Wel melanog. It's the 14th committee meeting in 2014. Can I ask everyone to switch off mobile phones in other electronic equipment, as they affect the broadcasting system? Some committee members may consult tablets during the meeting, this is because we provide meeting papers in digital format. Our first item of business today is consideration of an affirmative instrument on the valuation and rating exepted classes Scotland Order 2014 draft. Mae wel�� i fath gwaith mae'r GCOG, John Swinni MSP, eveisiwn bynnag ysgolfain sydd wedi'i ei bach, ac Mario An Cwck, y gyrffINAUDIBLE y gwrthodol yr unig o gyfnodol ysgolfain. Welch i fath i gwrthodol ysgolfain. Gweithio'r gwrthodol ysgolfain, maen nhw ymwysig, cyfnodol. Gweithio cyffredinol, yr hyn mae'n fdd LORD GAS, dweud yn y Gwelff perfumeas ddangos, yr komand mewn cyfríun iawn, gan y sylweddelach, has the same exemption under the non-domestic rating system as all other offshore oil and gas pipelines in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, all of which are exempt from non-domestic rating. The Scottish Government is committed to making Scotland the best place to do business in the UK and recognises that business routes play a part in attracting and retaining businesses in Scotland. These regulations will bring the pipeline into order with other similar offshore pipelines which are exempt from non-domestic rates. The pipeline that this instrument relates to is currently being constructed from the Shetland Islands to link into an existing pipeline in the North Sea known as the Fouca pipeline. As the legislation currently stands, when the pipeline becomes operational, it will fall out with the current exemption. We've undertaken our statutory duty, convener, to consult on these draft regulations and consulted with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Assessors, the Oil and Gas Industry, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveys and the Institute of Revenue Ratings and Valuation. The consultation received three responses, all of which are contained with the draft regulations. I'm happy to take any questions that the committee may have this morning, convener. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Are there any questions for the cabinet secretary for members? No. In which case can we move on to item 2, and we now move on to formal consideration of the motion to approve the valuation and rating exempted class of Scotland order 2014 draft, on which we have just taken oral evidence. Does any member wish to speak in the debate? No. In that case, cabinet secretary, can I ask you to formally move the motion, please? I formally move the motion in my name to approve the valuation and rating exempted class of Scotland order 2014. The question is that motion S4M-09977 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Thank you very much and thank you, cabinet secretary. I now suspend for just a couple of minutes for changing witnesses. Agenda item 2 today is an oral evidence session on our inquiry into the flexibility and autonomy of local government in Scotland. We have three panels this morning. I'd like to welcome our first panel, Dr Peter McLaverty of Robert Gordon University and Professor James Mitchell of the University of Edinburgh. Welcome and good morning, gentlemen. Would you like to make any opening remarks? Well, in which case, we'll move straight on to the questioning. As part of our inquiry, part of the committee undertake a trip to Germany and Denmark and Sweden, a whistle-stop trip, it has to be said. One of the things that, of course, we see in our European neighbours and in other places in the world is the fact that local government has a constitutional place. Can I ask you, gentlemen, do you think that that helps local government, would it help here if local government had a constitutional place? Professor Mitchell, would you like to start off? Yes, I think it would. However, there is a key difference between the United Kingdom and other policies in Europe, and that is the absence of a formal and trench-written constitution, which would make that more difficult, not impossible, but would make it more difficult, and I think we would have to take that into account. I do think it's important. I think it's important in two ways. I think, first, symbolically, it's important. It's always useful to have something formally written down somewhere that guarantees rights privileges of institutions of local government, local democracy. But also, substantively, I think it can make a difference. It can protect local autonomy. That said, the substantive point I've made, there has to be a caveat because the extent to which that protection exists in real, in reality, can vary and it depends on other aspects of the constitution, notably the judicialisation of such institutional politics, i.e. the extent to which local government, in reality, can appeal to the courts for its protection. But overall, I think it is advantageous. But that alone, I don't think, would be enough to protect local government. Dr McLevert, please. I'll basically agree. I think it would be good if there was something that protected the position of local government, their ability to carry out certain functions and gave them a position which it was difficult to change. I think the thing about giving a constitutional position for local government would be that there would be some restraint on central government just changing how local government is organised, what it can do, and there would have to be some agreement across politics and within the society that change was necessary. So I think it would give local councils a more secure position and probably more freedom to do the things that they need to do. So I would be in favour of it. We've also looked at participation levels as we've been going around, and obviously participation levels seem to be much higher in most of the countries that we have looked at thus far. Can I ask you what do you think stops the kind of levels of participation that we have in Germany and Denmark and Sweden from happening here? And how can we increase the levels of participation to the levels that they have? Professor Mitchell. I think that the evidence in this would suggest, there's never only anything that's definitive about such evidence but I think it strongly suggests that the more powerful the level of government, the more likely people are to turn out. In fact it's really more about people's perception of the importance of local government. There's ample evidence in looking across liberal democracies at turnout and participation in elections at different levels of government. What we tend to find is that there is far higher turnout at levels which have a great deal more power, a great deal of theoretical work and empirical evidence on that. So for example, these European elections coming up may be an exception for a variety of reasons but we would expect turnout in European elections to be relatively low, particularly low as compared with elections to a national parliament because the public do not perceive them as terribly important and I would suggest that turnout in local elections is low partly for that reason. However, sorry I'm always putting in a caveat, however is that in truth turnout has been an issue over the course of the 20th century in local government. Indeed in the report I produced last year I went back and looked at some of this and actually going back to the 1920s people were complaining about local government turnout, election turnout and local government then was much more powerful than it is today. However, I do think the perception of the importance of the institution to which people are returning representatives is important. Dr McLevert. That's absolutely true. I think all the evidence supports that. The more people think that the elections matter, that they don't have an impact on the lives in a big way, the more likelihood there is that people will vote. I think people have got the wrong idea about the importance of local government because it does cover very important services that have a big impact on people's lives but it's not perceived as important. The other point I think that needs to be borne in mind is that turnout in elections in Britain generally has not been good recently. There's a problem with turnout at all levels, be it local government, Scottish Parliament, Westminster and so on. There is a general problem that isn't unique to Britain but that seems to be quite developed in Britain and I think what's happening in local government has to be put within that broader perspective. There is a mistrust of politicians and politics in Britain which is borne out by survey research which I think is having a bad impact on people's involvement in politics including voting in elections. John Wilson, please. Thank you, convener. Just to go back to the first question the convener asked and that's the written constitution. If we were to establish a written constitution for local government, who would draw that up? Who would enact it? Because one of the problems that we have and we know from this place is that we were established under the Scotland Act 1998. However the powers are decided by Westminster. By setting up a constitution for local government, who would control the powers over deciding what would actually be in that constitution and who would basically ultimately be responsible for amending or changing that constitution? That's obviously not an easy thing to answer. I think you've raised an important issue. I don't suppose there'd be aspects at Westminster that were very keen on the Scottish Parliament and Scottish local government coming up with a constitution for Scottish local government. And it is an issue. We don't have, as Professor Mitchell said earlier, we don't have a written constitution in Britain. There's very little that's set out in detail of the powers and responsibilities of different organisations. And it would be difficult I think just to establish a constitution for local government that isn't part of a bigger constitution and that certainly isn't going to happen until Scotland's future is sorted out. I very much agree with Peter on those points. What would be useful would be to take the issue of writing a written constitution, whether a UK or a Scottish constitution, out of the hands of Parliament with all due respect to parliamentarians. And I think it should be done through an elected constitutional convention. That is the position of the Scottish government. It is an issue which is currently being debated across the UK. The House of Commons political and constitutional reform committee looked at this a couple of years ago. I gave evidence to that committee on constitutional conventions and there are certainly voices on that committee and in Parliament Westminster who believe either in a UK constitutional convention or indeed constitutional conventions plural. And it is conceivable that that might be a way forward. However, it has to be said, while there may be voices in Parliament Westminster who support this, I do not detect any voices among senior front benches of either party. However, that politics can move on. I do think, in terms of drawing up that constitutional convention or rather a constitution, it's always useful to draw on the public at large. There are different ways of doing it. There's been an enormous amount of research, very interesting research in comparative constitutional developments over the years. There's now a wonderful website compared with constitutions where you can go and look at constitutions through the ages. They're all available. You can actually trace this. I've done this myself and looked at the extent to which local government is written into constitutions and has been over time. What we see very clearly with it going into any of the great detail is that local autonomy is increasingly included in written constitutions, as indeed many other aspects are written into constitutions, women's rights and so on so forth, which were not in the past. My short answer is that, under the current constitutional dispensation, Parliament Westminster will ultimately have the final say. The concern there is that, for example, if an act of Parliament was passed, Parliament Westminster cannot bind its success in so that it could relatively easily be overturned. I think what we would be looking for would be some form of entrenchment, but entrenchment can come in different forms, not just constitutional legal entrenchment. There can be a democratic entrenchment, i.e. that people very strongly support something and would resist attempts to change it. I have to say, looking back in recent history, there's not much evidence of that one. It looks back to the reforms, the reorganisation of local government in the mid 90s, and there was a great deal of opposition to that in Scotland, but ultimately there was nothing that could be done to prevent that reorganisation. I would be tempted to go into the debate about whether or not we put the statutory duties of local authorities into a constitutional framework because of the non-statuary duty element, but I'll move on to the issue that Professor Mitchell mentioned about electoral turnout. One of the arguments that comes from the continent, particularly Denmark, Sweden and other countries, is the turnout in those countries could be viewed to be higher. Denmark was at 82 per cent turnout in national elections, 72 per cent in local government elections. It could be because of the nature of the electoral system and the fact that you get more inclined to get coalition government rather than one party government, and people feel that their vote, no matter who they vote for, may actually have more weight than it does currently at the present moment in the UK, or local government system because of the feel that one party state domination undermines the idea and concept of democracy. There is evidence that suggests that PR systems tend to have a higher turnout, whether that is because of PR systems or because of the countries where they've got them is a difficult question to answer entirely. I think where people feel that there is a point in voting that one party isn't going to just get home without much of a fight, then there's more likelihood of people voting. I'm not entirely sure, however, that simply just changing the voting system is going to make all that much difference. I think people have got to feel that it's worthwhile voting for local councils, or that it's worthwhile voting more generally in Britain, and while I think that the voting system can have a role to play in that, it would be wrong to see it as the solution in itself. We saw what happened when we tried to get AUV introduced for elections to the House of Commons. There was a big majority against that in the referendum, and I'm not sure that there's going to be much encouragement, certainly from Westminster, to bring in PR systems for elections to local government. I know we have PR for local government here in Scotland, don't we? We have the single transferable vote system, and that doesn't seem to have made a massive difference to turnout. So I think we need to be careful about putting too much importance on actual electoral system. It's what people think they can achieve by voting that matters. I would agree with Peter. In fact, if anything, I would push the argument further and suggest that the electoral system has very little to do with turnout. I think when we look at why people turn out to vote, there are a number of explanations, but two, one is an instrumental explanation, i.e. one votes for a political party because that political party is expected to produce public goods that you support. As against a civic responsibility explanation, i.e. I turn out to vote because I think it's the right thing to do because I am a citizen and it's part of my duty. What we appear to have seen in the United Kingdom and some other politics, though not Denmark, and I'll come back to Denmark in a moment, is a decline in the civic responsibility aspect of turning out to vote. People may be turning out for instrumental reasons, but the civic element has declined. It has not disappeared, I should stress. I think that therein lies one of the challenges. It also links into the Danish situation. I don't think it's to do with the electoral system in Denmark that you get higher turnout. What you have is far, far greater civic engagement. You have far more pressure group activity. Membership of political parties is vastly higher than in the United Kingdom. Participation in politics generally is higher, so there does seem to be a greater civic culture in Denmark and other countries that is not present in the United Kingdom. I think that we need to address that. One way of addressing that, and I think that a crucial way of addressing that, is at local level. There is no doubt that the local community is the building block of democracy, and that if we have thriving local communities, a sense of belonging, then we will be more likely, and I stress be more likely rather than predict that it will happen, but we will be more likely to have a more thriving local democracy and democracy in Scotland. I don't think that the electoral system in itself is enough of an explanation, though it is conceivable that there will be those who will fail to vote because they don't think it will make a difference, but that would be true whether it will be a coalition or whatever else. They may feel that all the political parties are the same, and I'm sure you've all heard that before. I don't agree with that view, but it is a view that is often heard. In Italy particularly, they changed the voting system from first pass the post to a combination of first pass the post and PR. It made absolutely no difference to the turnout. What they said the problem was that it was the frequency of elections that people didn't find it was relevant. We find also with local government, people don't think it's very relevant, but particularly in Europe, which arguably is the most relevant of all, as far as we're concerned, the turnout is remarkably low all over Europe, not just due to syndicism. I just wonder what you thought. There is a sense of, as you say, civic responsibility and public duty in that sort of thing, but it's diminished completely. In Denmark and certainly in Finland, I know that those two countries, it's very high. And also in Germany in the regional elections, but it isn't here. Could you maybe comment on that? On the Italian situation, I think some very interesting work has been done by an American political scientist Robert Putnam. He started doing work in Italy many, many years ago, and he's since developed his work out beyond that. One of his arguments, in essence, is informing what I'm saying today, is the importance of what he calls social capital, the sense of civic responsibility, the sense of belonging, the connectedness. He has written a very interesting book some years ago on decline in civic culture in the United States and entitled it Bowling Alone. And what he was referring to was the decline of not just political institutions, but social institutions that in the 50s, 60s, into the 70s, Americans would join big bowling clubs, would join choirs and such like. And that, in a sense, created that social cohesion, and he argues and provides some evidence, some of which has been challenged, I should stress, that there has been a decline in the social capital. And I think that's also true in the United Kingdom. I think we've seen that in a number of respects, the decline of the trade unions, the churches and so on and so forth, all of which I think are a part. They may not be political in the kind of party political sense or capital P political sense, but they are, I think, a vital and vibrant part of any active democracy, and I think that's something that we have to consider. Again, I come back to my point. I do think that at root this is a local issue. If we, you can't really do it from the top down, we've got to try and facilitate this bottom-up approach to encouraging civic responsibility. The other final point I would want to make is we've got to be careful we don't overdo it. There is evidence that where you get extremely high turnout, it does not necessarily mean that you've got healthy democracy. You often find very high turnout in those places where there is extreme conflict. Northern Ireland traditionally has had some of the highest turnout in elections and local elections, particularly during the Troubles. That was really a function of the nature of the Troubles and not a healthy aspect of democracy. I wouldn't want to overstate that point, so I throw that caveat in as well. Yes, I haven't got much to add really. I think James has said most of it. We do live in a privatised and individualised culture where people are not really encouraged to come together and to do things collectively. I think that is part of the problem. People have become disconnected. They don't take a public view of issues. They see things very much in an individualised way and I think that's at the basis of the problem. The way we tackle that is not straightforward. It's not clear what we can do to turn the thing around. Unless we do get this sort of civic culture, this idea that it's right that people should take an interest in what happens in their local communities and in politics generally, this isn't going to be turned down. But it can't be divorced from what's happening in the rest of the society, from what's happening with the economy and so on and things like that. I think it has to be taken as a whole and you can't just divorce this from other developments in the wider society. I'm coming back to that sort of thing with public duty. People just are not joining, whether it's the rotary, the girl guides, whatever it is, they're just not joining it. Community councils, a lot of them have great difficulty in attracting any membership and in theory that should be the basis of local democracy. The community council should be strengthened in some way to give them more relevance. I don't know if you're getting any more votes and I do agree with the point that people have got to find these things relevant. When you go to the doorsteps, they don't find their local council relevant at all. I don't know what they do and they don't know who the councillors are, many of them. Can I maybe add to that, because we took evidence in Stornoway the week before last and the chief executive of Orkney Islands Council said that we have changed local government many times since 1974. The islands largely unaffected in some of those changes but one of the things that we've not changed from that time is the setup of community councils and how they operate. Maybe I can add that into the mix and you can respond to that. Doctor McCleverty, do you want to go first there? Community councils should in theory be a rich path of the democratic system. They aren't, as you've said. They often have trouble filling the seats. There are very rarely elections and people don't take them very seriously. I think if we're going to do something with community councils, we then need to think about the whole of the local government system. You can't just change community councils without doing something to the whole local government, the way local government is organised and who has control over what services and what activities and so on. One thing that has been suggested is that local councils in Scotland should be smaller that certainly in comparison with councils in other parts of Europe they are geographically big and they encompass a large number of people. One thing that we might consider doing is making local councils more local, making them smaller so that in a sense we incorporate community councils within a rearranged local government system. But again, I think we need to be careful. Size is not, I don't think, the main issue, although I think something could be achieved if councils were smaller. The main issue is that people feel disengaged. As you said earlier, they're not sure what councils do. They don't know who their representatives are unless we can tackle that, get people to see the importance of local councils, what they do for them and the community. I don't think tinkering with structures is going to solve it. I think it's quite notable that the islands councils have amongst the highest turnout and have consistently had amongst the highest turnout. I think there must be a lesson in that. That said, the islands are struggling with some of these issues in terms of decentralisation within the islands because if you're in some of these islands, I'm off to Shetland later this week. You could be on an island miles away from the chief executive and local councils and that can be a problem too. That's where I think Peter's point about the decentralisation is hugely important. I think we need to look again at the relationship between communities and indeed local councils and get that balance right. I say communities rather than community councils because I'm not sure that community councils have such a variable experience of community councils. Some areas are very active and other areas are non-existent. It does in some cases appear to rest on individuals, if a particular small group or it. Indeed one individual is very active. He or she and I have to say at the roots, if you look in our local communities it is almost always she that is running the local communities and I think that is important and a notable feature. We need to somehow empower I think people at that level is not easy but actually if we start to give power to local communities it has to come at the expense of somewhere else. Are people comfortable with that and there are consequences. So we do need to think this through but I think it's certainly something we need to look at. But I do think Peter's important point about the size of local authorities, whether we could be more decentralised is a very, very important one. It would appear that community councils in the cities are less active than the ones in rural areas. Have you a comment on that? There is a lot of evidence for that but also I think another feature is class. There's no doubt whatsoever that middle class areas are much more active, more likely to be active. And I think partly because in poorer areas people are basically trying to survive and so you don't get the social capital. We've broken down the social capital in many of our poorer communities and I think that's been a major feature. So it's certainly true to some extent cities but I think class is not unimportant in this. Thank you. We really just to take you back, Dr McLevert, about encouraging, can I have your views on, when we're encouraging community participation, can I have your views on our education system? Do we do enough within schools and start from a younger age? That's another argument that's often made that children don't learn enough about politics and that they don't understand how politics works so that when they get the vote at 18 or whatever, they're uninformed about why it's important and how the system works and so on. I think there's something to be said for introducing pupils, even in primary school, to the way in which politics is important within society, not to try and indoctrinate them into certain political beliefs but just to try and explain why politics matters. That might help to make it seem more relevant. I honestly don't know. I know that the Scottish Parliament used to have the MSPs in schools system. I think some evidence, I know that was reasonably successful in encouraging students to become interested in politics. I don't know. I think it depends on what's happening in the wider society and whether politics is seen as important and worthwhile. I mean, I think we need to be honest for whatever reasons, politics has got a bad name in Britain and so have politicians and there's no point in trying to deny that. And I don't know whether doing more in schools would necessarily tackle that issue but I think it's something that we should consider. I think it would be good if everybody when they left school at whatever age had a clear idea of how we governed and the role they can play within it. I think that would be good and I don't think they do at the moment. Even if they take modern studies to the end of the school life, they're often, from the students I teach, they're often confused about who does what and how decisions are made. Professor Mitchell, please. That's a really interesting, really interesting and quite a challenging question. I think that there must be a role for education in some way. I hesitate, however, to say what that should be because I wouldn't feel terribly qualified. The only point I would make, and I think Peter articulated it much better than I could have, the only point I would make is that I think it shouldn't simply be about politics because there's much more to civic life than politics and indeed much more to political activity than that. I mean, when I teach my students politics, my first lecture is what is politics and I point out the derivation of that word. It's about the polis, it's about the community. Man is by nature a political animal. The Sarasota said essentially what he was saying is that we live in communities, ergo we have politics, ergo we have to find ways of living together, communicating, making collective decisions. I wouldn't suggest we should go into schools and say what I've just said but if we could find a way of getting that point across that when we live in our communities we've got to find ways of making decisions that impact on one another and we've got to find ways of explaining that actually throughout our lives from the moment we wake up in the morning to right through the day we are affected by politics in the sense that I'm talking about. Party politics is only one small part of that, a very important part of course, but I think that that is the challenge and I think possibly the problem is that people's perception of politics today is a very narrow conception and I think we need to do that whether it's as academics and I work you as politicians and I have to say also crucially the media, I think they've got to start behaving in a way that puts forward a very different impression of politics, a much broader conception of politics. Alec Rowley, please. Good morning. In terms of the devolution that came to Scotland, there is a view if you talk to people in local government that that devolution didn't fall through and indeed you have seen a reverse to that under successive governments in Scotland. I would bring Fenson to the last lot if you like and this lot have been a bit more suspect about the way that they've done it, but there is a view amongst people in local government that we've had a centralisation and what's your take on that? Very strongly, I would go back before devolution in the paper I wrote for Solace, which I believe you've seen a copy of. I've tried to trace that back over decades and what we tend to find is that oppositions are a favour of decentralisation and then governments are centralised and it doesn't matter which political party. A party in government may for a period decentralise, but ultimately it will centralise. I think one of the questions is not to put this in political terms and I'm grateful you didn't do that, but I think it's to try and understand why do governments at the centre centralise and I think it's partly a degree of frustration, the sense that things need to be controlled and also pressure on central governments because it's not just governments, parliaments play a part in this and many of you may, even with all due respect, be guilty of using its postcode lottery. That language is incompatible with believing in decentralisation I would suggest and so I think we've got to get out the happy of talking about this, but I fundamentally agree with you. I would point to Sunil McIntosh's report that he chaired the commission on democracy, which Donald Dure set up in 1998, I believe it reported in June of 1999, just a month after the Scottish Parliament had been elected, it put forward a series of proposals, concordat between local government and the Scottish Parliament and proposed a way of moving forward. Some of that was taken forward but too much if it wasn't. I would like to see Sunil's proposals brought forward and examined. By chance I was speaking at a event with Sunil on Friday last week and I cannot urge you strongly enough to call him as a witness to what he is to say, a man with immense experience and expertise and a fascinating insight into these matters. Dr McLevity. I just agree with that completely. I think if you look at the history of what's happened across Britain, governments have been elected centrally who were supposedly in favour of local government, in favour of local councils having more power and then they've done the exact reverse when they've got into government. It's a real problem. Central government wants to control local government. It's not a party political thing. It crosses all parties that have been in government. And I think unless we can tackle that, local councils will not get back the power that they need. I agree they should. Local councils should have more power. They should have more freedom. But how you actually stop successive central governments wanting to take more power into control local government, I don't know what the answer is. Dr Riley. It was a bit of experimentation happened down south the last Labour government around elected mayors. Is there any evidence coming through for that in terms of its impact or not? I don't think the mayors have had a massive impact in increasing turn out of the elections or regenerating their areas. Some mayors would have been more successful than others. But they're seen, I think, very much as an individual that has power. They're not seen as a position that's decentralised power and that's tried to increase public participation very much. And it's interesting that in England they had a series of votes on whether or not areas wanted to establish mayors a few years ago and they all voted, well nearly all voted against. So I'm not sure that elected mayors is a way forward. In fact I don't think it is. I'm not sure I would support mayors but I do like the idea of looking at such matters and I think in the case of the mayors the experience in England has been variable again. But then it should be variable. It should reflect local diversity and of course some of us may conclude that it's been successful in one place and unsuccessful in another. We've got to ask ourselves what criteria are we using in that respect. What I do think we need to do is to start looking at that and other initiatives and seeing whether we can move forward perhaps with some experimentation. However my fundamental point about what we ought to be doing is that any reorganisation of local government has to come from below. What I would be strongly against would be another Royal Commission from on high, great minds sitting around and drawing up a map of Scotland and deciding that way. I think what we need to encourage, if you like, to go back to something I said earlier, are almost local constitutional conventions. What is needed in a particular area? And I would cite as an extremely good example of the kind of local initiative that our islands are futures which I know you've been looking at initiative and which I think is a phenomenally interesting development. I spoke at their launch conference up in Kirkwall at the end of September. I think I said earlier that I'm off to Shetland late in the week. I think there is something really exciting going on there. That which is appropriate to the islands will not necessarily be appropriate to Aberdeen, to Edinburgh, to East Lothian or wherever at Fife, but that I think is a kind of model looking at from below. It will result, of course, in a rather messy landscape, but Scotland is messy. I think the problem we have is a mindset which expects symmetry across Scotland. People are not symmetrical. We do not live in that kind of way. I think we need to reflect in our governance structures the reality that is messy Scotland. That is what we see across many of the Scandinavian countries that Peter was talking about earlier. We had the Chief Executive of Fife Council and given evidence a couple of weeks ago. I should say I campaigned in the 90s for Fife to remain as one local government unit. He was giving the example where Fife has seven area committees bringing in community planning. He gave the example where they are now developing local community plans. They are doing so through the area committees, engaging communities. Crucially, they have also got budgets going to that level. The evidence that I have seen in Fife over the last couple of years is actually by getting budgets to that level you actually engage better. That community planning model, do you believe that there is a role for that as we go forward? Absolutely, absolutely. We are seeing similar developments elsewhere in this city. There are some very exciting developments taking place. It says of what is effectively moving towards a total place approach. That place will not be necessarily the local authority that may be beyond that. I think that that is very important. You also touch on something that is extremely important. That is a relationship between different statutory and non-statutory bodies, local government health boards and the voluntary sector of our communities. We have got to somehow work that relationship up. Fife has an advantage, perhaps because of the success of your campaign in the 90s, in that it is conceived of as a coherent unit for a number of purposes. It does seem to work. There is also something that we have not mentioned, the notion of identity, people do identify, people feel that they are fifers. That can be quite important. It can be overstated, however, it is not unimportant, especially in generating that sense of belonging, that engagement which can arise. I do think that is hugely important in the island communities. I have just agree that I have not got much to add. I think that it is a good idea and I think that it should be pursued where possible. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. There has been a lot said this morning that I have only a couple of answered questions, but I could probably ask her a lot more. There are a couple of things that have been said. Professor Mitchell, you mentioned the issue of the postcode lottery a few moments ago and also that is in the report that you provided to the committee on page 46. One of the previous pieces of work that this committee undertook was on the benchmarking. Going forward, if there is a change in local authorities and a change in the number of local authorities, for example, say that there were many more smaller local authorities, and you have got the issue of how easy would it be for many more smaller authorities to benchmark what they deliver with others so that the people in their particular local authority area can actually get a better service that is being delivered. Professor Mitchell? Again, it is another huge question that is really important, which I will try to answer and I will probably make a mess of my answers, so I apologise and I would want to come back to speak to you about that. I think that one of the key things about this is to determine what should be decided at which level. One would not expect to decentralise everything to a local level. There are areas where we have to have joint responsibility and, again, to the key point that I would make in this respect, we need to reflect the needs of local areas. What I find very interesting is, for example, the developments in Clickmanin and Stirling, where they now share an education authority, essentially they are one for that purpose. They are working together, but they did not have to get rid of the two local authorities so you protect the existence of one of Scotland's smallest local authorities, Clickmanin. I think that is a really interesting development. That is the kind of thing that we need to see more often in Scotland. We do not want to have a massive reorganisation. I am very much opposed to that because we have spent far too much time on the reorganisation and people are more worried about what job they are going to get and such like. The ball is very clear. It is providing decent services as a civically responsible community. We need to create that kind of situation, but I think there are different ways of doing it. I could go into this at greater length and I am more than happy to come back to speak to you, but I do think we have to be careful that we do not decentralise things that cannot be run at the most local level. One of the things that we have found ourselves in today is that I think that there is an awful lot of things that have been done at the wrong level, essentially, and there are relationships that are not quite right. One sees this both if you look at the international examples also historically. We have found ourselves with health boards with responsibility for certain things which in the past were under local government. We are beginning to tackle that, but we have a long way to go. That is one of many examples that one can look at. This is where we need to reflect the needs of the local communities and put trust in them. Things will go wrong.  When something goes wrong, we call for heads and we say that everything is terrible and our politicians are corrupt and hopeless and such. When we put into perspective the vast range of responsibilities and what happens on a daily basis, the delivery of services across Scotland by those many people, the teachers and nurses across Scotland, it is phenomenally successful. Dr McLevert, you talked about the difficulties if something fails. Do you think that in terms of some of the radical thought about joining up services between different public bodies, whether that be councils or others, that sometimes we do not push ahead with that because we are scared that the audit system will have something to say about it at the end if it does not work out exactly as planned? I would have to jump to the defence of Audit Scotland. I think that its reports are fantastically good and useful. For example, to look at the reports on CPPs, indeed. I am talking about other regulatory bodies who also have a locus in this. I was going to make the distinction between bodies such as Audit Scotland to perform a really important one. It is not the regulatory bodies that worry me. I am going to tread dangerously. I am going to say one of the problems that Parliamentarians often will then stand up and make a speech in Parliament and create a fuss about something. It is as if something could be done about it or else the responsibility of the minister. We have seen this across Governments, regardless of which party is in power, here and at Westminster. I do not think that that is at all healthy. It encourages centralisation. It encourages a control freak rate, which is not healthy. I will not name names, but I have to shake my head and despair when I hear some members of the Scottish Parliament attacking ministers. I have done that since 1999, I should stress. We have to be much more constructive in our criticism. One of the things that I think is fundamentally wrong is mind-setting. If I was speaking to the media, I would blame the media, but I tend to prefer to say it straight to the people I am addressing. I do not believe in giving people an easy time. I think that you have got a responsibility. I am happy to go and address the media and kill them about their responsibilities. Indeed, I go to my colleagues in the universities and tell them about their responsibilities, as I expect people to do to me. I think local councils should feel more willing to take risks, do things that are not generally done. I think we have got to get away from a blame culture. That is part of the problem why people do not like politics. You have got it wrong. You should not have done that. If we had done it, we would have done it so much better. Unless we can get a more grown-up attitude to politics, we are going to struggle to engage people and to get them to think that politics is important and worthwhile. On the question of decentralisation, or not decentralising things that should not be decentralised, in some continental countries where they do have small local government, they do do things together. A number of local councils work together to provide services or to run facilities. There are issues around that about accountability of people who are elected. No point in trying to deny that. I think if there is a willingness to be flexible and to recognise that things should be done at different levels, then I think we can start making some progress and start giving local democracy some meaning again. Thank you. You have said so much there. I generally appreciate Professor Mitchell's comments and the honesty in which you said them as well. There was something that was said earlier on as well by Professor Mitchell. That was regarding the islands and the discussion that is taking place at the moment. You mentioned the issue of that coming from the bottom up. Obviously, when we were there, we were speaking on record as well, but also speaking to folk from the community. Many of them felt as if they weren't involved in the discussions. It was something that was being done to them. They weren't involved in consultations, so they felt quite disenfranchised from that debate and discussion. Many of the folks in the western islands thought that power was centralised and stormed away. Professor Mitchell? I made that point in terms of the islands that people in the outer islands might not feel that the chief executive and the councillors making the decisions in any of the three island authorities are actually representing. That is a challenge for the island authorities and I think they are well aware of it. It certainly was an issue that was debated at the launch conference back in September last year. I think that that is a valid point and I think that it is something that local authorities have to take into account. The notion that just because you have been elected, whether it is an MSP or a councillor, means that you are the only legitimate voice in that community is wrong. It is an interest of the elected representatives to listen and get out there and to find means of encouraging that. That is where, coming back to the model that we need to see, it needs to be a model from the bottom up that does encourage local participation. Again, we have to be very careful and I suspect that everyone in this room, particularly those who have been councillors, will be aware that many local communities will be loud voices that aren't elected and aren't necessarily representative of the community. That is a challenge. What do we do about that? One possible response, which may be inadequate but I suspect is as good as it gets, would be that any proposed reforms should be put to the electorate in the referendum to give it an endorsement, give it that democratic legitimacy and underpinning that we talked about at the beginning when we talked about entrenchment. I take that point and it is very important that local authorities do that. The headquarters of local authority can be very distant to many people. I will basically agree with that. I mean I think we should also look at some of the, well not particularly new these days but some of the mechanisms that have come out of the debates on deliberative democracy such as the use of citizens' juries and perhaps consensus conferences and things like that. I think what we also need to ensure is that where local councils engage with the local population through things like citizens' panels, there is a genuine way for the people who are involved to see how it's affecting outcomes. That they know that what they are putting forward is being considered even if it's not being adopted and they know why it's not being adopted. I think all too often and I understand entirely why it happens. There's a tendency not to take seriously what people say when they're engaged and unless we do that and show the mechanisms whereby they have an impact then we're going to struggle. I know we'll have a session later from representatives from the third sector. What role do you think the third sector can actually play in improving service delivery? They're already playing an enormously important role. I think it's not always appreciated the role that the third sector plays without the third sector. We would not be delivering services as we do. I think there is an interesting debate on the relationship between the statutory bodies in the third sector and that's an on-going debate. There are issues which I'm sure you will hear from SCVO and rightly hear around the funding of local services through the third sector. One thing that the third sector is very good at, I think, is innovation. They're very good at innovating. They are not bound by the same statutory obligations. In some cases, they're not all. One of the problems that I detect is a misunderstanding in some cases in terms of how the third sector views the statutory bodies and vice versa. I think that we need to create conditions in which there is greater dialogue as we go forward into the future. Something that hasn't been mentioned is hugely important. We're moving into extremely difficult financial times. A long, hard, cold winter was, as the former auditor general described it. That will require us to make use of money much more sensibly. That will necessitate a closer relationship between the third sector and the statutory bodies. I think we need to give very serious attention to that. We could not provide the services that we currently do with the third sector. That's just the case. I don't think there can be any question about that. They do play an important part in the provision of services and an increasingly important part. I would just raise one caveat, though. If we're talking about trying to increase democracy and public participation in what happens locally, then we need to think about how social enterprises can fit into that. A social enterprise, by definition, is not necessarily democratic or an organisation that will promote public participation. We need to think about what role they can play in an agenda based on strengthening local democracy and engaging with the people more effectively. That will take some thinking. Can I add one other point that Peter made me think about? I hadn't thought about that until I heard Peter again. One of the interesting things about the third sector is that over the years its role has expanded and it is massive. It has taken on to far greater expertise than in the past decades' role in service delivery. I was like concerned that that may squeeze out the advocacy role that the third sectorist tradition played, which is separate from when you are dependent on statutory bodies for money and such like it is likely to limit your ability to criticise. We need to have that constructive criticism. Having said that, that is the theory that practice would appear to be quite different from what the third sector is more than capable of being critical, but I think that we need to be aware that that can arise in certain circumstances. Thank you very much, convener, and I think this has been a very interesting discussion so far. I wanted to pick up on the issue around communities and how communities are engaged, and obviously we focused quite heavily on community councils during the course of discussions. I was interested by the point that Professor Mitchell made around the demographics of a community can influence how active or otherwise that community is. Certainly from within my constituency, I see communities which you would class as being deprived communities, where there is a huge amount of community spirit, and probably in these kind of places people are more likely to know their neighbours and know one another than you would find in more affluent areas. Yet they don't necessarily organise and mobilise to the same extent as perhaps more affluent communities do, and that may be down to professional occupation etc. But there are still means through which these communities do organise and engage. Do you think that the balance is struck right at the moment where there seems to be a very heavy focus on the community councils as being the forum through which community engagement is viewed, and obviously they have a statutory function in that regard? Do you think that we need to look very carefully at how communities are engaged by authorities and whether we've got that balance right? I think we do need to look at new ways of doing it. Community councils, they operate well in some areas but they play no part at all really in other areas, and they're not the answer. There may be one part of an answer but we need to be much more willing to engage with people as service users, where they live locally, especially where issues relate to particular localities. We need to be more flexible about the type of ways in which we try and engage with people, try and encourage a more deliberative approach to the participation of people. I think we've got to get away from what has been the norm in local government across Britain that it's a one-size-fits-all situation. You have the same mechanisms for all issues and in all areas, and we need to get away from that. Local councils need to be more willing to be innovative in the way in which they engage with different communities who have different needs and different ways of expressing the needs. I think we need a number of different mechanisms. There are a number that are out there at the moment. A lot of work has been done on trying to engage people, and I think local councils need to be more willing to do this. The only problem with that is that if you have all these different methods of engagement, how do you bring it all together? There is a danger that you lose an overall vision of what should be done, but within that constraint, there needs to be more flexibility and more willingness to use different methods. Professor Mitchell? I very much agree with Peter on that. I think the plurality approach is hugely important. That which is appropriate in one area may not be in another. On the ground, I suspect that community councils are not even noticed, but in many areas of Scotland. Some areas are very active and very much noticed, but in many areas what they appear to be doing is the same kind of work. Others who are not doing it under the banner of community councils are very active. My point about demographics is that this is a tendency, rather than a rule, because clearly there is great diversity. You see in certain middle class areas where people decide that they want to have a club for X, Y or Z, then the local people will have the wherewithal, the resources to set one arm. I live in an area that is, frankly, reasonably well off, and it is rich in social capital. There are enormous numbers of groups and activities that I, my family, can participate in. That also happens in many poorer areas, but not in the same extent. That is not a criticism of people living in poorer areas, because I think there is a very good reason why that may be the case. I do think that this is where statutory bodies, local government department, has to step in and try to even out that distribution and play a part in ensuring that those areas that are at a disadvantage are giving help there. I think that the plurality is important. If we can encourage that, we will also see greater engagement. I think you will see an interesting relationship between the demographics of an area and also its turnout and participation generally. The point that was being made earlier was around the size of local government and whether the right size of local authorities has been achieved when looking at comparison with other European nations. The point was made in terms of the island councils about the remoteness of the headquarters. You could make the same point about Highland Council or Aberdeenshire Council, which covers vast geographical areas. While I would take on board the point that size is not important, do you think that it is more about the localism element than the size element necessarily, and if people feel that they are part of something more local? For example, somebody in Fraserborough would not necessarily feel an affinity with somebody in Lawrence Kirk when it comes to the delivery of services. That localism element might then drive more participation from people in the communities. It could do. I think there's nothing wrong with having local councils of different sizes. I think the idea that all local councils should be the same size and necessarily carry out the same functions isn't particularly sensible. You will need a different structure for a poorly populated rural area and you will for a built up urban area. I mean, think things that you can govern them in the same way. It doesn't seem to me to make a lot of sense. How you can do that in a way that keeps the system coherent is another matter, but certainly they have much smaller local councils in other countries, but I think we've also got to be careful about not just equating size with people feeling committed to the local authority. I think that can happen, but it's not inevitable. I think it's a difficult issue to get right the size of local authorities and their boundaries. I don't think there's any simple answers. I think there's a real tension here, and I don't think we should run away from the fact that there is a tension, if you like, between a functional way of organising local government and a more decentralized, localist way of approaching it. It's worth going back and looking at the Wheatley Commission and its report in the 1960s. It was highly influenced by a functional approach, and what they did is to look at what would be the most appropriate size of a local authority for different functions. What would it be for education, for health and so on and so forth, for housing, for local planning issues? In the report, it's a very interesting chapter in which they discuss this and they conclude that there's a certain size for different functions, and that makes a degree of sense. However, it doesn't really lead to a particular conclusion, because each function has a different appropriate size. Also, the danger is that you lose sight of the other important element, and that's a localist dimension to it. You've got to get a balance somehow in this. My suggestion is that the best way of doing this is to take the localist as the starting point, as a basic building block, and then build from there. And so, where appropriate, you can join together functions. I made reference earlier to the Stirling Click Manning situation. I also made reference to the Fife situation. One could conceive of Fife as being essentially a local authority, but consisting of different communities, each with their own now, to some extent, local budgets. That is an interesting way of looking at things. I think we tend to look at the local government from a top-down perspective, if we could start to change our mindsets. I've come to the conclusion that the biggest problem is mindsets, rather than anything else, and to conceive of things from below upwards. That doesn't necessarily mean that we should have X number of thousands of local authorities each doing everything, but it may mean that we have to have a larger number of local units interacting with others. I can certainly see the case in Scotland, for example, of some mergers of local authorities. I've heard the case, I'm not saying I'll sign up to it, I must be very clear about this, but I've heard a very powerful case made that the three Ayrshire authorities should be one. I've heard that very powerfully articulated. I could see that case. I could certainly see it particularly if there was also a degree of decentralisation from that which we have as well. I don't think we should see it as necessarily the case that we have to either centralise or decentralise. We might want to do both. We've had a lot of theoretical discussion around more power for local authorities, and that's come up again today. Do you have any ideas on which powers local authorities do not currently possess, which it might be beneficial if they were given control over in the future? I think that local authorities should have meaningful, and I stress that word, power of general competence, and I think that follows from having real local financial autonomy over decades now. We've seen local government losing its financial autonomy. At the moment, in terms of the particle to go debate, there's all this argument that the council tax fees, frankly, that is such a small debate in terms of what is required. We need to move well beyond that kind of party politics, and I think that we really need to go back. Again, let me conclude by citing Sonio McIntosh. I would call him before you to look again at what he recommended in June 1999. We really do need to look at finance again. That is the only way we'll have real meaningful autonomy. All parties have been guilty of this, and that makes it easier for people like us to be critical of this, because it's not a party political point. And I do think we need, and I really urge this committee to unite in a very clear voice on that. As many others are currently doing, but we need to be much more open minded about how local authorities are funded. We've got to avoid this silly kind of responses that if local authorities are to be given and say a range of different taxpayers, that means it will necessarily mean to more tax being paid. That will be the decision made by local people. I would just completely agree with that. In Europe it's not uncommon for local councils to get 40, 50% of their revenue from their own means, whereas here in Scotland it's less than 20%. We do need to tackle that, because it does limit the role of local councils and it limits how they're seen within the local community as well. So I think we do need to tackle that, and we also do need to look at giving councils more freedom to do things. A right of general competence I think would be a really good thing for local councils. And I think that provided local councils are meeting statutory responsibilities and they're meeting the needs of the most vulnerable in the society which they've got to do, and I've no question about that. But if they're doing that, then they should have freedom to spend money in the way that local people want them to, and I think that's the way that we should go. One of the things that you find in Europe around about financial powers, there is much more options for local authorities to come together and inform companies in some regards, with the profits going back into public services. Do you think that that is something that we should be allowing here? A good example I think is in southern Sweden where waste collection is dealt with by a number of public bodies forming a company together, all the profit going back into the municipalities. I don't want to preempt, I'm doing some work on some of these things. I do think we need to be very open minded about that, and I remind you that in the past local government provided many services, including gasworks and so on so forth, hospitals. Now I'm not suggesting we should remove hospitals from health and give it to local government, but we've got to be minded of the fact that these things were often done. And some of the greatest innovations in public services occurred at the local level is a wonderful piece written by David Donison, another grand figure in terms of public service delivery. A few months ago he wrote about the changes he's witnessed over his long life, I think he's 88 now, and David made the observation that if you really want to identify some of the key, really challenging and really exciting innovations in public services, you generally have to look at local, they've generally come from local. Over the years in terms of centralisations that you've talked about, for example the power which has just been restored recently for local authorities to be given the right to generate electricity, for example, these kind of things in terms of the renewables revolution could open up lots and lots of new revenue streams particularly for the island authorities. Do you think that these things should be looked at and the level of flexibility should be in place so that councils can really mine those resources? And the islands obviously are making the case for this, but it's also happening elsewhere. Fife was mentioned earlier, there's some really interesting developments there, I was speaking to people in Fife recently on some of the stuff that's going on there, they're looking at some of these things. So absolutely let's look at these issues and opportunities, these ideas, let's be bolder, let's risk a verse. Yes, I would absolutely agree with that, I think it's something that should be considered and where it can work, it should be done I think. And the last point I absolutely agree with that as well, we do need to be bolder about local government, what it can do and what it should do. People used to talk about gas and water socialism years ago where local councils ran those services and I think we need to make the most of local councils, but we also need to recognise that if you do give local councils more freedom there are going to be differences and we've got to be prepared to live with that and I think some people wouldn't be happy because the differences could be quite big. Thank you for that. In terms of differences Professor Mitchell would be missing a trick not to get to you to comment on Christie and obviously a number of recommendations from the Christie commission. Where do you think we're at in terms of dealing with some of these things and where should we be looking at going in terms of allowing that to progress? I remember appearing before this committee a few months after the report was published and I think I said some fairly challenging things in the committee back then too. I think we've made great progress, I think we've still got an awful long way to go, I think we're moving into extremely difficult times. Many of the Christie recommendations you look at the Ford Pillars in terms of the integration services, bringing local communities and individuals the personalisation agenda. I think it has a prevention and creating great efficiency of the Ford Pillars. I think all of these remain hugely important. I guess I take a great deal of comfort from the fact that there appears to be near unanimity around the principles, at least that's what people tell me, that they all agree with it, but I don't see quite the extent of implementation that I would like. Maybe I'm impatient but I think we could and should be doing so much more, but I accept that we're going to be moving into very difficult times. I think particularly on the prevention agenda which will require shifting resources, it's very difficult in a time when we've got financial cutbacks as we are now facing. I'm very impatient and as other members of the commission are, I'm sure we're all impatient but we're watching it very closely. I think it is one of many similar reports that we've published. I'll go back again to Neil McIntosh that informed that there was no rocket science in Christie. It was pulling the expertise of people across Scotland best practice. Somehow we've got to scale that up, we've got to move that forward. Thank you very much for your time today, gentlemen. That's been enlightening. Can I suspend for a couple of minutes for a change of witnesses, please? We now move on to the second panel. I'd like to welcome Councillor Gray. I'm Garvey, president of the Scottish Provost Association and convener of the Scottish Borders Council. And Councillor Tom Kerr, secretary of the Scottish Provost Association and Provost of West Lothian Council. Welcome, gentlemen. Good morning. Would you like to make any opening remarks? First of all, thank you very much for inviting us. As I said to you just briefly there, you were very quick off your mark just after we reformed, relaunched, as I should say, as an association to invite us. So we hadn't had time to give you any written submission, but I do have some remarks that might be of interest to you. First of all, we thought it was a word about ourselves. You see, we're not quite in the first flush of youth, but we're still rookie as far as the association goes. I have been in Kansas since 2003, before that, some years before that, I was chief executive of a Scottish local authority, probably an unusual situation for that to happen in life. In between, I worked for the foreign and common with officers at length in the Balkans and helped me to reconstruct their countries. That's a very brief resume of me. My colleague might want to say something. Thank you for inviting us along. I've been a councillor since 1992 and I've been Provost of West Lothian for the last seven years. Prior to that, I worked in the private sector in the marine industry and operated my own marine consultancy for about X number of years. That will not give my age away. I'll let Graeme start and then I'll continue. The Office of Provost was established in Scotland by King David I in 1126. It's been an ancient office and it's kind of been at the centre of Scotland's life until 1975, when the Wheatley report was implemented and the baby was thrown up in the bathwater of my boat. We lost a lot in that time. There was no designations other than the Lord Provost of the Cities and we lost Bailey's magistrates, but a whole Shenmuele thing was not addressed properly at that time. So a large part of what we're about is trying to revive that side of it and working in parallel with COSLA, who do the party political work and we work very closely with colleagues in COSLA. Our objectives are to promote the image and dignity of Scottish local government, to advance the wellbeing of Scottish local democracy and the people of Scotland and to provide a forum for civic heads to pool their experiences. Quite often a civic heads is thrust into that quite different role in life with any kind of support or training so that's very helpful and also to arrange training which we're now currently doing with the improvement service through Colin Mayer putting in place arrangements for that in the coming months. And to collaborate with COSLA closely as to their work and the political sphere. In previous times, as you will know and stop me if you all know what I'm about to say, the promise was both the civic head and the political head. In more recent times, councils have become much more political and therefore it seemed a natural development. It's only the last 10 or 15 years that has happened that there should be two distinctive roles. Now nearly all of Scotland's 32 councils have a civic head and a political leader of the councils administration and just to emphasise that the on-going working relationship between the two is in my view absolutely crucial to the harmonious working of the administration of the council. In between five years elections are soon to revert to four years. Most of the work is non-political. It's just delivering the services so it's really important that any administration that the people come together in that admin with the province of working closely with the administration. So that to me is an interesting development. Around election times things change a bit. So in this sphere of civic leadership, distinguishing that role from the political leadership, the value of a non-political association of provists as a defender of the institution of local government and the idea of local democracy cannot, we believe, be understated. So that's really an initial statement where I could go on about functions that bother us about what's happened in recent years as mentioned by the professor. But we've lost a lot of local government and there's real concern amongst our membership that not only has local democracy been adversely affected by a power grab by all governments to the centre and it's happened in England and Wales too. But also the advent of the Parliament here in 1999 has led, I think, understandably, to a huge public focus and emphasis on national politics in Scotland and away from local government. It's interesting to note, Chairman, that there are no national newspapers at all in Scotland with a local government correspondent. And the visibility of local government, I think I'm right in saying that, has been greatly diminished. And it's been argued that this general lack of visibility, the power grab to the centre coupled with the part of political orientation of stories when they do appear in the press is one of the main causes of low voter turnout at local government. Now, maybe in answering to questions, you've probably gone over this before, but you were asking, but I think it was Mr McDonnell was asking what functions should go back to local government. I don't want to add to the questions that you're likely to get, Provost Garvey. I'm a convener, by the way, not Provost. There's a variety of us. Most of us are called Provost. Some of us are so-called conveners. Historical reason for that in the board was. We have honorary Provost. I may be stuck to the councillor title then. I don't mind. Tell me what you like. First of all, you did hear Professor Mitchell earlier answering a question by Mr Riley about some of the places down south that have moved to elected mayors who have the political power. What do you feel of the idea of having elected provists, if you like, here in Scotland? That's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. What matters to me is proper powers being discharged locally by able people. I don't think we need to look at the whole. In fact, Neil McIntosh, who's a colleague of mine, in his report referred to, actually dismissed the idea in 1999 for the valid reasons in his report. I think it's a gimmick. Some countries do it. London have a very popular mayor in America. They do this. I don't think Scotland needs this. What we need are able councillors with the proper services run locally accountable to local people. That's my immediate response. It's in the relevance. I tend to agree with Graham. I don't think the elected mayor system has much to offer as far as we are concerned in Scotland. Decentralising is very important. I think everyone this morning, including your two previous speakers, went on at great length about the centralisation that had taken place. Remember that, at the moment, I am speaking and so is Graham. We're speaking as officers of the Provost Association, but we could drift into personal opinions as well. I hope that you will appreciate that. I'll try and distinguish between. We are not necessarily speaking for the other 32 conveners of the Provost in Scotland. On the elected mayor system, I agree with Graham. I think that it's more important that decentralising down to the existing authorities, which in a great number of cases has been taken away, then looks seriously, seriously and constructively. It will vary, as has been said earlier throughout Scotland, on what that smaller democratic system, if you want to call it that, or that smaller authority or that smaller grouping does and what services they perform. Certainly, I have personal views on that. Over the years, having had a lot of experience of community councils, they have been a complete failure in my opinion. It was a serious mistake on Wheatley's Park, but it was done for good reasons. I could see why that happened. Community councils do not do the job that I am sure Wheatley intended them to do, simply because they were given no teeth and simply because over the years, some of them have politicised, which they were never supposed to do. Others have been very good. I know that, in my authority, I could go round the ones that have gone totally political and I could go round the ones that stick very rigidly to being non-political, but we must look at that and I am certainly quite happy to answer any questions on what would be the best way forward. In terms of the provis association, I have been involved in the provis association most of the seven years since I have been provis. The point that I think I would like to get over to the committee and also to the Scottish Government is that I think the first five years that I was involved in it, we lost our way in many ways. I do not think that we were totally representative of the convener's provis in Scotland. I would hope that you would accept that over the last year, 18 months, and probably a lot to do with Graham's input into it, that, in fact, I think the provis association has now come together a bit better. There are difficulties, particularly with cities, but notwithstanding that, I think that there is a feeling among the remaining conveners and provis that we have an opportunity to let the voice of civic heads be heard. There will always be leaders and there will always be other councillors within local government who, in fact, think that the civic role is a waste of time. But I would like to get one point over to the committee and also over to the Scottish Government, and that is that in my seven years I am less interested in the opinion on this particular issue of my fellow councillors or even the opinion of MSPs or MPs. I know that people out there have a great deal of respect for the civic heads of the various authorities. When I go to attend things as provis, whether it be wedding anniversaries, 100th birthdays, whether it be events, whatever it is, and being projected as the non-political civic head. In fact, people out there, the general populace, respect that. That is something that I think the provis association wants to try and emphasise and get that message over. I think we do have a role and I think the association in fact is going to be the mechanism for that. I wonder, in terms of looking at the civic, if we did a straw poll in any of the local authority areas, how many people would be able to tell you who the provis was? In the boroughs, there wouldn't know who the convener was. In the boroughs, they have honoured the provis. I think a lot of people have travelled across the boroughs, 1,800 square miles, do a lot of openings, Lord of Towns, raw visits, citizenship ceremonies, visiting people in the communities, community councils. I suspect quite a large number, but you have to do a proper survey to get the proper answer to that. More than I would have thought at, it's quite surprising how people are aware. Of course, the local newspapers in my area are very up. The national papers don't take much interest. The local papers every week have us in either the leader or the convener or leading politicians locally on issues. So our pictures are in the press a lot. I'm sure that Tom will repeat that. I think it would vary from authority to authority. Certainly in my authority, and I'm not conceited in any way whatsoever, I would suggest that I'm probably better known than the local MSPs or MPs, but I'm lucky. I'm in an area which has maybe five traditional towns as a major new town and I get around all these areas. There may be other areas where your question would be answered in a different way. So I would say it would vary from authority to authority. What would the provost association do? This idea that we were taking evidence from earlier about the civic engagement, civic pride, and the view that that's perhaps more important than a lot of other factors in terms of people feeling part of a local authority or feeling that it's worthwhile going out and voting. How would you see what would you see the provost association being able to achieve in terms of trying to promote civic given that's what you are, the civic heads of these council areas? The local government, as I said in my initial remarks, people who are daft, they know where the controls and powers are in government. The last election in Galen Shields was a 29% turnout. They know the powers have been taken away from local authorities. I know you've been examining that, Chairman. But they still regard the local authorities as important because we deliver services on a daily basis, but they realise that the real exercise of powers elsewhere. Communities are interesting things. You've said it a number of times now, the powers that have been taken away from local authorities. Can you give us examples of the powers that have been taken away? I'm so glad you asked me that question. In my direct personal experience as a local authority chief officer and now as a councillor, since the 1970s, there's been a large number of powers. I've listed them here as about 10 or 12, I'll just quickly tell you them, Chairman. In the 1970s, housing associations were set up. I'm not saying much of a good thing about them, just a fact. They were set up in housing authorities running for council houses. The last parts of the country went into housing associations with the setting up of the housing corporation and housing associations in the 1970s and 80s. Further education colleges used to run by councils and they were taken away in the 1980s. Tourism was taken away in the 1990s from the local tourist boards to visit Scotland. Water and sewage, 1996. First to three water boards then to Scottish Water laterally. Environment to protection away in 1996 to SEPA. Economic development in part. Local enterprise companies disappeared into two enterprise companies for Scotland. Fire and rescue went last year, police went last year and of course perhaps worst of all the determination of the local council tax has been out of our hands for seven years. So these are some examples in my experience where local authorities have been diminished in the powers that they have discharged. Of course before that, as the professor mentioned, just after the war they were the energy authority. They provide energy to gas and electricity supplies. These are just facts. Over the years, successive governments have done that and I think it's going to an extent that people realise that and wonder why they bother voting local government at all. It's fair to say that most of these that you have mentioned have taken place at points where there have been major local government reorganisations. No, it's not true. Just one, just the two. Water and sewage and environmental protection in 1996. The others were outside reorganisations. Does scenario? No, housing associations, housing corporations were set up outside the reorganisation of local government in 1975 that was separate. Separate in parallel but separate from the organisation. Councillor Kerr, do you want to comment on that? Yes, I would agree with Graham completely. His analysis of these various services centralising is factual. What I would say in addition to that is I'm not trying to make a case to reinstate them. It's just stating a fact on centralisation. I certainly would not be in favour of a lot of these things necessarily coming back under local control. Do you want to say that sometimes it amazes me is that, and I should say that up until January I was the leader of five council, what absolutely amazes me is that local government are delivering services that do impact on people's lives every day. Every day their lives, education, social work, housing, getting the bins emptied, street cleaning, the local environment. I mean local government is the levely government, the teary government that's impacting on people's lives. Every day their lives. I agree entirely that there is a perception out there that perhaps isn't as important as this place. I mean that's not exactly a view I share but I can see that there is a perception of that. But how do you actually turn that round given that local government is the thing that people will have most contact with day in and day out? My view is that if the service is running well, that's fine. If there's a crowd pull or something goes wrong with someone saying that they're on, people will start complaining or turn up, propose to close something. But if everything's running well, they don't want to be engaged. And I've noticed that people now have got, rather than spatial communities where they live, they have communities of interest with social networks and their web and all that. And I think it's an interesting change in dynamic going on society at the moment, that the loyalty to the local community is not as I remember, it was absolutely crucial when I was being brought up. Now it's more on communities of interest, what their interest might be, whether it's nationwide or worldwide. So there's a change going on as to what people use their time in doing. And just to answer, to repeat, if the services are running well, then there'll be nobody interested in doing what will come to an area forum or a community council. Telling me things go wrong is a problem and that's when the press pick up as well. I did agree with the professor, but fantastic what local government does day in and day out, affecting people's lives in very good ways all the time, only when there's something goes wrong that people shout about that. And we should emphasise that time and again. We're very lucky, I've worked in very bad parts of the world, having this kind of meeting we'd be unheard of, for example. We are so lucky what we have, so what we're doing here is embellishing with what we have and looking at it again. But let's be so pleased about the country that we live in, we are so lucky and I think people realise that through travel as well. Yes, I would agree with that. I think to make the electorate more conscious of what local government does and I think that's really where you're coming from and appreciation of what local government does. I think we go back to what the professor earlier was saying and the doctor and we are in many ways saying the same thing, that we really have to think and this really is up to this committee to take on board all the evidence that you've had. How are you going to get, how are you going to reverse a situation where local democracy in many ways just does not exist? Like West Lodian Council is probably one of the smaller ones and we are 170,000, 172,000 of a population. How can we get local feeling back at a lower level and that will not be easy. That will not be easy because in my town I could declare UDI tomorrow and I'm sure I would get 100% vote for that but that certainly would not be a positive way forward. There are other areas that would not operate on the same basis. I think that the real discussion as far as local government is concerned is how can you get that local democracy with the tools on particular services to be seen by the local electorate. I think there are things like external environment or whatever you want to call it, maintenance of playgrounds and depends which authority you're in. That type of thing could quite easily be done at a much smaller level simply because you can get a great deal of the third sector or the volunteer sector to link into that and if they knew at a local level that they had a budget and there were people there that they could approach, then I think that that would be one way of doing it. Obviously you have the abilities at this moment in time to devolve those budgets down to whatever level and in some places that the committee has visited in past inquiries that we've made. Some local authorities are very very good at giving local folks the resource to be able to do the kind of things that you're saying. In other places budgets are held very much centrally. So what is to stop you at this moment in time from doing some of the things that you're saying, giving your town the ability to spend money on maintenance of playgrounds or grounds maintenance or whatever it may be? Why are you not doing that now? You're quite right and we do that in West Lodian. We do in fact allocate to the towns a town centre capital programme. That is then discussed at town centre management groups, it's discussed by the community council and it's discussed by the local area committees. But the one thing that we have not gone to the stage is of giving them the authority and the power to issue a contract. Now maybe that is something that we are behind other authorities on but I think it will only become meaningful if the local area committee or whatever you want to call it, whatever title you like on it, doesn't only have the allocation of capital or the allocation of money but they also have the authority to go out and get three quotes for a job say and use the money that has been allocated the way they want to use it. That we already go, I could say at the moment, we are going half way to that. Good morning. I'm still trying to work out the difference between the civic heads and the council leaders and I agree with convener Garvey that we have seen a change in differences in local government and how local government has been delivered. But we have also seen political changes in local government and I remember when the provost was quite an influential position within the council and then all of a sudden we seem to get this move from provost to council leaders and the council leader became the civic head of a local authority. Is this just not a dispute between the position of provost or in your case convener Garvey between the conveners and the council leaders because at the end of the day the provost and conveners of local authorities are political appointees? I think we've just worked it out. I can't speak for everyone although I should have consulted all the membership. From my own knowledge we make it work. I think it's been an important and useful development in local government to have this separation, not the least of which is time commitment. I spent a lot of time doing non apolitical work in the communities. We mentioned some of them. When we had a combined post in the boarders of leader and convener it just couldn't do it all. So that in itself was reason to separate them out. Of course there are occasions when politics comes into the job I do. For example I actually chair the administration meetings. That was a slightly interesting thing to be asked to do. Actually it works. It gives me an inside knowledge. The only one meeting I do outside the council is this chairing of this once a month and I get a feeling for the issues which helps me when I'm becoming an independent chair of the council meeting to understand those issues better. But relationships, disputes doesn't exist. We make it work between us and I think that's true of most of the councils to make it work for the benefit of the people. There might have been room for that but it's developed into I think a very good practical working relationship recognising distinct and important roles. Is that because Scottish Borders is a coalition administration and there's more freedom for doing the roles of convener to actually carry out that civic head function than it would be safe in another authority, say Glasgow or North Lanarkshire, where the administration is dominated by one party? Yes, there's only two councils I understand in Scotland who are not coalition arrangements. It's just those two that you mentioned. I have no knowledge of how Glasgow and North Lanarkshire operate. You have to ask them. I honestly don't know the answer to that. But coalition, in my experience coalitions in talking to colleagues in the vast majority of councils which are coalitions, that's the way it works. I think there's a couple of councils, maybe a couple of islands who still have the combined political head and the convener. But it is unusual. The norm is to separate these two out in coalition councils. I think the big change did come probably when SDV came in and it ended up that we had very few majority councils, party majority councils and the role started to change. I've been on council where it has been a majority party. For the last seven years we have had no party with overall control and I've had experience of being an administration with two different parties for five years with one and now with a different party in this present administration. There is sometimes a conflict but a great deal depends on the individual as well and the individual has got to, for example, and it's perhaps wrong for me to personalise this, but after an election, the last two elections, my overall consideration was that we had an administration that would last for five years. That was my overall and I wasn't really worried who that administration was, but it wasn't to be an administration that flipped and flopped and flipped and flopped every six or nine months. Now, if you start off from that philosophy then it's easy. Now I'm working with two different, have worked with two different leaders and we have to set out our roles. But there is absolutely no doubt, as Graham says, that the role of the civic head is clear and probably I am better known within West Lodian than the leader of the council is, albeit that the leader of the council is the political leader. I don't know if that answers your question but when you get administrations of two or three different complexions it comes down to the individuals, how they form the administration and the civic head has a very important role. I just chaired a council meeting yesterday where I abstained on three votes in the chair simply because I couldn't agree with either the motion or the amendment put forward by two different parties. But there are occasions where, as the civic head, I've got to mediate that. I won't tell you other things that went on at that council meeting which weren't very nice if the public had been present, but there is a distinctive role for us. You just made a point there about it wouldn't have been very nice if the public had seen what had gone on at that meeting. Now there are things like that which could be said in many council chambers across the country. Do you think it's that kind of thing that makes the public disengage from participating in the system? No, I don't think the public know that the meeting was going on yet that was this one-layer six-weekly full council meeting. They wouldn't even know what was going on. Going back to what we were talking earlier, when you're at that lower level, whatever that be, be town council, whether it be a local area committee or whatever, there are more people turned up to our local area committees than turned up to the full council. Just following on from that, I'm trying to get, because this inquiry is about the flexibility and autonomy of local government, it's, apart from the example you gave Provost Kerr about the meeting yesterday, what other influences do you think the conveners of Provost can have as civic heads to convince the public that there is a change and that you have that power to make the changes? That people may look for in relation to engaging with local government, because our convener, Stuart, made the point about how we engage and how we interact with the public. It's very important, no matter what elected position you're in, whether it be council, MSP or MP. But as a civic head, are you in danger of raising expectation about what you can deliver for the people of your community? You've said it, both said it, these are both better known than MSPs and MPs in your local area, because Provost Kerr said it. But how do you get translate that civic function role in engaging with communities to one whereby communities then start engaging with the councils? It seems to me, Chairman, we're here talking about the health of local government in Scotland. That's what I see or about. I talk to my daughter's generation, she's a professional solicitor. Why are you guys not getting involved in local government? Oh, much do you pay, 17 grand a year, basic for all the hassle on doing that? We've got to look at this. Do we want to have a meaningful system of local government here, or do we not? It doesn't matter what the civic head does on the lead. What matters is what the next generation is saying about us, and they're saying we're not engaged, either voting or standing. You talk to any political party, they're all saying the same thing, can I get the right people? We've got to look at that. It seems to me, it's rather a professional job, but it isn't. I think it's a professional job. 17 grand is a very nice part, but it's actually almost full time in some cases. Our leader doesn't get much more than a rising professional starting off their careers. I think you have to have a long, hard look at. What are we about here? Getting people involved, when you pay them, you get what you pay for, you're going to think about reducing their number of councillors. My colleagues might not like that, but if they can't pay it any other way, we've got to tackle this. Otherwise, local government is going to disappear down the sinkhole, and I've been involved in the system for many, many years, and I'm extremely concerned. I wouldn't be in this job today before you unless I was really concerned about where we're going. Sorry to dodge your question, Mr Wilson, but I think it's a broader thing to be examined here by both the Cosmic Commission and by ourselves, where the heck is local government going? Is this the right model for a modern Scotland? I don't think it is. I think these are the issues that we ought to be looking at. Sorry to be so strongly about that. I just feel that we have to tackle a fundamental thing. How I engage with the community, I'll just do it fine, go to festivals, do citizenship ceremonies, do it like that. That's perimeter, peripheral to what I've just said. I think I'm going to put some of this back on to yourselves because you are a committee who are deliberating over the future of local government and going to make recommendations to the Scottish Parliament. From the provis role, what we do, and certainly what I do, is I promote West Lothian. I don't promote Lynlithgow. I don't promote Bathgate, Whitburn, Livingston. I promote West Lothian. That's all I can do. A civic head, as someone when I've got that chain on is representing the people of West Lothian, I'm going to promote our local authority. I'm going to encourage every opportunity to comment to the local authority. At the end of the day, it's coming down to giving some control, some real control at a local level. I'm hoping what will come out, that's when you'll get more participation from people locally. You'll get a better understanding from people locally. If, for example, if our local areas committees in West Lothian had real power and you could turn that back on me and say, why don't you give them real power? Why don't you allow them to make decisions? Why don't you allow them to issue contracts? Then you could put that back on me, certainly, but I know that a lot of my colleagues would fight against that. Nevertheless, you're going to make recommendations to the Scottish Parliament. That may come forward as a bill, which I hope it will, and there'll be proposals in that bill. All I would ask you is that do something, you're taking a lot of evidence here, do something that is going to allow local authorities as they are. I'm not for changing the present 32 or 33. We've heard the Shetland thing and I'm sure there are some areas where we'd like to break off and to bring the airships together. We've heard that. That's something that you can decide, but as far as I'm quite content with the size of some of these authorities at the moment, some are bigger, some are smaller, some are operating well, some are not operating quite so well, but that can remain if we can get something at a lower level. I think it'll be extremely difficult for this committee to generalise on that, so you'll have to come up with something that allows a West Lodian or an Aberdeenshire or a Borders to, in fact, to be able to do that. Now, whether it be local area committees, whether it be, I think the community councils would be the wrong way to go. I think they've had now 30 years, no, full more than that. They've had 39 years and the name itself, the community council name itself does not carry a lot of credibility. I think you have to change that, but you have to get that down. The interesting, but fair, mention of community councils, and this is the 40th, or coming up for the 40th anniversary of community councils in Scotland, which were established around the town of reorganisation in 1974-75. Surely part of the debate about community councils is they have not been given the place they were expected to have had within the structures of local government, within government circles, because when we saw the changes that took place in 1975 when we established the town councils and we established the regional councils, there was an element at grassroots there that we expected community councils to be able to deliver. But my experience, and some of the experience we've heard from evidence, is that community councils were never ever treated with either the authority or the respect they should have actually received at that time. So therefore, to actually say community councils have not delivered may be part of an issue for local government to look at in the way that they actually dealt with community councils and continue to deal with community councils. I knew Lord Wheatley, a friend of my father, and I discussed it as a young man with him what this was about. The idea of a community council came from the province of Selkirk, Selkirk Town Council, and Wheatley said to me, I remember it well, he said, we had to put something in place to make sure the boroughs and the towns had something, but it should be looked at again, he said. And that's a long time ago that was said. So, and the statutory function was a single function to ascertain to coordinate and express the views of the community which they represent. Very few of them do that. They're not funded to do that. So that in itself is a role they've not fulfilled because of no money. So that could be strengthened, but I agree very much with Tom. We ought to be looking at some statutory way of empowering localism, whether it's a community council concept or a slightly wider concept, groupings of communities, empowering them statutorily to deliver on the local authorities to put in place a scheme for them to deliver some of their services. That would go some way to re-energising local interest in actually cutting the grass, looking after cementries, cleaning the streets, that kind of thing. That's the way I think you should look at, Chairman, something you might recommend at some stage. Sorry, Tom, maybe you should have answered that. I'd agree with Graham that what I would say is that I would be really concerned if the outcome of your investigation and what you ended up doing was, and I'll probably get absolutely murdered by community councils around the area, I would be quite distressed if what came out was boosting the power of community councils. Now, I know that that is an in-thing to say, I know it's a populist thing to say, but I'm afraid after 40 years the attitude of members of the public locally to community councils in my area is not good. In 40 years in West Lodian there has been one election to one community council in 40 years and we got a massive 9% turnout. Now, the credibility of the name is gone. Now, if you wanted to change it in some way through legislation that there was a local area committee, whatever you wanted to call it, and within that legislation the existing local authorities had to hand budget over to them, which of course you would very generously pass down to us from the Scottish Parliament, then I think these local area committees or whatever you want to call them would in fact be able to deliver services. I'm repeating a lot of what I've said, but I've got serious reservations about community councils and the name. My point flows on quite nicely from what we've just been discussing, and it's around how communities choose to organise and engage, and I think you've rightly identified that community councils, broadly speaking, do not have the levels of involvement and engagement that any of us would want to see, but there are other means out there in communities through which people become active, become involved, and often, as we do. As we all know, people will only become active if an issue directly impacts and affects them. A school closure, for example, will see a huge amount of engagement from a local community, but the minute that that issue is resolved one way or the other, many of these people will never be seen again at a public engagement event because they feel they've fulfilled their role. So, are we maybe putting too much hope on the notion that you can get people to actively engage? Do we need to look very carefully at how people engage and why people engage first and foremost before we reform any means of local engagement? Fundamental comment, I may say so, Chairman. Yes, society is changing. If you could do a piece of work on that to find out how that could be ascertained would be excellent. I think that you've put your finger on something really important, though. I think that that difficulty in that problem relates not only to local government, but it also relates to central government as well, engagement, understanding, etc. What I do think it would be much easier to implement certain things at a local level, and I was really interested in what the professor said about rather than looking down on top, looking up from the bottom in terms of change. Engagement at a local level is much easier if you already have many voluntary groups, and I know in my area in the town one voluntary group has effectively taken over 50% of the grounds, not grounds maintenance, but the, for example, flower beds, hanging baskets, etc. I'm sure that happens in other towns and areas as well. Now that, with a local area committee, with a budget, would be where they would go for that help, whether it be help in kind or whether it be financial help, rather than coming to West Lothian Council based in Livingston, which is kind of distant to some of the people in the other traditional towns. So I think that you really have to give some authority at a lower level and let that feed up, and you will get engagement in some communities. Some communities you won't get any engagement at all because they don't want to be interested, really that interested. But if you give them something that they can see happening at a local level, then I think you'll get progress. The professor also spoke about mindset, and I think that that chimed with me absolutely. I mean, if I could look at an example in my own area where I'd suggested to the local bus company that they adopt a blank canvas approach to look at how bus services should be delivered, and it was anathema to them, they couldn't get their head around the concept, and you think that there's a reluctance out there to maybe take a blank canvas approach sometimes to look at what's being done. But it would be too risky to do something like that, or it would be too difficult to reorganise and restructure things from a blank canvas approach, rather than looking at what we already have and maybe making what would essentially become insignificant changes to be seen to be doing something. Hi, blank canvases are never there. It's just the way it is. It's nice to do that, but we have what we've got when we are where we are. It's interesting that you mentioned the bus issue. We have a problem with that at the moment on the borders, and I was told the reason for changing timings and where the bus goes into Edinburgh instead of going to St Andrew's Square, goes to water. It's all to do with shifts, the driver's wages and shift patterns, so there's not the blank canvas. I can understand the reaction of the bus company dealing with their drivers and so on. We could do a theoretical exercise and see what happens, but I think the reality is that we don't have blank canvases. The blank canvas approach in general terms can be a good thing in certain areas. However, as an ex-engineer, if the thing ain't broke, don't fix it. So there are things that do work very well. Sometimes to just take a blank canvas and start from scratch, you could be throwing the baby out with the bath water as well. So I really think you have to look at what is working, what is good and then look at where the improvements can be made. And I think that can only be done at a very local level. It can't be done at the level of central government at the moment, not to satisfy individual areas. And certainly that is the message that I get through from all the areas that I attend in West Lothian. I think what I was driving from as well with that was around how local government is structured in Scotland and what powers rest with local government. And sometimes it's maybe a good idea to divorce oneself from what is currently there or what has gone previously, because there has been a lot of talk about what existed previously in terms of local government. And I think you've made the point, and the point was articulated by the professors, by Professor Mitchell and Dr McClavitt earlier, that you don't necessarily want to go back to what was before. It's merely illustrative and there may be new things that could come to local government in the future that local government has never had control of in Scotland. But in terms of that approach, where do you get the feeling that local government needs to go in the future? Not in terms of necessarily identifying particular powers or particular structures, but is there a general trend or direction that needs to take place in local government in Scotland? I can answer that, Chairman. When I started local government, we had part-time councillors who ran businesses and they ran their local authorities, the perception they ran them pretty well. And there was a lot of interest in standing with some wars not contesting various parts of the country. It's changed, the world's changed. These people aren't around anymore to devote their 50s and the rest of their lives to public service. So what we have to address now is making local government councillors like MSPs and MPs a profession which is attractive. I mentioned this before, Chairman. That's the director of travel I see professionally and as an elected member professionally what we should be looking at very strongly. You get what you pay for and we're not paying enough to attract people in who've got the brains, the variety of experiences, the professionalism to bring to that table. I know where I wish to be rude about any of my fellow 1200 councillors but I think we all know there are people in the elected office who shouldn't be. We haven't got much to bring to the table at all, genuine, but we need to address that. Is this the right way to go forward, I would say? No, we have to look at the direction of travel and I'm suggesting that's one possible way. On that point, certainly my experience over a number of years in local government is that you get different types of councillors and you have councillors who will be very vocal, will be at the heart of their local community, will be involved in other local committees and you have other councillors who take that more professional approach and see their role as strategic. Is that not difficult there because you seem to be suggesting that professionalising local government is the professionals at the strategic level but what about the local representative who's very much working at the heart of their community? The strategic person does both. The local person can't do both but there's a chemistry or mix to be got there. Maybe I'm in dangerous ground but I just feel professionally there are people I've met throughout the whole system who are very little to offer and are not doing conversely, not doing strategic because they can't but they're not doing local either. They're not there for the beer. I've come across that in the past. It's a general critique that we're individualising that but observing any other profession in the country, be it an architect or a lawyer or an engineer or whatever, you have to do what you're doing as a professional. Why shouldn't we do the same for elective members into a different area, Chairman? Yes, I could come back to the original point and I go partially along the same route as Graham. I do think that when you're dealing with budgets of four, five, six hundred million every year and that people making decisions and policy decisions at that particular level, you do really want to get good people in there. I don't dispute that. My concern is that if you were to professionalise completely and give the appropriate salary to these people, you'd be as well to go over to the German system and just have the land rat who in fact was the chief executive and the leader of the council who is the same person. In other words, they directly employ someone who has experienced qualified and local government finance qualified and he performs or she performs the same role. That's my only concern if you professionalise it too much but I agree partially. But when you get to the lower level, as I have been saying all along, you don't need that type of professionalism. That's where you get the local person, that's where you get the person who's genuinely interested in his local area or her local area to get on to that particular smaller body. Stuart McMillan, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning, gentlemen. Just a couple of questions. One of which is on the issue of the number and the structure of local authorities and councillor care. You stated earlier that you don't think there should be any change in the number. In terms of yourself, councillor Garvey, what's your opinion on that? Well, I've been through two reorganisations. They're terrible things. It does upset the whole thing for two or three years. In fact, Neil McIntosh told me there was one resolution, one issue never resolved between the 1975 and the 1996 reorganisations. So it's a huge upset. So I would never go in engaging in a reorganisation unless there was going to be measured value in a business case made for that. I think the last one was almost totally financed to them, whether then Secretary of State Ian Lang. So be careful what we do here. Having said that, we have to address these facts. Scotland has the fewest councillors, the fewest councillors, the largest constituencies, the highest ratio between the population and councillors. The lowest proportion, most important this, the lowest proportion of the population engaged in local politics and the lowest turnout at councillor elections throughout the whole of Western Europe. That's serious. So Garvey, can I stop you because you said the fewest councillors, but earlier on you were arguing that the number of councillors should be reduced. I am, but I'm just talking, this is the whole picture. All of this comes together. Just by that point? Well that's just a single issue at the time. That's a way of funding paying people more, that's one possibility. But in the round of local government in Europe we are not faring well in our structure of how we do things. But to restructure the number, I would agree with Tonker, I think just leave it with what we've got. But look at what we're about, how the councillors are appointed, how we pay them rather, what functions the councillors do, how councillors come work together, Ayrshire was mentioned at the moment in the borders, we are coming very close together with the health service and joint appointments, the joint health social work appointment, the joint public health director. All of that came done within the present structure. I would caution us as a country going down a further reorganisation. I think we can do a lot of the things we're all concerned about within the present structure. It's not ideal but let's do the structure some other time if we have to. Let's look at the internal operation and functions of local authorities. In terms of the functions of local authorities, and earlier on in your evidence you highlighted where powers were removed from local authorities and one of which was on housing. But what would you say to us today in terms of the number of local authorities that have actually undertook housing stock transfers to actually take the housing out of their own control? Now that was their choice, it wasn't the choice of anyone else, but similarly the likes of leisure trusts or cultural trusts that they've decided to take out of their own control. I'm not arguing for them to come back in, I'm just pointing out the facts of how local government has been diminished. Each one of these should perhaps be reexamined with others as to what are the right functions to be run by local elected representatives and not by external bodies like housing associations or culture and sports trusts. I'm not arguing for the case for local government elected councillors representing the people to be examined as a vital part of our democratic system. All I was saying there were examples of how it's been diminished. I'm not arguing one way or the other for any individual function. Some might be a bit unsuccessful. Housing associations in the board have been great success but what is their accountability to local people? That's the issue for me. So there's a number of things to be teased out there but no, I'm not arguing for any particular function. I'm arguing for local government to be looked at in the round. Yes, I did mention earlier that I did not want a major reorganisation of local government and I stand by that. There may be cases as I've said for Shetland and other areas. I agree with Graham that to go through that turmoil again, to go through that expense again I think would be wrong. What councils can do, what councils at that level are doing is they are becoming more corporate and I think that has got to be encouraged. We have three Deputy Chief Executives. One of them is 50% paid by Lothian Health and 50% paid by West Lothian Council. External trusts, you will not reverse that. Several authorities in Scotland have leisure trusts. They save a tremendous amount of money and I think it would be incorrect to call it a fiscal fiddle but they do save the public purse a huge amount of money in terms of VAT and in terms of non-domestic rates etc. That will not reverse so I think local government at that level can in fact look and work within that size of authority. Where I do agree completely is the number of councillors, the number of elected representatives is on the whole low. And there has to be a compromise between the French system where I don't know is it 3,500 mayors they have in France or something. Some representing 300 people, some representing 10,000 people. Our twin town in Guyancourt in France has a mayor but that's a sizeable new town. But there's a neighbouring area where they have a mayor for 300 people. There has to be a compromise somewhere but they know who their mayor is. Going away back to one of the questions earlier on they know who their representatives are at that level. So I don't want 3,500 mayors which would probably end up with 30,000 extra councillors but I do think there is a strong compromise there that we can reach and I hope the committee do that. But to go into a major reorganisation please know because I've been through one of them but while in local government and the other one while I was interested in local government. I've still got the scars to this dude. The other points that has been raised today is the issue of public engagement and in the evidence that we received from the Accounts Commission they stressed that and I'll quote it. There is significant potential for improvement by local authorities under existing arrangements and circumstances such as in identifying good practice and engaging with citizens. Training for elected members and their responsibilities, a right leadership culture and improving how performance is reported to citizens. Also the Voluntary Action Scotland who will be giving evidence also later in their submission to us suggests that participants insisted on the need for greater transparency and openness in the decision making process so that everybody has the necessary information as well as knowledge on how to influence the process. Do you think these are fair comments? Well I've not seen the evidence you're referring to and I'm sure it varies across the country and I can't consult with colleagues who are not here. My only experience that is not the case in the Scottish Borders. We have surveys of the whole population, sample of the whole population every year, every 18 months and being small areas, councils walk down the streets on the days, we know the people that come up to us, all sorts of events in a relatively small population size area 110,000. So I think we are made to be aware of what we're not doing right on a regular basis whereas festival, community council or rugby match, whatever it might be. So in my own case I hear what that's being said, I hope I'm not being too confident about that but I just don't recognise that criticism. We have moved a large, long way into communicating with the public and hearing, listening to what they're saying, we have set up a petitions committee, we actively encourage people to come forward to that committee to speak about any grievance they may have or issues they may have. So I really would have to see the evidence which I've not seen as to whether we're guilty generally across Scotland, there must be something that's bothering the Accounts Commission. I'm going to try and get Cameron Buchanan in so briefly councillor Kerr if you've got anything to add. I think they're very good words but I think they're very difficult to implement. We have tried and particularly with the economic situation over the last three or four years, we went through two major consultations locally and I mean major consultations through the newspaper that goes through every door, through all the groups within West Lothian. We're invited to face-to-face meetings to discuss the proposals, big choices and I have to say that you cannot take a horse to water, you can take it to water but you can't make it drink and I'm afraid that there's sound words and it'd be great if someone could wave a magic wand to get that, the answer to that, a positive approach but it's difficult but we shouldn't stop trying. Councillor Garvey, you mentioned you have in the board of local provis, local provis in Huyck and other places. Do they have the power and what do they do and do you think this is the answer maybe to instead of mayors you have local provis? There are certain times that have them, at Melrose, Huyck, Eimerth and it's honorary, it's festival time, there's no statutory power given to them. In some cases that's true but I think the one I can think of actually is Huyck, is the only one in the entire boarders where the chairman or the honorary provis is an elected member. Do you think that's the answer to giving people more authority or name recognition? The point is the recognition of who's in charge or who's running the chair. I think it's a dual thing. The committee of the council and the provis of Huyck, in the next two weeks we're doing a parade march past of the Royal Scots with the Lord of Tennant and the current of the regiment, all four of us are on the dais and we take the salute together and afterwards at the lunch the provis of Huyck will say a few words and I'll say a few words. We're both known so I'm not sure there's a problem with that at all. Can I thank you very much for your evidence today gentlemen and I suspend for five minutes for a change of witnesses. We now move on to this morning's third panel. I'd like to welcome to here Sha, policy manager for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and Callum Irving, chief executive for Voluntary Action Scotland. You're very welcome gentlemen, do you have any opening remarks that you'd like to make? I'd like to kick off. There's two aspects of this flexibility and autonomy of local government issue that's of interest to our network. Our network is the network of third sector interfaces in Scotland so their role is very much about supporting the third sector in localities but also building a bit of a bridge to the public sector to local government and community planning in particular. They have kind of two sides to their interest in this. The first is that they have a view about democracy per se and where we're going with that, that it shouldn't just be representative that we now need to start looking at how we make it more participative, much more involving of local people in communities. But also they have an interest in this in so far as it relates to public service reform particularly for local government and how that's working and how that could be done in a more participative way that makes the most of the assets and views of the third sector. So their interest in this is two types of participation if you like, a better type of democratic participation but also a better type of participation with the third sector whereby its views and assets could be brought to some of the kind of public policy challenges that we face at the moment. I suppose that the key question for us as a sector, SCVO is the umbrella body for the third sector in Scotland. The key question for us is what is local government for and up until recently no one's really been asking this. It's all been about how we kind of change and tweak the current system. Now traditionally the third sector over the last few years has had its interest in local government has been primarily around funding arrangements. So how is it resourced by local government? I think increasingly we've realised as a sector that a lot of the work we do, a lot of the work we do to support the people in communities work with, actually fundamentally does depend on how local government organises itself and supports that activity itself. So I think that's where our interest has come in and it opens up a whole range of questions which we've only just started to explore as a sector in Scotland because we're transitioning from thinking just about the funding relationship to this broader relationship. So, for example, should local government be enablers of public services, for example, or should they be big employers?  Should they be local government be about controlling services, or should they be maintaining an overview of services, or alternatively, as many in our sector are now coming to the conclusion, how could local government focus instead on creating the right kind of conditions fo