Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will bring in Fiona Campbell on that specific point in a second. I do not think that anybody failed to notice what I had to bring to Parliament two weeks ago. In the context of the in-year position this year, the idea of trying to backdate something in-year this year would just be impossible, or incredibly difficult. Going back to the optics that you mentioned earlier, I do not think that that would be at all sustainable. The focus for me is what we can do from April 2025 onwards. Fiona, could you address the point about uprating?

We should remember that that was also the pre-election period. There would have been issues around Scottish Government officials’ involvement in a number of forums because of the pre-election guidance and so on. That potentially had a disruptive effect.

Let me be absolutely clear: I do not think that the decision on council tax had any bearing on the report that emerged from SLARC. I think that it would have been exactly the same report, with the same recommendations, if the Scottish Government had not frozen council tax. I think that it is a good report. The question, though, for everybody now is how the recommendations are funded going forward. I think that we can get into a positive space about that, but it will need to be done on a cross-party basis.

That last point is key. We know that there are barriers to women and people from a minority ethnic background. A number of groups are underrepresented among local government elected members, and that should be a concern to us all and something that we should collectively want to address. Remuneration is part of it, but so is the need for flexibility and—I guess something that we are all very aware of—the fact that abuse in public life is hard and puts people off. It puts people off coming in to serve in any elected forum. We need to address all those things. The special interest group that is being worked on through COSLA is important, because it will help to address some of these issues.

On the point about central spending and who pays, we are all facing these issues. Given what I laid out to Parliament about the in-year position, the position of the Scottish Government is no different. We are under severe financial constraint.

How do we take this forward? There are various mechanisms within the local government settlement that this could be accommodated within, but I go back to my previous point, which is that it would need to be done cross-party. All the represented groups in COSLA would need to make it clear to me as part of the budget process that this was a collective priority that they wanted to see funded.

There are various mechanisms to do that. We could top slice an element of the local government settlement for it, but you can understand that it would not be universally popular to do this. You can already see some of the media commentary about it. If we are going to take it forward, we need to do so collectively. Given that local government is multiparty and that we have a collective interest in taking it forward, we need to try to do this in a way that takes the politics out of it.

I am very happy to discuss with COSLA and the local government leaders what that looks like. Do I think that we can get there? Yes, I think that we can, but it will require everybody to step forward to say that this is an opportunity for us to lay the ground for 2027 by making being a councillor a more attractive proposition. It cannot just be the Scottish Government’s responsibility to do that. I am very keen to have those discussions and I have written to the presidential team offering to take this forward as part of the budget negotiations.

Okay.

The regulations would give authority to apply them. Technically, I guess that if it was down to local authorities to fund uplifts, authorities could decide not to do so.

Well, what councils are saying is that they want us to pay for it; they are saying that they cannot afford it and they want us to pay for it.

It would not be backdated to 2024: it would start from 1 April 2025. I am very clear about that. I think that this will be difficult enough to get agreement on, and its presentation to the public is quite an ask. I do not think that the public in particular have politicians’ salaries at the top of their list of priorities. However, I will from the outset not agree to the idea of backdating for two years from 1 April 2025. That is not happening. We will discuss whether we can find agreement to implement the change from 1 April 2025.

I do not agree at all, because the Verity house agreement is about partnership and respect for each sphere of government, which is something that is very important for COSLA, and about where responsibility lies for respective roles and functions. For example, it is not about central Government funding all local government costs. We do not fund all teachers’ pay or all local government pay, per se. We make a contribution but we do not fund it all. That is the responsibility of local authorities.

It is about where the balance lies, and on something as contentious—if I can use that word—as this, the responsibility has to lie on a cross-local-government and cross-party basis, because otherwise I just do not think that this will fly. The spirit of the Verity house agreement is about partnership and trying to find solutions. I have said that I am willing to have the discussion around the budget to see whether a solution can be found, but that will require compromise and give. I am certainly willing to have those discussions.

I think that the next steps are for some genuine negotiation around the budget. For me, a step that I will require is some reassurance about cross-party support for this move. I think that that needs to set the tone for the local government settlement. If this is seen as a priority, it needs to be everybody’s priority. COSLA and local government are made up of all parties represented in Parliament as well as independents. I think that, despite the heat, which there will be, everybody has to step forward to say “We are all agreed that this is a priority, and we want to make sure that, in our discussions with Scottish Government as part of the local government settlement, it is seen as a clear priority by everybody.” I do not think that it is unreasonable for me to ask for that.

As I said earlier, I do not think that there would have been any perfect time for this report. If it had been published earlier, it would have been the opening gambit for some of those negotiations. It would have been right at the start of them. You could argue that it would have framed and set the floor for those discussions with local government workforces. I do not think that there would have been any ideal timing in that respect.

Looking at the negotiations in detail, I note that it is very welcome that two of the three unions have now accepted the offers that have been made. There was a range of other things that the local government unions were looking for in terms of pay progression for the lowest paid and so on. I am not sure that the SLARC recommendations were centre stage in all that. There was a whole load of other pay issues that were being negotiated. The fact that two out of three unions have now accepted shows that enough progress was made, particularly on pay progression for the lower paid, to satisfy two out of the three unions.