 The next item of business is an urgent question from Jackie Baillie. To ask the cabinet secretary for finance and the constitution what is the responses to news that councils are using their reserves to fund services. Cabinet Secretary, Derek Mackay. Decisions on the use of reserves are rightly the responsibility of councils to take where it is prudent and sustainable to do so. As today's Audit Scotland report states, it will prescribe a minimal level of useable reserves, but as on 31 March 2017 local authorities of useable reserves amounted to £1.9 billion, which represents over 18 per cent of the total funding being provided to councils by the Scottish Government this year, and that excludes Orkney and Shetland who have additional extensive oil-related reserves. Jackie Baillie. Last year councils cut £524 million from services and used £79 million of their reserves simply to balance their budgets. That cuts to schools for our children, cuts to social care for our elderly, cuts to basic services like road repairs. Some £1.5 billion of cuts have been made by the SNP to council budgets since 2010. Councils are now in danger of exhausting their reserves and there will be nothing left in a couple of years' time in councils like Murray, Clackmannanshire and North Ayrshire. Added to that, 7,000 jobs have been cut from local government. If local government is such a priority for the cabinet secretary, why is the Scottish Government continuing to cut vital services? It is the case, Presiding Officer, that the Scottish Government has increased support for local services in our most recent budget, an increase of around £400 million. If you deduct the sums that Labour authorities chose not to increase the council tax by that number, it is reduced. Overall, the support for local services through health and social care integration and the ability to raise the council tax and the multiplier ensured that more resources went for local services. In addition to that point, I would say that local government has been treated very fairly in very tough and challenging times at the hands of the UK right-wing Conservative Government, which has reduced our resources for public expenditure in Scotland in discretionary expenditure. It is the case that we have treated local authorities very fairly in a very challenging framework. Do not just take my word for its spice. The Parliament's information service says so. If you look at the last couple of years when you take into account the complex nature of health and social care integration and the ability to raise the council tax and the change in multiplier, it shows that in the budget that I presented to Parliament, any increase that we would have had in local government would have a better settlement than that. However, I accept that it is a challenging fiscal environment in which we are all operating, and that is why we need a matured debate on the choices that we have going forward and recognise the pressures on our public services. I will continue to be as supportive as I can to Scotland's public services and not least local government. I am always happy to have that matured debate, but I think that it takes the cabinet secretary to recognise that, when you cut a lot and give a little black, it is still a cut in real terms. Contrary to what the cabinet secretary said on radio today, because I listened carefully, the local government's share of the overall Scottish budget has fallen. It is the case that the cuts from the UK Government has reduced the money available. He is right to say that, but Spice tells us that the cuts from the Tories amount to 1.5 per cent taken over the past three years. If you use the same three years, the cuts to local government made by the SNP amount to 4.6 per cent. The SNP have taken Tory austerity and more than doubled it and passed that on to local government. What we have here is SNP turbocharged austerity. The cabinet secretary has an opportunity. He really does in almost two weeks' time to change course and properly fund local government. The question for all of us is whether he will be Santa or Scrooge. I noticed that Jackie Baillie did not respond to my comment that if local authorities felt that they did not have enough resources, why was it that Labour authorities chose not to increase the council tax by 3 per cent, including Jackie Baillie's own Labour local authority in West Dunbartonshire? Similar to local authorities across the country, there was an increase in resources. That is the fact from the budget that I presented to the Scottish Parliament. What is more, those extra resources were opposed by the Labour party to go to local services. That includes, in Jackie Baillie's analysis, she excludes the money from council tax increases, the multiplier and health and social care integration. Jackie Baillie discounts real money in terms of her presentation to the Scottish Parliament, but Scotland's local services have been served very well and very fairly by the decisions of this Government, which has protected local services in the face of austerity coming from the right-wing Tory UK Government, whose most recent decisions have made this even more challenging, and they have grown and they have mown. I look forward to the intervention from the Tories, because I have some very interesting figures here as to how the Tories treat local government in England. Alexander Stewart The block grant from Westminster is going up in real terms. Therefore, there is no justification for local government budgets to be reduced by the Scottish Government. Will the Scottish Government therefore commit those funds to support and assist local councils with their commitments over the next financial year? Alexander Stewart has just given us the latest spending commitment from the Tories. Will I commit any Barnett consequentials specifically to local government as opposed to the health service, as opposed to any other service that the Tories may be interested in? Yet again, the Tories are all over the place on tax and spend. You cannot have tax cuts and more expenditure at the same time. The Tories are choosing to spend resources time and time again. The Tories ask why local government is feeling pressure. They are feeling pressure because of Tory cuts coming from the Westminster Government and they are feeling further pressure as a consequence of the Government. The £2 billion figure that Alexander Stewart has referenced is not a real-terms increase to the discretionary funds for our public services. You cannot spend it on council services, but I am not surprised that the Tory front bench does not understand that particular fact. I am interested that the Tories are saying today that their priority is local government, because here is what they do in power. I have said that the reduction that we have endured as a Scottish Government has, as a matter of fact, tried to protect local government. The real-terms reduction in Scottish local government is around 5.5 per cent in real terms over a seven-year period. Do you know what the reduction is for local government in England? It is 28.3 per cent real-terms reduction. Where the Tories are actually in power, their impact on local services is devastating, although at the same time they are trying to devastate Scotland's public services as well. That is why we are having a mature and reasonable debate about the powers that we have at our disposal to protect our public services right across the board in the face of this right-wing chancellor who is pursuing austerity as a matter of ideology. Richard Lochhead. The cabinet secretary may be aware that the leader of Murray council criticised Councillor Walter Wilson for causing alarm when he resigned a few days ago because of his conservative colleagues' extreme right-wing views and the cuts that were contemplating, yet today Murray's leader is talking about being a few years away from bankruptcy, which will certainly cause alarm amongst local people. Will he be willing to ask his officials why they seem to be the only council in Scotland that is talking in such terms? I have met a number of council leaders. I am happy to continue my meeting. I meet regularly with COSLA to look at the settlement going forward as well. I engage with COSLA on matters of distribution. Of course, the Government will try to be supportive, but Richard Lochhead has fairly characterised the administration in Murray. As I said, the Government will be helpful, but some people should apply some pressure to the right-wing Tory Government in Westminster as well, because, essentially, the reductions that this Parliament, this Government and this country are facing in real terms for the spend on local services is coming from the direction of the Tory party. The cabinet secretary has criticised councils for complaining about their financial position if they did not choose to use their flexibility to increase council tax. Isn't it clear, though, that the very many of us who have long criticised council tax as a fundamentally unfair tax need to take responsibility for that? In particular, he is in a position to decide how much revenue should be raised fairly, progressively through reform of income tax and how many councils should be put under pressure to use an unfair council tax change to raise their revenues? Isn't it clear that people on his salary and people on my salary need to be paying more income tax next year than we did this year if we want to fund our local services properly? Patrick Harvie touches on the point that I have made about the discussion that we are having around the role of income tax in Scotland's budget. I am happy to engage with all parties on that. I am actively doing that, engaging with stakeholders and the public as well. I look forward to presenting the budget on 14 December for our tax proposition as well as our tax position. As I say, that debate is very much live and kicking.