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That is helpful.

Keith Robson, I know that the majority of Open University courses can be provided online. Does that also provide flexibility? Is the change in learning that happened during the pandemic the way of the future?

Would you say that those areas in which councils have been able to make cuts have been the low-hanging fruit? We have just completed some work on the national planning framework 4, and a big part of that was about the fact that planning departments are not functioning properly and do not have the workforce in place. That might be changing now but, for a decade, people have been lost to a very important part of our local government planning system. Has that been an area that councils have been forced to target because key statutory services need to be funded instead?

That is fine.

On the flipside of that, if we look at what the report says about adult social care being in crisis, we see that spend by councils on adult social care has risen, in real terms, by 25 per cent since 2012. Given some of the reforms that we have seen, such as the integration of health and social care, and the record amounts of money that are going into the sector, why is performance going in the wrong direction? As every member of this committee knows, I always raise the Edinburgh situation, but 25 per cent of all delayed discharge happens here in the capital. Something is clearly not working, beyond workforce issues. Do you have more detail on why a 25 per cent increase in spending is not delivering better outcomes?

You do not go into this in the report, but would it be helpful to have a specific ring-fenced preventative budget? I do not see many current opportunities for spend to go directly to preventative projects, because we are managing crisis, whether in social services, homelessness services or mental health services. What would you recommend doing to achieve that shift towards prevention? If the resource is not there, the projects do not happen.

Thank you. It is an area where a lot more discussion will happen across parties.

Good morning, Ali, and thanks for joining us today. I want to discuss the introduction of another set of politicians—elected mayors and provosts. We have touched on that, but I would like to hear more of your thoughts on it. Is there evidence of elected mayors increasing accountability, improving community engagement and delivering better outcomes for people? What are your thoughts on that? What has Reform Scotland said about the suggestion?

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I want to ask a couple of questions about the spending figures in the report. What stood out for me was the significant reductions in council spending on planning, culture and leisure services and environmental services over the past decade. What impact have those reductions in spending had on local communities and businesses? Have some of the changes that we have seen—for example, the use of arm’s-length external organisations—helped, or have they simply been a way of transferring the money off council budgets?

Which powers would you centralise to elected mayors, provosts or civic leaders? This is a leading question, but something that has not been well managed is deciding who is responsible for delivery of the city growth deals that the UK Government, the Scottish Government and collections of councils have signed up to. We have had big bang moments and big numbers for those, but we have key infrastructure projects such as the Sheriffhall roundabout, which is not far from here, progressing at a snail’s pace. That is a huge key project for the Lothian region, but no one is the lead minister or lead politician for it. Do you envisage powers over, say, economic development, health or policing sitting with the individual?

Would it improve the relationship between local and central Government to have that additional tier or would it mean that we just created another voice for the areas in people who, let us face it, will be elected by a party that is either in government or not? Political cycles might dictate who has the roles. Might we see mayors who will, as with Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan, happily take on the UK Government? We would maybe have Conservatives elected, who would take on the Scottish Government at this point. It is quite easy to have a dissenting voice if you are not in the Government of the day, because you will not necessarily be progressing an agenda.

Finally, to go back to Willie Coffey’s question about council numbers, let us consider having 32 elected mayors and the amount of resource that an elected mayor of Edinburgh, for example, would potentially have compared with an elected mayor of Clackmannanshire. The voice of those mayors, in the cities, would work well in driving real economic opportunity and promoting an area. However, where did the idea of having 32 mayors come from? Should we look at where we operate more regionally—such as with Holyrood’s Lothian region—with individual councils coming together? People could get lost if there were 32 voices instead of eight.