 Welcome to the fourth meeting of the local government housing and planning committee in session 6. Our first item this morning is consideration of whether to take item 3 in private. Item 3 will be an opportunity for members to reflect on the evidence that they have heard in the meeting this morning. Do members agree to take item 3 in private? Great. Item 2 is the opportunity for the committee to take evidence to inform its consideration of regulations, giving effect to the recommendations of Boundary Scotland in relation to six local authority areas. Before I go on, I want to acknowledge the good work of Boundary Scotland and that what we are doing today is the beginning of three sessions where we are going to be reviewing the work and taking evidence. For this morning, the committee will be hearing from five of the authorities, Orkney Islands Council, Shetland Island Council, Highland Council, Argyll and Bute Council and Kohler Nantiar. The committee has also received written evidence from North Ayrshire Council, and that can be found on the committee's website. I would like to begin by welcoming Karen Greaves, head of executive support from the Orkney Islands Council. Hello, Karen. And also Maggie Sanderson, chief executive from Shetland Island Council. Hello, Maggie. Welcome to the committee. I just want to let you know that we have a series of questions that different members are going to ask you, but I also just want to let you know that if through our questions you don't feel that all of the information that you think we need to hear has come out, I will give you time at the end of the questioning to also do that. I also want to frame this meeting that we are in this situation because of the islands act. The intention of the islands act was that it came about because of the concerns that the distinct interests of island communities were not fully represented in council decisions and discussions, so there was this review that has come about. Clearly, what has happened from what I have been researching or being briefed on is that for each island grouping or councils with islands has had a different effect. We are really looking forward to hearing from both of yourselves as to what the impact has been for both Orkney Island Council and Shetland Island Council. I am going to start with the first question, which is that I am interested to understand if you are satisfied with the recommendations as set out in the Boundaries Scotland report regarding your council areas. Maybe we will start with Karen and then continue with Maggie. I can confirm that the council endorsed the proposals made by Boundaries Scotland at its meeting on 26 November 2019. They are currently the optimum solution with a number of councillors allocated and they take into account Orkney's challenging geographical setting, which has slow fragile transport links, often affected by the weather. We were happy with the outcome of the commission and its recommendations, largely because for four of our seven multi-member wards, we have stayed with the status quo, which is exactly what the council asked for in the consultation period. In respect to the other three, it included maintaining the status quo in one area by using the two-member option that was brought in by the Islands Act. That provided a solution and resolved a significant departure from the parity issue that would have arisen in our central and west wards. Throughout the process, we felt that the council had been really well listened to, the engagement was excellent and the information was provided. Our members were fully and effectively briefed and then the commission subsequently went on to engage with community councils, giving the same messages so that they could actually have the conversations with their communities. We were really felt that the process of communication, that engagement, has really led to the satisfactory result that we have achieved. Thank you for that. I am now going to call on committee member Willie Coffey to ask the next question and that will be followed by Eleanor Whitham. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you, Karen and Maggie. Welcome to the committee. I wanted to ask a question that really does not relate to your authority area, but I would be really pleased to hear your views. The proposal for North Ayrshire and Arran is that Arran would have a single member board. Just to get your reflections on whether that kind of principle defeats the principle of proportional representation that we had hoped to introduce within the councils, just to get your take on that, please, if you may. For Orkney, the council considered any opportunity for single member wards. However, without the geography that we have, it would be very difficult to implement single member wards to every aisle without increasing the number of councillors. Although we have some big challenges for the North Isles ward in particular, where you have three members covering quite a number of aisles and the transport links don't make that very easy, for our own situation we felt that having the three member ward covering that area does give the optimum solution and helps with the workloads. I think that the single member wards would always be welcomed, but the desire to maintain councillor numbers wouldn't give us that solution for Orkney. We also engaged in the discussion about single member wards, particularly for our North Isles. We had representation from the community councils speaking about the impacts and views from the electorate around the use of single member wards. For example, one of our communities, Walzer, conducted an informal stakeholder engagement in their area, and they felt that they could express a voice for a majority view, which was to stay as part of a three member North Isles ward. I think that the recognition was very much that the three member wards that they experienced enabled work to be shared between councillors, that the burden that individual councillors might feel in a single member ward was really unsatisfactory, and that because of the way that our committee structure is set up, for instance attendance at our planning committee, we have a member from each ward who is not part of the planning committee. Again, the ward members have somebody who can represent their views in the committee if they wish to use them. Having a single member felt at times that it would dilute the opportunity for our electorate to be fully represented because of the work that was required of members. It was fully explored, and the commission gave us a real chance to engage with members of the community around that. However, the overall opinion was that the work required of councillors was such that they were better supported in multi-member wards. Do you think that enough weight is attached to the geographical areas that our local councillors have to represent? Let me give you a wee example, Maggie and Karen. Arryn is 167 square miles, and the proposal is that a single councillor represents that huge landmass. If you look over at ward 5 in North Ayrshire, it has five councillors, and it looks to me as though it is about 15 square miles. That is a ridiculous amount of land for the Arryn councillor to have to cover. Do you think that we give enough weight to the amount of travelling and distance that a councillor will have to travel to perform and carry out their duties? If I could come in there, again, that formed part of the discussion for our elected members around the options. Certainly for some of our elected members, the North Isles and the South mainland, they would describe the geographic coverage that they have. Fair Isle being the furthest part of the South mainland, moving up to Cunysborough and Galberwick. There are tendons that meetings, particularly community council meetings, can mean that they are travelling some distances and having a lot of meetings in evenings, as I was describing the workload. I think that our multi-member wards have worked together, so they agree how they will split up the work across the ward, which again manages that workload. Similarly, the North Isles, because you have to get multiple ferries to attend meetings, then people have split up that work across the multi-member wards and have managed the demands on their time better that way. Certainly that was recognised by the consultation that we had with our communities, which welcomed the broader coverage that is provided by the multi-member wards. Karen, you will be the same. I would imagine that it is essential that you do not have local councillors yo-y-ing and hopping about islands in order to carry out their duties. In reflecting on the R, for example, I gave Fair, do you think that there is enough priority given to that aspect of a local councillor's work? I think that our councillors would always want to emphasise that it is a significant challenge for them to physically undertake constituency business. Due to the challenges, for us, the way that our geography is, it is more like a folk and hub model. The Isles all come back through Connector, the Orkney Mainland, in order for a member to visit another island. In their area, they have to come via carpool, and that could involve an overnight stay to be able to pick up the transport links. It remains a significant challenge for them. They spread the workload out so that not every councillor has to go to every island to undertake the business. However, there are some elements where they would like to go and visit all the residents in their ward. Therefore, they undertake the travel to each of the Isles. Obviously, with connectivity, digital connectivity, that is helping, but there is still a significant challenge there in getting all of our remote Isles up to the required digital connectivity standards, too. It is quite an issue, but, as Maggie referred to earlier, the advantages of having a three-member ward for the North Isles, for our North Isles, for example, in terms of things like planning and other issues are there, too. It is a fine balance, but we cannot underestimate the significant challenge that there is for them in terms of the geography. Thank you very much to both of you for those comments. Back to you, convener. Thank you, Willie. Eleanor, would you like to come in now? Thank you very much, convener, and welcome to today's session. Karen and Maggie, before I start, I would like to refer everyone to my register of interests, still a serving councillor at Eastershire Council. The question that I have this morning for both of you is, what would you like to see happen next regarding these recommendations? What action should this committee take? What action should the Scottish Government or Boundaries Scotland take, if anything? I can come in first. I think that making a decision would be important for us. We have local elections in May next year, and clearly we need to begin preparing for those local elections. Understanding the boundaries that we will be working with for our wards would be important as early as possible. Certainly, for me, a decision so that we can work on the next stage of our activity around the election would be helpful. For Orkney, it is exactly the same. We have a few minor tweaks to some of the boundaries by Kirkwall, so we would welcome an early decision to agree the proposals for Orkney so that we can start the engagement in that preparation for the local government elections next year. I just have a resupplementary question to that. What would be the implications if they were not agreed to both of your council areas? For me, the issue that was raised by the commission was that we were beginning to see a significant deviation in parity arising in a number of wards. Two of the changes that we are seeing are trying to get the electoral balance correct in our wards. We are seeing a centralisation effect happening in our communities. People are moving into central communities from the more rural areas. A failure to address the parity begins to create an issue for how fairly our community is represented within the council. I think that it is appropriate that the wards begin to represent the settled nature of our communities. For Orkney, if the proposals were not agreed and we would have to go back to the drawing board, that would be very challenging for us to complete a comprehensive review again and consultation with the community. If the current proposals are not agreed, that might lead us to suggest that there could be more radical changes ahead, which would require a lot more consultation. It would be important that we get things settled and agreed ahead of the local government elections next year, as the preparations were already under way, as other councils will be for those elections. I am not going to call on Paul McClellan with the next question. We are moving into a slightly different theme. I just want to say to my colleagues if they want to ask your question but then direct it to somebody to kick off. Maggie and Karen get a little bit of guidance on who starts. Thank you, convener, and welcome to Karen and Maggie. Can I refer everyone to my register of interests as well? I am an existing councillor on Eastwoodian Council. I will direct it first to Karen if that is okay. It is really your views on how Boundaries Scotland have applied the criteria for boundary reform during this review. Any thoughts you have on that? Boundaries Scotland made its criteria very clear at the outset of the review, and the criteria that it used was also clear in all correspondence, both with the councillor and as part of the engagement. It has taken into account Orkney's specific geography, particularly those areas that contain rural, sparsely populated island isles with limited fragile transport links. We have welcomed the criteria and believe that that is why we have arrived at the optimum solution. I think for us it certainly felt that Boundaries Scotland were genuinely exploring options for the size of our wards. They were really keen to discuss that flexibility and how we could provide better results in the process to ensure effective and convenient government. Whilst it is felt that electoral parity remains really important, there was a willingness to discuss future electoral changes, the issue of local ties and special geographic considerations. For instance, we saw one of our areas moving from Lerwick, where it is absorbed almost as a suburb into Lerwick, into the more rural south area and that area rising to a four-member ward. I would say that, whilst it receives many of its services from Lerwick, it does not consider itself to be a suburb of Lerwick. The commission was very clear about what they would consider. The guidance booklet was very clear and set out the scene for good engagement. It also provided a timeline that they stuck to, except for the fact that they provided us with a little bit more time to allow a council decision because of the discussions that were happening in our community. For us, it felt like the criteria were clear and enabled people to understand the issue of parity and what could be considered and what could not be considered. Maggie, thank you for that convenient for me, just to ask a quick supplementary. Maggie, you probably should say herself first of all and then on to Karen, obviously. The pre-criteria of discussions before the criteria was set, were you satisfied with that? Is there any lessons committed to look at in that regard? Is how quickly they start the discussions with you before they move on to the process? Is there any comment you have on that or were you satisfied with that? Again, thank you. We actually found the engagement throughout absolutely excellent and the boundary commission actually took up a proposal from the council in presenting ideas to the community. The early engagement, the seminars with our elected members, the willingness to genuinely explore options, gave a confidence to our members in engaging with the community around the options and then being able to revert back to what the community felt was best rather than pursuing an option, either that the council had generated or that the boundary commission themselves had generated. It really felt like it listened to the community, heard the community's views and applied those in coming up with the final recommendations. Thank you, Maggie. Karen, any thoughts on that question? Just really exactly the same. We really welcomed the visit by a boundary Scotland to Orkney to have seminars with our elected members and to really scope out the initial proposals. That gave us an opportunity to discuss all the options and explore different ideas at a very early stage prior to going out for the public consultation. We were able to discuss a proposal that we did not think was suitable for our area because it broke local ties. We were very much listened to and that came out in the final proposals that went out. We were very much welcomed the approach and felt listened to. There was every opportunity to give us feedback to them and they listened, so we were very happy with the consultation. Thank you for that, Paul. It is great to hear in more detail the good work of Boundary Scotland and how well they have been listening in Shetland and Orkney. I would like to call in Elena again. She has a couple of themes that she would like to explore. I would like to explore whether placing councils into categories with other similar councils is the appropriate basis on which to determine total councillor numbers. If we think about varsity, morality and deprivation and whether you are both aware of your classification, whether you agree with who and which other councils that you were griff with. If we perhaps start with Karen and then go to Maggie Pans. In local government we always get paired with our family groupings and no two councils are ever going to be very alike. Everybody has different geographies and different contexts. However, there is always that need to do some element of comparison and benchmarking. As we work through this, we realise that we have to have some element of comparison, especially in terms of things such as numbers of councillors and electoral parity. We recognise that, and that has come through in the final proposals that we are happy with. I would agree with Karen that local government often gets benchmarks and we are compared with family groups. In the Islands Act you have recognised that islands are unique and different and need to be treated uniquely and differently. We have always said that every island authority and every island is different, but you have produced a process that enabled people to be heard and listened to. Whilst there were clear boundaries and statutory considerations to be taken into account, particularly in parity, it never felt that the option to discuss things like geographic uniqueness and local ties would not be listened to and options were not available. It felt like an open process of engaging with our communities and our elected members. If I could just come back on that, Maggie, does that mean that you agreed that despite being benchmarked against your family groupings, the whole process enabled Shetland Islands to have its own recommendations that were clearly set out on the basis of what was best for Shetland as opposed to being steered towards other family groupings that they were benchmarked against? I certainly felt that. The flexibility in the Islands Act was articulated, particularly considering single or two-member wards in addition to three or four-member wards. It felt to us that the main goal of the consultation was to listen to the audience, not to promote a preconceived idea or having drawn a map already. In posing it on us, it definitely felt that, although the ground rules were clear and discussed, members were able to engage in the process. Similarly, our communities and our community councils were able to engage in understanding the benefits of the various different options and then being part of making a recommendation that we felt was listening to our local issues. I will bring Paul back in on another bit of exploring that theme a bit more. Thank you, convener, and I will ask Maggie first time in this regard. I think that you both touched on this, but it is really looking about the voter to councillor ratio across all the wards. Do you think that having variations in the councillor ratio could impact an effective and convenient local government? Obviously, it is relevant to the Islands. You have touched on that as well, but what are your thoughts on that? Thank you. Clearly, having significant disparity can create an imbalance. I would certainly say that, at times for Shetland, it has felt as though the voices of the central area may feel louder than the voices of our more remote areas. I think that that is partly about how the council itself works together. I believe that we are a council for the whole of our area. I often see our elected members making supportive decisions for our islands. The Islands Act really enshrines that every decision that we make, we have to consider the implications to islands now, even though we are an island authority. I think that the need to consider islands that you have promoted through the legislation impacts on our own arrangements locally. I think that I see a council operating for the whole of Shetland but listening carefully to its island communities and considering the impacts of its decisions, regardless of where those elected members have been directly drawn from. Maggie, was that an issue that came through in the consultation with the smaller islands and the populations? Did they mention that at all? If it is one member ward or two member ward as against the three in a similar type of geographic content area, did that come through as an issue at all? Not so much. I think that the key issue for them was recognising how hard our elected members work and the demands on them and their ability to do what is needed for their community if they are just a sole member on their island. Our elected members recognise that elected members and cells need the best support that they can to do the work that they do for their communities. In doing that, having a peer group that they are part of is better for them than working as a sole member in their community. Just the same question. With the consultation, was there any feedback from the communities about the disparity in the number of councillors that they had in the voter ratio? Similar to what Maggie said, our council very much works together in considering any impacts of any decisions or policies on all of the Orkney isles as a whole. In decision making, we would do an equality impact assessment. Iles proofing is an element of that, which we undertook ahead of the islands act. We are very much committed to the sustainability of our isles and ensuring that the populations are sustained and that there is work and economy for them. Our council works very much together to support the isles so that the voice and the considerations are heard in the chamber. In terms of electoral parity, there was no feedback about that in the public consultation. The isles were welcome the fact that they were able to retain the number of councillors to represent them. The feedback is that they are confident that their voices are heard in the chamber. We are going to shift themes a little bit to a bit more around the electoral reform society's work on electoral parity. Before I ask my question this morning, I would also like to refer to my registered interests as I am a Serving Councillor in North Lanarkshire. I would like to ask Maggie and Karen this morning in relation to the electoral reform society that was stated during the former local government and communities committee in 2016 that making electoral parity a priority is outdated. I am just wondering if you agree with the statement and as a follow-on question, are you aware of such parity ratios being used to determine representations in other countries, for example across the United Kingdom or in Europe? I think that it's important to take the context of the area that's in consideration, which is what the Boundaries Scotland has done for Orkney. They've looked at our areas as a whole. In looking at electoral parity, the wards have been split up to give the optimum solution. We have some areas where there isn't electoral parity because of the population and the geography. However, I think that the criteria that are set to allow us to deviate from electoral parity is important. That's an important consideration and an important flexibility that exists. I don't think that taking electoral parity alone would give a fair representation and fair workloads for elected members. I feel that the way that it's been dealt with by Boundaries Scotland is the best way for our context anyway. I'm not aware of other examples. I agree that the discussions that we had because of the flexibilities and the four options that we could explore, I don't think that it felt for the discussion that the electoral parity was being pushed at the risk of everything else. The council has had a history in the past where the commission has been so stringent or had no tolerance for the matters of deviation from parity that it felt that communities weren't listened to. The council, around 20 years ago, went to judicial review because of the history of total adherence or lack of capacity to adjust around the rules. A stoic adherence to the rules does lead to a position where we have unhappy communities and unhappy councils. However, the consultation was completely different. It felt that the workings of the review were fully explained. The whole flexibility of the islands acts were taken into account. It was clear that their main goal was to engage and consider all the different options that we would propose without any particular pre-imposed idea. Whilst the parity discussions were clear to us, it was also clear that the consideration of geography and also the local ties would be a matter. I think for our council who have had a previous experience, which was particularly challenging, this was a completely different experience for us. In terms of the wider awareness of other areas around whether or not they are using parity as a decision process, I would have to claim ignorance on that. I was reading the Electoral Reform Society's report in preparation for this meeting, and I thought that it was interesting that there is a piece where they are talking about Scotland's wards in comparison to the UK average and then also to the EU average in terms of a population per kilometres. I thought that it was striking that the average local authority in Scotland is not necessarily for Shetland and Orkney, but the average local authority in Scotland is 163,200 whereas the EU average is 5,630. A little bit further on, the UK has 1,860 councillors, whereas Finland has 1,500. I think that that is a bigger conversation, but it is part of the conversation of real local representation. I realise that we are having this conversation today in terms of the boundaries that have been placed, the proposals that have been placed now, and are we on a journey towards even more localised representation and a different way of working together? I just wonder if that has been explored in Shetland or Orkney, maybe Maggie, and then Karen, you could come back on that. Thank you. Certainly our figures are closer, I would say, than the average, so we do see our electorate being better represented. I recognise a challenge for the first time, last election, local election, that we had a number of uncontested seats where we did not have the range of candidates standing in local elections. I think that the challenge that I would want to see addressed would be how do we make being an elected member a valuable contribution to society and recognised in a way that recognised the work of our elected members. I want to see better representation of our community. At the moment, I think that the level of renumeration that our elected members receive means that quite often we see people who have got another income like a pension being able to stand for the council, whereas somebody with a working family or a single mother, for instance, would not be able to find a way of standing. In Shetland, a third of the working age population worked for the council, and when you become an elected member you cannot be an employee of the council. I think that we would be presented with a particular challenge if the number of elected members in our community were to increase, because people have a right to a choice when it comes to an election. I think that we should value the work of our elected members. They work incredibly hard, so how do we make it something that is valuable? I personally might prefer to see less elected members but well-paid elected members, rather than seeing more elected members who continue to not be recognised and valued for their contribution. Thank you for that perspective, and Karen, do you want to come in on that? I support what Maggie has just said. I think that the role of an elected member has changed dramatically over the while. They are doing a full-time job now and the remuneration does not reflect that particularly for the size of our area. Comparing different ratios across different councils in different areas is always difficult, because there are different degrees of devolved powers, delegations and duties from different councils, whether it be a district council or a parish council or a local authority. In terms of representation, we look further down when we think about community councils, and we have more community councils than 20 community councils in Orkney. Our elected members are a part of a go-to-community council meeting, so they are very close to the constituents. We try to allow the community councils to say as much in directing or delivering services in their communities so that we can do that, or at least helping us to prioritise the situation. It is an issue that is a really interesting topic. As long as we keep going down the road of trying to keep everybody empowered and keeping the decision making where it needs to be, we are on the start of that journey, but a long way to go. It is great to hear your perspectives. I will move on to Miles Briggs, who has a range of themes that we are coming to a close with Miles's questions. Thank you, convener, and good morning to both Maggie and Karen. You have answered my questions, which I was going to ask with regard to the boundaries commission and the involvement in public consultation. From the evidence that you have given us, it seems that both your councils seem to be intent. I wanted to turn the questioning on its head and ask you, given that I am sure you will have been in correspondence with colleagues across other councils, where do you think, given the concerns that we have had expressed to us about the other council areas, their reviews have gone wrong that they have put forward concerns? I wonder whether the flexibilities that we have been provided with through the Islands Act has enabled us to have a much more open discussion of options. We genuinely felt that everything was available for us on the table. No map had been drawn for Shetland, and we could engage in designing the future boundaries. It felt like a very empowered process for our community and our elected members. Clearly, I think that the Islands Act had required a different approach, and maybe that is what generated a genuine conversation and exploration of options, the ability to explore different things and then come back and present a recommendation from the community, which was taken on board. I completely agree that the Islands Act is the requirement for the review from that. The review felt like it was not being done to us, but it was being done with us, and it was very early engagement. As I said before, we have very much been listened to. We have had all the flexibility that we have been able to very clearly and comprehensively explore all the different options. That was available to us to come up with the optimum solution. We were very much benefited from that approach, whereas it has led to us not being quite content with the proposals. Given that, in both cases, Shetland will see an additional councillor, and Orkney will remain on the current numbers. Do you think that that was a significant issue? Were there any concerns that you would like to raise that you do not feel were addressed during those reviews, which should have been as part of that process? We would not have liked to have seen a reduction in councillors. We would have felt that that would have been very difficult to take forward, because of the workloads and the area. We are content to remain at the number of councillors that we have been allocated. Thank you for that question. We did see some reluctance around the central ward. Currently, we have two or three member wards. Because of the issue around parity, there is a proposal that the west ward becomes a two member ward and a four member ward. That would not be created in Shetland Central. Members accepted the proposal in the consultation paper, but with a degree of reluctance. I think that there was a recognition that the alignment with our community councils has been a problem here. The nature of the issue that we are facing is this draw from more remote areas into the central area of Shetland. We did observe that perhaps the best solution for the whole of this area would have been a six member area award with six members rather than the split. That move of one member from one of the three member wards to the other, but having a large award that covered the whole area because of the geography and the nature of the communities. That was not available to us in the legislation. I think that the community probably was less concerned about whether they formed part of a two, three or four member ward, as long as the representation that they received from their elected member was good enough. Really, for our communities, I think that how good your elected member is rather than how many people they are representing is the key thing that they wanted to be focused on. I think that that issue for me is about the recognition of the role of an elected member and how we value what they contribute to the democratic processes that we have. That is very helpful. Finally, I wanted to ask, do you think that this is going to encourage more people—you touched upon this earlier, Maggie—to, given that you are likely to be standing in a ward, which is a two member ward, do you think that this is going to encourage people to come forward or if they realise that there would be two people representing such a significant number of people? That might put people off. What impact do you think that this will have? I think that there is a risk that, with a less of that cohort of members, it may have an impact on the number of people willing to stand in that area. I suppose that it is our first experience of that, so we will find out in May if this is implemented. I think that the underlying issue is how do we make the role of a councillor valued and support people to step up and be their community representative. In a small community, it is very difficult to put your head above the parapet and represent your community. We have had some challenging issues, particularly in that area, the western central ward, where we have a large wind farm that is being built in that area. I think that our elected members have felt a pressure within their communities. I think that that may be the biggest issue for whether or not we see people standing. How do elected members get supported with the pressure of social media, the challenge in our local press? Those are people standing for their community, doing a very critical role on very poor pay, yet they are under probably more immense pressure than some of our officials who get paid a lot more do. I think that the real issue for me is not about whether or not we get people standing everywhere, rather than just in that two-member ward. I think that the issue about how people see their elected members, we are going to do a lot of work around promoting the role of elected members and how important they are for the council. That does not necessarily mean that people will get that message. That is something that has clearly come through in this conversation this morning about the renumeration for councillors, the acknowledgement of their role and that that would encourage people to come forward. That has certainly been something that we have already been talking about as a committee and maybe that is a piece of work that we actually need to take on and explore. I think that we are very fitting because we have three current councillors and a former councillor on our committee too, so valuable perspective there. I appreciate your contributions this morning. Is there anything that has not come out at all? We need to wrap up, but I wanted to give that opportunity of taking heads from both of you. OK, great. Thanks so much for coming today. I think that I will do in writing to Karen, which was mentioned a bit about a tweak in the Kirkwall boundary. I think that we will just put that in a letter to you and get clarity on what you meant by that. My understanding is that if we accept these, they need to be accepted as they currently stand. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and for now we are going to temporarily suspend the meeting. We now move on to our second panel of witnesses this morning, and I would like to welcome Councillor Margaret Davidson, leader of the Highland Council, who has come joining us by telephone, Douglas Henry, executive director of Argyll and Bute, and Derek Mackay, governance and election manager for Merlin Nan in Siar. Welcome to the panel. We have a range of questions. Good morning. We have a range of questions, so we will get going with that. I will start off with an opening question, which is whether you are satisfied, we would like to hear if you are satisfied with the recommendations as set out in the Boundary Scotland reports regarding your council areas. I will start with Douglas Henry and then I will go to Margaret Mackay and then Derek Mackay. In Argyll and Bute terms, the council's position is that there are significant elements of the commission's final proposals, with which the council is in agreement, but there were a number of areas set out in the council's official response to the recommendations. It was not possible for members to come to a single consolidated view and also there were a small number of areas where members did not agree with the commission's final recommendations, so is the answer to your question from Argyll and Bute. We will probably have a bit of time to explore some of the differences that you have brought out there. Margaret Mackay, would you like to share your perspective there? OK, thank you. Good morning, Ariane. Nice to speak to you. Thank you for your opportunity. OK, in Highland we actually do have a single view across the chamber, all 74 of us, that we would like to ask the committee to consider rejecting the Boundary Commission proposals with deeply unhappy, dismayed even with some of the elements of what the Boundary Commission is proposing. My understanding is that there are only two options—acceptance or rejection of the Boundary Commission's proposals. If your committee would consider asking the Boundary Commission to undertake a fresh review, sensibly after the local government election in 2022, that is our opening position. Thank you, Margaret. Derek Mackay, would you like to bring in your perspective? The view from Corrie and Archer is that we broadly welcome the proposals from the Boundary Scotland. They are better reflective of the natural and historic communities across the islands. Indeed, all the comments that the court had made have been taken on by the Boundary Commission. About half of the public comments were in support of other proposals. I am quite a number, requested additional representation of the southern islands, and that has been incorporated into the final proposal. From the course point of view, we are very happy with the proposals, and they are much more reflective of our communities in the islands than the current ones. That is great to hear. Before we go on to other committee questions, I will give Margaret and Douglas an opportunity to go into the detail of why. Douglas, if you would like to expand a little bit on why there is a split perspective on some aspects of what has been proposed, that would be very helpful. In terms of positives, the council welcomed the fact that the four geographical sub-areas of Argyll and Bute that are in place for governance purposes were recognised and remained unchanged. We felt that was a positive. It was also considered that, in respect of the final proposals for what no change was proposed, Cowell, the Noon, parts of Helmsbury and Lomond were appropriate. In terms of the issues that the council had with the final recommendations, a specific objection was made by the council through the proposals. It was felt by members that they diminished overall electoral accountability and did not necessarily take into account factors that are material. Electoral parity, possible impact of demographic changes, an ageing population and not sure whether appropriate consideration was given to social and economic deprivation as a factor. It was felt that the council recognised that it was a perturbation that was made in particular to act in accordance with the principles of parity, the electoral parity, as they are set out in the legislation. However, the view was that there is discretion within how those principles are applied that would have allowed alternative proposals to come forward and be accepted. Specific areas, there was a division of opinion within the council on island-only words or island and mainland words. In the final proposals there is a mix, but it is fair to say that the principal islands, the biggest ones, would be in three island-only words, some of the smaller island words. He thought that some of the smaller islands would be part of an island and mainland word, for example in the Lorne area. The council recognised both sides of that argument and the final submission to the commission was that, as part of the wider public consultation exercise that the commission was carrying out, if a view came out from that public consultation that supported island-only words, the council would be in an area that they could not come to a final view on. In terms of other elements, there was a recognition and acknowledgement that the commission had picked up some suggestions that the council had made in relation to the entire area that reflected more accurately local community boundaries. The final point from Argyllun bute council point was that members wanted to take cognisance of a view that has been in place across the council since we responded to the islands that Scotland built back in 2017. It was in relation to that general point again about island-only or island and mainland words, to reiterate the point before. That has been the council's consistent view, but as I said a moment ago, if there was a particularly strong view from local communities, that was something that they would buy. That is a quick run through the position in relation to Argyllun views. There may well be things that I have missed or other matters that the committee would want to ask. I would be happy to try to pick those up if that is the case. I am sure that we have a range of questions. We will see if things come through. I have a bit of detail that I will come back on if it does not come out in those questions. Margaret, do you want to give us a sense of why Highland councils are asking us to reject the proposal? OK, thank you. There are four key issues that we would ask you to take into consideration. The first of which are in remote and sparsely populated wards of north-west Sutherland and Westeros. Those are the largest wards in Europe, not in Scotland, not in Highland, in Europe. They are vast. The boundary commission is suggesting that we take away a councillor in north-west Sutherland and reduce it to two. They are suggesting that we take away a councillor in Westeros and reduce it to three, although they are suggesting that one of the small towns moves into a neighbouring ward when that happens. It still leaves the huge geography of Westeros. We think that this is a real contrast to Scottish Government's supportive policies emerging about depopulation and that this is going to only make matters more difficult, because we believe that the demographic challenges of representing these vast wards need more than two and three. We are very resistant to the idea of removing councillors. The second point is about Sky. Again, the boundary commission is suggesting that we reduce the councillors that represent Sky from four to three. We were looking again because of the island effect, which is why this whole review has taken place. It is because of the impact of the island bill and taking that into place. We have seen no sign of an island impact assessment having been done for Sky. There has been no discussion of that. We again believe that this extraordinarily busy island is going to have its democratic representation reduced. It is very serious. The population of Sky is pretty steady. It might just be below the parity or the predictions. I do not believe that for one minute they will be the actuality of what happens. The population of Sky must quadruple during the large part of the year with visitors. The idea of losing a councillor has been extremely active and done very well on Sky over the past five years, but to lose a councillor is a tragedy to us. The third point that I would like to make is that the boundary commission is proposing against their own guidelines that we completely split the community of Loch Ness. Loch Ness is part of a ward called Edd and Loch Ness for councillors. It has worked very well over the past four years and five years. Now they are proposing that we split Loch Ness right down the middle so that South Loch Ness goes with one of the city wards and the rest of the ward becomes called Edd. The people of South Loch Ness and the people around all of the ward are extremely upset by this because they believe that Loch Ness is a community. We have so much in common and so much more in common than South Loch Ness would have with the city wards. They would always feel as if they were the add-on. It would be very difficult for anyone from South Loch Ness to be elected because the preponderance of people would be in the city end. It's a growing part of the city. The city ward that we are talking about is actually three councillors at present. We see no problem with them increasing to four. The boundary commission is suggesting that they increase to five at the expense of Edd and Loch Ness. We, again, think that this is wrong, that this community should not be split down the middle. This is such a fundamental problem. Finally, let's just speak about Cullodenardusia, which is at the other end of the spectrum. Cullodenardusia is a growing area in the Ness. Anyone who sees the house will see this vividly. It is already 50 per cent over parity. They are underrepresented at present. The boundary commission is proposing that they stay where they are. They say that they'll review it perhaps in the future, but we just don't understand why they haven't taken the opportunity to put an extra councillor in Cullodenardusia. We feel that, overall, the boundary commission will thank them for their first revision. They did return a councillor to Cays Ness, where they were proposing that one was lost. We thank them for that. That was helpful, but it just doesn't go far enough. The proposals that they still have in front of us are such that we've never seen. Over the last decade, the boundary commission has steadily reduced the number of councillors in Highland, which we find odd as we are an area with growing population. However, that growing population should not be represented by more councillors around the Ness at the expense of the rest of the Highlands. It is a very diverse area, with very different needs across the area. We truly believe that the boundary commission is not taking that to account. My final word is that, when we wrote to the Deputy First Minister, we also included the fact that we would ask that Parliament looks at the remit of the boundary commission and looks to see whether there can be some more flexibility so that both the populated and rural and island areas can have more flexibility around parity. That, from a Highland point of view, would work much better for us. We have a range of questions that will help us to dig into some of what you have just brought up. As I said at the end, we will have a little bit of time in case any of the three of you feel that something has not been brought to light through the question. I am going to bring in Eleanor Wickham. Thank you very much, convener, and welcome to everybody this morning. We have just heard very clearly from Margaret why Highland has the view that it would like the committee to reject the proposals. Can you please hear from Derek and Douglas as to what they think that the committee should do? Obviously, Margaret has explained clearly that due to the geography of the Highlands and the fact that some of the proposals in Highlands view seek to split a community up and that we have underrepresentation in their view. Can I hear from Derek and Douglas as to what they would like the committee to do with regard to the proposals? From Collin, in our shared point of view, we would like an early decision. Firstly, as deputy returning officer to enable us to plan properly for the May elections next year, the proposals that the Boundary Scotland would come up with better reflect communities right across the island and are broadly welcomed. The council has long advocated for a reduction in councillor numbers, and we have that with those proposals. We have also advocated for having more flexibility to move away from three and four member wars to one to six member wars, which will allow a better reflection of communities across the islands. The proposals that Boundary Scotland have come up with reflect that. They could ridden some of the anomalies that currently exist within the larger wars. All those boundaries would be easily identifiable to the electorate right across the islands as representing natural, historic communities, maintaining local ties and ensuring equal representation across the islands, and they are broadly welcome by the core. I will first echo the comments from my colleague from Western Isles, forgive me if I don't do the Gaelic, in relation to whatever happens being moved on as quickly as possible. The second point is my understanding. It was made clear earlier in the course of the meeting that, ultimately, the commission's proposals can be accepted or rejected. There are a number of views. The proposals are not ones that the council can buy into in the room. There are a number of views. We expect that, because the bill will come to the conclusion that, from a Gaelic views point of view, the proposal should be rejected. We missed a little bit of your preamble to the statement that the proposals should be rejected, but that is very clear. Eleanor, did you want to come? Is that okay? That's okay. That's fine. Now we're going to move on to a little bit of our questions around the process that was carried out. I'm going to invite Paul McClellan in with a question. I'll probably start with Maggie. Maggie, you're in touch, and this is really just about your views on how Boundaries Scotland have applied the criteria for boundary reform during the review. You went into that quite a bit, but I don't know if there's anything else you want to add to that particular point. Was our discussion pre the criteria and what level of discussion did Boundaries Scotland have with ourselves before the criteria was almost set? Okay. Thank you for bringing that up, because we had a discussion with the Boundary Commission back in 2019. It seems like an eon ago now, doesn't it? We actually had a very good discussion with them. We raised many of these points where we didn't want to see democracy being watered down, where we wanted them to look at it and we said to them, please don't think that you just have to come here and reduce councillor numbers every time. There is actually a case here for increasing them by a couple around in the nest and retaining the situation elsewhere. We had that and various other issues came up in 2019, and we had what we thought was a really good discussion. I think that contributed to the fact that we were genuinely dismayed when we saw the proposals when they came out. We were so upset that we didn't actually reply to the Boundary Commission in the form that they requested that we actually went straight to Parliament and said, this is appalling. Can you look at what the Boundary Commission is doing here? We then took breath and I wrote to the Boundary Commission before they went back and did their review after their first consultation. I know our officers had been in touch with them. They knew exactly what we wanted, so we didn't fill in their forms in the first place. To be honest, we are way beyond that now. Everybody knows what everyone else is saying. It was for the Boundary Commission to take that into stronger consideration when they did the amendments to their first proposals. From our point of view, they just didn't get anywhere near what we were requesting. Thank you for that. Can I ask the same question to Douglas and then to Derek? I would start by saying in our Gail and Bute that the engagement with the council on the part of the commission was entirely positive. It was an engagement that began with informal discussions with officers that rolled out to formal engagement with members. It also took into account the wider public consultation exercises that ran over a period of time. I believe that the council's position is that there was every effort by the commission to engage in a positive manner. If there are issues, they would be in and about to an extent that there is a framework within which the commission is required to operate. If you look at their final report, there is a good deal of weight given to electoral parity. Electoral parity, or has a legislative basis, is possible for the commission to move away from the application of parity principles, where there are special reasons for doing so. Special considerations and reasons can be things like slow transport. Communication links infrequently travel subject to interference by weather and the seasons and so on. It is considered by the council that there was scope to go in a different direction than that, which produced so much. The proposals that are now with the Parliament. The final comment on that is that, again, there was a positive engagement by the commission that there was a bit of disappointment in the part of the council that their starting point appeared to be the same or similar to the one that they had in the previous review. It was back in 2016, and that was about an overall reduction in councillor numbers. It would be fair to say that, although there has been no discussion between the councils, some of the views that were expressed by the elected member from Highland a few minutes ago were points that were relevant. I would have found a listening ear in Argyll and Muir. No problems with the principles, the basis in which there was engagement, but a view that, in terms of the final outputs, it was possible within the overall framework to look at things differently. Some disappointment that that was not done, particularly having regard to the overall reduction in councillor numbers. For my point of view, the criteria that the Boundary Scotland was working with were clearly explained and outlined to us. The engagement was comprehensive and open. As I previously indicated, the comments of the court were adopted into the final proposal. No real comments about that. We welcome the level of engagement and the fact of taking on board our comments. We also welcome the fact that, in three of the 11 words, they have been quite prepared to give greater weight to the maintenance of natural communities and historic ties and particular circumstances and moved away from parity in those areas. That is welcomed by both the court and the public. I am going to bring Eleanor Witterman in with a couple of questions. As an existing councillor, I am very aware that there is a lot of benchmarking that happens. We tend to be placed into council families. I am wondering whether placing councils into such categories with other similar councils is an appropriate basis in which to determine the total number of councillors and whether you are aware of your own council classification and whether you agree with the grouping that you were placed in. We will start with Maggie, and then we will go to Derek, and then to Douglas. Sorry, I must have missed the beginning of your question, Eleanor. Thank you. It was to me first. I was not so very aware of the families that we are in, but I would be prepared to bet that we are in the same family as our garland butte. You can see that we share many of the same issues. For Western Isles, I am really pleased that that has worked so well for them. The island bill has given them opportunities that they have not had before, but on the mainland, remoteness and sparsity is still needing to be wrestled with by the boundary commission and probably all of us. That is why the Scottish Government has picked up on the depopulation issues and is working strongly alongside that at the convention of the Highlands and Islands at which Highlands and Argyll are represented. To be honest, I would have to go back and look at the family group that we are in with, but I certainly feel great kinship for Argyll and Bute. We share many issues. I assume that we have grouped in with the other island authorities and we share many similarities. The island act has been an important piece of legislation for our island authorities and has been very welcomed. There always has to be an element of comparison and benchmarking, as long as that takes note of the unique circumstances of the island community and the unique circumstances between the island communities. I think that it would be reasonable to accept that there is a degree of benchmarking as part of an overall consideration of all the relevant factors. I would suggest that benchmarking should not become something that is applied on a hard and fast basis. It is simply an indicator that allows consideration to be given to the wider positions. I accept that a degree of benchmarking is reasonable. In general terms, my colleagues were aware of the position. In general terms, they recognise particular elements such as highlands. If you look at the large mainland mass, it is very sparsely populated. We are perhaps a bit more of a hybrid than either, say, Highland or North Ayrshire where they have a relatively small number of islands. In Argyll and Bute it is over 20 inhabited islands, which I think is up there that puts us in that respect more in line with our colleagues from the island councils. The principle of benchmarking is that the obvious family members are island councils in the big geographical areas with super sparse populations, but benchmarking should not be a major determining factor in the outputs. Thank you for those responses. I am just going to bring Paul back in with another question. Gens, can you be touched on the voter-to-counselor ratio and whether you think that the variations in the council-to-voter ratio could have an impact on effective local government? I know that that probably varies from area to area. I don't know if Derek wants to start off with that one. There are variations above parity in three of the wards. I think that the weight given to maintaining the natural communities is correct. I think that in terms of representation, the wards are proposed will ensure that there is better representation across the islands. The communities that are laid out in these wards better reflect the understanding of communities across the islands. I think that it is very positive, and the variation from parity is welcome. Derek, was there much consultation with the public on that? Was there feedback from the public on the number of councils that they wanted for their own particular ward area? There were very little comments. I think that there were 64 comments in total in the Boundary Commission. The commission's proposals were circulated to community councils, and there were very little comments. Some of the public comment was about maintaining the number of councillors in the southern isles. The initial proposal was a reduction from 7 to 6, but with the two councillors' proposals for Bara, that retains that at 7. Right across the corn area, it is a chain of remote island communities, and Bara is a remote island within that chain. It is felt that that justifies the variation of parity, which is 35 per cent there, because of their distance from the administrative centre and the store. Margaret, your thoughts on the same question? It was the key issue with the communities. I will be very surprised if you have not had representations from some of them from the Boundary Commission, certainly from Sutherland, Sky and Loch Ness, that they do not want to see a reduction in their councillor numbers. In some ways, I am asking for consistency. Derek was really good. He reminded us that some of the reasons for varying the parity can be around transport and the impact of the seasons. Will you ever see that more strongly than in the vast stretches of North West Sutherland and Wester Ross? We are an extreme example. If you put it in a family of councils, we will still be the extreme example with the huge Highland mainland. We do hope for more consideration on that, which is why we do not want to lose councillors. One of the gains of the pandemic—as you know, it is an odd business—has been the move to online technology, which will be a huge boon in those areas. It will really help, particularly in the winter months. However, I think that you will find that we have a lot of new councillors next time. We have a fair turnover coming in our councillors, and that is just me knowing everyone. I think that you will find that it will be very difficult for those who go for representation in Wester Ross or in North West Sutherland, who want to understand and visit their communities. Sometimes you really need to be there, and that has very much been the case in the past. It can lead to inequalities of a number of councillors who can turn up at events, particularly open public meetings and policy discussions and local hot issues. Believe me, you get a big turnout whenever you mention roads. One of the things that I did not understand at all from the Boundary Commission's findings was that they retained the councillors for Fort William and Ardena Merkin at the same number. I was pleased about that because Ardena Merkin is also extremely large and difficult to represent fairly. They cited the example of roads as being one of the issues. There is no difference between the roads in Wester Ross, North West Sky and Ardena Merkin. They are all difficult and extraordinarily long. The amount of travelling, while it might be reduced on what it was, is still going to be extraordinarily large in these areas. The point about electors and councillors is that they concur with the views of colleagues in general terms. I am trying to summarise Ardena Merkin's position from an Argyll and Bute perspective. It seems clear that, although I am not sure whether I will be able to do that, I will not be able to do that. It is clear that, although there is, again, a place—in terms of a suite of indicators or factors—to look at that ratio as one of a number, it is not one that should hold unduce weight or outweigh other factors such as local communities and local ties. I think that it is fair to say that the Argyll and Bute councils position would be that, as a principle, the ratio can demonstrably be regarded as something that should not be the same across all of Scotland. So areas with islands, areas with super-sparcity, there needs to be a recognition that the number of electors having regard to those wider factors, like communications and so on, and what can be done. The ratio could and should be lower. The echo comment has been made on where we are now. As I keep on moving from lockdowns into the post-Covid environment, I think that it is the case that, across the board, more council business will be able to be done remotely. I believe that it will not go back to what they were before in terms of the conduct of council business, but those changes, those possibilities that are going to arise because of new ways of working should not deflect from the basic principle of democratic accountability having regard to local communities and local interests. I hope that that deals with the question. I know that Douglass is very extensive. Thanks all. Thanks, convener. Thanks very much for the responses so far. I am going to take the opportunity to register my interests, which is that I am a Highlands and Islands MSP and all the council representatives here are part of my region. I just wanted to note that interest aside from North Ayrshire, who is not with us today. I am going to bring in Megan, who is going to shift a little bit of the focus. Thank you, convener, and good morning, Margaret, Derek and Douglass. My question relates to parity. I know that that has been raised a few times this morning. My question relates to the electoral reform society, as it stated during the former local government and communities committee in 2016, that making electoral parity a priority is outdated. I am just wondering if you agree with that statement. If I could start with Margaret Pleas, then Douglass and then Derek, thank you. I wish I had been there when they said it. I would have written them a thank you letter straight afterwards, because it is outdated. Having been a rural councillor for 20 years now, I represent areas in Loch Ness, and I have many villages. Each village has its own views and separate ideas, much more so than you do in an urban area. Parity does not work for me and never has when you think about somewhere like the Highlands and how you need to represent it. Thank you for raising it. It is outdated, and I think that it would be really good to revisit some of the principles there. Now, maybe it works for central belt authorities and better than it does for those of us on the edge, but it has long been a thawne in our side. While we have compromised in the past, it was this review that stopped us in our tracks. I would stop short of saying that there is no place for electoral parity as a consideration, but, as I said in response to the last question, it should be one factor, one of a large number, and it should not be the major or the determining factor. Again, comments made by the elected member from Highlands in regard to the issue, and I believe that the general reflective views of a Gail and Duke council are perhaps worth noting. One of the comments that was made in the final report would perhaps be an indicator of the basis in which the commission would do their business. Best practice in previous reviews suggests that an electorate within 10 per cent of absolute electoral parity is acceptable. That is unnecessarily restrictive and does not helpfully contribute to the overall principle of arriving at elected members with connections to their local communities or groupings of communities best able to do their job. I hesitate to say that there is no place for electoral parity, but it should not be the major or the fundamental consideration. I concur with everything that Douglas has just said. Parity should not be the only consideration in arriving at council numbers and wars. It might be more applicable to an urban setting, but I do not think that it is stricter to parity, but it should not be suitable for rural areas, particularly in the remote rural areas. I will bring Miles Briggs in with some questions for the panel. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I want to ask a couple of questions with regard to public consultation. I have personally received correspondence ahead of this from Islay Community Council, for example. It is fair to say that some of the community councils who have been involved in the process do not feel their views were taken on board by the rengate commission, specifically around the reduction in numbers of councillors. From your experience, what views have you had on that? Can I start with Margaret Briggs and move on to Derek Briggs? Good morning, Miles Briggs. I have a woman in my other ear saying that I am unmuted regularly. Right. Once we had our council meeting and spoke again to our communities, that was the first thing that they said to us. They just did not feel as if they had been listened to. That really goes to the heart of it. It was particularly the Sutherland, Westeroth and Loch Ness community councils and community members who said that they did not feel listened to. That gives a real feeling of abandonment. It reduces hope and engagement. I know those are emotional words, but they are what drive rural areas forward. When they are working well, the energy that they release is extraordinary. That has definitely put people back in their thinking. They feel neglected and some of them are very upset about the proposals from the boundary commission. Thank you. Derek, can I bring you in? I am not aware of any issues with consultation with community councils in the islands. I certainly know the proposals that were circulated to community councils. They were invited to respond directly to Boundary Scotland. They could also feed back through to the council, as each of our elected members are on the community councils. That may very well reflect the broader proposals, which, as I previously said, reflect what we see as our natural communities. They correspond very closely to our current community council boundaries, more so than the three or four member words. I think that, in terms of the engagement with the wider community, in Argyll and Bute, the council did not hear a lot of adverse comment on the activities that were carried out. We were aware and there was help from the council to the commission in terms of giving a full list of community councils to all the 57 community councils in Argyll and Bute were contacted, not aware of the level of response, but the commission did try to engage with all of them. All the local newspapers, old school engagement posters in public buildings and so on, I am aware of that. They did also go out to some local area community planning groups. We have one for each of our four geographical sub-areas. At the request of at least two of those groups, the commission did engage with those groups, which represent council and all the other community planning partners in the particular area. They also moved to the 21st century methods of communication. The commission did try to engage via social media to my knowledge. As a general proposition, I think that there were a mix of approaches that appeared to hit significant bodies of opinion, such as community councils, community planning partners and so on. On the number of responses and the content of them, I am obviously not cited in those, but it would appear that the commission did try to engage in the wide front. That is very helpful. From my understanding of what we have heard this morning from both our panels, there seems to be a consensus around Shetland Orkney and the Western Isles being content with what has been put forward. The challenge around managing islands and the wider review of mainland council wards as part of that has presented difficulty and concern. I just wondered about your views on that. I do not think that many people I have spoken to about this are expected to see a reduction in councillors to be part of that. I wonder about your views on those two points. First, on the reduction in councillors, the coon has been advocating that for a number of years. Indeed, at some of our earlier discussions, we had looked at a reduction to either 21 or 26 councillors, but when we looked at the wards that that would create, we realised how much the workload for the remaining councillors would increase. The reduction by two is welcome. On the flexibility, the Islands Act has benefited the three islands authorities. Prior to the introduction of the multi-member wards prior to 2007 and, as part of the fourth review, the council advocated for a legislative change to allow a wide range of wards from one to six members, which would allow more flexibility and allow us to create wards that reflected the local understanding of what communities were to maintain local ties and be much more representative of our islands. The Islands Act has given us that opportunity. Given the mainland and island mix, can I come to Douglas on that and your views on how those have been drawn? That is an issue that the Argyllw bute Council found it hard to come to a settled position on. As per a comment that I made earlier, there is a recognition or a view that both the island stand alone wards and the island mainland wards could work. The experience in Argyllw bute 396, the last reorganisation, had other than bute, which was already an island ward. We had other stand alone island wards. Back in large, in a since, say, the 96-way structuring, bute has still been there, but the rest of our islands have been part of island and mainland wards. There are a couple of relevant points. I hope that I will not take up too much of your time, but if you look at the mix example, then if you take our western seaboard, the arrangements that we have had in place for the last number of years have had a ward that comprises part of Owen and Lorne and the islands from Eilor—sorry, not Eilor—Mull, Tyree and others. That has worked because the point about natural community links, when they come off the island, hardly anyone stays on the island all the time. When they come off, if they are not heading down to the central belt, to cities or whatever, islanders who connect into Owen and see Owen as part of their wider community. I come back to that basic point. Either can work, but I think that one of the main factors that prevented Ergyll and Bute from coming to a definitive view was just that a lot of folk valued the connections with the mainland, whereas there were others who quite liked the idea of standing alone. Again, the comments from a colleague in Western Isles about the islands act and the potential benefits coming out of that. Ultimately, just coming back to my basic point, there is no right or wrong answer here, and either a scenario can work. Thank you, Douglas, and finally Margaret. Thank you very much. We were astonished when the proposal came forward to take a councillor out of the sky, especially seeing as the review was based on the island act. The island act itself has given great energy and impetus to the islands, both the stand-alone island councils and the mainland ones. It has given them the chance to think about where they sit and be more thoughtful. Therefore, I am astonished that they want to take a councillor out of the sky. We were not expecting that, I can tell you. That was a particular shock. I think that your comments are perceptive. There is a difference between the use of parity and representation for islands and the big rural mainland authorities. I do not think that that has yet been captured by the strict use of parity that the Boundary Commission is proposing. We are getting to the time when we really need to wrap up. There are some questions remaining that we could write to you, but I want to give each of you the opportunity to just have a minute or so in case there is something that you really want to say, tell us this morning while we are all here together. In that light, if there is anything that you feel really strongly want to let us know, I am just going to give you a little bit of time. Let's start with Margaret, then Derek, then Douglas. Thank you, Ariane. I would like to mention two things. First of all, I did not mention it when I was talking about the great improvements in connectivity across the piece, but here I am talking to you on the phone because my broadband is not strong enough to work on the system that you guys are working on. Broadband is still appalling in parts of the Highlands. I am nine miles from in the Ness. Can you imagine what it is like in some parts of Westeroff and north-west Sutherland? I know that that is due for improvement over the next years, but if you ask BT Openreach, who are doing the big contract, they are talking about fulfilling that by 2026-27. That is another five years of a council's life. Its connectivity representation is just as important as it has ever been from the point of view of Highland councillors and their communities. Secondly, if you step back and think about what is being proposed for Highlands here, it is moving the focus, the centre of gravity, further east than west, and that is not what we are wanting to do in Highlands. We are working very hard on localism. We are working really hard on trying to get repopulation in the west and the north. We do believe that that is really important, that they have sufficient democratic representation, that for the next five years they can actually be sure that they will see their councillors often enough to have those discussions, which will help them into the future and to give them vibrant local communities. The boundary commission proposals do not help us to do that. Thank you very much. Thank you for that, Margaret. If we go to Derek and Douglas and frame it a bit more specifically on anything that has not come to light around the piece of work that we are doing in the boundary Scotland review? Not really much to add. I will be brief, but at the end of the current awards, where we have three or four member awards, there are a number of issues that could come up against. Barra is one specifically. Barra is currently in the south US, so if a member is based in the south US and wants to attend an evening meeting on Barra, it is automatically on overnight and vice versa. There is also a danger that we could have a circumstance where there is no elected member during a term on the island of Barra. That is corrected by those proposals. There are a number of other three to four member awards. It has really seen us as maybe not an unhappy marriage but an unusual marriage with some of the areas that are grouped together, and those are corrected by the proposal from the boundary Scotland. We welcome those proposals. Thank you. Thank you, Derek. Douglas? Very briefly, issues from Argyll and Bute in relation to reduction in council numbers, council numbers, as I have said. Having said that, the elements of the proposals and the discussion today have been very positive. Our position, as I said at the start, is dictated by the fact that it is either yes or no. We could not say yes wholeheartedly, so that puts us into the no-camp. I hope that what we have said today has been of some assistance to the committee in the deliberations. Thank you very much. I thank all three of you for coming along this morning. I think that it has been very helpful. I have certainly become aware of more of the