Hansard

We support this emergency measure. Councils need the finance to deliver the new policies and laws that are being passed at a great pace by the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. The rate that new Government policy is being developed is astonishing and we have to commend the officials for the work that they do to develop it and the councils that have to make sure that sometimes incomplete policies are delivered in practice. A number of issues will be thrown up as those new policies are developed into practice.

Businesses that have a rateable value of between £15,000 and £18,000 and might in England have looked forward to grants of £25,000 will find that they are going to get only £10,000 in Scotland. That is not a massive issue in the context of the scale of the crisis that we are dealing with, but it is something that I hope the minister will be able to reflect on in due course.

Some businesses that work in the hospitality sector have discovered that they are not considered as hospitality, such as the Kingsbarns Distillery in my constituency, and will perhaps lose out on significant support that would keep them going. A number of issues are being thrown up—for example, key workers wonder whether they will have their childcare costs covered in full as a result of the policies that are being passed: something that I am sure they would find comforting if that was to be the case.

At the end of this crisis, we will have to deal with the financial legacy that will need to be cleaned up. We are going to have to find a way of paying for all this. I hope that there is a review mechanism for local government so that when we look at the end of this crisis at how different parts of government have fared we consider whether local government got the right finances at the right time. Councils need to make the right decisions now without worrying about whether they have all the money that they need to make them happen. I hope that there is a review process to consider those important decisions.