Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2020
The pandemic that we face is disrupting lives like never before. A key priority and focus of the Scottish Government in partnership with local government will be to ensure our communities are supported and protected as much as possible under the current circumstances and I, too, thank local government.
In the local government finance settlement, the Scottish Government will provide local authorities with a total package worth £11.4 billion, as I said, but as we now know that is only part of the overall funding that we will provide to our local government partners and the wider business community.
We have already announced an additional £350 million fund to support our communities, alongside the £2.2 billion package of support for the business community. Working with local authorities and the UK Government, we will continue to respond at scale and at pace to provide further support to the people of Scotland, particularly those who are most at risk.
I thank parliamentary colleagues for their unanimous support for the Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2020, which will help to show our local government partners and the wider Scottish community that the whole Parliament is working together through this unprecedented crisis to ensure that our local authorities can continue to support and protect our local communities in the coming weeks and months.