Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will wear my parochial hat. You both mentioned some impressive figures at the outset. Al Denholm spoke about £650 million being invested in 37 businesses. Adrian spoke about 80,000 jobs being delivered, and 26,000 jobs in the investment pipeline coming along. If I ask you about this as an Ayrshire member of the Scottish Parliament, can I—or any of my colleagues—see where the benefit of all of that is going in relation to our particular parts of Scotland? Do you do that? I am not asking you for it now, but could we, as members of Parliament, see how that impact and those benefits are being spread around Scotland, so that all the communities in Scotland benefit from the activity?

Good morning to you both. I want to continue briefly with the discussion that Emma Roddick led, using the example of the Welsh councils. As I understand it, the Welsh councils are saying that they are less likely to end up in a bankrupt situation than their English council counterparts, as a result of their close relationship with central Government. As we do not have our Welsh colleagues in front of us, perhaps you can offer an explanation. What do they mean by that? Do councils there have a tighter financial relationship with the Welsh Parliament?

One councillor in particular, who is head of finance at Cardiff Council, is reported as saying that, with regard to councils in Wales,

“higher central funding from the Welsh Government has helped them stay afloat when some English councils are collapsing.”

That is quite a statement to make. It is clear that that councillor thinks that, in Wales, there is a better relationship with central Government that has enabled Welsh councils to avoid the disasters that some of the English councils have encountered. Can you add anything to what you have said, Abdool?

Goodness. Thank you for that.

My final question is on general financial sustainability indicators, which I ask you both to comment on. In Scotland, our Improvement Service publishes those to guide us. Are the financial sustainability indicators, which, collectively, we all use, fit for purpose? Do we need to think differently about what financial sustainability should look like in the medium to long term? What measures should we introduce to get a better and more rounded picture of what we need to know?

Thanks very much to both of you.

Good morning. I will start with you, Jo. The committee often hears extremely different points of view depending on who is sitting in your chairs, particularly about local government finances. The Improvement Service benchmarking framework seems to present a more positive picture of local government finances, certainly in terms of debt management and healthy reserves, but on the other hand we hear from our colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about how serious the position is. Why is there such a divergence in opinion when in essence we are talking about the same thing—local government finance?

Would you see yourselves recommending some kind of consistent, standardised way of describing the issue? Would you ask the Government to formalise it so that we do not continue to get a varying picture, depending on which council we talk to? Would that be a useful tool?

My other question is about capital funding. Do councils have any mechanisms open to them for capital funding, other than capital grants, borrowing, and so forth? Are there any other measures that they may be able to deploy locally so that they can deliver?

I look forward to the update that will be published in January, as it will clear up all those issues for us. Many thanks for your answers.

We have mentioned the reserves position before at the committee, and we have probably asked you about this, but we cannot seem to agree what the indicators are. We have categories such as contingency funds, earmarked, unearmarked, committed and not committed. There is a myriad of terms that, frankly, we struggle to understand, so we do not know where the various bits of money that local authorities have tucked away are and what they will be used for. I have probably asked you this before, Jo, but do you think that we will get a clearer picture and an agreed set of criteria for that stuff?