Seòmar agus comataidhean

We are going to change themes and move to housing.

Although we have other questions, in the interests of time, we will put them in a letter to the cabinet secretary. There are important issues to do with reducing emissions from home building. We are also interested in how local authorities will be affected by the levelling-up schemes. However, we will put those questions to the cabinet secretary in writing in the next few days.

I thank the cabinet secretary for coming to give evidence. It has been very helpful for us to get a baseline understanding of the Government’s priorities to carry into our scrutiny in the coming session.

Welcome to the third meeting of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee in session 6.

Our first agenda item is consideration of whether to take in private agenda item 3, which will be an opportunity for members of the committee to reflect on the evidence that they heard earlier in the meeting. Do members agree to take agenda item 3 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you; I appreciate your opening remarks, cabinet secretary, which point us in a good direction for asking our questions. I will just comment that I think that we have a great opportunity. You said that you are overseeing a wide-ranging area, but it is all joined up. The committee has been talking about our remit being local government and housing and planning, and how important it is to hold all those together and see how those aspects of how we design Scotland work. We have the opportunity now to do that.

The committee has some questions and I will start. What are the biggest challenges facing local authorities? Do you agree with the Accounts Commission for Scotland that tackling inequalities and addressing the effects of poverty are some of the biggest challenges facing local authorities? I heard you say that one of the most important challenges is tackling child poverty. Can you share a bit more about that?

That concludes our questions. It has been a rich and thought-provoking session, which will form a really good basis for our future work. Thank you for spending your time with us and sharing your views.

Agenda item 2 is an opportunity for the committee to take evidence to inform its understanding of what its key priorities should be for this session. It is also an opportunity for the committee to inform its pre-budget scrutiny. The committee will take evidence, virtually, from the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government and then from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

I warmly welcome to the committee, for the first time in this session, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. I also welcome her officials from the Scottish Government: Catriona MacKean, deputy director of the better homes division; Caroline Dicks, head of the affordable housing supply programme; and Stephen Garvin, deputy director of the building standards division.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks.

Thank you. My colleague Elena Whitham will ask the next question.

Thank you very much for that.

We are sticking with housing, but my colleague Miles Briggs will bring in the theme of homelessness.

We will change the topic. I invite Willie Coffey to come in.

I have very quickly been learning a lot about local government in this role. The fiscal framework has piqued my interest. The Scottish Government has invited local government to bring forward its own proposals for such a framework. How could a fiscal framework between the Scottish Government and local government work? What must be done to ensure that a rules-based system could work? What are the barriers to progress, given that issues such as ring fencing, single-year budgets and unsatisfactory changes to settlements have been under discussion for decades?