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Providing that £980 million would provide a substantial number of jobs in local government, would it not?

Okay, thank you. Carmen Martinez, you have talked about how the national outcomes need to drive spending and/or decision making in relation to equality.

I understand that the word “innovative”, specifically, has been removed.

To be fair, the proposed new education and learning outcome is a bit woolly. It says:

“We are well educated, have access to high quality learning throughout our lives?and are able to contribute to society”.

That is a bit difficult to measure.

Allan Faulds, human rights are important to the ALLIANCE. Will you expand on your view on the proposed new national outcome for equality and human rights?

A power of general competence was agreed in the first session of Parliament when Wendy Alexander was the minister. Although it might not have been implemented, it was certainly agreed by the Parliament, as anyone who checks the Official Report will be able to confirm.

Thank you. That concludes questions from members. We are over our time and we have not been able to touch on reserves or climate change or much about economic productivity and economic growth.

I will raise one issue that was alluded to by Michael Marra and John Mason, which is the trade-off between expenditure on welfare as opposed to local authorities. In paragraph 49 of your submission, Katie, you talked about how the benefit budget has increased by £984 million in this financial year and said:

“The opportunity cost of these decisions needs to be considered.”

The funding could have gone to

“economic development and employability services which help to create jobs and support people facing barriers to the labour market to progress toward, into and sustain work in fairly paid jobs, thus reducing dependence on the welfare system and also improving health outcomes. This funding could have been used to create more affordable housing supporting people out of poverty, reducing homelessness and improving health and education outcomes.”

Has COSLA done a cost benefit analysis of how that £984 million could have been spent in local services? That is a key point of your submission.

Thank you very much. That has been very helpful to the committee. We will hold our final evidence session in our inquiry on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach, at our next meeting, when we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government.

We will now take a five-minute break to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Allan Faulds, you say in your submission that you feel that inequality has not been consistently considered across the national outcomes.

Why would any Government want economic growth for its own sake? Is the purpose of economic growth not to generate wealth to invest and spend on services?