Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2026 [Draft]
I thank members for their contributions to this short debate, and I will touch on a couple of issues that have been raised. The first is timing, which was raised by Alexander Stewart, Mark Griffin and a couple of others. First, it is important to say that the timing was not wholly within the gift of the Scottish Government, given the substantial engagement that was required with the UK Government. It was a two-way process that—far from being about parliamentary theatre, as Mark Griffin suggested—involved the hard yards of trying to get agreement with two successive UK Governments. To those who have never held ministerial office, I can only say that it is not an easy task to get agreement with another Government on the detail of issues such as competence. We required the Advocate General to give us comfort that there would not be the risk of a further referral to the Supreme Court, and we did not get that.
We could talk all day about why it took so long, but I say to members candidly that it is difficult to negotiate these matters, in particular where matters are not clear cut. They were complex, and we therefore had to work through all the detail and find a compromise that was acceptable in particular to COSLA, as the main stakeholder. Those were the hard yards that we worked through to get to this point.
On the point about funding, there is a real-terms increase in funding for local government in the budget that was passed last week, without the support of Alexander Stewart or Mark Griffin, who did not vote for that additional funding for local government. Actions always speak louder than words.
I refer to the point that Alex Cole-Hamilton made about the tension between centralisation and localism when it comes to accountability. For as long as I can remember, ministers have always and regularly been held accountable for the delivery of responsibilities, whether those responsibilities sit within this Parliament, including the ministerial responsibilities of the Scottish Government, or with local government.