Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will bring Robert Emmott back in at the end to see whether he has any more comments on that.

Kirsty, do you have anything to add?

That point and the point that Carol Calder made about general competence might need to be raised. I do not know whether that should be done through looking at the new deal. If the issue is general competence, it is about widening local authorities’ ability to look at that, and that could involve a discussion with COSLA. That is a valid point.

Obviously, there are inflationary pressures at the moment, and there is long-standing capital spending that local authorities planned for. Inflation has jumped up massively from last year to this year, and nobody could have predicted that. Are you confident that local authorities can invest in infrastructure that they have almost agreed on in the past year or two, given where inflationary pressures now are?

My next question was going to be whether you will be monitoring that over the next year, because there will be an impact on the delivery of capital projects, whether they are delayed or spread over a longer period of time.

Robert Emmott has set me up for my question, which is about the revenue-raising options that are open to councils. You might all have heard the previous panel session, in which I asked about the short term and the longer term. Carol Calder mentioned general competence in relation to councils being able to raise funds. What options are available to councils now? What is preventing you from doing that?

On the medium term, in the discussion with the previous panel, it was mentioned that most local authorities in Europe have the ability to raise about 50 per cent of their income. In Scotland, the figure is about 15 per cent. Again, in the short term, what would you like to see and what is preventing it from happening? In the medium to longer term, what other powers could local authorities look at? I am not proposing these options, but the options that are used in other countries include a local sales tax, roof taxes and taxes on visits to hotels—all that kind of stuff. Can you comment on that?

I will come to Robert Emmott first, as he mentioned fiscal flexibility.

I want to move on to the question of the revenue-raising options that are open to councils in the short term and in the medium to long term. I will start with the short-term options. What are your views on councils’ ability to raise their own income and how much that has changed over the past decade?

The second part of my question is about the longer term. The committee has been doing a bit of work on what other countries do in relation to local government finance. We found that councils in Scotland and the rest of the UK raise about 15 per cent of their own income, whereas in Europe that figure is around 50 per cent. We have looked at the workforce parking levy, the visitor tax levy and so on. That would almost be a start, but do we need to consider whether we can give local authorities more powers to raise income in that way? Councils could pick and choose from the available powers. I am not suggesting that Scotland should go down this route, but some other countries have local sales taxes, local income taxes and other taxes.

I would like to get your thoughts on the ability of councils to raise their own income, in the short term and the medium to long term.

With your CIPFA hat on, is that something that the organisation has discussed, or that you as directors of finance have discussed?

Thank you for that.

The wellbeing legislation wraps around how that is raised and apportioned.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I want to talk about fair work in the third sector. As you know, I chair the cross-party group on social enterprise. Multiyear funding is one of the issues that comes up, as is inflation, which you mentioned earlier. Can you say a little bit more about what the Government is doing to support third sector organisations?