 Good morning and welcome to the 31st meeting in 2023 of the local government housing and planning committee. Please note that we've received apologies from Mark Griffin MSP and I remind all members and witnesses to ensure that their devices are on silent. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are members agreed? We're all agreed. We now turn to agenda item 2, which is to take evidence on the new deal with local government. This session is an opportunity for the committee to explore external perspectives on the relationship between central and local government in Scotland. This morning, we're joined in the room by Professor Jim Gallagher and online by Dr Dunton Carr West, who is the chief executive at the local government information unit and Professor Donna Hall CBE, who is the former CEO of Wigan Council and Wigan NHS clinical commissioning group. Welcome to all of you. I will start with the questions. A broad question. I'd be interested to hear from you what you see are the strengths of the variety house agreement and to hear if you think it encapsulates an approach that could enable local authorities to respond to the severe challenges that they are currently facing. If not, what do you think that local government needs to succeed? I'll start in the room with Jim and then I'll go to both of you online. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, everybody. It's always a pleasure to be here in this enormous room. I can see you all in the distance, including colleagues who are even farther away. You asked a very general question about the so-called variety house agreement. It's, in its own terms, rather a disappointing document because it is a set of warm platitudes about what we would all like to see and all like to have, who could be against sustainable public services. What it doesn't do is provide a mechanism for choices and it doesn't go beyond general statements of goodwill. It would nevertheless be a good thing, because general statements of goodwill aren't a bad thing, if it led to a set of changes in behaviour in the relationship between central and local government. Unfortunately—and we might as well put the King Charles' head straight in the middle of the room—it did not lead to changes in behaviour. It led almost immediately to exactly the opposite of the behaviour in which it described, in the form of an unplanned and unconsulted upon freezing of the council tax. Having made a set of warm-hearted platitudes with one hand, the Scottish Government simply drove a coach and horses through them with the other. I fear that the relationship requires a genuine fresh start. At the moment, I don't see how it's going to get it. You mentioned that it doesn't provide mechanisms for choices. Could you illuminate us a little bit on what might need to be there? I mentioned sustainable public services. One of the tests for when somebody says something is that if you can't reasonably say the opposite, then you haven't said anything useful. Who in the room is for unsustainable public services? Nobody. It tells you nothing. It doesn't give you a mechanism that says, do this and not do that. Politics is about choices and sets of warm statements that do not imply any choices. Don't set out the mechanisms by which choices will happen, which the agreement does not. It is no more on a set of warm words. We have plenty of warm words around here. I will come back with another question. We can delve a little bit more into the council tax, but thank you for bringing that up already. Let's go online. Donna, what are your thoughts around the strengths of the Verity House agreement? I hope you can hear me all right. Absolutely. I'm up in the high. I'm a resident of yours now in the Highlands, so I'm no longer in Wigan. I think it's good to have it. I do agree with Jim about being a little bit more specific. I think sustainable public services are only achievable through wholesale public service reform. I've noticed in part of the document, it talks about person-centred services, particularly children's and adults, which are the main drain on council's resources at the moment. However much money is put into children's and adults unless we completely transform the way we deliver those services, building on some of the work of the Christie commission. We need to be a bit more specific around a reformist approach, person-centred, asset-based working in communities. That needs to be part of the outcomes framework too, but having one, it may have not been delivered in the best way in the first few months of it being there, but at least there is one to build on. I don't think there is anything like that in the UK government, between local government and the UK government at the moment, and certainly no discussion about public service reform. So those would be my comments. Make it more specific, make it more about reform. Thanks very much for that, Donna. Jonathan. I don't disagree with either Jim or Donna. I think that's what they say. When we look at other countries where the relationship between central and local government arguably works better, we see that there is a constitutional clarity about where local government sits. If you look at Germany, you have the basic law that builds subsidiarity into the legal framework. If you look at Italy, you have horizontal distribution of resources between local authorities, and you have what's called the Italian Local Autonomies Conference, which is a standing committee for negotiation between central and local government on funding and other issues. Those have legal status. For example, in Italy, if central government creates unfunded mandates, gives local government duties that there's no money that goes on with it, that can be challenged in the courts. In the UK, we don't have a written constitution. The Verity House agreement is a good first step. Even without a written constitution, we can still have the subconstitutional, whatever you want to call, the memorandums of understanding agreements that try and set out what the relationship between local and central should be. That is a good thing. Many people were looking at Verity House and saying, well, look, this is an example of perhaps what we should be thinking about in England, where, as Donna says, there's nothing equivalent or in other parts of the UK where there's nothing equivalent. However, agreements like this are only as good as people's adherence to them, and it is disappointing, as Jim was pointing out, that within a couple of months, a coach and horses has driven through the principles of no surprises, the principles of local by default, the principles of early negotiation around budgetary issues are all trashed by a council tax freeze, and that's unilaterally. When we surveyed Scottish local government, only 10% of leaders and chief execs feel that Verity House has, in effect, improved communications between central and local government, but I don't think that means we should give up on it. It's still a good place to start. The fact that we can have a conversation about whether it's being adhered to or not is still better than having no basis for that conversation, but it does need, as Jim and Donna have just said more specificity, it does need people to put their money where their mouth is, and I think we would argue that what it lacks, perhaps, is that sort of formal body, the equivalent to the Italian local autonomies conference that enables that, you know, it talks about negotiation between COSLA and the Scottish government, but it doesn't set up a sort of standing forum publicly in which people can see this taking place. So it's a good start. It hasn't got off to the best of implementations, but there's still potential for it to deliver real value, I think. Thanks very much for that, Jonathan. So a couple of things that you've mentioned there around the council tax freeze, and also while you've all mentioned it, but around the council tax freeze, Jonathan, you've had that report and you've spoken to leaders of councils. What do you think needs to be done now to rebuild the trust, or maybe it's not completely trashed, but to strengthen that trust? What do you think needs to come from central government to restore that? Well, I think trust comes from two things. It comes from open conversations and it comes from reciprocal actions. So I think there needs to be a full and frank exchange between Scottish government about what happened and what people feel about it. We will see what happens in the budget later. But by the way, the fact that we're all going to sit here from a local government perspective and speculate about what's going to be in the budget also implies that the early negotiation... I mean, it's not no surprises. We're waiting for a surprise later. It's unlikely that the... I mean, I don't think we can aspire to the council tax reform being you turned on, though that would be nice. But there are also a whole set of other ring fencing measures that local government is very keen to see removed to give local places the flexibility to spend money in the best way for their local areas, which local government, rightly in my view, thinks that it is best place to do. So there is still potential. Yeah, there are still things that Scottish government could do to start sort of moving us back in line with the Verity House agreement. And I would say that a consultation, an honest conversation about what happens with council tax going forward and what happens with ring fencing would be a very good place to start. There is other... I think there are ongoing discussions about the council tax and in general and the future of it. But I wonder also you talked earlier about what's happening in Italy around the standing committee that negotiates around the kind of the funding that comes with policy from the central government. I think that's what I understood you say. And I wonder if there's an opportunity in the local government. We've got a local democracy bill coming up this session. I wonder if that's something we need to be looking at. Do we have enough in place to build on that and go in that kind of direction with that bill as a vehicle? Well, I think that's absolutely... I think we should look at that. I mean, looking away, you know, the advantage they have in Italy, in Germany, in Japan and in many other jurisdictions is that all of this has a constitutional and legal framework. And there's a challenge that in this country local government is a subject of sort of case law legislation, not of constitutional. But, you know, in a way, the experiment of Verity House is can you do this? Can you get similar sort of results with a sort of in principle agreements based on good will? And I think that's what we need to test because actually the conclusion we might come to is that actually you need to instantiate some of this in law. You need to have principles around subsidiarity, principles around budgetary consultation within a legal framework. And the bill you referenced does provide an opportunity to do that. So I think we, you know, one conclusion we could draw now is that the Verity House sets out the right principles, but it needs to be given a firma legal standing. We perhaps have an opportunity to do that. And I think we should think very carefully about that. Okay, great. And Jim, do you have any thoughts around rebuilding the trust and what needs to happen, or any experience of what's happening in other countries around the trust and the relationship between local and national government? I'm not sure how helpful international comparisons are, given, as Jonathan says, that both the different constitutional framework and also the different balance of local and national responsibilities, but one doesn't have to look too far back in history in this country to see that tolerable local central relations can be made to work. Now, as it happens, I agree with Jonathan that the UK could do with the constitutional principle of subsidiarity. That would relate both to the powers and responsibilities of this Parliament, but also, as it were, go beneath it and relate to the relationship between this Parliament and local government, and indeed, as one always adds at this point, local communities themselves. I think it would actually be a very good thing if we legislated at a UK level to provide for that, thus embedding the principle throughout the system. But as for rebuilding trust, I think that one has to start with the practical, and in that sense, I think that it's right to say, as Donna does, that one has to start with the practical things that need to be changed. I myself would address the question of the relationship. As it was addressed, I'm afraid, a half a century ago in everyone is forgotten, in the Magisterio report of the Lowfield Committee on Local Government-Central Government Relations, which I commend to the committee. It said that the question that you have to ask is, do you regard local government as an agent of the centre, or do you regard it as a democratically elected partner that has its own authority and responsibilities? Governments have always fudged this, which means that, in effect, they have taken to regard it as an agent. Government has to ask itself what it thinks the job it's trying to do is, what's the relationship it wants, and be explicit about that, rather than pretend, if I may be brutal, as it does in the Verity House agreement, that local government is a valued partner, but treat it as a second-rate agent. It may be that the right answer is to say that, in some respects, local government is an agent—one might take, for example, the social care of the elderly, because it's so close to the national health service—but, in some respects, it is to be regarded as an institution with its own proper autonomy and democratic accountability. If you do that, you then design a fiscal system, which no doubt will come on to it later, which supports both of those but deals with each of them in a different way. You fund an agent in one way and you support a democratically elected leader of government in a different way. Somebody thinking that through properly would come to a different set of conclusions and behaviours from the ones that we see today. That's something that you could think about in the context of a local government bill, though, when the end of legislation is not what matters, behaviours by government and behaviours by local government are what actually matter. That's very interesting. The more nuanced approach is that it's not one approach in the relationship, but depending on the issue and the policy, there's a different way of doing it, either funding an agent or supporting a democratically elected partnership or a body. I think that's very helpful. Donna, do you have any thoughts around rebuilding trust or any experience in terms of the relationship between national and local government in other parts of the world? Not so much on other contexts around the world, but I do think that the strengths are that it's there, that it's something to build on. I think an apology wouldn't go a mist. I'm really sorry we did this. If it is a genuine contract, a social contract, then one part of it is to say, to admit when one person's behaviours don't exemplify what's written in the document. So I think an apology. Really broadening and expanding it into a reform agenda is the only way we will get sustainable public services. I really like what Jim said just then about NHS services. We're doing it again, aren't we? We're not starting an agreement from the perspective of a person or a neighbourhood. We're starting from the perspective of the services that we provide and how we organise ourselves. People in communities don't see the difference between NHS local government, welfare, police. They just see public services and they want us to work together in a better way. I think some kind of an agreement around a place-based approach to financial settlement. The NHS boards and local government having some kind of a joint place settlement. I was going to share some slides today, but I'll send them to you separately, but I can't do it today. Basically, it's the story of one person, a real person, and it maps out all their interventions with the NHS ambulance service, with local government, with housing. Every element of public service, you name it, John has accessed it over the last 10 years. It's cost millions and we've messed it up big time. We really have. That's where all of our money is going, particularly around children and adults. If you did the same with a family, it would tell you the same story, but because our budgets and our commissioning approaches are separate between the NHS and local government, particularly when it comes to adult social care in children, we get it wrong. I think a place-based, total place type approach. I don't know if that was ever implemented in Scotland, but it was in in England and it was really successful and it was a whole place approach to transformation and that's we will never get sustainability unless we do that. That's really helpful and I look forward to seeing those slides because I think that is to kind of see that scenario illustrated is a very helpful helpful thing. And of course, somebody did mention already that we are taking this evidence. It's kind of interesting morning to be taking the evidence just before the budget being announced. We will be even more informed in a few hours as to what's going on. I now would like to bring in Pam Gosall with a question. Thank you, chair. Good morning, panel. Quite a lot of my question has been answered, but I feel that I owe it to the local authorities because I've been lucky enough. I've been speaking out to 32 local authorities. I have now spoken to more than half of the chief execs of the local authorities and they have clearly said that one of the primary principles of the Verity House agreement was violated less than four months after the agreement was made. The First Minister failed to consult or even inform councils of the council tax freeze. Essentially, the agreement fell at the first hurdle. That's what their words were and I think that's what a lot of people are saying and today as I hear from yourselves as well. I want to ask the question around, do witnesses think that the role of local and central government will change or was this agreement just empty words? I also want to go back to looking at behaviours. What behaviours should change or should have happened from the beginning as well? I'd like to put my question at Professor Jim Gallacher, please. I agree with you with the analysis. I do not regard the Verity House agreement as well supplied in the Verity Department. It has a big hole in the middle of it. If you cease to follow it within weeks of making it, it does not suggest that you weren't sincere in making it. That's an important point to make. Whether, as Donna suggests, an apology would meet the need, I'm not absolutely sure. However, what behaviours would one like to see? In the end, what we're looking at is finding ways of putting guidelines, guardrails, call them what you will, down that will incentivise the right behaviours rather than the wrong behaviours. Another set of bias statements about how nice we're going to meet each other would not do the job. I think that there is something in what Jonathan says about constitutionalising the principle of subsidiarity, but it's quite a broad sort of principle. I, for my part, going back to what I was saying to the convener earlier, would like central local government to have a frank conversation about which bits of the universe that they deal with together are ones where central government is going to be dominant and accept that. As it happens, I think that social care is a good example for the reasons that Donna gives. It has to be integrated with the health service and the single most important thing that we could do for the health service in Scotland is to fix social care. It costs money, of course, but those things do. There's a difficult argument to be had about precisely how education fits into this picture. There's a third chunk of all the other important local services that the Government doesn't, at the moment, either ring fence or effectively ring fence in Scotland, which are nevertheless important and require to be funded. In an agreement on what the funding system would be and what the funding principles are, and in particular what the degree of equalisation of resources should be—and there are choices about that—it's not automatic at what you do—might be a good start. The second set of guardrails that one might put down are structural, and those go back to the arrangements for consultation and the obligation to consult. It's quite ironic in this context to watch the Scottish Government do to local government what it complains that the UK Government does to it. There's a deep and ironic symmetry in this. It's always terrible when Westminster does something without consulting, but it's entirely acceptable when Holyrood does it. Both of them are wrong. One needs a set of procedures that are actually followed and a set of structures that are actually obtempered in order to create the space in which the kind of conversations that have to happen take place. That, of course, is a sign of the underlying behaviours and the underlying respect, but it may, in time, create the both respect and the behaviours that are desired. It's not at all straightforward, I'm afraid, once you've got to this place. Thank you, Professor Jim. Before I go on to Jonathan, if I can go back to yourself, you talk about a set of procedures to be followed. One can easily put down in paper or set of procedures. One could easily sign that as well, just like the Verity House agreement. But how does one make sure that one complies with that and making sure that, as there are going to be penalties put in, I mean I don't know is there any frameworks or any policies out there or things like this that have been done before that you are aware of? Because I think it's important that how do you make sure that this is followed and if the Scottish Government was to break it again, so who is going to be liable here and who is responsible? So I know it's kind of, yeah, heavy words, but we just don't want words. How can we help firm this up a little bit more? Yes, I mean it would be nice to think that you could report them to the teacher, but you can't, right? The Government is the Government. What the Government is, however, is accountable to Parliament. If there's anybody in the system who can be the teacher, it is Parliament and it is there for the responsibility of the folks in this room to make sure that the Government does what it said it would do. That requires a flow of information and the flow of information about how things are going. I think it's great that you've been talking to individual councils and individual local authorities. What you need is a flow of information from local government that tells you whether or not the folk are doing what they said they would do and the capacity to someone, as you have ministers, to explain themselves. I'm afraid there is no other mechanism than parliamentary scrutiny that can achieve that. Thank you, Jim. Jonathan, Donna, would you like to say anything? I'm happy for Donna to go first, if you'd like. I agree with all that. In the end, the point is not whether we think this is working, whether we think relations are getting better. It's what local government thinks. As I mentioned earlier, in our survey only one in ten leaders and chief execs agreed that Verity House had improved communication. Only 8% said they were happy with the progress that had been made in bringing local government into consideration of wider policy decisions. The sector is very clear that they do not feel consulted, they do not feel engaged, they do not feel that policy is something that's being developed with them. They feel that policy is something that Scottish Government is doing to them. I think that is both undesirable and, in the end, unsustainable. Why does it matter? It matters for all the reasons that Donna set out. Of course, a place-based approach is exactly right, and we need that integration between social care, any preventative services, we need services centred around the individual. But you can't get that when budgets are being ring-fenced from Central Government, either from Scottish Government or from UK Government. It doesn't enable the sort of approach to public services that we know we need to have at the local level. We've made very limited progress on this. Donna talked about Total Place. Total Place was great, but it was 2008, I believe, that Total Place was first tried. That's whatever that is, 15, 16 years in which we effectively haven't moved forward on that place-based agenda. As Jim said, I spent a lot of time in my early years at LGU running events at which the late and much-missed Professor George Jones would always come, and he sat on the Layfield Commission. Whenever I said anything that I thought was clever, he would very politely remind me that the Layfield Commission had, in fact, covered all of this back in the early 1970s, and it's definitely working out. But I think that leads us to ask. What is it that prevents us from moving forward? So we keep having those ideas. We keep talking about a different approach, and we never quite get it. I do think that having clarity around what we think the relationship ought to be, and in my view that should be centering more on local government as a site of democratic legitimacy, not just as a sort of agent of the central state. Having that that is accountable, yes, through Parliament, also through public opinion, we need a much broader conversation about this so that members of the public can see whether government is fulfilling its obligations, and ideally something that can be held up in the courts through some sort of legal framework. But we are a very long way from that, and right now, I mean, we'll see what happens in the budget later, but right now local government tells us that we are moving in the wrong direction, not the right direction. Thank you, Jonathan, Donna. Sorry, it's a bit of a delay. It doesn't let me unmute myself. A slightly different perspective from Jonathan. I think some places are trying to do the total place type way of working. We certainly did that in Wigan. We started in 2011, and we brought together NHS and social care resources and managed to add an additional seven years of healthy life expectancy in the most deprived wards in a large borough, and at the same time managed to make almost £200 million of savings and freeze council tax. We did that for eight years, the freezing of council tax. Again, I just touch on this, it might be a bit controversial and a bit raw for people, but council tax is the most regressive form of taxation in the UK, and I think we managed to add an additional £500 per every bandit property in Wigan over that period of freezing it, and I think although the way that the agreement's been enacted isn't right, certainly no one can excuse that behaviour, I don't think freezing council tax is a bad thing automatically. I think that's what treasurers would say, because they like to very often ratchet it up to the maximum, but I think that's passing the burden of public service reform on to citizens, and I think it's unfair. It might be controversial, but I do think council tax is a massive drain on family income, so I think it has to be addressed, and just putting it up is not the answer. We've got to reform services, we've got to do total place, we've got to start with the person. There's some amazing work happening in parts of Scotland and in the UK, Gateshead, Wigan, loads of great work going on. I don't think people are standing still. There's 42 integrated care systems in England that are trying to do this, so I think we've got to, as public service leaders, help people to do it, because however much money we're given, however much we put council tax up, it will not work unless we transform and reform. Thank you, Donna. Thanks very much, Pam. Jonathan, I just want to come back to, you know, you did this research talking to council leaders, but my understanding with the Verity House agreement is it's an agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA, and that's where the communications are. Did you, and then the leaders, I think then COSLA has a way of communicating with leadership of the local authorities, and I wonder if you had any communication with COSLA around communication and the experience that's happening there. Yes, I mean, we've spoken to COSLA. I mean, look, I don't think you need any back channels. I mean, to COSLA you can see from their public statement after the First Minister's speech on council tax, which was, you know, very unequivocal in its disappointment, surprise and anger, frankly. Yes, Verity House is an agreement between Scottish Government and COSLA, COSLA representing the 32 local authorities in Scotland, and obviously they have regular feedback to their leaders. So I think what people are telling us is that their perception is that the agreement hasn't improved communications with local government as a whole, which, of course, would work through COSLA. So I think their view is much the same, that they were very, very, very disappointed, and they were very public. And to my mind, frankly, speaking very frankly, I was surprised at how unequivocal their statement was. They didn't attempt to be diplomatic. They were very raw in expressing how angry they were about the announcement of the council tax freeze. And that's not to say, by the way, just to pick up on Donna's point, of course, we can have an argument about whether council tax is the right mechanism. Of course we should, and it is a regressive tax, and it is absurd that our main funding system for local government across the whole of the UK is a tax based on 1992 property levels. And we can't think that just funding council tax and allowing councils putting up council tax year after year after year is the way to reform public services. It's not, but at the same time, when one in four Scottish councils are saying that they are worried that they won't be able to balance their books this year, taking away that council tax base, it feels like a bad step in the short term. If we're going to reform, we need to keep local government going long enough to allow reform and innovation to take place. Okay, thanks for that. I think, as I said earlier, there is work being done in the Scottish Government around the council tax reform. Bring it on, I think, as soon as possible. I'm now going to move to Marie McNair. Thank you, convener. Just before I start, I'll just remind committee of my registered interest. I've been a previous councillor up until 2022. I'll start. Just my first question to witnesses. Do you agree with the three shared priorities that identify in the vet to house agreement? I have no objection to any of the shared priorities. What I don't think they do is guide behaviour, because they're insufficiently specific. They don't say do this but don't do that. Government, as I said earlier, is always about choosing. All resources are limited, whether it's financial or otherwise, and you've got to decide which thing you're going to do and therefore which thing you're not going to do. Unfortunately, a set of broad principles that no-one can object to don't help you in that respect. Okay, thanks for that. I'll go online. Can I go to Professor Hall, please? Can you share your views? I think they're great and you can't argue with them, as Jim says. I think they need to be more specific. I think the person-centred vet needs to be put in up front around the sustainable public services. I was going to ask a question back if that's okay around whether there's been any consultation with citizens about the priorities? I'm not aware of that. I can certainly combat you on that one, but I'm not aware of that. I know that local government consults with their constituents on a regular basis, but on that I'm not too sure. If we were going to start off with a set of principles and priorities, perhaps having a deal with residents might be between initially a deal with residents with the council. That's what the Wigan deal was all about. It was a social contract with citizens that we were going to work together to improve public services and to make healthy communities, healthy vibrant communities. I think that social contract is long overdue across government in the UK and in Scotland with local government. Having a two-way partnership around how we work together over the next few years is really compelling. Rather than it just being around different forms of government having a contract with each other, let's include the citizen voice in that. Thanks for that. Do you want to come in? In the interests of time, I 100 per cent agree with a German donor. I think that they're absolutely right. Stay with yourself there. The 2007 Concorda between local government and central government wasn't sustained. Why do you feel there's no longevity there and what needs to be in place for the 28th House agreement? That is a good question. The 2007 Concorda was quite a different beast in that it was much more specific about certain changes to funding and was much less about or had much less on the ways of working together. For me, I think that the way Verity House is structured, that tries to instantiate, this is the relationship we will have. These are the ways we will talk to each other. This is the sort of esteem. By the way, it's really important that we build parity of esteem into these agreements because when you go out and vote for a councillor, for an MSP, for a vote as a vote, it counts the same. That cross in the box has the same value whichever bit of government it's for and we should recognise that. I think that in principle, having something that isn't just about, oh, we're going to do this bit of funding differently or we're going to change this thing, which is more what the 2007 Concorda did. It had a long list of such things and then quite a short bit at the end about how we will work together. I think something that sets out principles for how the relationship is going to work can in theory have a greater longevity precisely because it's not so tied to specific policy issues. But then that comes back to all the issues that we've talked about before. That only works if people actually instantiate those principles in the way in which they actually do behave towards each other and that remains. Will Verity House have a longer shelf life than the 2007 Concorda? We don't know yet. That depends how people react from here on. It depends what attitude both COSLA and the Scottish Government take into this to say, look, this hasn't got off to a great start. We set out these principles. We haven't stuck by them. Let's not have a sort of, I don't think it's about a blame game or pointing fingers, but I think it's about saying, okay, how do we reset and move forward? That's how it will have a greater longevity, but the jury's out on that. We'll see. Thanks for that. I pop the same question to yourself, Professor Gallacher. There's far too much agreement between your witnesses. I'll find somebody to disagree with in what Jonathan had to say. That splendid phrase, parity of esteem, which is usually attributed to the Macintosh commission, which, as the committee will remember, was set up just before devolution and reported just after it. I declare an interest because I was the senior official responsible for the setting up of Macintosh in the then Scottish office and receiving it in the then Scottish Government, but there we are. It's a potentially misleading phrase, not because I don't think local government deserves appropriate esteem, but because it hints that the relationship is symmetrical and the relationship isn't symmetrical. National government is national government and local government is local government. In particular, the hard fact is that local government depends on national government for much of its funding. That's a reality that we can't get away from in the jargon. That is a vertical fiscal transfer between different levels of government, and it's always going to be there for good reasons. When thinking of parity of esteem, one shouldn't be misled into thinking that it's an absolutely symmetrical relationship. What has been lacking is not so much parity of esteem, but proper respect for the status and autonomy of local government. In order to have proper respect for it, you've got to be absolutely clear in your own head what it is that the proper autonomy is, and I echo what I'm a broken record, what it is that you expect local government to deal with under its own esteem, and giving it full autonomy to do that. What is it that you're expecting it to do that essentially is in support of national priorities? Here, I think that Don is a really important point. Even if you regard it as an agent, you've got to regard it as an agent that makes things work in a place, which brings together the public services. That's where local government can do things that national government cannot conceive of. It can make things work in a geography and in a particular social situation, which national government can't do because it isn't of the information, it isn't of the understanding, and it isn't of the flexibility. A proper respect for that role of local government will lead you down a certain set of behaviours, but you've got to embed it somehow. I know that you want to come on to this, but the hard place is money, I'm afraid. The other stuff is in the end more important, but if you can't get the money right, you can't get anything right, and we haven't got the money right, then don't you want to get back to that? It can be there in due course. Thanks for that. Professor Hall, do you want to finally come in? I think we can hear you. Give it a go. Oh, no, I heard a noise. Oh, there we go. Yeah, sorry, it's saying it won't let me mute myself. Yeah, I think Jim's bang on that it's about core purpose of local government and really fine honing that and making it about convener of place. That's what local government is for me, and really being absolutely clear that there is a responsibility in Scottish Government to trust and to build that respect over time and say sorry. I know it's essentially a basic thing, but at least there is an agreement, for goodness sake. There isn't the rest of the UK, so that's something positive to build on. Thanks for that. Thanks, Marie. Dona, just to say, we'll sort out the microphone for you so you don't need to do it, and we are aware of pauses, so it gives us a little moment for us all to catch our breath. Somewhere where technology is helping us relax a little bit, but Jim, I just wanted to come back to just picking up on our comment on the point you made around getting really clear around what local government can do under its own steam and that they can make things work in their particular geography. I do think that is, I've recognised since being in this role, that that is really critical. In Scotland, where we have literally very different geographies with so many inhabited islands and places like Highland, where they feel in some places that they might as well be islands, I do think that that is a really important bit around getting that clarity, so it's good to hear that from you as well. I'd like to bring in Willie Coffey. Thanks very much, convener. Good morning, everybody. Jim, you mentioned Mackintosh. I've got a copy of it here, and I just wanted to explore just some of your memories about that and how relevant its messages were then to what we see now. When I was jotting down your opening remarks there about Verityhouse being full of worn platitudes and no mechanism for choices and why wouldn't you agree with all that stuff, I found a wee quote from Jean McFadden about Mackintosh in 1999. She said, the recommendations in the first part of the report are fairly bland and will probably be welcomed by local government, whether the proposal will work will depend very much on the philosophies and personalities of ministers and so on. You could almost read that today in terms of what you've said a wee moment ago. What's your view about something like Mackintosh, which is an important document in 1999, and what happened since then? Did we basically succeed in taking forward Mackintosh's recommendations and proposals? Do you still see some of the same issues still to be resolved in Verityhouse that Mackintosh talked about back then? The very short answer to the question is no. When we set up Mackintosh back in the day, we were conscious that a new democratically legitimate level of government at the old Scotland level, this place, carried the risk of not merely taking power down from London, which was the expressed purpose of devolution, but of sucking it up from Glasgow and Edinburgh and the islands and wherever. Mackintosh was set up with a view to addressing that fear, and it set out the fear and said that we shouldn't do these bad things. We've done them. The bottom line is that over a quarter of a century since devolution, we have systematically disempowered and underfunded local government. Disempowered quite literally in the sense of removing functions from it—police, fire, the most obvious examples—disempowered ffiscally by removing for a decade or more its one local tax decision, the decision which is critical to the setting of its budgets. Disempowered in the distribution of grant so that in one way or another three quarters of a local authorities budget is now determined by central government, whether explicitly in the form of specific grant or implicitly in the form of determining issues such as teacher numbers. Those are all the things Mackintosh feared and they've come to happen. Ffiscally, not only have we removed the local tax flexibility, which is the key thing that a Government needs in the end. Governments don't just spend money, they raise money. Local government has been prevented from raising money for more years, I think, now than it's been able to raise it. It's not quite right, but it's not far short of it. Local government has also been the squeeze element in budgets. Ministers have always done this in the centre. It's always easier to tell somebody else to cut their budget than it is to cut your own. As a result, the growth in local government spending, even comparing like with like when you take away all the stuff that's been taken out of local government's purview, in Scotland has been a much bigger squeeze, unless you know all of this, in local government spending than in national government spending, with the result that the principal task of local government for a decade or more has been managing budget reductions. All of those things were the things Mackintosh wanted not to happen. It happened. Sorry. On the relationship issues, even then, Mackintosh has said things like Parliament and local government should set up a standing joint conference, which they called a covenant between Parliament and his local government, with parity of esteem and all of that. Did that happen? I don't recall. No, I don't think that that ever happened. It's clear that a formal working agreement should be established between local government and the minister. He could argue that they can call that, became that and might be verity house. It's time to become that. Is that fair, Cymru? I think that's fair, yes. In the end, as we said earlier, I was a coffee, this relies on behaviours, but you need to put in some formal structures in which the behaviours can happen. I think that those are a bit weak. It's just what we were discussing earlier, whether the international experience or historical experience. If you go really quite far back to the 1970s and 1980s, the only formal mechanism in the statute for consultation between central and local government was lurking in the finance legislation local government, finance act to Scotland in 1975, as that happened. You have to be interested, which obliged the then secretary of state to consult with such associations of local authorities, as he saw fit, on the distribution of grant. That created a whole mechanism, which perhaps Donald and Jonathan will remember the English equivalent of distribution committees and expenditure committees and working parties and all those things, which did actually work. They were built on a very small foundation, but they did actually operate. As far as I can tell, they don't operate now in any meaningful way. We do need a fresh start on that, and, sadly, Verity House. Somebody tried in 2007, somebody tried in 1990, in 2001, I think that Macintosh was, and somebody tried again in the Verity House agreement. I'm afraid we have to have another go. Thanks for that, Jim. Our guests online, do you have any comments on the transition, the journey that we've made from Macintosh to Verity House and whether we've learned any of those lessons? Is there hope within Verity House that we can overcome it? Anybody want to come in on that, Jonathan? Just very briefly, a question to which I don't have an answer, it is interesting to observe that the list that Jim set out of things that have been done to and taken away from the local government would also apply at the UK level, so it's not just something that's happened in Scotland. I think there's something to understand about how much of that is specific to the functioning of Scottish government and how much of it is about the UK government and how much of it is a response. I mean, why those things go in parallel, I think, is an interesting, and I'm picking that a bit, would be an interesting subject of inquiry. I'd simply add on Verity House that we have to have hope, right, because otherwise we would all shut up and go home, so we have to take it, I think it is better to take it as an opportunity to reset, even if that's resetting the reset and try and move forward, because otherwise what's the alternative? Okay, thanks, Jonathan. Professor Hall, any thoughts on the journey from Macintosh to Verity House? Yeah, I think, and not much to add to what Jim and Jonathan have said, Jim is the expert on this, having lived through all various iterations of different agreements. It's almost like it's kind of human nature to pass the book downwards, isn't it? And it certainly that's what's happened in England and the UK austerity, going back to 2011. Rather, the civil service has grown hugely in England at the same time as local governments had basically its budgets halved in the last 13 years. But it is, as Jonathan said, this is a real opportunity. I do think the relationships are different and certainly not as fractured in Scotland as they are in England. That's my personal experience and I do think this is a real opportunity to do whole-scale implementation of Christie commission if we think about the NHS as part of this too and try to think about pooling budgets on that radical total place approach. Let Scotland lead the way and show that the rest of the UK that we can do it. Thanks for that, Donna. My second question was probably aimed more at Jonathan. Jonathan, when you came to the forum in May, you were telling us that local government finances have reached a crisis point in England, although not yet in Scotland, you said in May. Given that we're on budget day in Scotland, have you changed your opinions in recent days, weeks or months, and what would your views be on the situation facing Scottish local government finances today? Well, I mean, since May, we've seen more councils effectively go bust in England, so Birmingham and Big councils, Birmingham and then just a couple of weeks ago Nottingham. So I was right about that. It wasn't a very difficult prediction. I mean, that was very, that writing was very much on the wall. I think that the situation we're told has become more difficult in Scotland. So we recently ran a survey of every council in Scotland asking chief execs leaders, chief finance officers, their views. One in four are warning that unless something changes, they fear they will not be able to balance their budget this year. In other words, that they will be in the same situation as those English councils that have effectively declared bankruptcy. We'll see what happens today with the budget, whether anything comes out that will alleviate those fears. I mean, I should stress those are warnings rather than predictions. So we're not saying that one in four councils in Scotland will go bust next year, but one in four are very anxious about it. And the other point I would make as I was making the English context as well is everyone focuses on our councils going to sort of go fall over financially. What about all the others? What are they having to do to make sure that they don't? And so we know that councils, well, in Scotland, council tax looks like it's frozen. So they won't be putting up council tax. They were all planning to do so had the freeze not happened. They are all making cuts to service spending. The majority of them are increasing fees and charges. So half are dipping into reserves. So even those councils that are going to manage to balance the books are only doing that by pulling on all sorts of levers, none of which are great in terms of the services that the citizens receive. It's a squeeze on the delivery to ordinary people. OK. Thank you for that, Jonathan. Any views on the same matter, Jim or Donna? I mean, I think I do agree with Jonathan, but I think we've got to try to look at the way that services have changed as well. As that we can't just say, we need more money to continue to fund status quo and take a look at children's services. And I don't know how many of you know or have ever worked in or have shadowed a social worker and seen the way that children's services has transformed over the last 10 years. It's become much more risk averse, huge privatisation, huge number of children being moved every couple of weeks to privatised placements, hugely expensive. Every time something goes wrong in the life of that child and an additional bill is sent to the council, you know, these services have totally changed in the last 10 years. And we've got to look at that as well as just asking for more money. OK. Thank you all very much for your responses to those, convener. Thanks very much, Willie. I'm going to bring in Pam Gosall. Thank you, chair. Obviously, we've been speaking about ring fencing earlier on as well. And after speaking to more than half of the local authorities, they have spoken about the issues around ring fencing time again and again. And the Verity House agreement obviously envisages a physical framework with a presumption against ring fencing. Do you think it's likely that such an approach can be delivered, particularly when ring fencing continues to be emphasised in relation to areas such as teacher numbers? And that's something that most of the local authorities did highlight. Obviously, they welcome that ring fencing is removed so that they can make the decisions locally. However, they are talking about teacher numbers, basically, areas like that, that may not be removed. So I just want to know what your view is on ring fencing in relation to that. This time I'll go to Jonathan first. Yeah. Get rid of it, simply. I don't think it helps. And this is to pick up Donna's point, because of course we need to reform public services. We need to think about how they work, but we're making it much, you know. So firstly, we need to fund local. Of course, we can't just ask for more and more and more money and we can't put more and more money into the old ways of doing things because it won't deliver results. But we do need to ensure that local government has sufficient funding to be able to look at public services. And one of the key ways in which we prevent it from doing interesting things, from changing public services, making them all joined up, is through ring fencing. Teacher numbers is a good thing, but it will look different in East Lothian and Highlands, and it should be for local, democratically elected local leaders, our best place to make decisions about what the balance of spend is in their area so that they can not just plough money into the status quo, but start to think about public service reform, start to think about how, you know, so I mean, without getting into teacher numbers, there are lots of things you can do with online learning. Of course, there are some things you absolutely need a teacher for. There are some things you can do with teachers as a teaching assistant. Those needs will look very different in different types of community in island communities and cities. And we should be opening it up for local leaders to make those decisions based on their local priorities and the aspirations of their community. And I think the challenge is that what we get locked into is everyone says, OK, ring fencing is bad. We don't want to do ring fencing. Oh, except for, we do think this is really important. So we'll just ring fence that a bit. And oh, and actually this other, you know, that's also really, really important. So we won't ring fence except for those things and those things. And actually it builds up quite. So look, let's ask this question again this afternoon. I would like to think we're going to see as Verity House and Visages a move away from that. I'm, you know, I travel more in hope than expectation, I feel. No, thank you, Jonathan. And before I go on to asking the same question to Donna and then to Professor Jim, just on that, Jonathan, do you believe if ring fence is completely removed that it will open up more doors? That's what I'm hearing from you. The fact that innovation come in to play a role to basically how delivery can be done more efficient and effective and probably more in line with what today the technology is. I think so. Now, look, of course, you know, it's also really important to stress and donimate this point powerfully earlier that loads of good things are happening. Local government across Scotland, across the UK is innovating. It is deliberate trying to change how it delivers services. It's doing all sorts of amazing things. I just think that we're making it harder rather than easier for it to do so. Why make that an uphill battle? Why? Yes, so often when councils are doing good, innovative things, they're doing it despite the system. They're doing it thinking, well, we won't tell anyone we're doing this. We'll just try and sort of sneak it through. It's not really, we'll try and use this budget. It's like, oh, well, actually I know that, you know, the local police chief or the local hospital trust will just sort of sort something out. And it's all based on sort of relationships and kind of making stuff work and being agile and innovative, but it's despite the system, not because of it. So does ring fencing kill innovation in local government? Of course it doesn't because local government is resilient and innovative. Does it make it harder than we would want to be? Yes, it does. Thank you, Jonathan. Zona. I completely agree. It should be got rid of. It doesn't help anybody and it certainly doesn't build on citizens experience of, you know, the way that the arbitrary numbers are compiled. Essentially, I think just get rid of it. It stifles innovation. I completely agree with Jonathan as well about doing things almost despite the system by working together. And again, we formed something, we called a rebel alliance of people who could see the need for public service reform, including frontline people working to support individuals and families in crisis. And they could see where the system was letting them down year after year after year. And they knew that the system wasn't designed for people and communities. So we redesigned it, but almost against the rules, if you like. And that's not right. The system should support the conveners of place, which is local government. Thank you, Donna. Same question to Jim. In general, I think ring fencing is something you should avoid. It can, however, discharge some functions usefully. The specific grant, as we used to call it, and probably still do in some places, is a good way of incentivising change and a different way of doing things. Sometimes, if central government wants to introduce a new thing, specific granting it may be a way of doing it. But we've reached the stage where three quarters of money is rank events, and that's certainly too much. However, going back, if I may, again, just to produce some disagreement among your witnesses, the point I raised earlier, it may be sensible to think more about those areas where central government is taking primary responsibility for funding something, and social care might be an example of that, which is not the same as ring fencing everything and saying exactly what must be spent on what. But if government does that kind of thing, it then has to accept responsibility for the budget. It can't just say, we've given them this money. If they want to spend more, they can. That's kind of what government does at the moment. That takes, as I guess, into the idea of, well, what would a fiscal framework for a local government actually look like? And it would address itself to the question of how much budgetary authority is effectively assumed by the centre, and by budgetary authority, I mean the total that's spent rather than how it's just spent, because how it's just spent, as Donna argues, I think, forcefully should be subject to a lot of local discretion so that local managers and local elected people can make some choices about how they do things. But how much of it nevertheless belongs, as I said earlier, to local government under its own steam. That takes you into the second thing that we haven't mentioned in the fiscal context here, and that is what are the principles of equalisation used in the funding of local government. One thing that has rather gone by the board in Scotland is systematic attention to needs and resources equalisation, because we've staggered on from year to year moving budget year on year, rather than having a principled approach. If we had a proper fiscal framework for local government, it would set down some principles about needs and resources distribution, an issue that dominated argument in the 1970s and 80s, but has been silent since devolution because of the persistent squeeze on local spending. So, yes, less ring fencing, but decide what you're doing on a principled basis, then address yourself to the old questions of distribution. Thank you, Jim. I've got time to ask a quick supplement. Then we need to keep moving on. Shall we? Okay, I've got about halfway through, and we're... Oh my goodness. Yeah, we're out. Okay, now that's the time at the end, that's fine. Move on. Okay, and I'm going to bring in Stephanie Callam. Thank you, convener, and thanks for joining us today to our panel. So, the last question, I think many of you touched on innovational ready, and during the Futures for Me event, we heard about the fact that more innovation means more risk taken and that there will be failures as well as successes. So, I'm wondering what other things can central government do to support local authorities through that process of innovation, and if I could start with yourself, Tim. So, what central government has really wrought in that is coming up with new ideas, because it comes up with them on a political timetable and driven by political considerations. New ideas and innovation happen when people are actually doing the work, when local authorities, when bits of the health service or the public services are changing stuff, and if you look at some of the good things that happened in Scotland, one of the things that we don't mention very often is that the number of murders here has gone down, the number of homicides has reduced, and that started in Strathclyde Police, it didn't start with the central government, it started with the police, and the health service in Glasgow, as it happens. So, what central government can do, first of all, is get out of the way of that kind of thing. Second, it can, if it is effective, act as a distributor of information. Have you seen what they're doing in Strathclyde? Is it a reasonable question to ask, or what used to be a reasonable question to ask another police force when we had more than one? Central government can act, to some degree, as a distributor of information. I'm less concerned with the implication of your question that there will be failure if you have innovation. If we can do failure without innovation, we manage that really quite well when we're good at failing at things. Innovation is, in some ways, less risky, but it's a bit more in high profile. And Donna's better place to, I suspect, address this question than I am, but it is creating enough local freedom, takes us back to ring fencing and so on, to enable innovation to take place, and to get out of the way of it. That's what central government can do. I totally agree with every word that Jim just said. I think that the biggest risk the Scottish Government face and local government in Scotland face and local government everywhere in the UK face is trying to maintain status quo. I really do believe it, and I just think it's going to fall over. However much resource we put into it, it doesn't work with the way that particularly adults and children's services, the bulk of a council's budget, are structured and have evolved over the last 10 years, is not going to be sustainable for anyone. And the demographics that people are living longer with more complex conditions for adult social care, which is brilliant, but at the same time it needs a completely different model to the one that we've got now. So I think encouraging that positive risk taking, because the biggest risk is we just carry on doing what we've always done, and just keep asking for more money, and just accept that the current model of public services is completely broken. It doesn't start with the person, it starts with the service, and if I'll send you the slides later you will see the huge cost in terms of the impact on the public purse, but at the same time the absolute tragedy of the failures, the repeated failures that we've had to support a man and his life journey, and it just shows you so clearly what's wrong with public services. They don't start with individuals, they start with a deficit based lens of looking at individuals through eligibility criteria, and when we get a budget cut we've raised the bar on eligibility criteria. We tell people go away, get worse, and then come back and then we can help you when you're in an acute state, which is much more expensive and terrible for you and your family. So it needs that reformist approach right the way through Scottish Government, through local government, everywhere in the UK, a reformist mindset from every single leader involved in this. Chief Executist, political leaders, everyone needs to really get the broken nature of public services before we can start to move forward. So just to stay with you for a moment there, Donna, it certainly sounds like we need some real systems thinking and systems leadership going on there. I'm wondering if you could comment just very briefly on my way of time. Do you feel that there's been progress made towards preventative spend and shared services and community empowerment? I think it's been cut, like everything else has been cut, and certainly in England it's been hugely cut. Public health budgets have been decimated and you've seen for the first time all the work that Michael Marmot's done around life expectancy, it's reversing in England. I'm not sure about the situation in Scotland, so it desperately needs addressing and I think prevention has got to be the way forward. I don't quite know what's happened to the Christie commission and why that isn't being revisited. We do all this work and then we just leave it to one side, don't we? Because that was amazing. It didn't specify how and I think that's the step that we need to look at now in detail is how do we embed the principles of the Christie commission and get a completely different mindset in the conveners of place and really give them the backing and the encouragement and the support to try new things. I don't know if Jonathan has anything to add. Well, I feel that again you're not going to get much debate amongst your witnesses. I agree with all of that. I would add just very, very quickly just to add that I totally agree with Donna that the long-term greatest threat to local government is the status quo, but I think we've also replaced that with a short-term threat to financial sustainability. We don't know what will happen if a Scottish council can't budget balance its books, but what we've seen in England is we've seen central government step in, we've seen them appoint commissioners, we've seen massive rises in council tax, we've seen massive cuts in service delivery, we've seen sale of public assets, we've seen redundancies. So, you know, there's a very immediate, you know, none of that will help us to tackle these long-term problems. So, yes, the biggest threat is the status quo, but the most immediate threat I think is just sort of complete financial collapse and the replacement of local government by central government control, which will do even less of the long-term thinking and even more of the risk aversion. And the only other point I would make is that we talk a lot about, you know, what if councils fail, but how are they accountable? And we always talk about that accountability as being upwards towards the Parliament and government. Let's not forget that local authorities' primary accountability is actually to the people who elect them, and they are and remain always accountable to that electorate. Thank you. Thanks, Stephanie. And I'm now going to bring in Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us today. I wanted to play devil's advocate, really, with regard to why we've not seen this progress. And so to set a scenario where central government, be it UK or Scottish government, has concerns over the performance of a local service in a local authority area, what do you believe a system should look like to be able to address that and make sure we don't see large disparities between outcomes in different parts of the country? We often hear this referred to as being a postcode lottery, but just wondered what you think that should look like and how that can be taken forward. And maybe start with yourself, Jim, and then go online. The words postcode lottery should be banned from political discourse, because if we had a postcode lottery aversion, we wouldn't have this place. The differential provision of service is differential outcomes, which will follow from that, and differential ways of doing things all go together. So the avoidance of variation as an objective is an error. Nevertheless, you are right to draw attention to how we facilitate the accountability of local government, just as we need to facilitate the accountability of national government, and how we provide the information and the analysis that enable voters ultimately, but also in the short run, ministers and others, to make some assessment of whether a council or a particular council service is deeply problematic. Now, we set up some systems for doing this in the 1990s, in England, in the form of the get my phrases right in the audit commission, I think it was called in England, which was actually rather an effective body, which sadly was abolished in a fit of peak by Eric Pickles, because it had annoyed him one day, which was a big mistake actually. We set up a parallel system here in Scotland, which wasn't quite so well-developed and wasn't quite so hard-edged, which has kind of turned on one of the unsung successes of the revolution framework has been the arrangements that we have made for audit, and the blood-brain barrier that we put in between Parliament and the audit process and local government in the form of the Accounts Commission for Scotland, which is something that we inherited from the pre-evolution world. Those systems of audit and review are potentially very strong. I think that they become, in recent years, rather overwhelmed again by the reductions in local spending, which is principally what local government has had to manage. So there are perfectly good systems for doing that, but they depend on the context in which they operate. I'll just be really brief, completely agree with Jim. I was a big fan of the audit commission, so I've been involved in supporting lots of councils over the years. I think the best way of supporting people is through peer support, I'll be honest, through people who are doing it well. Like the example Jim said of the different police forces working together, I know that's all changed now, but I think when it's not a threatening environment, when you're not going to be closed down or shut down, but it's actual genuine person-to-person support, I think that's the most effective. I think we've seen that work in so many places, so just keep it like that. Don't set up a great bureaucracy, please. Jonathan, do you want to add anything? Yeah, I mean, we all annoyed Eric Pickles, we all annoyed Eric Pickles sometimes time, but some of us were fortunate enough to work for organisations that he couldn't close down. I think the audit commission did do a good job, although there is a romanticisation slightly of the audit commission these days, so I do remember also at the time councils endlessly complaining that they had whatever it was, 187 different indicator sets they had to report on, so it was quite a cumbersome process. I think the existence of equivalent bodies in Scotland, the accounts commission audit Scotland, which have continued, I think it is a sort of underreported strength of the Scottish system and one which we should pay some attention to. At the same time, the key is, we are told by local authorities both in England and even more so in Scotland, they spend a lot of time putting together detailed returns of data and sending it up to government, and they are not quite clear what happens to it and what it actually tells anyone and how they are accountable for it or not or how it helps to improve services. So, there is no point having a big bureaucratic reporting system unless there is actually a degree of clarity about what it is going to achieve and how it is going to help. So, I do think it is an area that probably merits some further investigation, but I also think it is important to pick up Jim's point that uniformity of outcomes is not, we are interested in the quality of outcomes, but that doesn't mean that everything has to be the same everywhere because places have different needs and different priorities and we shouldn't create a sort of large sort of new public management style system that just tries to sort of deaden everything to the same level because you end up, and I think there is some argument actually that this is what we saw under the Labour administration from 97 to 2010, a sort of approach to target setting and reporting that was very good at raising places from good to sort of, from sort of bad to good, but doesn't really enable excellence. It just brings everyone up to a same sort of okay kind of level and I think that is a lesson that we should take quite seriously when we think about how we want to do accountability going forward. That's an interesting point and I'm just wondering in terms of the Verity House agreement, it does include a commitment to jointly agree monitoring accountability in some sort of framework. Now we have the national performance framework already, which I think is meant to be doing that in practice, so I just wondered if the panel had a view on how you think that should work or is this just another measurement like you've said, which will provide data but then not necessarily that data would be much use or prescribed what it's been used for. Donna, as you kind of did this in Wigan, what examples do you think we should take on board? I think it should be on the three priorities, if they are accepted by all partners, then I think some broad outcomes around those three priorities, but with a real emphasis on trying new things and innovation. Not a kind of risk averse approach or else it will just perpetuate what's happening at the moment with the gradual disintegration of public service. I think being quite bold and courageous on the outcomes framework is essential. The national performance framework goes back to just before 2007 and it is intellectually confused. It doesn't really the difference between the indicator and a target. It was a set of indicators which were regarded as somehow magically going to become targets. Indicators only become targets when you set up machinery to try and achieve them and no machinery was set up to achieve the outcomes set out in the national performance framework. Partly, as a result, those outcomes have not been achieved. Another gap, I'm afraid, is that there appears to be no connection between the national performance framework and the outcomes in it and the outcomes that might or might not emerge from the Venetee House agreement. This is just sloping, this guy. This is poor work and needs to be fixed. Jonathan Finlay, is there anything you want to add? One of the things that's very fashionable in public policy at the moment but for good reason I think is a sort of missions approach where you're very clear about what the kind of objective is but you allow much more flexibility in terms of how people coordinate and get together and focus on achieving those objectives. I think there's something we could usefully learn from that. A lot of work done on that at UCL, to the Marianne and Mattsford Coutures Institute there and some councils have sort of picked that up. I think that that is worth looking at. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. I'm just going to come in with just picking up on, well, Jim, you kind of said it, put it our way. We need to get much better on things like paying attention to the subunits between the Venetee House agreement and the national performance framework. The Venetee House agreement includes a commitment for what I'd be interested in knowing is around scrutiny of the Venetee House agreement. What do you think there should be for the Scottish Parliament, including committees, on the agreement and the performance of local government? You've got two things or two sets of things that, as a Parliament, you might want to understand. I almost said collect data on, but let's not collect data, let's actually gain understanding. The first is how the processes are working. That means talking to people. Pam Goswell was talking about talking to local authorities individually. It's not for me to advise you and precise you how to do that. You've got to get a feel for what councils actually think and how they feel about it. Otherwise, hard numbers won't be particularly helpful. How is the process going? Are the behaviours that are described actually happening in practice? The second thing is because those behaviours are not an end in themselves. They are behaviours that are designed to facilitate the operation of local government, the avoidance of collapse and the movement into the kind of reforming agenda that Donut is talking about. You need some data and understanding about that. Again, it's probably soft data rather than hard data. Please don't send out a form with numbers in it. You and your committee colleagues need to ask yourselves, well, which areas are we looking for change and progress in? That's not every area, otherwise you're getting nowhere. Get some understanding of the extent to which there's been success or failure in that. That's the kind of useful function that the committees might perform here, in my view. Colleagues may have something to add, though. Donna, you've spoken really well today and very inspirationally about the changes and the new deal in Wigan and things like that. What do you think that we need to be taking on in terms of scrutiny of the agreement? I think it's exactly what Jim said word for word. I would take specific areas of where we're not progressing quickly enough in reform, so I would take a start with children's social care, huge expense, terrible outcomes for children and families in Scotland and the rest of the UK, and start with looking at, say, the promise. The promise is brilliant. It's one of the best pieces of public policy work I've ever seen, done by young people. Was it 5,000 care experience, young people? It's brilliant, but it's not being progressed quickly enough in local areas, so why? Let's try to get the skin of why this is not happening and what needs to change. I would be really specific around where cost lies and it's in failure. It's the failure demand that we create by the way we organise ourselves. Rather than just looking at it through the lens of individual service failures, let's look at the system as a whole and find out why it's not working and what we can do as leaders to make it work and to unblock those barriers that are stopping things happening. That's great. Thanks. When Jim did talk about that, what specifically, and thank you, you've given us something specific there. Jonathan, do you have any thoughts on it, scrutiny? No, only that I think we should also think about collaborative scrutiny, so not just about Parliament scrutinising local government, but how can we bring Parliament and local government together to do this as a collaborative endeavour so that we're all scrutinising us? If we're talking about partnership, an enhanced partnership between Government and the centre and the local, I think a scrutiny system that reflects that is worth thinking about. It's not just us scrutinising them, it's us scrutinising us all. That's brilliant. I love that idea actually in terms of I do think that what we're learning, needing to learn to do better, is the whole kind of collaboration piece, isn't it? And there's a lot of skill sets around that that need to be expanded and opened up. So that's a great suggestion. I'm not quite sure Parliament and who would it be, but that's certainly something to take forward. I mean, we're certainly getting a lot from you. Earlier you commented that you're not bringing up a debate in this conversation, but I actually have found this morning extraordinarily constructive in terms of getting ideas and suggestions of things that we need to look at and take further as a committee. I'd like to bring in Stephanie Callaghan with the last question. Thank you very much, convener. I should remain members as well of my register of interest as a councillor until 2022. I suppose, with that in mind, I'll direct my last question at yourself, Dawn, and I'm happy for the others to add something there. I'm wondering about the Verity House agreement. Do you feel that it says enough about actually devolving power to communities? Now, thinking on that as well, I suppose, my own experiences of neighbourhoods being able to do real full-on asset community-based development has certainly had some good experience of that myself and that involved participatory budgeting. I'm just truly interested in some positive examples that could be something that we could look to build upon in the future. I think that expanding that sustainable public services element of the priority, Stephanie, is the key to this. As I've said several times, we will not be sustainable unless we have a different relationship we've seen between public services and citizens in a place, in a neighbourhood. That's where we need to start. I actually think the council tax element—I'm sorry to be controversial again—could be a part of that. Again, this building on my experience in Wigan, it was really simple, really clear. It was a two-way social contract between citizens and states. The first thing was, we will freeze your council tax if we can work together to improve things in your local area. Asset-based community development just works, but it's very patchy in how it's implemented is my experience. We know it works. If we know it works, why don't we have the courage and the backing to roll it out at pace and scale across everything, not just have it as little experiments in individual communities? I think the reason is that we haven't got that reformist mindset in all public service chief execs and leaders. It just doesn't exist everywhere. We've really got to change the way that we approach the role that Jim kept saying, the core purpose of public service is for me about transformation and reform, to get the best possible support in place in local neighbourhoods for people and to be the conveners of that, not to just transact with them and be the guardians of eligibility criteria, which is what we've become over the last 15, 20 years or so. Let's take ourselves back to what is our core role, and that's what we did in Wigan. We were there to be the conveners of place and to support communities, to really maximise the strengths. We had no money, we had huge pressures on services, but what we did have was 323,000 amazing people. We didn't draw on their assets and their strengths enough until we created the deal, so that could be the start of a deal with citizens in Scotland. I think it could be dead exciting, but a great question, Stephanie, thank you. Can I just ask really briefly, do you feel that participatory budgeting could perhaps play a role in making that a reality for people? Definitely. The community wealth building, participatory budgeting, they're all sides of the same coin for me, and I think that it's absolutely brilliant work that well done. Keep it up. Thanks Donna, that's really helpful. I'm happy to hear from Jim or Jonathan if you have anything to add there. In general, I'm sympathetic to this, but just from my own experience, one of the risks that we carry here is that we're expecting relatively poor people to carry greater responsibilities than is reasonable sometimes to guide the services that should be supporting them. Having spent some years in the urban renewal world, I always feel a bit nervous about expecting more of people who are there to serve than better off folk who, for whom we just provide services. Provided that we are not damaging folk in the process, yes, that's fine. Remember, of course, that the bulk of our local authority expenditure is on the employment of people, teachers most obviously, social workers and others. I absolutely agree with Donna that the thing that one should aim for is finding ways of avoiding that failure demand. The kids who don't get educated in the effort require even more intervention in the families that don't get supported in the effort into crisis at spending more and more. Finding ways of doing that as participating as you like is certainly where you're going to save a large amount of money and make people's lives better. You can actually do both of those things, I think. Look, I think what bridges Jim's comments and Donna's comment is the role of local democratic institutions. We need more participation. Power belongs with individuals, with communities, and we need to enable that, but we need local democratic institutions holding the ring making that happen. That's how we avoid the risks that Jim's talking about by having local government collected with a mandate from the whole community holding the ring, ensuring that participation is at the heart of what local government does and that local government is at the heart of that participation. That's a good note to end on, and it pulls us back to not just looking at the Verity House agreement, but looking at the whole of the local government's review in its entirety, because I've always been keen that we don't lose sight of that piece of community empowerment. I think that there's certainly some things for us to think about in terms of the community wealth building bill along with the local democracy bill that's going to be coming forward soon. Thank you all. As I said earlier, I think it's been a really constructive session this morning. We've got things to take away and look at and see if we can squeeze some evidence sessions. I've got some notes here saying, well, can we get some evidence on this and that from things that you've said? It's been a very constructive morning, and I really appreciate you sharing some time with us. Thank you so much. We have previously agreed to take the next four items in private, so as that was the last public item in our agenda for today, I now close the public part of the meeting.