Hansard

I knew Bill Bowman’s wife, Helen. She was a kind and generous woman, and certainly formidable to anybody who met her. I met her as one of my constituents, and I was truly sad when she passed. I wish Bill well in the future, and I am sure that he will continue to make good use of the services of his MSP in his retirement. He can retire from this place knowing that he did his bit in the service of his country. I wish him well for the future.

I also praise local government staff, who have done an exceptional job during the pandemic. They went above and beyond, as usual. They spent extra hours—all weekend, and extra shifts—making sure that money got out the door for businesses and that services were provided when people needed them. We should all recognise that service.

Scottish Liberal Democrats will vote for the order this afternoon, because we supported the budget, with its additional £300 million of extra support for mental health, education, business support, training for the north-east and funding for councils as well as climate. Some of that money is reflected in the order that is before us today, as the minister set out, including £259 million in non-recurring Covid consequentials—the additional £375.6 million and, of course, the further £40 million that he referred to. We support that, because it is important that councils get that funding for such things as the pupil equity fund supplement and the bounceback support for education in schools, but also because it is important that councils get the £90 million in future years as part of the council funding baseline.

I was pleased to see additional support for Aberdeenshire Council and Aberdeen City Council, as well as for the City of Edinburgh Council, Orkney Islands Council and Shetland Islands Council. I presume that, for Orkney and Shetland, that additional funding has been given in part for internal ferry services—something for which my colleagues Tavish Scott, Beatrice Wishart and Liam McArthur have been advocating for some time.

I am also pleased that, for the first time in some years, all councils are above the 85 per cent floor, so I do not have to give my usual speech berating the Government for failing to meet that threshold. I am pleased that it has been met, because councils in the north-east were underfunded for a number of years, and that floor did not protect them.

We also secured in the budget £15 million of additional training support for the north-east, as part of the transition from oil and gas. That was done partly to reflect the fact that that part of the country has not been adequately supported.

I am not as optimistic as Patrick Harvie clearly was about the ability of the council tax reform group to achieve its goals. All he had to do was to look at the face of the minister’s predecessor when that group had to be cancelled because of the pandemic—it was a picture of relief. I do not believe that the Government had any intention of reforming the council tax and was only too happy for the group to be abandoned. However, there will be an opportunity in the next session of Parliament to make that change, because council tax needs to be reformed. It needs to be fairer, and we need to provide the extra levers and dynamics needed to raise the appropriate money and give councils responsibility for raising the majority of the money that they spend. We would support some form of land value taxation as part of that, but we need to make sure that we make progress on that and do not let off the hook whoever is in government next time around.

I will not make my final plea, because I am going to conclude my speech on the dot, Presiding Officer.