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The next item on our agenda is consideration of a negative instrument. There is no requirement for the committee to make any recommendations on negative instruments. If there are no comments on the instrument, is the committee agreed that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instrument?

Members indicated agreement.

We agreed to take the next agenda item in private so I now close the public part of the meeting.

In the previous evidence session, we discussed with the witnesses the timing of things and the working relationship between SLARC, COSLA and the Scottish Government. They started their work at the beginning of April 2023 and said that it was very positive and very engaged, but quite quickly, towards the end of April, things changed. That timing was around the announcement of the council tax freeze. Could you share with us what happened there? The relationship was good, and then they had a sense that there was less engagement from the Scottish Government.

Thank you very much for that outline.

I have an initial question on the timing of the SLARC report. It was published in mid-February, but what we have just heard from our previous panel comprising members of SLARC and COSLA was that it could have been published sooner. It could have been published in December, but the committee was under the impression that it had the time to continue to refine it.

In addition to that piece of the puzzle, we are also interested in the fact that, although the report was published in mid-February, it took the Scottish Government until July to publish its response. Why was that?

Thanks. I think that I need to clear up a little bit of our timescale. We have some different Aprils going on.

Just to be clear, SLARC began meeting in April 2023. The council tax freeze, which impacted relationships, happened in October 2023. Then SLARC reported in February, which was five months before the UK elections. I just wanted to get clear on that, because I think that we were starting to talk about different Aprils there.

Willie Coffey will continue our questions on SLARC’s recommendations.

The second item on our agenda is to decide whether to take item 5 in private. Do members agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much. It was good to hear COSLA’s perspective.

We have a number of questions on areas that both of you have touched on, illuminated and possibly given us some answers to, but we want to dig down a bit further.

Angela Leitch, I will come to you first. In your opening statement, you said—I will paraphrase you, perhaps badly—that, if SLARC had understood the Government’s response, it would have made a recommendation on a shared approach. To what extent was the issue of who should cover the cost of SLARC’s recommendations discussed before the committee started its work?

Yes.

Fulton MacGregor, do you want to round us off with a final question?