Rai, diwrnoddi, mlynedd.  Ieithi chi wedi ei f confrontation i ddim yn cymaintau cyddullach arall i ddechrau amdano cofodau i weld rydym ni'n mynd yn allu i ddoddiadau ieithuaeth, a ti chi'n ddwy'n cael ei wneud there has been no apologies from MSPs and we move straight to agenda item 1. The committee will take evidence on its inquiry into homelessness and I welcome this morning Kevin Shoop minister for local government and communities. Good morning minister. Good morning. I welcome two of your officials here today. We are pleased to have David Signorene, Head of Better Homes and Marion Gibbs, team leader homelessness Scottish Government. Thank you to both of you for coming along this morning. Minister, I believe you have an open statement to make before we move to questions. Thank you, convener, for the opportunity to outline our plans to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. In recent years with strong housing rights already in place, we have made significant progress in preventing homelessness before it occurs. The number of homelessness applications has fallen by more than a third since 2010 with fewer families in unsuitable ond, ond we are not complacent. We know that now is the time to do more building on the progress we have made to be more ambitious now. We want to ensure that everyone, including those with the most complex needs, is supported to secure a home that works for them and to achieve the best possible outcomes for individuals. Members of this committee and many people across Scotland will be concerned by the apparent rise in the number of people who are sleeping rough. It is unacceptable in a country as wealthy as ours and is why we have recently announced measures to address that. In our programme for government, the First Minister set a clear objective of eradicating rough sleeping. We have moved quickly to establish the short-term homelessness and rough sleeping action group, chaired by John Sparks of Crisis. The group is already working hard to identify actions to address rough sleeping this winter and will report in the next few weeks on the actions that they will recommend on that time critical initial question. In the coming months, the group will also consider what further action is required to end rough sleeping for good and will also look at how we transform temporary accommodation and how we can end homelessness in Scotland. We have also created the £50 million Ending Homelessness Together Fund over a five-year period, as well as investing an additional £20 million in alcohol and drug services. The action group will consider options for the best use of the fund from 2018-19. In the longer term, we will continue to work with local authorities and other partners through the homelessness prevention strategy group to drive change and improvement. I look forward to the recommendations of this committee. It is clear to me that success will rely on all of us working together. We face huge challenges, not least from UK Government welfare reform, but with the action-focused approach that we are taking, we can make real lasting change in Scotland, ensuring that everyone is able to secure a safe and suitable home. We will move to questions now from Andy Wightman. You mentioned in your opening remarks the need for everyone to be working together, and that has been a key theme of evidence that we have had in the inquiry. The fact that homelessness is not just a housing problem, but it is often just a symptom of wider problems. A lecture in their submission said that, in the longer term, there should be consideration of extending statutory obligations regarding homelessness to a wider range of public agencies other than local authorities. Do you believe that that would be helpful? As the committee will be aware, John Mills of Elacil is a member of the action group. I am sure that he will convey the views of Elacil to the group. I will certainly look at that very closely. What I have found, convener, is that I have gone around the country speaking to third sector organisations, local authorities and people who have lived the experience of homelessness. Sometimes services are not joined up in the way that they should be. I have come across some extremely good examples of where local authorities and others have joined up their approach to tackling homelessness, a person-centred approach and the preventative approach, and that works well. Probably a good example that I could give the committee is that Jeane Freeman and I recently met with Dundee City, who have brought teams together, not only from homelessness but from the Scottish welfare fund, from energy efficiency staff and others. The approach that they are taking is one that I would like to see exported elsewhere. The best practice that is going on is discussed regularly at housing options hubs. I want to ensure that all of those hubs are aware of all the good work that is going on wherever that may be to pick up the best of what is going on and ensure that that becomes a reality right across the country. Beyond that, convener, one of the things that has been useful is that the Scottish housing regulator in terms of the work that it is doing in Glasgow has mapped out the journeys of a number of folk to see where things have gone right and where things have not gone so well. As well as looking at what the action group comes up with in terms of their recommendations, I am also keen to ensure that we continue to look at what is happening on a day-to-day basis. That work that has been undertaken by the Scottish housing regulator will help us to pinpoint the areas where we need to improve, which may also be areas where joint working is not taking place the way that it should be. I have a suggestion that there is best practice out there and we have seen some of it ourselves as well. The question is whether we need a step change in the way that we do funding for those services and, in particular, the statutory obligations on key agencies, whether it be the health service or the prison service, to ensure that, albeit best practice is spread and learnt from, that best practice is embedded and that there comes an obligation on the wide range of agencies that are dealing with the problems that contribute to homelessness. I will look very closely at what the action group comes up with and what others are saying at this moment in time. I do not think that this is necessarily about budgeting per se. I think that this is about bringing people on the front line together to make sure that they are taking a person-centred approach to individuals. Often what we find is that we may get elements of helping people absolutely spot on right, but the element that we may be getting wrong is the one that drives them back into a homeless situation. I think that we have to look very, very closely—and I know that the action group will be looking very closely—at where there may be difficulties in that regard. In terms of some of the organisations that I know that you have visited as a committee and some of the organisations that I have spent time with, we can see quite clearly where the holistic approach works. A good example is Tomorrow's Women Glasgow, which does not follow the housing first pattern but has put in place all of the agency support that is required to help women not only to retain their tenancies but also to help them with other issues that they may face. In some regards, convener, legislation is not always the answer to these things, but what we need to do is to make sure that we have services that are tailored to deliver in every aspect of an individual or a family's needs to ensure that they continue to retain and secure their tenancies. Is that okay for now? Can we bring it back in later, Mr Mike? That's okay. I've put it on the record that I've got the Scottish Housing Regulator in front of our committee in a few weeks' time. I was aware of the work that he's doing in Glasgow, and I think that we'll be very interested to hear more about that. Not as part of this inquiry, but I'll come along to give evidence on the annual report anyway, so just put that on the record for anyone following proceedings here. Can we move to Graham Simpson? Yeah, thank you very much, Moring Minister. I just want to ask you about rough sleeping. It's obviously very difficult, but maybe impossible, to put an absolute figure on how many people sleep rough, but we've certainly had evidence that in some parts of the country it's increasing. You've set up a homelessness and rough sleeping action group and, if I'm right, one of the priorities for that was to reduce, I don't think it was to eradicate, but reduce rough sleeping this winter. We're already in the winter, so how are you getting on? Convener, the action group first met at the beginning of October, and they will meet again tomorrow and will provide me with recommendations of what we need to do over the peace of this winter. The meetings themselves are not the only thing that's going on. Members of the action group have been in constant communication with one another to make sure that they get those things absolutely spot on right. Mr Simpson is right, that is their first task, and I look forward to hearing the recommendations that they have to make on that issue. I look forward to getting that as soon as, after tomorrow, it's possible for them. Given the fact that we're already in the winter and your priority was to reduce rough sleeping this winter, I would have expected something to have happened by now. Obviously, I'm going to look very carefully at what the action group has to say. There are already services that are in place for this winter. For example, the Edinburgh night shelter is already operational and has been since, if I remember rightly, convener, October 23. I'm looking at officials, but I think that it's round about that. The Glasgow city mission opened up recently during the course of storm Ophelia because, obviously, temperatures dropped at that time. I will look very carefully at what the action group has to say and will move quickly on their recommendations to make sure that we get as many folk off the streets during the course of this winter as possible. Beyond that, convener, it's not just about dealing with this winter in terms of rough sleeping. One of the questions that the action group will answer is how do we eradicate rough sleeping. That's very important because it is all fair and well us putting emergency measures in place every winter. I'm sure that the committee would like to see the eradication of rough sleeping full stop. You're absolutely right. As you know, that's something that we've been looking at, particularly on our recent trip to Finland. It sounds to me that nothing has happened so far to tackle the problems this winter. I've already said to Mr Simpson, convener, that a number of measures are already in place in terms of winter shelters, but beyond that... Sorry, minister, those shelters have existed for years. There's nothing new in that. I think that it would be unfair to say that nothing has happened because I know for a fact that, over the past while between October 5 and tomorrow, when the action group meets again, they have been working very hard to come up with solutions and recommendations that they will present to me. Anything additional, Mr Simpson? Thank you for joining us, minister. On the same issue of rough sleeping and following up on what Graham Simpson is asking about, the support that you talk about is mainly provided by churches who do a brilliant job in providing that. What do you think the role of the public sector should be in providing support for rough sleepers? I'm very grateful to faith groups and to third sector groups for all the work that they do in dealing with the issues that are faced by rough sleepers and homelessness issues in general. The work that is carried out by organisations such as the Bethany Trust, Glasgow City Mission and others is extremely important to what we are trying to do. I hope that they will continue to carry on with the engagement and the work that they have done over a number of years. I think that the public sector and local authorities also have duties in those regards. We know that, in many places, the methods that are used and the facilities that are provided are provided by local authorities in dealing with that. Obviously, one of the things that I would like to see is folks going in to temporary accommodation with the support that is required, rather than a reliance on night shelters or hostile accommodation. I know that, in terms of the committee's trip to Finland, you have seen other examples of how things work there. Again, convener, we will look very closely at what the action group has to say. The committee will be aware that the action group itself has the former moderator of the Church of Scotland as a member. The Reverend Barr has been very interested in this subject. We will also look to see what recommendations it makes in terms of provision, not only in the cities but in rural areas. I am quite sure that it will have something to say about the provision that is currently undertaken by faith groups, including, as I said, Bethne Trust and Glasgow City Mission. Thank you, convener. As I said at the beginning, they do a fantastic job, but we have to have some wider consideration of how the provision has worked. You said in your opening statement that you talked about the apparent rise in rough sleeping. That was the word that you used. Why did you say apparent? If it is because we do not have exact numbers, then I note that Homeless Action Scotland has asked the Scottish Government if it would conduct a national audit to establish the number of people who are sleeping rough, would you have any plans to follow that advice to do that? In terms of the most recent figures that we have of those who are presenting themselves as homeless, there are two questions that are asked. The first one is, did you rough sleep the night before and have you rough slept over the last three months? The figure in terms of the night before has risen slightly in recent times. Out of those folks who are presenting, if I remember rightly and I will look to Marianne to correct me if I am wrong, that figure has risen from 7 per cent of those presenting to 8 per cent in recent times, a slight rise. The figure in terms of those folks who are saying that they have slept rough over the past three months has remained almost static. Those are the figures that we have, but we know and we have seen a rise of folks saying that they are seeing more people sleeping on the streets. That is why I am saying apparent. The figures are not necessarily matching the anecdote or what I have seen myself, whether that be in Aberdeen or here in Edinburgh. That is why I use the word apparent. In terms of an audit, I think that an audit is a very difficult thing to undertake. When they have been done in the past, I am not sure how accurate they have been. What I would rather see, convener, is efforts into the actions of getting folk off the streets and into accommodation. That is where the focus lies. That is what the action group has been tasked to look at and offer recommendations on. If the action group were to come up with a recommendation to carry out an audit, I would obviously look at that. However, the key thing for all of us here is not necessarily arguing around the numbers of folk that are actually on the streets, on any one night, but actually providing those folks with the accommodation that they actually need. Can I just pop up a couple of things, minister? You mentioned the homeless rough sleeping action group, which we are all very much welcome, and that recommendations will find their way towards you fairly soon. Will those recommendations have made public, minister? I would be open and transparent, and I am sure that the group want to be as open and transparent as they can possibly be. All of those things will become public. That is very helpful. In terms of the increased visibility of rough sleeping, I know from my constituency caseload that constituents tell me that they see a more visible form of rough sleeping in Glasgow. The committee that we are visiting in Glasgow, some of the chapel organisations said to us that the nature of rough sleeping has changed, and one of the theories—we do not know for sure, minister—is that whereas previously rough sleepers were maybe down alleyways or under railway archways, they do not feel safe there anymore, so they come into the public spotlight because they feel safer in shop door ways than they did. Is there a culture around rough sleeping changing a bit? Do we have to better understand the lived experience of rough sleepers and why they are choosing to opt? Some of them are opting for that lifestyle, but some of them have been filled by services. Is there a change in the dynamic of rough sleeping in Scotland? That is a very difficult question for me to answer, convener. Obviously, again, in going out and talking to various organisations, you hear about different individuals' experiences and why they have maybe changed the way they do things, but I think that it is very difficult to give you a straight answer to all of that. Obviously, we have seen, in certain places, a rise in begging and the increased visibility of begging in some places in Scotland. Some of that may be down to the fact that changes in legislation from the UK Government means that so many folk have no recourse to public funds. I think that that is an issue that the UK Government must look to and address because I think that we are creating crises for people on a day-to-day basis because of that situation. The action group itself tomorrow, as well as that initial meeting, is going to be talking to a number of stakeholders. I think that it is between 40 and 50 stakeholder groups that they are going to be talking to tomorrow. That is maybe a question that we can ask them to pose tomorrow, convener, and to give you more information on in some more depth. I have got information that I have received from folk as I have been going out and about, but that is more anecdote than hard information. I know that you will be wanting hard information, so we will try to get that for you. That would be very helpful. One final, hopefully brief question for myself before I bring in Jenny Goldruth to take on the questioning further was that none of us want to see night shelters have to exist. They are going to exist this winter. Is there an opportunity there, minister? When you get very vulnerable people forced because of the harshness of winter to present to night shelters, you have a cohort of people who are vulnerable, who might have previously disengaged with services. That is a real opportunity to get them back into the system again. Is that something that you see as an opportunity and are you confident that there will be a plan in place to try to achieve some of that? Absolutely, convener. I think that what you are suggesting there should really become a matter of course. If we look at some of the work that Glasgow City mission has done over past years trying to link folks who are presenting at their shelter with health services and with others, there has been some success in that regard. It is a situation where folks who often have lost confidence in people come into the shelter and find that there are people who are willing to listen. I think that that is the key thing—willing to listen—and then folk can help them to signpost them to the services that they require. From my knowledge of what went on at Glasgow City mission last year, that has been extremely helpful. Glasgow City mission presented at the recent Glasgow homelessness summit, which I was at. The work that it has done in terms of signposting is something that is being done now by many other organisations. Long may that continue, because that joined-up approach is the way that we can help folk to get out of situations that they do not want to be in. Can you ask a little bit more of that later when we come on to housing first, minister, because there are certainly links there, but Jenny Gilruth? Good morning to the minister and the panel. In previous evidence sessions, we have listened to the experiences of homeless people and a consistent theme coming out has been the experiences of care experienced young people going into the system and their experiences of homelessness. Does the minister have a view on how best we meet their needs? Convener, since taking over this role, I have had a number of bilateral meetings with ministerial colleagues, including with Mark MacDonald, the minister for early years. We have, at this moment, the care review going on instigated by the First Minister, but we cannot just wait for its findings. Actions are required now, and we have already taken some actions in that regard to make life easier for younger folk who are leaving the care system and who are moving into accommodation. There are some barriers to what we are trying to achieve there, because, obviously, the Westminster Government has removed housing benefit for 18 to 21-year-olds, and the Scottish Government has been able to mitigate that using the Scottish welfare fund to ensure that those folks can continue to get support. Recently, the First Minister has announced that we will look to remove council tax from younger folk leaving care to set them on the right path. Beyond that, in terms of housing options, we have a protocol in place for care leavers. However, Mr MacDonald recognises that we must continue to ensure that we are doing our best. I have continued to speak to young folk themselves about their lived experiences and where the system has not necessarily worked well for them. That is why I want to ensure that the housing options toolkit that we are developing to help train front-line staff has elements that deal exclusively with those leaving care, because those folks in the front line are key to ensuring that young people move on to tenancies that are sustainable. It is not just about getting them to the house, it is not even just about the support through the Scottish welfare fund. If a rent element is required, it is not even about that removal of council tax, it is making sure that other elements are in place for supporting those folks in tenancies. I know that many of the members around the table will have heard me speaking before from the bat benches about all our responsibility as corporate parents to those young folk. I want to ensure that not only elected members here, including myself, recognise my responsibility, but I also want to ensure that councillors themselves recognise their role as corporate parents and ensure that the policies that they are putting in place at council level recognise their responsibility to care leavers to make sure that they are put on the right path. At the end of the day, those of us who have been lucky to live in pretty secure environments—I am a 49-year-old convener, and to this day I still rely on parental support from time to time. I am sure that that applies to many of us. That support may not be monetary, but it is advice. It is ensuring that young folk have all those elements so that they can have the best possible start that we would want every young person to have. I am sure that committee members cannot believe that you are 49 years old, but in terms of welfare benefit reforms in particular, we had in September the national audit evidence that said that we had a 60 per cent increase in England and Wales in terms of the homeless population, and they laid the blame for that at the door of the UK welfare benefit reforms. The Simon community last week told us that UK welfare reforms were leading to longer stays and temporary accommodation, and Shelter told committee a couple of weeks ago now that it is unlikely that the Scottish Government will be able to sustainably mitigate all those changes in terms of the welfare reforms. Would you agree with that statement from Shelter? Is there a shelf life to how long the Scottish Government is going to be able to mitigate what the UK Government is doing because there is obviously a disconnect there and a clash of political cultures? Secondly, would you agree with the fact that UK Government reforms themselves are disproportionately affecting certain groups of homeless people to a certain extent? For example, I am talking about—we have talked about—K experienced young people, but I would also put into that bracket women and their experience, and that came up last week at committee. I do not know how many of the committee members watched the STV documentary earlier on this week, but a number of the women with families that they spoke to from Edinburgh were affected by the benefit cap. I think that, if I remember rightly from the documentary, it was Siobhan and Melissa who talked about their experiences of the benefit cap, which meant that they could no longer stay in the housing that they were in and were forced into temporary accommodation. From my perspective, I think that that kind of situation is completely unacceptable. I do not think that the UK Government, as the National Audit Office report points out, has done due diligence in terms of looking at the impacts of the policies that they are implementing. The National Audit Office is quite clear in that report saying that the work should have been carried out to look at those impacts on people. You can see directly from that STV documentary the impact on Siobhan, Melissa and their children, and that is unacceptable. While the Scottish Government can mitigate a number of things, bedroom tax mitigation is costing us £47 million a year. We have talked already today about using the Scottish welfare fund to ensure that 18 to 21-year-olds who are having housing benefit withdrawn are still helped here. We have put additional money into discretionary housing payments in recent times. While we have done that, we cannot mitigate every single aspect of the cuts that are taking place. I know that the committee and others have played with the UK Government to rethink what they are doing. I would ask them to take a long, hard look at the impact of what their policy decisions are having on individuals and families across the country. At the very least, there is an expectation when we bring new policy to the forefront here in Scotland that we carry out impact assessments. At the very least, they should be carrying out impact assessments before introducing some of those policies. However, the STV documentary shows quite clearly that those changes are having major impacts on folk here. If I can maybe finish off with a point about the benefit cap itself and how other things can be put in place to try to alleviate some of the difficulties that are there. Glasgow City Council, I understand, has done a piece of work looking at the families that are likely to be affected by the benefit cap, who may be in rented accommodation that costs a little bit more, identifying them and giving them the option of moving into social housing, which is often cheaper, and thus removing some of those difficulties. That is something that other councils need to look at. I have spoken to a number of other councils and asked them to look at what Glasgow is doing and to see if they can do similar. I intend to write to all councils the ones that I have not spoken to to see if they can do likewise. I think that if we can try to hide some of those difficulties off at the past, that saves families from having to resort to temporary accommodation. Minister, my deputy convener just made a good suggestion that it would be very helpful if we were cited in what correspondence went to local authorities and what kind of responses came back if that would be appropriate. I am more than happy to do that. We touched upon care leavers. I recently wrote to all councils about care leavers and their responsibilities and asking them what policies they have in place. I am more than happy to share that information with the committee and its responses to what I have suggested there. I will bring Alex Anderson in a second condition. I will walk up a couple of things. I note in my briefing prepared for today's meeting that one of the issues has been the management fees in relation to temporary accommodation that has been taken away and taken up of universal credit, but we do have a note saying that the UK Government transferred £22.5 million. I have no idea whether that was sufficient or not sufficient. I just know that the figure is there and that it was distributed via COSLA, so I have a bit more information on that figure if you have it today, minister, and how the spending of that has been monitored. The answer is no. We have had a discussion with COSLA on the distribution, as you have pointed out. On more detail, can you give me an indication of what more detail you require? I might have to write to the committee in terms of more depth, but if you can give me an indication of what you are looking for, I might be able to answer today. Rather than doing something off the cuff, we think as a committee what kind of detail we would be looking for, and we will get back to you on that as well, but it is certainly something that we want to make sure that we have covered all the appropriate parts of evidence before we report on our inquiries. We would get back to you on that, minister. One final mopping-up point. Care leave is incredibly important.  Prisoners would be another one. Former military personnel would be another group. Is there a consolidated strategy across local authorities not just care leave as a significant and important as that is, but across all groups, whether there are transitional points in their life that are at significant additional risk of homelessness? Is that something that additional thought could be given to? In terms of veterans, convener, most councils have policies in place around veterans. In terms of some of the other at-risk groups or others who may experience homelessness, one of the key things that we are doing is that housing options toolkit. What we want to ensure is that training package is the very best that it possibly can be to allow those folk in the front line to understand the difficulties that certain folk, certain groups of folk, are going through. I think that, quite possibly, my officials are I would not say annoyed with me, but there may be a little bit nafft off at the amount of things that I have asked to be added into that toolkit because there are often things that we do not necessarily think about until we meet with individuals and groups and hear their stories. I think that that is why it is important that the committee has been out and about talking to folk and it is why it is an important part of my job to talk to folk with lived experience of homelessness. Recently, I have asked officials to look at what we need to do in that toolkit in terms of dealing with folk from the LGBT community, particularly LGBT young folk. I met a number of LGBT young folk from LGBT Scotland who came up with a number of things that, quite frankly, I had not thought about, which I think needs to be built into the toolkit so that those in the front line can understand the pressures that certain folk go through and have an understanding of what is happening in folk's lives. That toolkit will cover all gamets of groups and folks. I do not know if Marion wants to add a little bit to that, because Marion has been at the forefront of that in terms of discussing with local authorities what is required. We are at the stage where we are about to procure the toolkit itself. If I can maybe hand it over to Marion. Marion, just before you come in, we are definitely wanting to come in. I should point out that in terms of minister you annoying your officials, they have very good poker faces, but I have perhaps annoyed Alexander Stewart, who had a line of questioning on the toolkit, so we will hear from you Marion, but then we will bring Alexander Stewart in to develop some areas around that. Miss Gibbs, thank you very much. The way that the toolkit is being developed is a co-production model. All the local authorities have been involved in it. All 32 local authorities have signed up to the toolkit, which I am sure that you recognise is quite a considerable feat in itself, along with Glasgow Housing Association, and they have been working through the hubs to take that forward. What they are doing is not just local authorities on their own doing this and getting the procurement and all the rest of it. They have invited groups such as Scottish Women's Aid, Scottish Refugee Council, NHS Health Scotland to be involved in that production in there. We are trying to capture all the experiences that are out there and trying to make sure that the toolkit reflects the best stuff so that when it is rolled out, the individual front-line workers will have quite a good resource behind them about how they do that. That area is very much about identifying people who have an interest in that. We have Skills Development Scotland involved and interested in it as well. It is looking at that wide thing. It is not just housing, it is looking at employability aspects, financial management aspects, along with the wider health. There is a huge range of stuff in there. As the minister points out, organisations such as LGBT Scotland have a particular offer in there in terms of how we can help develop services to be more responsive to certain groups in Scotland. I missed out on one part of your question. I am sorry. It is important that I respond to it. You mentioned prisoners and I failed to answer on that front. We are setting out minimum standards under the acronym, convener. You know that I don't really like acronyms, which is sustainable housing on release for everyone, which should ensure the co-ordination when it comes to release. Beyond that, convener, in terms of cross-cutting government response to deal with some of those issues, the Justice Secretary, Michael Matheson, chairs a ministerial group on offender reintegration, which brings eight ministers together to try to get things right for folk leaving prison. Obviously, housing is a major element in that and getting it right. We have had discussions around release dates and things like that to make sure if somebody is being released at four o'clock on a Friday afternoon, that does not give them the opportunity to go and deal with services. I am sorry to come back in, but I missed out on that element. I think that it is important that I put that in the record. That is very helpful. Thank you, convener. Minister, we have touched on this morning the toolkit. I think that the toolkit is a huge opportunity for us going forward. During our evidence, witnesses have been very supportive of the possibilities that the toolkit can bring. You have given some information this morning about the depth and breadth of that. The size of the document and the scope have great potential, but it is trying to ensure that, as we develop it and as it comes forward, is it your plan to bring out in stages or is it your plan to develop it in certain sectors to ensure that you have given us examples of organisations that we did not consider initially, but that you are now considering. I think that to make sure that we get the purpose and the view that people want from the toolkit, it is very important that they are not given masses of information that they are not able to disseminate fully and that it comes out in a way that they can benefit. That was very much the evidence base that we were taking, that people felt that this could really be a huge advantage if we are hitting the specifics that they are considering and also taking in views and opinions of individuals and organisations who have a big impact on this. Cymru, a very good question. One of the things that we do not want is an information overload or a training overload. I think that Mr Stewart is right in that regard. The toolkit itself will come in six modules, so that will split it all up. Beyond that, there will be the flexibility to look at adding it to a later date if something else hits our radar from an organisation. We have listened to a huge degree from local authorities, but let me be quite clear that we have also listened to third sector partners and others, including those folks with lived experience of homelessness, to try and get this as good as we possibly can get it. Obviously, we will continue to monitor how well it is working, and we will take feedback from those folks who are being trained and using the toolkit. It would be pointless if we were not to do so. In terms of the amount of listening that has been done—as we have moved forward, there has been a fair number of discussions between myself, Mary and other folk in her team. We have picked up on things that we know that we may not be getting right in certain places and making sure that that information is in there to get it right. However, we have not just been complacent in waiting for the toolkit. We have been disseminating good practice right across the board as we have been going on. If you do not mind, I am going to use a prop convener, which I would not normally do, but Women in Fife, with the help of Scottish Women's Aid, put together this document, Change Justice Fairness, around about the experiences that they had in terms of getting housing after having to flee domestic violence. The document itself, which has a huge amount of efforts gone into it by those women with the support of Scottish Women's Aid, has been going around the country speaking to folk. I have been bringing up the document time and time again. Fife Council has been working on the recommendations from the document in order for them to get this part of the service right. I know that other councils have taken cognisance of this and are now looking to do likewise. It is not just about the toolkit itself, but about the constant change that is going on with new information. I suggest that folk read this document. Some of the key findings in it are extremely important in terms of changing and reshaping services to get it right. As folk do those things, which are extremely worthwhile, we will continue to update and continue to disseminate. I am sorry for using the prop convener, but, quite frankly, the women in Fife who have put this together deserve a lot of applause for the work that they have done. That is a very appropriate thing to do, minister. The toolkit minister will obviously help many sectors, but those who have multiple and complex needs may be of a real advantage to them. We need to encourage agencies—I know that that has taken place already—to try to redesign some of their approaches to ensuring that that becomes a reality. That is quite a hard nut to crack to ensure that we get those agencies joined up and that they are thinking about some of the multiple issues. That could have a health implication or a mental health implication. It is how we will progress that in the short and medium term. I would like some more information on that. I am glad that Mr Stewart used the words redesign. What I do not want to do—I do not think that any of us want to do—is reinvent, because there is already a huge amount of good work going on out there where all pieces of the jigsaw are completely and utterly joined up. It is ensuring that public bodies, local authorities, housing associations, the health service and the entire shebang realise that that way of working is the right way and can save a lot of money. At the same time, the money aside, by not doing this, there is a human cost. It is important that we take those best practices that are going on and make sure that they are replicated with redesign in certain areas to get that absolutely right. I know that the committee has looked a lot at housing first. There are a lot of things that are going on out there that are not necessarily housing first per se but are very similar in that regard. Tomorrow's women's Glasgow is a very good example of bringing agencies together to ensure that there is that person-centred approach in dealing with women who have had often very difficult backgrounds, sometimes folks with extremely complex needs. That kind of project itself—there is a natural progression in terms of other agencies suddenly wanting to become involved because they see the advantage of what is going on. Hearing from some of the women at that project, many of whom were very cynical about criminal justice, they told me and June Freeman, who was with me that day, that sometimes folks stray from the path a little bit and they find themselves in the criminal justice system again. Sheriffs in Glasgow, or individual sheriffs in Glasgow, recognised that they were taking part in this programme and were being helped by this project. They recognised that fact and probably took different decisions from the ones that they would have because they knew what was going on and that that was an on-going journey. It is not only persuading certain elements to come in at the very beginning. It is that additional folk coming on board recognising that, if they are involved, that adds to the value and helps folk further along that path. The whole idea of health and social care partnerships coming together gives us an opportunity once again to look at how we can focus, but, in doing that, they need to have an active consideration of how they want to move things forward. We will see some of the benefits that I have no doubt of health and social care that will progress us in the long term, but, in the short term, they have to consider the silos and coming out of that silo to try and support individuals. I think that that has still got some way to go, Minister, for that to be resolved. I think that what you are already doing is supporting and helping, but the agencies themselves have to think about what they are doing to make that become a reality. We are already seeing many bodies looking at the evaluations that have been carried out around housing first, including the Turning Point Scotland's housing first project evaluation, which was put together by Sarah Johnson of Herriot-Watt University. You do not even have to delve far into that report to see the very positive outcomes of following that path. Aberdeen is probably one of the next ones that is going to hold an event to look at how they can use housing first there. As I say, it does not have to be the complete housing first model per se, but it is the person-centred approach in ensuring that all of the elements required for that person to be able to sustain a tenancy and to have the help behind it are in place. Now, all of that means that it has to be psychologically informed. Folk has to know what the real difficulties the person or the family is facing, and they have to make sure that they get the environment absolutely right in terms of helping folks often with very complex needs. All of this around the table will have its constituency cases where somebody comes to us and gives us a problem that they need to help with, but when they delve further down, often that is not the real problem. We have to get better at that delving to see exactly what is required to help that person on their way, on that journey to sustain tenancy. That is extremely difficult with folks with complex needs who may be completely and utterly untrusting of authority, of the system. That is why ensuring that those folks on the front line have the knowledge to be able to do that delving, to get that trust, and to have that empathy is the most important thing in all of this. Now, a lot of that we cannot legislate for. We cannot legislate for empathy, for common sense, but what I want to be able to do is to ensure that we provide all of the elements that are required to allow those folks on the front line to start that process, to make sure that we get people on the right path, with the right support. Mwgwy Tym Minister, due to Mopot 1 o 2 things around housing first, I will move to the next line of questioning after that with Andy Wightman, who has other matters that he wants to explore. The committee did indeed go to Helsinki and we are moving towards a significant sympathy for housing first, but it is also a point to point out that we are usually told half fidelity to the system. We were told something very different in Helsinki and in the final we said that if it works, it works. There are some key underlying principles that housing first do in the context of your country and what works for you, but some of the underlying principles were certainly access to all services at the point of emergency and of crisis. That was integration of health and social care and housing. That takes some significant realignment of budgets to achieve some of that in greater supply in the housing system. The situation in Finland would be that someone who turns up in a state of emergency might have to be briefly accommodated for a few days. It is appointed a social worker pretty quickly and it is offered a secure tendency pretty speedily also with all the wraparound services around that. I know there are some small-scale examples, including my constituency with Turning Point Scotland. I suppose what I would ask you is the same thing that I asked the First Minister last week in relation to the budget lines around trying to achieve some of that. I see that there is a £10 million a year ending homeless together fund. There is the £20 million a year alcohol and drug services budget, but there is also a substantial A-HIP budget, affordable housing investment programme budget. I am just wondering, as well as the healthcare budget, in terms of aligning some of those budgets, can we bring some money into the system to create some new terenys? Supply is a key issue within the system, so supply is a key issue, but there is also an additional workforce issue. We need additional care workers in the system, additional addiction workers in the system, additional social workers in the system. We were impressed by some of the ice that we saw in relation to housing first. It has been tried on a small scale in Scotland. We know that there is the action group. We are just trying to tease out further some of the Government's thinking in relation to this and also what budget lines the Government might draw upon to make some of this a reality. Convener, obviously the action group will make recommendations probably around about funding too, I would imagine. We can use the ending homelessness together fund, the new fund, to pilot initiatives and look at what is required. You have rightly pointed out, convener, that we have got a lot of money in the system. Sometimes that does not always join up the way it should. I do not think that it is necessarily the case of aligning budgets being the solution to everything, but the alignment of people is extremely important. I go back to my point of the Dundee situation, where you have a team of folk working together, where one person is sitting at one end of the room dealing with somebody in terms of homelessness, but not just leaving it at that, where they are immediately speaking to colleagues across the room and saying, well, this person might need something from the Scottish welfare fund here, or this person might need something in terms of energy efficiency for their home, or even in the case of Dundee going through in-depth with a person, their benefit entitlements, and then working through with them what is required in terms of getting them the additional support that they require from the DWP. There is no one budget for all of that, convener. It is still different budget lines, but that team approach of everybody working together is the way forward. I think that there are huge opportunities in terms of where we are at at the moment. Mr Stewart touched upon health and social care integration. It is absolutely vital that health and social care partnerships look at what they are doing in terms of housing and homelessness, because a huge amount of the work that they undertake, preventative work, is about making sure that we are getting it right for our individuals. Not just homeless folk in the case of health and social care partnerships, but also ensuring that folk have the right adaptations in their homes to save them from going into hospital or long-term care. I think that there are huge opportunities at this moment where we are at in terms of getting this absolutely right. Homelessness itself is not just a housing matter, it is a cross-public sector matter. That is one of the reasons why I have spent a huge amount of time talking to colleagues in justice, in health, in early years and in employability to make sure that we are aligned in tackling all of this, because we could move forward in taking new approaches if we do not have everyone with us, everyone with us, then there are still folk who are going to fall through the cracks. That is why all of these elements must come together. I will look very carefully at what the action group has to say about budgeting. I can assure the committee in the medium to long-term that the homelessness and prevention strategy group, which we intend to reinvigorate, will continue to look at all of these things. If necessary, we will look at further how budgets can be aligned. Finally, convener, in terms of the affordable housing element of all of this, I would expect all local authorities and housing associations to look at the opportunities that our programme provides in ensuring that we have the right accommodation for homeless people. Currently, at this moment, Edinburgh City Council's allocations, 73 per cent of their allocations go to homeless people. Across the country, the average is around about 40 per cent of allocations go to homeless people. I think that local authorities and housing associations should continue to monitor their allocations policy to ensure that they are getting it right for homeless people. Beyond that, folk who are homeless should also be benefiting from the new housing that is coming on-stream. That is very helpful, but it is worth noting that homeless people and rough sleepers are not always the same thing. Housing first is very much focused on vulnerable people who find themselves on-stream at times of crisis. There are supply-side issues, which is why I deliberately mentioned the existing £20 million and £10 million budgets, perhaps for the support of the individual rather than just housing. I mentioned the A-Hip budget, because there is a supply-side issue. We are returning to the student ministerships, strategic housing investment programmes, which I know that you are interested in. Should they be starting to align with if we decide to back housing first? Should they be starting to look at, let's have a percentage of the units that local authorities wish to see in the years ahead being designated as built on a housing first model to allocate some of those units to very vulnerable individuals, a housing first secure tenancy approach and align their support services for the most vulnerable people who will be staying in the Glasgow night shelter this year or the Edinburgh night shelter this year or the rough sleep that takes place around Scotland? I am just trying to get a tangible idea of what it could mean in practice. That is a meaty budget, that A-Hip budget, but it is about the nuances of how that is spent and whether a housing first model should be directly aligned to that. I have said to the committee before in terms of formulating their ships that councils should look at the housing needs and demands in their area, and that would include the housing needs of folks who find themselves homeless in their area too. We have talked at length previously about local authorities ensuring that they have got the right provision for disabled people and families with disabled members. I would expect them to do exactly the same thing in terms of looking at what is required in terms of moving forward with a housing first model if that is what they intend to do. Yes, in terms of their housing needs and demands assessment, I would expect them to look at these elements too. Obviously, in formulating any policy on housing first, the authority would have to have the housing, so they are going to have to think about how that may be an existing housing convener, in some cases that may be new, but they will have to think about how they are going to provide that element in order to be able to move forward with housing first. I will stick to one final question. I have two supplementaries on this from Kenneth Gibson and Graham Simpson to those MSPs in a second. Please just tease out a little further that same line of question, as you would expect me to minister. One of the things that happened in Finland is that there was a relatively modest financial incentive from the centre in relation to local areas deciding to invest in housing first models. In their case, I would not necessarily follow that route in Scotland, but they adapted a lot of form hustles into self-contained one-bedroom flats. I am not saying that I would go for that. I would probably go for a more scattered housing approach, I suspect, in Scotland, but there was financial leverage and incentives from the centre. If national housing first is the right way to go forward, could you envisage using budgets at the centre a bit more innovatively to incentivise local authorities to do supply side issues around housing first? I get that the statutory duties sit with 32 local authorities, but we are developing a national action plan, so it is about getting that balance right, about driving leadership from the centre and allowing local discretion. I will look very carefully at the recommendations that come from the action group. Beyond that, I will look very carefully at the findings of your committee. I have got the report from your trip to Finland. I think that it would be fair to say, convener, that I have not read it in as much depth as I would like to. Beyond that, it may well be that I have a number of questions for you, if you do not mind, around your visit to see what has worked there. We come at this from a different angle from the finish, because obviously we have got different legislation and stronger homelessness rights, but I am willing to look at good examples from anywhere and everywhere to try and get this right. What I would not want, convener, is to push from the centre a system that may not work in a particular place. The delivery of housing first is likely to be a lot different in the likes of Glasgow or Edinburgh compared to some of our more rural areas. We have to allow that flexibility. However, what I am always willing to do, convener, is to look at all aspects of how we can take that best practice from wherever it may be and get it right for them. In terms of the budgets themselves, the ending homelessness together fund gives us an opportunity to pilot certain initiatives and to see what works and what does not. That will then allow others to look at their budgets and where they may need to realign, whether that be budgets at a local authority level or whether that be our budgets. I think that there is a wee bit of learning that we may need to do in terms of from some of the pilot initiatives, which I think are inevitable in terms of where we are likely to go. That is very helpful. I suspect that I am speaking for the committee if I say that I think that we would appreciate an on-going dialogue, perhaps not even in a formal evidence session. A discussion would be very, very helpful. We might take you up on that offer at a later date in relation to what our experiences elsewhere were. We thank you for that minister. A couple of supplementaries on this, Kenneth Gibson, to be followed by Graham Simpson. Thank you very much, convener, because it leads on from what you have actually been saying. Indeed, the minister has just said that he does not really favour a push from the centre, but, of course, in Finland, that was exactly the model that worked because there was a need to get to all-party buy-in and to get buy-in from across the country. There was a push from the centre, and the emphasis that I am pretty sure that we received from the mayor of Helsinki was who was housing minister at the time that came forward, was that that is the only way to really get a significant delivery in terms of housing first anyway. Think about what the witness has said to us last week. They absolutely were overwhelming in suggesting that housing first should be implemented at the earliest possible opportunity. There are a couple of questions that I was wanting to ask. The first one really was—he talked about 40 per cent of allocations being for homeless people, but in your view, should housing be built specifically for homeless people? That is obviously what they do in Finland, and that is the model that they feel works, whether it is in the scattered housing or, indeed, the more communal approach. The other question is—there was a lot of talk this morning about cross-cutting budgets, et cetera, and, indeed, the ending homelessness together fund. I am just wondering what work the Scottish Government has actually done in terms of a cost-benefit analysis to look at the impact of housing first, not just in terms of the cost of delivering such a model, but what the savings might possibly be in terms of local government health, justice, et cetera, in terms of that, and relative to other kind of homeless provisions that we have at the moment in Scotland? First of all, when I talked about—I certainly want to push from the centre and make sure that folk are doing all they can to eradicate rough sleeping and homelessness—what I do not want to do is be dictatorial in terms of saying that this is a system that you should use without flexibility. Maybe I got my wording a little bit wrong here, because the push from the centre very definitely is in ensuring that eradication of rough sleeping and that the move forward to ensure that we are providing the right services for homeless people. In terms of my view, should we provide housing for homeless people only? I think that that is a very difficult question to answer, and there are many views and all of that, because, for example, in my days in the council, what we did was ensure that our temporary accommodation was spread throughout the city. I was a logic to that to ensure that particularly folks with families could still attend the same school or have that family support network. The same went for individuals. If they were taking somebody away from their family support network and putting them at the other end of the city often, that was not particularly wise. In some cases, it might be an idea of having folk together and building the right accommodation for people who are homeless, but in other cases, I think that you have to have that flexibility so that support networks are still there. I do not think that there is one way of doing this. That is something that we can definitely look at. I am willing to have further discussions about your experiences formally or informally. In terms of Mr Gibson's question about cost-benefit analysis, there is some work going on in Renfrewshire at this moment around that cost-benefit analysis. I would have to say that, from my perspective, we need to do much more work on that front. We will continue to look at that situation. I think that, beyond doubt, without having all the figures necessarily behind us, you can see from turning back to the evaluation on housing first and turning point Scotland and how individuals' lives have changed and you can see quite clearly from that that what is not happening is a huge amount of spend on crisis, which is always the most costly. While we can share what we have from Renfrewshire in terms of cost-benefit analysis, I do not think that that goes far enough yet. I will say to the committee that we will continue to do more work in looking at cost-benefit analysis, but I would definitely point to the reports that already exist that show that crisis goes down, which means that crisis spend goes down. That kind of preventative spend is definitely the way that we should be moving forward. I will share the Renfrewshire stuff that we have and I will try to provide the committee with more of that cost-benefit analysis as we move on. I want to give a time check, because we are beyond our time. We have a supplement from Graeme Simms, which I am going to take. I have two specific lines of questioning that I know are still outstanding from both Elaine Smith and Andy Wightman. I intend to take both of those. I know that it is a forlorn hope, but I hope to have that disposed of by around 11 o'clock, so I am in the hands of members and the minister in relation to how we get on with that. Andy Wightman. It very much follows on from what Mr Gibson and Mr Doris was asking. It really follows on from our visit to Finland. The housing first programme that was driven by a Government minister, now the mayor of Helsinki. He did not force it on councils, but he got buy-in from them. It seems to me that is the way to do it. He comes across as a charismatic guy, but he managed to get that buy-in from the 10 biggest councils. His starting point was that we do not want to see the homeless shelters in our cities. They do not have them anymore, because they have converted them. Are you prepared to perform that kind of role as a housing first leader, champion in Scotland, to get councils on board without forcing them to do things, persuade them and put in extra resources, because they did that in Finland? The answer simply is yes. I do not know whether I would be regarded as charismatic or not. One of the key things that I have done over the piece is to bring local authorities together with a mix of folk, not only at director and head of service level, but at the front line to try and ensure that we are all on the right path. The thing that I want to do is to make sure that best practice is exported right across the country. I want every local authority to be doing its very best to help the most vulnerable folk in our society. They have a huge amount to benefit from changing the ways that things have been done, because we cannot have a situation where we deal with crisis only. We have to move to a situation where we are helping people with their needs and to become more person-centred. If we look at the journey that we have travelled in terms of homelessness in Scotland, since 2010, the amount of folk presenting as homeless has reduced by 39 per cent. We can continue to ensure that we are building new homes and that journey getting folk into houses who do not need any additional support is quite easy in some regards. What we now need to concentrate on is those folks who are more vulnerable with much more complex needs and must ensure that services are aligned to help them to be able to sustain tenancies. That is going to take a huge amount of work. The programme for government, as the First Minister outlined, shows that this is a priority for this Government. In terms of what I have done since taking office and particularly going out and speaking to folk, I realise that we have got a journey to go on. I want to be in the drive-in seat on that journey and I want to take folk with me to ensure that we do our very, very best for folk out there. Some of this, convener, is not going to be easy. What we require is a degree of partnership working, not just with local authorities, but with the third sector and other stakeholders to make sure that we get this absolutely right. I think that what we are going to get from the action group will set us on the right track in terms of the recommendations. Beyond that, we must continue on after their work to make sure that we deliver. That is why the reinvigoration of the homelessness prevention and strategy group, which I co-chair with COSLA, is vital in ensuring that we continue on that journey and that we get absolutely the right services in place right across the country. I am sorry if that took too long. I will put on the record that we finished talking about housing first, that even in Finland they would say that it is not ended rough sleeping completely, it is ended rough sleeping as they used to know in Finland, and one service user told us that their next big challenge, their next third wave of the policy, is to engage with those who have completely opted out of engaging with services who are sleeping intense in the forest in Finland. It is not a silver bullet to solve rough sleeping. It is a great pathway, a speedy pathway for those who engage with services at that first point of crisis. It is always important to put that on the record because those big initiatives pop up and it is seen as a silver bullet. We are not saying that, we are just very keen to see how it can be rolled out successfully in Scotland. Two lines of questioning left, the first one to Elaine Smith MSP, followed by Andy Wightman MSP. Thank you very much. Minister, you mentioned the SCV documentary earlier, but in that documentary, the issue of standards of temporary accommodation was raised. Can I ask you specifically about that in the Fairer Scotland action plan? The Government committed to developing minimum standards for temporary accommodation based on the equivalent standards for permanent social housing. I wonder if you could give us an indication of how you see that being achieved and when those changes will be introduced. I appreciate given timescales that you might want to write to us with further detail. I know the interest that Ms Smith has on that particular issue, and I am more than willing to meet her again individually if that is what she wants to do in that regard. The action group itself is going to look at temporary accommodation, including minimum standards. Ms Smith is well aware that I want to ensure that temporary accommodation is of the best possible standard. 82 per cent of families in temporary accommodation are in mainstream social housing. I want that figure to grow. I do not want to rely on unsuitable accommodation. The Government is also, as the committee is aware, reduced the amount of time that folk can spend in unsuitable accommodation from 14 days to 7 days. I would rather convene her that that was zero days, but I am also aware that the committee will be aware that sometimes there are emergency situations where something has to be put in place quick. Beyond that, it is often more difficult in rural areas to give folk temporary accommodation in the social housing setting, particularly in smaller places. Rather than having folk move away to other places, we have to have some kind of flexibility there. The action group will look at the minimum standards in some depth. We will look at their recommendations. I was horrified by what one of the women had to say on the STV documentary. I will follow that up because I want to know exactly what happened there and what accommodation that family was put in so that that can never happen again. I am sure that the committee is interested in the issues. There has been a suggestion that the order that you mentioned could be extended to other groups, such as young people, but I will leave that sitting there just now because I would quite like to turn to the issue of when people present as homeless. Of course, it is widely acknowledged that we have some of the best homelessness legislation in Europe, if not wider. However, we did hear evidence that people are not able to access the rights under that legislation, for example Thomas Lyon, who gave evidence to the committee. He had spent six and a half years on the streets in Glasgow until the LSA got him put into a temporary furnished flat. We do hear that there seems to be some kind of gatekeeping going on. I am sure that we know from our constituency case what to, sometimes, people have to go and seek assistance from the LSA, the Govern Law Centre and then go back to the local authority and tell the local authority what their rights are. Therefore, I wonder how you would respond to some of the concerns that we have heard about that. First of all, I would like to thank those organisations that advocate on behalf of homeless people. Ms Smith has mentioned a number of them. There are many others and hats off to them. People should not have these difficulties. I, myself, after the situation last year where Alasdair Cadona went on hunger strike outside this Parliament, spoke to Mr Cadona about his experiences, as I know Mr Whiteman did, too. I was a lot of concern around Glasgow City at that time and that gatekeeping situation. The Scottish Housing Regulator has been looking at that closely indeed. I mentioned at the very beginning about those journeys that the regulators looked at. I would be extremely unhappy if that kind of gatekeeping is going on. I would want to know about it. I would want the Scottish Housing Regulator to be made aware of it, too, because people have rights, rights in legislation and no-one should be sitting there acting as a gatekeeper. I know Andy Whiteman wants to follow up on some of those issues, so I will leave it there. That is very helpful, Elaine. I have a few very brief questions and there is no need to elaborate too greatly on your answers with respect. We heard from the local service agency that they regard the code of guidance on homelessness as out-of-date. Are you happy to consider updating it? We will consider what the action group has to say. I am willing to consider most things, as Mr Whiteman is well aware. We need to have a good hard look at what is there at this moment in time. We have 150 pages of guidance there. I will look at that and make any necessary changes from the recommendations, not only of the action group, but also of the further work that will no doubt go on in terms of the strategic group, too. We have also heard some views on putting housing options on a statutory basis. Do you have a view on that briefly? Again, housing options has been done here voluntarily. It has worked particularly well under the voluntary set-up. I know that other jurisdictions are looking at putting it on a statutory footing. I will look at what comes out of there. As I have said previously, legislation is not always the panacea to everything. I think that housing options are working well. If it transpired at any point that that was not the case, I would rethink my position, but I will also look at what is happening in other jurisdictions and what comes out of what there is. Lynn Smith mentioned a witness, Thomas Lyon, who gave us evidence in the 20th of September in which he opened his comments by saying that the reason I became homeless was that I had a private letter at the time when the council were paying for it but my landlord went bankrupt. We are about to consider commencement orders for the private housing tenses Scotland act, but is it right or wrong that someone like Thomas Lyon should be plunged into the nightmare of homelessness merely because the landlord went bankrupt? I think that we should do everything possible to ensure that folk do not enter into homelessness. We know that there are various situations that go on in people's lives that are not of their making. I think that in terms of services, I know from my own constituency experience that local authorities could do more in certain cases to keep folk out of homelessness. Is it right or wrong that he should be made homeless because his landlord went bankrupt? I think that in almost every case it is a wrong that somebody becomes homeless. I do not know the specifics of that case, so it is very difficult for me to comment on it. What I would say is that I think that in certain circumstances, which are not of people's own making, local authorities and others should be stepping up to the plate to help the night of the situation. I thank the minister and his officials for that. That concludes this particular evidence session on this agenda item. Before I briefly suspend just to allow witnesses to change, just staying with this minister of course, I say to members that we will get a comfort break once we are disposed of all the statutory instruments, so I will suspend briefly just to allow some of the witnesses to change. Thank you very much. We will recommence the meeting and move to agenda item 2. The committee will take evidence on three affirmative statutory instruments that provide regulations for the private housing in Tennessee, Scotland Act 2016. I welcome back Kevin Stewart, Minister for Local Government and Housing. I also welcome Linda Leslie, team leader of the private rented sector. I apologise for the pronunciation of your name. I wish to have asked Mr Gibson to do that. Kirsten, thank you very much for my apologies for that principle legal officer Scottish Government. Those instruments are laid under affirmative procedure, which means that the Parliament must approve them before the provisions can come into force. Following this evidence session, the committee will be invited to the next agenda items to consider the motions to approve each instrument in turn. Initially, I can invite the minister to make an opening statement. I am pleased to be here today to present three affirmative instruments that support the introduction of the new private residential tenancy. The UK Housing Review 2017, published by the Chartered Institute of Housing, acknowledges Scotland's flagship housing policy. The report says that the Private Housing Tenancy Scotland Act 2016 marks the most significant reform of private renting in more than a quarter of a century. It goes on to say that new PRS tenancies will be open-ended and significantly more secure through the virtual ending of no-fault eviction. In line with the core principles of the act, our new tenancies will indeed improve security, stability and predictability for tenants and provide appropriate safeguards for landlords, lenders and investors. I will touch briefly on the content of each instrument that is before you today. First, we have the private residential tenancies statutory terms Scotland regulations 2017. Here, we prescribe the statutory terms that must apply to all new private residential tenancies. The terms in the schedule of the regulations cover matters such as rent receipts, rent increases, notification about other residents, subletting and access for repairs. All those terms mirror those contained in schedule 2 of the 2016 act. All those terms have therefore been previously approved by the Scottish Parliament, with the exception of paragraph 9 of the schedule, which is in addition, and makes clear that a tenancy may not be brought to an end except in accordance with part 5 of the act, which deals with termination. Secondly, we have the private residential tenancies information for tenants Scotland regulations 2017. Here, we prescribe the information that a landlord must give to a tenant at the beginning of a new private residential tenancy. Where a landlord chooses to use the model private residential tenancy agreement, a tenant must be provided with accompanying easy read notes. Otherwise, where the written terms of the tenancy are drafted by the landlord, the landlord again must supply alternative accessible notes called private residential tenancy statutory terms supporting notes. Last, we have the private housing tenancies Scotland act 2016 consequential provisions regulations 2017. This is a routine technical instrument that amends various primary and secondary legislation in consequence of the 2016 act. That gives a very brief overview of the regulations, convener, and I will be happy to answer any questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much, minister. I appreciate that. I will throw open to committee members. Are there any questions at this point? I… Yes, Elaine Smith. Thanks very much, convener. It is just a question, minister, that Citizens Advice Scotland had raised about the serving of notices so that there was some concern that the notices served electronically might be missed by some people, and that could have consequences. I will pass to Linda in the first instance, convener. Good morning. We consulted on serving notices electronically and a number of responses highlighted the same concerns that Citizens Advice Bureau has. The 2016 act permits tenants and landlords to communicate electronically, but we have made it very clear in both the model tenancy agreement and the easy read notes that that is something that they have to agree to do. We have also spelt out in the easy read notes that in considering whether they want to do that, tenants should be very thoughtful about whether or not they want important information, like changes to their terms of tenancy or so on, to be served electronically rather than in writing. It remains possible for landlords and tenants to use written communication. The model tenancy agreement provides a specific clause that makes the landlord and tenant consider whether or not they want to do that. There is nothing that forces tenants to agree to electronic communication. One of the concerns is that, if a single email was missed, that could result in a notice of a tribunal or a victim being missed. There are some inherent dangers that are even in agreeing to it, if you think that you can work that way, but obviously accept what you have said. I hope that that gives Ms Smith some comfort. If there is any other information in that regard that is required by the committee, we will pass that on. As per Always, convener, we will continue to keep an eye on those things after implementation. We will then move to agenda item 3, still subordinate legislation. For this item, the committee will formally consider motion S5M-080087, calling for the committee to recommend approval of draft local government and community committee recommendations that the private housing tenancy Scotland Act 2016, consequential provisions regulations 2017. We now move to a debate section. Only the minister and members may speak in this debate and can invite the minister to speak in relation to the debate and to move motion S5M-080087. I think that I have said what I need to say, convener, and I formally move. Thank you. Are there any contributions from members at this point? There have been none. Can I ask the minister if he has any further comments to make and to sum up if he wishes to do so? I am happy for you to move on, convener. The question therefore is that motion S5M-080087, in the name of the minister for parliamentary business, be approved. Are we agreed? The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument shortly. We now move to agenda item 4. For this item, the committee will formally consider motion S5M-07895, in this instance, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the draft local government and community committee recommendations that the private residential tenancies information for 10 Scotland regulations. We once again move to a formal debate section and remind that only the minister and members may speak at this point and invite the minister to speak and to move motion S5M-07895. Thank you. Are there any members who have any comments to make at this point? That has been the case. Can I ask the minister if there is anything he wishes to sum up in relation to this? There have been none. The question is that motion S5M-07895, in the name of the minister for parliamentary business, be approved. Are we agreed? The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument in due course. We now move to agenda item 5, still subordinate legislation. For this item once more, the committee will formally consider another statutory instrument, which is motion S5M-07899, calling for the committee to recommend approval of the draft local government and community committee recommendations that the private residential tenancies, statutory tenancies Scotland regulations 2017, be approved. Once again, we are getting the structure here. Only the minister and members may speak in relation to this debate, so I once again invite the minister to speak and to move motion S5M-07899. I am delighted to hear that you are formally moving that, minister. Do members have any comments to make at this stage? Once again, there have been no comments. I can ask the minister to sum up if he wishes to do so. Therefore, the question is that motion S5M-07899, in the name of the minister for parliamentary business, be approved. Are we all agreed? We will move to agenda item 6. We do not escape subordinate legislation just yet, but we have got some more items of subordinate legislation. The committee will consider negative instruments 295, 296 and 297 as listed on the agenda. Those instruments are laid under the negative procedure, which means that their provisions will come into force unless the Parliament votes on a motion to annul those instruments. I can inform the committee that no motions to annul have been laid. I therefore invite members to make any comments that they may have in relation to those instruments. There have been no comments. I can invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to those instruments. Are we agreed? We will suspend briefly for a comfort break before we move to agenda item 7, which is City Region Deals. I welcome everyone back. We now move to agenda item 7, which is City Region Deals. The committee will begin to take evidence on its inquiry into City Region Deals. I welcome Professor Duncan Maclellan, Policy Scotland University of Glasgow, Dr Peter O'Brien, Research Association Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University, Leslie Warren, Policy and Public Affairs Officer, Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, Barry McCulloch, Senior Policy Advisor, Federation of Small Businesses and Chris Day, Policy Advisor, Transform Scotland. I thank everyone for coming along here this morning. Sorry for the short delay in starting this particular evidence session, and we will move straight to questions. I ask Mr Simpson to open up on behalf of the committee. Thank you very much. The background to our inquiry is, if I can be blunt with you, concerns around the Glasgow City Deal that some members of this committee have had. My opening question is a general one. You don't all have to answer it, but anyone who wants to can. Have any of you actually looked at a comparison between the deals that exist in England and the Scottish ones, particularly Glasgow, to see how they are operating and whether there could have been improvements in any of the Scottish deals? I can be a bit unobservant, so please catch my eye if you are desperate to speak. Professor McClellan. I should make clear that I'm speaking in my academic capacity rather than as a commissioner on the Glasgow City Deal, but I'll happily tell you what I think of the process. I think the Glasgow City Deal arose in many ways in a process similar to the larger deals in England, although there were exceptional political circumstances in the period of its formation. I think that it was formed very quickly. Like a lot of the other deals, it focuses heavily on transport, and I think that that was a characteristic of all the early deals. It comes out, in my view, of a technical mistake whereby cost-benefit analysis in transport always gives people hard numbers, whereas other infrastructures that might have been more growth and productivity supporting are much more difficult to put on the table. I don't think that any of the city deals have actually identified the infrastructures that you require to create productivity, to create innovation districts, and I don't think that they've been imaginatively used in the UK. I served for five years as chief economist in the federal department for infrastructure in Canada, and when we had infrastructure programmes, we looked much more closely about how you could create innovation districts in Toronto or the like. I think that Glasgow was similar in that regard. The difference for Glasgow from England is the Scottish Government's emphasis on inclusive growth has actually meant the discussion about where the impacts fall and who benefits. It's actually been more acute than in the English deals, and I think that the particular arrangements whereby there is a commission rather than just the national evaluation puts a bit of focus and Anton Muscatelli chairs the commission, so there is a fair amount of economic scrutiny of what's going on within the Glasgow city deal as a set of projects. I think that it's different in some regards, but similar in others, but that was part of the point of the exercise. They were all bespoke. Dr O'Brien, do you want to add to that? Yes, I think that part of the challenges these things aren't static. They're evolving as we sit here and discuss these issues, so particularly in England, and this is based on the research that we've done across the UK, but also increasingly in Australia, where you're seeing city deals develop, is that right at the outset, through the coalition government at Westminster, there was an appetite to remove any notion of overt performance management of city deals and metrics and a sense of how you benchmark and measure how the city deals are going to be delivered. I think that ministers there were very clear they wanted a clean break from what they saw as a target-driven culture of the previous government, and so civil servants were informed, as far as we understand it, not to instigate a national or English kind of performance management framework. When ministers were asking the question how are these things going and doing, it was very difficult, so retrospectively they had to be a kind of system introduced across the different city deals in England. It's still too early to tell to some degree, but I think the process that was set up didn't help matters. You now have the gateway reviews, and I think that the city region deals in Scotland have learned from a degree to the English sort of city deals, but I do think that right at the outset that was part of a problem about how you measure performance of the English city deals. There wasn't a kind of framework. Now a government would say, well, it's up to a local area to do that, but we would argue that it's quite problematic. In our witnesses, I want to come in and make an observation on that. Yes, please. Just to build on those comments and just to address your question directly, I think the concerns are absolutely shared by small businesses, and whether that's in relation to Glasgow or the other two operational city deals, or even the three developing city region deals that we have in the pipeline, this isn't a Scottish phenomenon, but I think there are big concerns about lack of transparency, both at the development stage and at the implementation stage, and also concerns about the lack of engagement with the private sector in a more inclusive, discursive manner. I think if you've tried to piece together the puzzle of city region deals in Scotland, it's quite a challenge to gauge how much, where and why, and in trying to ask some of these questions or answer those questions, you're struck by just the scale. You know, we're looking at somewhere in the region of £4 to £5 billion between 10 to 20 years, and we could see upwards of 30,000 to 40,000 new jobs, so I'd just like to put on the record, I think that it's a very timely inquiry by the committee, and I look forward to taking part. Okay, now, I think that the point was made, not every witness has to answer every question, so I'm not, no one's catching my eye to add an answer to that, so Mr Simpson, do you want to follow up on any of that? Yeah, we will be focusing on some of the detail of the individual deals in Scotland, so I don't think that's the purpose today. However, I think it was yourself that Dr O'Brien made the point around scrutiny of, you know, and what results, what the bang for your buck is on these deals. In Scotland, of course, we have a lot of money from the UK Government, a lot of money from the Scottish Government going into these deals, so where is the scrutiny? Who is actually looking at the deals in Scotland? Well, particularly Glasgow, because that was the first that's up and running, to see if we're getting value for money, if we're getting what we're supposed to get out of them? Yeah, if I can come in, I think part of the challenge in England as well has been the abolition of the Audit Commission to a degree, so the scrutiny of local government, the formal scrutiny, you've now got the National Audit Office undertaking a much more direct role in scrutinising local government in England and combined authorities and deals and city deals, and I think doing a really very good forensic sort of job there, I think they're excellent to that degree, but I think, again, it was that kind of hiatus period of a lot of change and sort of turmoil from 2010 onwards meant that things maybe fell between the sort of cracks. I just would say as well, kind of deal making by its kind of nature fields and seems a quite opaque process and secret process, however you might kind of look at that, so I think by their very nature it's quite difficult to get information on how things are going, and certainly we found that from a research perspective. We know that the UK Government did a stocktake of English city deals, but trying to get access to that kind of information has been quite challenging for researchers. I'll take in a second Professor McClellan. Can I take Leslie Warren then first? Certainly. I just wanted to ask that. Obviously you were talking about financial impacts, but obviously there's huge equality impacts on the money and how it's being spent. It was part of the creation of these deals that they would address community issues. Almost all of the deals kind of vaguely reference social impacts, but I can't seem to find any detail as to who's going to benefit, who's been involved at these stages, certainly in the Glasgow deal, which is now fully formed. We as an organisation have not been part of any of the work that's been under way, and I'm not aware of any community groups that have been. So that transparency is an issue for us because we can't then evaluate the impacts and who it will or won't benefit. Obviously the Equality and Human Rights Commission has a project just now engaging with local authorities and partners and we welcome that, but it seems like this has just been thought of now and these deals have obviously been in process for a few years now, and we would like to know more about what has happened within these deals, obviously understanding that it is quite a secret process in the early stages, but now that information should be released, it would be good to know if the quality impact assessments have been done and how the money is going to be spent in relation to public sector quality duties. That's very helpful, Leslie Warren or Professor McClellan, and then I'll open it out to some other witnesses. I wanted just a couple of things about how these deals will be involved. I actually spent about 10 years on the board of the Glasgow Regeneration Alliance a long time ago. It was always a deal between the city, the government's agencies and so on that was actually conducted in private, so there's nothing different about the city deal in that regard in terms of how major resources flowed. I also think that after local government regions were scrapped in Scotland, the capacities to make major investment decisions and infrastructure at a local authority scale just really didn't exist, and that one of the things that one might talk about when one is looking at metrics and going forward, there's a more acute understanding of how infrastructure might affect growth and productivity and why it's important in economic development than was in the mindset of city policy makers in Scotland for about 15 or 20 years. There are pros as well as cons in this, in some quite big cons maybe, but I think it's important to see the contacts these deals went into, which was pretty absent of major thinking about infrastructure at that kind of metropolitan scale. I do think in terms of who's watching this. Part of the point was for local authorities to have skin in the game and put their money in front end, so each local authority ought to be looking at where the progress is. The Glasgow Economic Commission is unusual in the UK that we are there to, I have to watch my hats here, we are there to actually see how the deal is progressing, so we are actually scrutinising how it goes. In addition to that, you might ask the question of, and I think this has been missing in the debate in Scotland and indeed in policy thinking in Scotland, it's fine to look at each individual deal, but what are they adding up to as a set of system changes for the Scottish city system? Nobody's addressing that issue, in my view, and nobody's monitoring that aspect. In other words, at the Scotland level, we've not got to grips with what they all mean. I would agree with the point by scrutiny by community has been, in my view, near absent in all of those deals. Chris Day and Barry McCulloch. I've reinforced the point that Leslie had made about equalities and the scrutiny of that, but I've also added, as we've put in our evidence, that there seems similarly to be an absence of environmental assessment. Before retiring and taking on my voluntary post with Transform Scotland, I worked for the City of Edinburgh Council and the Lothian Regional Council for more years than I care to remember in the field of transport. Certainly, in the latter part of that period, it would be the norm that you would carry out an environmental assessment and an equalities assessment and also a financial assessment and various other ones on any given project. I would assume that in each of the city deals, that would be the norm, but what doesn't seem to be there is a reflection of the total impacts in equalities or in the environment. It might not be the case that if you take project A and project B in any individual deal, that the sum of that is A plus B. It may well be A plus B plus C, so that appears to be missing even though, notionally, one would expect to see the impact assessments coming through on individual projects that form part of each deal. I don't think there's any doubt that the governance arrangements that have emerged have been focused on robustness and adequate scrutiny, but the focus has been on partnership working within the deals and the focus has been on facilitating partnership working among local authorities. They're not looking out and there's very little opportunity for external stakeholders, like small businesses, to contribute. You have assurance frameworks and gateway reviews and a whole raft of terminology to describe the world of city region deals, but it is important to make the point that, despite the commitment both by the Scottish Government and the UK Government, there's very little detail at a Scottish level that shows a dashboard approach. Where are we with the projects? To take the Glasgow city region deal as one example, you have a very good website that gives you information on the 20 plus projects, but the scrutiny of those projects is on Glasgow city council site. That seems like an obscure point, but if you're trying to get information both on the deals and the scrutiny of the deals, one would imagine that those would be in one accessible place so that communities and business owners could scrutinise those proposals. Graham Simpson, what do you want to follow off with any of that? Well, there's so much there, convener. Fascinating. So, if we go back to what you start off saying, Professor MacLennan, you talked about none of the deals have identified the infrastructure required. So, one of the criticisms of, sorry to focus on the Glasgow deal, but it is the most advanced in Scotland, one of the criticisms of that is that just a whole load of money was thrown at this. It wasn't actually a deal, it was, here's the money, off you go and spend it. And so, council officers in the various authorities were frankly salivating at this pot of cash, took projects that they hadn't been able to deliver for sometimes decades, dusted them off, popped them into the deal and off they go. But they didn't actually identify, as you said, what was required. Is that a fair criticism? Apologies. I'm going to indulge as chair.  I'll come to you in a second. Just given the fact that you were obviously involved in the Glasgow deal, my history, as I used to be originally MSP for Glasgow region, and I think that Mr Simpson's MSP makes a very good point. You'll know the specific case I'm about just to raise as a case study example of that. And that is when I was originally MSP for Glasgow, the Cafgan relief road completion was suggested as one of the projects. Huge, massive local opposition to it didn't think it would necessarily mitigate some of the travel issues. Public transport was the big issue in that local area rather than completing that link. The cost, I just checked there, was eventually £18.6 million for that. Yet a stagger report as recently as 2007 put the cost of doing that road at £3 million. So the local community thought hugely expensive, undesirable, unwanted, not value for money, and that was one of the first Glasgow city deal projects it got no community buy-in from the various early stages. So that road exists now, it's there, it's open. It's just about Mr Simpson's point, but also how we learn from these experiences, because there's city and region deals rolling out right across the country. Now, it's rather than lambasting Glasgow city region, me personally, for that specific ill-considered road in my opinion, how do we learn the lessons from that to make sure those things don't happen again? Sorry, Mr Simpson, I saw that as my opportunity to put some of that on the record. Professor McClellan. I think that I'd reinforce some of the points Pete made earlier about the importance of having good monitoring systems and so on in place. What I actually said was, I thought in the assessments that had been made, that transport investments came up in terms of the cost-benefit analysis and prioritisation as top of the list on city deals across the whole of the UK. It relates to the methodology whereby consultants and experts are able to give a big number for a transport project. Usually it's the saved value of travel time that they can't do for other projects, so there's a bias towards doing things in transport. My point was that we also have been inheritance whereby, frankly, at the city and region level, there was not the capacity to do that modelling nor understand it. In other words, you rely on external advisers and consultants to tell you what the answer is. They do their job but every place gets pretty much the same answer. It's not the right answer in terms of looking at the needs of infrastructure for business, infrastructure for innovation areas or whatever within cities. That was my point. I thought that it was weak analytically from the get-go. I actually do more work in Vancouver and Sydney than I do in Glasgow. That depends who pays for the research funds these days. I've just been involved in developing the city strategy for the Sydney metropolitan area. The capacity of a city region like that to do that modelling, to have the debate, to involve communities, to involve the committee for Sydney, which is all about business in the process, is a good demonstration to look at how you would do what is a major investment strategy going forward for the metropolitan area. We can learn from the experiences that we've had but we can also learn from other places that I actually do that much smarter than we do. We didn't put enough thought into nor enough resource. We're trying to do all this at the point when the kinds of people that do that thing within local authorities have been retiring early for the last 20 years. There's hardly anyone left that could actually do this work when it came. When the billion pounds arrived in Glasgow, there wouldn't have been that many people who knew what to do with it. I'm deliberate on leaving that one hanging. I'm not sure if we can go back to Glasgow. Christy, you wanted to come in. I was just picking up the point that's being made about Glasgow and how that deal seems to have come together. I would suggest that by the time you come to the more recent deals, the pendulum swung the other way. If you look at the Edinburgh one simply because it's the most recent one and you look at the components of that deal within transport, I'm not arguing the point about the split of transport as opposed to housing and other projects that form part of that deal, transport actually forms quite a small part of the funding of that deal so far. If you look at the individual projects, which off the top of my head I can only think of two, certainly one of them, which accounts for six times the amount of spending of the other one, I cannot see how that particular project relates to the general thrust of the council's policies. Supposedly what's been talked about is spending £120 million on grade separating sheriff all-round about as opposed to £20 million, which appears to be largely spent on studies into sustainable transport in West Edinburgh. Now, if you were to look at the local transport strategies and the priorities of the councils that are part of that deal, it does seem strange to me that sheriff all-round about is the big mega project within that context. So, where has that come from? That's part of the difficulty and again it's being touched on by the other panellists but it's also part of our evidence. How on earth are some of these decisions reached? If you look at what the strategic priorities of their partners are. Okay, Barrow McCulloch, did you want to follow? Yes, please. So, the aim of City Region deals is to boost regional competitiveness now. The question is whether or not they're on track to deliver that growth and the truth is we don't know and we can hide behind phrases like it's too early to tell and it is, by the way, it is too early to tell. But I think if you step back from it and look at some reviews that have been conducted in England by the National Audit Office, it highlighted major problems and deficiencies within the methodology and the approach and that highlighted just a few problems that I'd like to cover. Firstly, difficulties and discounting displacement, so within Scotland, if Edinburgh goes massively through the City Region deal, is it at the expense of Glasgow or Stirling or in Venice, is it additional? Secondly, the lack of capacity and expertise to monitor, appraise and evaluate the programme, that's back to the point that Duncan made. Lastly, different deals using different methodologies, so you can't, at the end of the day, step back and say, because of X money, we delivered Y jobs because in this case jobs are being measured and implemented in quite different ways and that will prove a challenge for both the Scottish Government and the UK Government to make quite grand claims about City Region deals because the claims that have been made have been quite inflated. They are indicative of the deal-making nature of the deals, where local authorities are trying to lever more from central government, but from an outsider's perspective, all that does is heighten the expectation that it will have a transformative impact. I just want to pick up the point about modelling in a sense of the UK context, the Office for Budget Responsibility. Some of the research that we did, speaking with local areas, suggested that it was very difficult for them to prove that city deals would generate additional economic growth and additional jobs because the OBR's model that was almost factored in would be the way in which the UK economy was going to grow. This was about displacement, and it was not about additional growth. Local areas came up against the central or UK Government response, which was that the model said that it is advocating that. We are not quite convinced that that is going to work. That has been part of the challenge for even places such as Greater Manchester, but it is a poster child for City Region working in the UK to convince and persuade Treasury, OBR and others that you can generate additional growth at a local level, above and beyond what you think the national forecast is saying. That has been part of the issue in England, and it may be the case in Scotland as well. We are really interesting. Do you want to come back on some of that, Mr Simpson? Convener, I would love to. I could ask questions all day, but it is important that other members have a chance. Thanks very much, convener. Obviously, we are just at the beginning of this inquiry, but the fact that those deals run for quite a long time means that governance is very, very important. The English deals had a degree of governance reform in them, as I understand them. It was almost like the Government was saying that there are some additional funds, but here as well are some additional powers that you have. It seems to me that we have or have had in recent years in Scotland regional spatial planning. Local government has got fiscal powers, local government has got very embedded frameworks for equalities and environmental and economic assessments, it has got governance and transparency arrangements and all the rest of it. It seems to me quite surprising that we would attempt to do regional economic development through such an opaque process as this deal-making, particularly when the displacement effects that have been intimated appear, in my colleague Jenny Gilruth may say more on this, to be a risk in the Edinburgh city deal. Although I represent Lothian, perhaps I will be criticised for saying that that does not really need the kind of growth that is envisaged, whereas areas like Fife desperately do—those are post-industrial areas—I do not want to see thousands more commuters pouring into Edinburgh every day. That presents massive problems for Edinburgh. If we build new roundabouts, that is precisely what will happen. Should we even be taking this very much further, or should we be strengthening the existing governance arrangements that exist in local government, their capacity to work together and the existing powers that they have over money and over planning to do precisely what city region deals want to do in policy terms but do it in a way that is more transparent, upfront, more consultative and more sustainable over the type of timescales that are being talked about? I am not sure if I agree with you on all of that. I think that there is a fundamental problem for growing metropolitan areas, that the consequences of economic growth, whether it is shortages of transport infrastructure within the metropolitan system or shortages of affordable housing, remain within that metropolitan area, whereas the tax revenues that accrue from the growth grow somewhere else, some of them may now come here, but mostly they went to Westminster so they did not go to local authorities. You are therefore reliant on national governments or federal governments having coherent reallocation programmes back for public investment and housing. Now it would be really difficult to say that the UK Government had that position for the last 10 or 15 years, so that the problem that we deal with in managing metropolitan regions effectively is one of acute vertical fiscal imbalance in relation to what we are now asking them to do. In the absence of greater tax resource powers or assignment of tax revenues to these metropolitan areas, we need a way of transferring resource back. Transferring it back within a government structure that is a functioning city region rather than individual local authorities, to me makes good sense given the nature of labour markets and housing markets, the city regions are a reasonable entity, although we have to look at environment and social as well as the economic. I think that the governance issues there are. What I think the Scottish Government confronts is an issue is how does it deal with areas outside of city regions because if it neglects other areas then that is not very effective, but I also think that there is a real difficulty in Scotland that we have intruded the geography of the city regions into a geography that has got health boards, it has got regional infrastructure hubs, it has got other quango boundaries and none of them match. I think that tidying up the governance structure is actually in quite simple ways. I would actually help bring these things together and give the Scottish Government a clearer focus on how all those things come together at one scale. I wonder if perhaps the issue here has never resolved the issues arising out of the last reorganisation of local government. At that time there was a regional layer and the regional layer would take on many of the projects that you see featuring in the city deals, the bypasses, the railway stations, the railway reopenings, those were carried out by regional councils. Now of course obviously we have the Scottish Government, we have local councils so I'm not saying there's an argument for introducing yet another layer of local government, perish the thought, but there seems to be a gap which I think Duncan is perhaps getting at somewhere between the local council level and the Scottish Government. How you resolve that I don't know. What seems to be happening at the moment is that a lot of joint boards, joint committees are being set up partnerships and so on now in terms of the democratic accountability of them. There's very little because the appointments are made by local authorities and government, they're not directly elected. It's the issue fundamentally about quangos which I think you've probably rehearsed quite well already. Comments that Barry McCulloch think there's a middle ground to be struck between city region deals which do represent significant capital investment and the existing function of local government to support economic growth and the regional and national bodies that also support local and national growth. I just think that it can be quite complicated and duplicative and what we're not standing back from that and going how do we make Scotland a more competitive place and I think that despite the play through of strategies there's a point for me that the deals are probably more about cities than about city regions and where is the impact on consequent local economies. I think I have some big issues about how the whether the airshers or the lanexers or the post industrial places you know what is what will change for them within city deals you know there's a there's a good argument about agglomeration economics and the making cities great but Scotland is a community of towns 479 towns and what about towns what about a regeneration efforts here and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we do spend over two billion pounds a year on our enterprise and skills network and local government already has a key role to play you know through business gate when other functions and supporting business very helpful couple more responses from our witnesses with Dr O'Brien followed by Professor McClellan. Mr Whiteman makes a very important point about governance of these particular initiatives and that's something that's come through our our research you know if you think about this in the context of England a very centralised country and a big question about how England is governed and the rest of England's relationship to London for example these are where some of these questions of city deals have arisen so from a UK government perspective governance was part of the quid pro quo you would get this particular investment if you as a group of local authorities agreed to set up combined authorities even now have metropolitan mares so today the seven metro mares in England are meeting for the first time you know so it gives you a sense of the kind of where this might potentially be be heading but it's also coming up against a particular set of challenges in England you know so I know Yorkshire very well doing some work there very problematic to try and agree the next stage of city deals through devolution deals metropolitan mares in a county like like that but it's we we would argue these are seen not only as economic development instruments but they are governance reforms as well and in context of England that's been quite clear. Professor McClellan. Two points one going back to governance the point was made about this it's slightly awkwardly between government and quangos and and the like I've always been quite surprised in the context of the parliament where we have regional list members of parliament that there isn't an active regional scale role for these members and it might well be that in relation to overseeing city deals or how in other words to have a democratic presence in that context might actually make some sense. The second thing I wanted to say was that it's right about Scotland being in some sense a country of towns as much as cities and if you look at the national spatial planning framework which has been coach and horses have been ridden through that by the city deals if you look at the national spatial planning framework it's very much a framework that's written from the Scotland of towns and I think cities get mentioned on page 64 so that the feel of how Scotland is is a place it's actually quite accurate in that what we do not have sitting beside the city deals yet is a coherent sense I've always something railed against the notion that you treat city and town and rural as if they're cuts and you don't see them as connected they're connected and supportive and I think that if city deals go forward without coherent town deals across most of Scotland and not just the towns that have been missed out by the classification of the city regions like North Ayrshire then we'll be missing an important trick in terms of looking at ways to take forward investment projects in some of the smaller towns as well. Okay thank you Leslie Warren. Yeah I just wanted to pick up on that point there about governance it feels from our perspective that there's a disconnect between the city deals and what's happening sort of a national and local level in terms of addressing equality issues we have the race equality framework for example which looks at how racism should be tackled and institutional racism should be tackled across every policymaking it should be across all public bodies we have the public sector equality duties which put very strict reporting regulations on what local authorities for example should be reporting on and what they should be considering as evidence and involvement but we don't see any of that fed into the city deals we don't see any of these higher level drives being fed into how these deals are operating. We mentioned before obviously that there's been no engagement with communities but we would go further in that and say that we know of communities that have tried to approach their local city deal groups and just come across a brick wall. That's very helpful. Andy Wightman do you want to follow up on some of that? I'll leave it there just now. Okay please go nicely to some of the genical lines of question I suspect. Thank you convener and good afternoon to the panel. I really want to go back to what Barry McCulloch was saying in terms of the deals originally being about the cities more so than the city regions and I represent a couple of those towns that you've talked about this morning this afternoon. In the submission Professor McLean you state that the multiple local authority arrangements are compelled by a focus in city deals to target investments and policies to reflect as far as possible functional geographic areas rather than rebound by administrative areas. In the Fife context what the decision that's been made is that north east Fife has been cut and taken with the Tay cities deal and the rest of Fife has been lumped in with Edinburgh. I believe to the detriment of my constituency which takes in Glenorthus and Leven two areas of really high unemployment and child poverty levels. In the submission in Barry McCulloch in your submission you say if Inverness grows as a result of investment from the city deal for example how will this benefit firms and citizens in Fort William? From my perspective as a constituency MSP in Glenorthus and in Leven, I feel that the Edinburgh city deal has been a great boon for the city and to the detriment of my constituents. I can't point to a single local project that I benefited from in the constituency itself and so therefore I wonder is there a tension between the aspirations of the UK Government in terms of their focus which was on growth and whereas contrasting that I suppose with the Scottish Government's ambitions which were around inclusive growth. Inclusive growth to me is about also looking at issues of equity and that was part of the deal originally that was meant to be part of the consideration and it seems to me that we've fallen through the cracks of two city deals and have actually been missed out. I don't know if the panel has any views on that. I suspect they might. Professor McClellan will start with himself. I should admit that I also work at the University of St Andrews so I go through your constituency quite often and I think that Fife is a very good example of an important level of government that's been split by different city deals and I would take that on board. I think that when you are actually looking at how, if the objective, as Barry says, is competitiveness around the world for major metropolitan areas you deal with the metropolitan region. That's where the labour market flows go, that's where you have to think about some of the big environmental issues as well as some of the areas about housing and so on. I would defend the notion of city region but you have to be careful about how you ground it and if there are exceptional areas that lie between it you don't just draw a line, you think about how we do that. That gets slightly more complicated in the Scottish case because we've been talking about cities. If I was having this discussion in Australia or Canada, there's only two of the Scottish cities that would be very vast as being cities. They are the terrain of the agglomeration economies, the growth drivers, the large scale, i.e. what do you do about the core metropolitan areas of Glasgow and Edinburgh? That's not to say that you disregard the rest but you have to think about them differently because the growth strategy that you would have for the Perth Tayside proposition or Aberdeen is different in terms of global connectivity, in terms of the way that these places connect into the economy. At Scotland level, we're not really being very direct. I hear people talking about agglomeration economies in Perth and Stirling and I think, good luck if you can find any, let me know because I haven't seen any evidence of them and I don't think people will find any evidence of them. That said, in the Scottish context, given the geographic structure of our big towns, I think that it's really important to think about how you deal with Stirling but also Falkirk or Paisley as well. I think that we need to be a bit more subtle about how we make these arguments and don't see all these city regions as the same thing. In terms of the impact of the projects within the context of Fife, I think that that gets back to the point that once you have inclusive growth on the agenda, those initial city deals were not designed, in my view, to deliver inclusive growth. They were there to raise GVA per capita, not inclusive growth, but the capacity to remake them. I think that city deals should be seen. There's only a relatively small part of overall capital investment after all. I think that there's a case for realigning them within the context of spending in those areas. There's a definite tension between growth as traditionally conceived in GDP and GVA terms, just as Duncan mentioned and the question illustrated, and inclusive growth. I've heard many city region deals talk about retrofitting. They're deals to try and discover how they can make their deal more inclusive. The fact that that has to happen is disappointing, but I think that the aspect of inclusive growth that I would focus on is this regional cohesion argument, and that is to move away from just focusing purely on cities as a policy instrument and start talking about our towns and rural areas and what they need. If you go back to research at the FSB published in February, the most enterprise and places in Scotland, it wasn't the places that we thought it would be, it was Newtonmore, it was Ullipill, it was very small rural towns who have a strong history of entrepreneurship, but that wasn't being captured in conventional discussions about economic growth. I think there's a miss opportunity there to do much more for the hinterlands and to do that I think you focus on digital infrastructure. I think that's the game changer and specifically mobile phone infrastructure. The beauty of city region deals is that you bring together the Scottish Government, the UK Government and local authorities. That's quite a unique settlement in a lot of ways, and we can get over some of the disputes about reserve powers and devolved powers. If only we could increase the amount of people who could access 4G. At the moment, according to Ofcom, only 12 per cent of Scotland's landmass has access to 4G. There are still many, many business owners who are operating with very poor 2G. That is where the transformation lies. I think that's where we get the productivity and growth. Just to go back, Lizzie Warren to your submission, you talked about the lack of communication between communities and I would agree in terms of my own experiences that it doesn't feel that the local communities that I represent were at all involved in any consultation. I think as well, linking into Chris Day's submission, on the final page of your submission, you said that the deal should provide significant opportunities to investment in sustainable transport. However, without a commitment to include sustainable transport or to have proper regard to national objectives for carbon emissions reduction, there are no mechanisms to ensure that sustainable infrastructure is prioritised. Chris Day, you may be aware of the Leaving Mouth rail link campaign in my constituency. The opportunities that it offers in terms of what Professor MacLennan alluded to about connecting towns to cities in terms of job opportunities, for example. The area that I represent is completely cut off in terms of rail link. Is there an opportunity there to go back and revisit, as Barry McCullough alluded to, the opportunities for smaller communities, such as those that I represent, the towns and the smaller communities, which are, I think, to some extent disproportionately disadvantaged in terms of unemployment statistics and child poverty, for example? Who would like to come in on that first? Leaving, yes. That was quite strange, I think, regardless of the... I know that the Scottish Government has now committed to do some initial work on that, so a lot has to be done in terms of analysing the returns from that potential investment. However, one would have thought that, as a partner in the deal, five council would be... Because it was touched on earlier on, this is a deal-making process. They would be hammering on the door saying, look, we have, and I can think of a couple of other projects in five that might have gone into the deal that would have made it more as a sustainable transport organisation, you would expect us to say, make it more sustainable. It's not. The difficulty seems to be that it's I mean, I've retired in September 2016, so I quickly say I was not involved in preparing the Edinburgh City region deal, but I was part of the organisation that was, so I had some slight, you know, kind of informal insight in what was happening, and my observation was that it was quite opaque, not just to the outside world, but to some of the people you'd expect to be part of the decision-making process.  If you look at the outcomes of the city deal in terms of, bang, what's going down on the ground, it does seem quite strange. Yes, certainly from a community perspective. I don't see any reason why communities shouldn't be involved. I don't see any barriers to their involvement. Obviously, with some of the high-level negotiations, it's not necessarily appropriate for certain types of involvement or consultation, but the way they are now, I wouldn't say any reason for that not to be the case. Obviously, the constituent members of most of these city deals are public bodies, which have to comply with public sector quality duties, but even within the individual bodies, we're not seeing a transparent narrative on what they've done. For example, in the local authorities' own public sector duty reports, we've not seen exactly how communities have been involved, exactly the engagement that they've included, and we would expect that to be part of their legal duties that currently exist, let alone obviously the bigger deals themselves. I mean, from our perspective, it's very much a two-edged sword because these deals with the money that's behind them, there's real potential to address the equality issues that we're all aware of and under representation of certain groups in areas. But at the same time, without transparency, without positive action, without community involvement, there could also be regression. We also saw in the press just last week that there was reports saying that the Edinburgh city deal was going to just remain the status quo. Obviously, there's potential for that actually to further entrench disparities and disadvantages. Dr Brian. Just very briefly, to some degree, some of the city deals in England feel quite dated now. In a sense of the 23rd of June last year, a lot changed in the UK, in the context of Brexit, and in particular UK government talking about industrial strategy. Many city regions and places in England are thinking about their role within industrial strategy and thinking about the whole concept of value, whether it was simply economic value that was driving the city deals, financial value, because what's the return on investment in infrastructure to now a question of actually what about the social and environmental value and what about those places that have really have been left behind and the consequences of that and what happened at the referendum last year. So to me it seems it's quite sort of dated and this kind of is the tension between these long running programmes of 25 and 30 years. But in England, in a context of where we continually sweep away and change from be