 Good morning and welcome to the 10th meeting in 2020, one of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have received apologies today from Michelle Thomson. Alasr Allen MSP is attending as a substitute and I therefore welcome Alasr to the meeting. As this is the first time he has attended this committee, I invite him to declare any relevant interests. Convener, I have no relevant interests to declare, but as usual we would refer people to my register of interests. Thank you very much Alasr and Ross Greer has unable to attend this morning in person due to a Covid outbreak in his family, but I am pleased to say that Ross is with us remotely. The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth on the Budget Scotland Act 2021, amendment regulations 2021 draft. Mr Arthur is joined today by Scottish Government officials, Nal Caldwell and Scott Mackay. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite Mr Arthur to make a short opening statement. Thank you very much convener and good morning to the committee and may I put on record my apologies for being delayed and my gratitude to the committee for being so accommodating. The autumn budget revision provides the first of two opportunities to formally amend the Scottish budget for 2021-22. The budget revision details the continuation of the Scottish Government's financial response to Covid-19, along with the regular annual budget changes. The supporting document to the autumn budget revision and the brief guide prepared by my officials provide background on the changes. The changes detailed in the document are based on the funding that Treasury confirmed to us following the UK Government main estimates earlier in the year. Further spending for 2021-22, including alongside the UK spending review figures, has not yet been formally added to our block grant and the financial position remains at risk of funding being withdrawn or changed later in the year. The UK Government has refused to continue the Barnett guarantee into this financial year. Turning to the detail of the changes in the budget revision, I will set the changes out in four groups. The first set of changes increases the budget by £1,173.8 million and comprises the majority of the Covid-19 funding, which has been allocated over a number of lines, as detailed in the brief guide. The second set of changes comprises technical adjustments to the NHS and teachers pensions budgets. Those technical adjustments are non-cash but do add £267.2 million to the overall aggregate position. Whitehall transfers and allocations from Treasury have a net positive impact on the budget of £29.4 million. The final part of the budget revision concerns the transfer of funds within and between portfolios to better align the budgets with profiled spend. The ABR allocates over £1 billion of Covid-19 and other funding changes. It is being funded through £1 billion of Barnett consequentials and Scotland reserve drawdowns. £834 million is allocated to health and social care in the ABR, which is all directed towards our continuing response to Covid-19. A further £104 million is allocated towards maintaining our critical transport networks. Just over £300 million of the total funding that we have received remains of which £250 million is capital and financial transactions. While that funding is not formally allocated here, it has been held against a variety of commitments embedded within our budget position. Funding for those commitments and pressures will be formally recognised in the spring budget revision. As we move towards the financial year end, we will continue, in line with our normal practice, to monitor forecast outturn against budget and whatever possible seek to utilise any emerging underspends to ensure that we make optimum use of the resources available. With that, convener, I will conclude and be happy to take any questions that the committee may have. Thank you very much for that opening statement, which I found very interesting. I mean that we talked in private session about the spring revision and ticket. Is that going to be January, February or any kind of evening indicative dates for that? Yeah, as normal at work or early the new year ahead of the budget. Okay, thank you very much. You talked about the NHS, and you mentioned the autumn budget revision allocation £834 million to the health budget for Covid-19 response. However, the health and social care portfolio as a whole is reduced to a net increase of £473.2 million. I'm just wondering if the minister believes that the transfers should include £292.6 million to social justice housing and local government support integration, school counselling services, carers act, free pass on nursing care and the living wage, basically fulfil the spirit of the reasons why this money was allocated as consequentials in the first place. Thank you, convener. I do. As the committee will be aware, a budget resource is allocated to the portfolio that has policy responsibility, and then any year that it is transferred to the required, to the relevant portfolio where delivery takes place. This has been a routine feature of autumn budget revisions now for over a decade. I know that you will be aware of from your previous tenure as convener of this committee, and that, in what we see in the autumn budget revision today, is just a continuation of that long-standing practice. Thank you very much for that. A couple of other questions before I open up. £40 million has been allocated as general revenue grant for local authorities. Is that for anything specific, or is that just to kind of oil the wheels of local authorities, giving them additional money to spend as they see fit? A latter point, convener. That money was announced on 18 March as part of the local government finance order just after stage 3 of the budget. As you correctly identify that, £40 million is a general revenue grant, and it is a discretion of local authorities how they spend at to meet their own needs and priorities. I notice that there is a Whitehall transfer of £24.5 million to increase Scotland's share of the immigration health surcharge collected by the Home Office. I wonder if you can tell us a wee bit more about that. Certainly, that money is collected centrally and goes to the UK Government consolidated funds, and it is then distributed to devolved health authorities using the Barnett formula. Just one other question for me. You can have touched on the issue of further decisions on allocations when the spring revision comes forward. I am just wondering if you could update us on any changes to the balance available for deployment and allocation in terms of going forward with regard to the kind of reserve balance that we have at this time? Most certainly, there was further consequentials announced as part of the UK spending review, but we will not have confirmation in that until supplementary estimates. The position currently, as is outlined in the autumn budget revision document that has been provided to the committee. The question of that additional funding, we have to take a balanced view on that, because ultimately we will not have confirmation whether or not we receive this funding until later in the financial year. We do not have that Barnett guarantee that we had in the previous financial year, so we need to take a balanced and prudent approach to how that would be deployed. Thank you very much. I have a number of members who are keen to come in. First of all, I will have a deputy convener, Daniel. Obviously, one of the largest single increases to the health budget, I think that we can all understand the various needs and demands that are being placed on our health service right now, but nonetheless, that represents a 5 per cent increase in its budget or thereabouts. I wonder if you could provide some detail as to where that money is going to be going and what the priorities are for it, given that it is such a large increase to the health budget. Ultimately, that is about supporting our health service as we continue to face the challenges that are presented by Covid-19, which remains first and foremost a public health matter. The funding that has been allocated in addition will support a range of measures such as test and protect, staffing and PPE, and various other requirements that have been identified as by health authorities to see us through the pandemic. The resources there are a general support to the health service in saying us through the pandemic. Of course, we have announced a further additional resource of £300 million as part of our winter plan. Has the sum of money being allocated to those categories in advance? If so, do you have any indication as to what the allocations are? Are you implying that this is a contingency fund that is available for drawdown over the coming months? The nation's budget revision is retrospective. Clearly, there can be issues when funds are drawn down as and when are required, but this has been general funding to support our health service as itemising the supporting document that was provided. It is for a whole range of measures that are required to support the health service as we continue to face the challenges presented by Covid-19. Do you have that breakdown available to you? Can you perhaps specify what the nature of the breakdown is? A schedule-free point and one of the supporting documents of the breakdown is that, for example, is there more specific information around the £700 million of allocations that you are seeking? Exactly. Those are quite large figures. I am assuming that there is further breakdown that applies to the large sums of money. As I said, even that £700 million is about 4 per cent of the overall health spending. I would hope that NHS does break down figures a little bit more in a refined manner than that. So there are details available from health finance on what has been allocated to health boards and some of the split of that. We can obviously provide some additional information in writing. We have not got a pound allocation with us at the moment. On that point of contingency, we are all very mindful of the acute pressure that the health service is under right now. Are contingencies in place for the coming months, when we may well expect to see an increase in demand from where we are right now, especially in areas such as A and E? That is an important question. I refer Mr Johnson to my earlier remarks that he has correctly identified a significant uplift in health funding provided via the ABR or rather confirmed via the ABR. Of course, there is an additional £300 million being committed as part of the winter support package. We are committed that every health consequential that we receive will pass on to support at NHS. That is a long-standing commitment that remains as evidenced through the bottom budget revision process. Minister, you said in your answer to the convener that some funding would be allocated in the spring budget revision. Can you explain why that cannot be done now? Clearly, there is a process of when funds are required and we need to be drawn down in a phased manner, but perhaps I will ask Scott McKay perhaps to set out some of the process behind that and how those decisions are taken. There is a timing issue here that was prepared when we had the main estimates. We did not have the confirmation of the funding that we received alongside the spending review when we did the document, but we have made announcements on the basis of expected funding. The health winter package is an example of that, where decisions have been taken in anticipation of funding being confirmed. However, as we referred to earlier, it is only at the UK supplementary estimate that we will get the final amount of funding over the course of the year. We are still subject to some risk in terms of those confirmed final allocations, albeit that decisions are taken on allocation of funding in advance of that final confirmation to ensure that we are utilising resources. You also said that last year there was the kind of Barnett guarantee, so we knew the minimum that we were going to get. What is the worst-case scenario that all of the extra UK funding is just a reallocation of their existing funding and we would not get any consequentials? Is that the worst case? Yes, absolutely. The final position is based on equivalent UK departmental allocations for devolved responsibilities. If there are savings offered up by UK departments as part of the supplementary estimate process, then a negative consequential would flow to us from that. There have been examples of that in the past. Until we see the details of that supplementary estimate position, we are still juggling a range of financial risk. We are taking decisions on funding in advance of that confirmation being available. The important thing to remember is that supplementary estimates come so late in our cycle, normally around February. For example, where we need to be faced with negative consequentials, that is a very small window in which to seek and try and reconcile that before the end of the financial year. As part of a prudent budget managing process, we have to be able to maintain a position where we can manage any emerging pressures. Unfortunately, that is just a reflection of the way that the current system operates. The UK budget and spending review are having an impact on 2021-22, as well as 2022-23? We have additional consequentials identified, but the question is ultimately what materialises will not be confirmed until later on, so we cannot take it for granted that all that money will actually feed through in the end. That is why the cabinet secretary and I have previously continued to make calls for the Barnett guarantee, because it gives us that certainty and allows us to have a more assured position with regard to our budget planning. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have a question that I had around the £40 million extra for local government. I think that he said that that was just being given to local government for them to spend as they wish. I am just trying to think that there was obviously the pay settlement that was put forward just last week or the week before. I think that it was reported about £30 million. Is that additional money that is going to be going to local government, or does that have to come out of the £40 million that has been allocated in here? What I would try to attention to is that the autumn budget revision was published in late September, which would predate that announcement in the nature of the budget revision as it is retrospective. As I mentioned to my answer to the convener, that £40 million was announced on 18 March and has been distributed. That money, again, just to reiterate, is a discretion of local authorities to spend as they see fit to meet their own needs and priorities. I do not know if there is anything that you want to add to that, Scott. So when we look at the pay offer that was offered, is that going to be additional funding that is going to go to local government to pay for that, or do they have to find that money themselves? The big correctness thing is that the money will come via the spring budget revision. There will be an adjustment in the spring budget revision. That is good. Has that £40 million been allocated to local government already? Do they have that in there? Yes. Next question that I had was around education and skills. Page 43 of the papers. Page 43, yes. The table shows that there is approximately a 33 per cent cut to the spending on learning. Would that be fair or is that money being spent elsewhere within the budget? I am trying to think that through the committee we receive quite a lot of evidence saying that we have a big-skill shortage at present in Scotland, so it is... Mr Lumson, to refer to the specific line in the schedule for that one. I am just looking at the overall proposed change that is going from the original budget, a £448 million down to £299 million. The important thing in terms of context is to look at what is below to the specific range of inter-portfolio transfers. The money is being deployed. For example, if we look at the additional funding to local government for education, recovery and additional teacher support, that is the point that I made earlier on about the resource being allocated to the portfolio where decisions are taken, but it then can be allocated to another portfolio where delivery takes place, so that is what is reflected there. There is not an overall reduction in the amount of funding on education and skills, then. Would that be correct? Yes, it is revenue neutralist on the list at hand. Yes, it is about the delivery of the policy, ultimately, being through local government, so the funding is still being spent on that purpose. It is just now being seen from another line in the budget. Given the role that local authorities play within the delivery of education, so education is the policy lead, money goes to local government for the delivery, so it goes to the local government line to be allocated to local government. Would that be in the same housing, for example, of 20 per cent cut £205 million? Would that be the same that the money has been allocated to another department for them to spend on housing instead? That is correct. If I remember correctly, it would be potentially around energy areas where it might be transferred to the NZ portfolio to better align with energy policies. Orgyst element of that was a transfer to align it with the rest of the energy budget in the NZ. You may look at this initially and think that it has been a cut to the housing budget, but it is not really that. It has been allocated to another department to spend on that area. It helps to ensure that budgets align more clearly. I appreciate that there is an element of complexity in approaching the ABR for the first time, but I think that it increases transparency because you can see where the policy decision has been taken and where the money has been allocated for delivery of that policy decision. The last question that I had was about health and social care again. It is back to the issue of delivery. For example, there has been a large amount of Barnett consequentials, £700 million shows in here and an extra £24.5 million from the Home Office. It does seem that not all of that money is being spent on health and social care. It has been moved to other budgets as well. Is that correct? It comes back to the issue of delivery. For example, one of the questions that I know has been raised by the committee before is the transfer from the health line to education for the delivery of nothing in Midwifery. It is just a reflection of that earlier point that we were making about policy decisions that have been taken within a portfolio and the funding being allocated to the portfolio where responsibility for delivery lies. I do not know if there is anything further to add to that. Those amounts are factored into the overall health spending plans at the start of the year and the regular transfers for specific purposes. The key point about the policy responsibility lying there is that the ultimate decision on the quantum of the funding and the delivery mechanism rests still within the health portfolio. It is not a reduction in spending on health or social care, because some of those transfers are to local government for social care. It is more just a reflection of where the policy responsibility lies initially. Okay, so when we see that increase out of £724 million and only the proposed budget going up by £473 million, that does not mean that the NHS has been shortchanged by a quarter of a billion or anything, it has just been spent from other departments almost on behalf of the health and social care department. Is that correct? I think that that is a fair assessment. Okay, thank you, convener. It is two points of clarification, if I may minister. Just in terms of one of the transfers between the health and social care budget to education and skills, there is a £5.2 million in respect of the additional medical student places. Could I check that that is in relation to the 190 extra medical places that the Scottish Government said in 2016 would be provided by 2021? I do not have that specific detail in front of me, would you be content if I lower back to the committee? Yes, I would be content. I am just interested in that strong commitment that the Scottish Government gave to extra medical places five years ago, and they said that in that intervening five-year period we would have these extra 190 places in medical school. I am just interested as to whether that £5.2 million is part of that commitment, or whether it is something new. Secondly, in the £30.4 million that is in the education budget, there is a £20 million figure there that is titled for post-Covid improvements. Would you be able to break that down just a little bit, minister, as to whether that is specific to any sector in education? I do not see very much for higher education spending in this, so I was just wondering where that is. Do you missmith to what page you are referring to? You are on. I will find it. It is under page 13 in our section here, under education and skills, where there is a £30.2 million total. One of that is additional funding to support education recovery. I just wondered what that consisted of. Have you given me a much struggling to identify a specific budget line that you are referring to? I may be on a different page. It is coming out on page 13, but it is under the headings. We have headings here for Covid and other funding changes. We have got social justice, we have got finance in the economy, we have got a section for education and skills, and within that education and skills bit, there is a £20 million. Would you be content if I wrote back to you, minister, just to provide more information? I would like to reflect on that and make sure that it works. I am interested to know that education has been prioritised as a big part of the recovery from a lot of the witnesses who attended the committee. I am interested to know that there is a large chunk within that education and skills section. I am interested in whether that is towards the higher and further education budget. If we could get some information on that, that would be very grateful. I think that because it is an aggregate figure, I would want to be able to disaggregate it for you and itemise it. That might just take a bit of time and time. Quite significantly in terms of the percentages. For example, rail gets 5.3 per cent more, buses 1.2 per cent, highland airports 8.1, and light rail 4 per cent. I am just wondering what the reasoning is behind those variances and what the detail is of additional funding to support rail services, for example. Certainly, the additional funding to support rail services was required in terms of order to cover revenue shortfall suffered by the franchise. As such, it is demand-led. That goes some way to explaining the variation between the two budgets. Ultimately, it was in recognition of a fallen demand, and it was seeking to provide support to fill that gap. To be fair, I anticipated that that would be the answer, but in terms of those reports, would it not be easier if those were included in those lines? I think that another sentence to say that would be quite helpful in saying that. That is why I asked that question. Sorry that I was going to ask you something else, but I cannot read my own writing even though I wrote it down two minutes ago, so I apologise for that. Maybe it is something that will spring to mind in the next minute or so. I see what it is now. I talked about the spring revisions, and it is about portfolio changes. A lot of the changes that we have here, as was mentioned earlier by yourself, and we were asked questions on it earlier, are about portfolios whereby there has been a change following the First Minister's realignment of cabinet and ministerial portfolios. Do you anticipate that, in the spring and subsequent revisions, there will be significantly fewer changes because of that, and that the next time we have a revision that will be only relatively minor changes as a result of that? Indeed, as a pandemic eases, is that how you see things going forward? I would not want to forecast, but the point that you make about the autumn budget revision is that previous autumn budget revisions have done following a realignment of cabinet and changes in ministerial portfolios. That is captured, obviously, I think, table A in the supporting document reconciles with new portfolios to the previous portfolios as outlined in the budget. In terms of what will be in the spring budget revision, will reflect the developing financial position over the coming months? It is just that specific issue because the changes this time have obviously been very significant, the pandemic has contributed to that. Transport is an obvious area whereby additional resources have had to be put in just to make sure, frankly, that they always continue to run because, obviously, of the diminished number of passengers. What areas of the budget have savings been made not because of, for example, cuts to your budget or whatever, but because the budget that has been allocated has no longer been required? What areas in the budget have been most able to, if you like, provide additional funding for the Scottish Government to reallocate because of the pandemic? That is a very broad question, but I touched on some of that during my statement to Parliament in June on the provisional outturn. I think that one of the examples of that was, for example, around capital with slippage when we had long periods of lockdown when construction could not take place. That impacted on some of the capital budgets that were available, which could be taken back to the centre and redeployed. Obviously, as well, there are some budgets that are demand-led, so it is intrinsically more difficult to forecast how much will be required in total. Where demand does not meet original expectation, again, that money is available for redeployment. That is captured across a number of areas through the budget. I do not know if Scotland wanted to come back on a previous point. Just on the spring budget revision point, I just wanted to say that there will be quite a number of changes at the spring budget revision, but it is more about processing changes that flow through. As we see closer to the year end, demand-led budgets, for example, we have a clearer idea on the likely outturn, so we will realign budgets to ensure that we are maximising resources. There will be quite a lot of changes. What you will not see are those regular changes that we have had all the discussion on. The funding changes for student nurses, for example. Those are the regular changes that we see at the autumn budget revision. The spring budget revision will have any additional funding that we have confirmed for the supplementary estimate and the allocations of that. The realignment of budgets in line with what our budget monitoring and management is telling us. I mentioned capital, so I will touch on that. Obviously, we understand that in terms of capital there are huge increases in material costs, labour costs are rising, etc. All appears higher than inflation. Is the Scottish Government taking of that in terms of planning its capital investment as we go forward? It looks as if we will be able to get less for the same amount of money going forward because of those changes. Is the Scottish Government looking, for example, to increase its capital budget in order that it can do the same with more money, given the fact that the buying power of our capital budget is decreasing over time? We obviously continually monitor that and reassess and reappraise as required as part of our on-going budget monitoring process. More generally, my ministerial colleague Ivan McKee regularly engages with the construction sector and other sectors that have been particularly impacted by the increasing costs of materials, challenges around supply chains and is working in a practical sense to help to resolve those matters. However, as part of our on-going budgeting monitoring process, we take account of all those factors. I do not know if there is anything that you would want to add, Scott. Obviously, we are ultimately constrained on the extent to which we can flex our capital budgets. We have got our treasury budget limits and very limited borrowing powers for capital. There are very real limits on the extent to which we are able to flex that in response to increasing prices. I think that we are aware of that and we have had discussions at committee on that over recent weeks, but there are concerns in Government over that, would it be fair to say? I think that that is reflected in our asks around the fiscal framework review as well. I know one point that I am sure you will have noted, convener, that our capital bottom limits do not take into account inflation. There is a range of different ways in which we could improve the situation and the fiscal framework provides an opportunity to do that. I will echo the points that the cabinet secretary made when she was in front of committee previously. I hope that the Government can count on supporting the committee and the whole Parliament by having a productive engagement with the UK Government to resolve some of those issues and ensure that our fiscal framework meets the requirements that we have in delivering our priorities. Thank you very much for that. I thank you, sir, and your officials for the evidence that you have given today and, indeed, colleagues for their questions. I will now turn to agenda item 2, which involves formal consideration of the motion. I invite the minister to move motion S6M-01468, that the Finance and Public Administration Committee recommends that the Budget Scotland Act 2021 amendment regulations 2021 draft be approved. Do members have any further comments at this time? They do not. I therefore now put the question to the motion. The question is that motion S6M-01468 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. I know that you have not quite moved it a bit. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are. Thank you very much. I would like to thank you once again, minister, for coming here today. We will publish a short report to Parliament setting out a decision on the regulations in due course. Our next panel of witnesses will be ready to start at 10 past 11, so I will just suspend the meeting for four minutes in order to have an exchange of witnesses. We now turn to the third item on our agenda, which is to take evidence on public service reform and the Christie commission from Stephen Boyle, auditor general for Scotland, Professor James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh and Professor Graham Roy, University of Glasgow. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and members have received a paper from the clerk setting out background information along with written briefings from two of our witnesses, Professor Roy and Stephen Boyle. Before I open up to questions from the committee, I will invite each of our witnesses in turn to make a short opening statement, and I would like Professor Mitchell to go first because he has not provided any questions to me. By the way, I would not go straight into questions, but as you have invited me, I suppose that I could say a couple of things. First, I have been before this committee on a number of occasions over the past decade and indeed many other committees on this subject. In fact, we talked about this before this very committee just a few weeks ago. That is significant because the question that kept arising—the question that I have been asked more than anything when I have given talks on Christie and I have given talks on Christie more than any other subject over the past 10 years, literally hundreds of talks—the question that keeps me asked is, if we are all agreed, why is it not happening? For me, that is the fundamental question. If we can grasp and grapple with that and find some kind of answer, we might move forward. I am not saying that we have not done anything, but I think that we have not done as much as we might. I will leave it at that and hand over to my colleagues. The first thing that I will say is that, after 10 years, it is unusual for a report on public policy to be still getting the attention that the Christie commission report, especially given that we have come through a period of devolution, EU exit, and a global pandemic in the intervening period. The longevity of the Christie report reflects two things. One is the needed change in the delivery of public services, and as Professor Mitchell said, we have not yet made the changes that were envisaged. As I noted in my blog over the past few weeks, Scotland remains an unequal society. We are referenced education, national health service, living standards and so forth, made worse by the pandemic. Now that we are emerging from the pandemic, there is an opportunity for Scotland to take stock and not to rebuild back to what we had before the pandemic but to grasp the opportunity to reshape public services in Scotland. Public sector reform convener is too often associated with structural change, but public sector reform must figure out how we improve outcomes as well as changing the structures of how public sector bodies are organised. That has to involve a long-term perspective, ensuring that there is equity of opportunity for all of Scotland's citizens. It is bigger than individual organisations. As public auditors, we do not determine performance measures, rather we assess performance against them. Despite the aspiration of the national performance framework, Scotland's public sector remains dominated by performance management arrangements and performance reporting on an organisation by organisation basis. Public sector leaders are not held fully accountable for delivering change that requires working across organisations. There is much talk of collaborative leadership, there is less evidence of delivery. It is very clear at the moment that there are too many public leaders that do not feel truly empowered or emboldened to make the changes that are necessary that Christine Visage did. Culturally, we are also constraining ourselves. We must learn lessons from public services when they underperform, but if every failure of public service delivery results in a snapback to a culture of blame, we will fail to harness the learning, fail to grow a creative, risk-taking and innovative mindset that Scotland's public sector needs. Accountability is important, but the way we do it matters just as much. Of course, convener, that involves some thinking for us as auditors about how we report, both on assurance but also harnessing good practice across the public sector. Say again, convener, I am delighted to be with you this morning. I look forward to the conversation. I do not have too much to add other than what has been said so far in the remarks that I submitted earlier to the committee. The one point that I would make that is really important to understand is just the urgency of the challenge that we face in this now. If you recall, back to when Christie was published, it was published after the independent budget review report. That was very much making two points. One was the outlook for the Scottish budget over the next few years to be very difficult because of the fiscal consolidation, call it austerity, whatever word you prefer, back in the early 2010s onwards. However, there was a much bigger secondary issue there, which was the long-term demand-driven pressures that were going to come in public services that even once budgets started to recover again, they were always going to be there. Jump forward 10 years and we have come through the fiscal consolidation, we have come through the austerity, but the pressures are still there and they are even more acute now. Even if budgets will go up over the next few years, the pressures there on demand for public services are a thing that is going to really drive the need for public service reform. It is just to re-emphasise the point about the urgency and the seriousness of the need for reform that is all the more critical at this moment in time. I am going to quote the esteemed Professor James Mitchell, who said that, if we are all agreed, why has it not happened so, Professor Mitchell, if we are all agreed, why has it not happened? It is difficult, is the answer in some. In fact, you asked me that in 2015 when I appeared before this committee and I cannot really change the answer I gave then. I said that one of the problems is that there needs to be significant cultural change, there needs to be significant change in the way we operate, rather than, as Stephen rightly pointed out, it is not just about formal institutional change. I do wonder whether we encourage this enough. I think that one of the most interesting things is how often we use the language. We are very fluent in the language of Christie, but we are not so good at putting it into effect. I sometimes ask whether we incentivise the kind of changes that we require. On many occasions, I have asked senior figures whether they are aware of or have ensured that someone has been, for example, promoted because of their work on prevention. I am almost invariably met with silence. I think that we really have to start asking ourselves, well, if we believe that this change is important, how do we do it? How do we get good collaboration? How do we ensure that it actually happens? How do we avoid the kind of tick box approach of just simply bringing people together? One thing that we know is that bringing people together around the table does not necessarily create collaboration. How do we get it where it counts, which is in our communities at the most local level? The really big challenge that I suspect is in our heads, rather than anywhere else. It is a way that we think about these things and how we can address them. Finally, I have to say that I do not think that there is a political will. If you really want to make change, you really have to believe in it, you really have to prioritise it. I want to ask the question, is that happening? I am not convinced it is. Just as a follow-up to that, you talked about the political will, and I am quoting Professor Roy's statement here. He says that there are huge institutional practical and political constraints in public service delivery, and you talked about the political will. Is it because you think that political parties fear the electoral consequences of such radical changes or is it vested interests within the public sector, a combination of those? Where is the main bottleneck in terms of that? If you were to start the ball rolling from where we are at this time, what is the number one bottleneck? I will be asking our other witnesses to answer that question also. Of course, there is no single answer to that, because public service reform and delivery across the board will require different approaches. That is one of the messages of Christy. If we cannot do this simply from a top-down, highly prescriptive approach, that is a very important point. Take, for example, prevention. One of the reasons why we have been particularly poor in that area, one of the four Christy pillars, is that it is really difficult and that it would involve shifting priorities and budgets. That is very difficult. There is also the problem that the effects can take a lot of time. We have had this conversation before. I remember a wady before this committee some years ago in which one of the members—I will not say who—actually said, why would we want to do that? We have elections to face. It was very honest and I appreciated that honesty. The fact that it had to be said in a closed session was not insignificant. However, I think that that is part of the problem. The other problem is that there is always this problem with collaboration, because if one element, one collaborator, where resources are put into long-term planning and prevention, that may not benefit that institution, for example. There are real issues. That is why Christy made the point that the four pillars are very important in themselves, but they must always be seen as operating together. That creates problems, because sometimes there will be a conflict. I think that that is part of it. The fundamental point that I would make is that it is incredibly difficult, but unless we face up to the difficulties and are willing to maybe make some difficult decisions, then we are not going to make progress. In fact, as Graham really made the point powerfully there, it is going to get worse. The longer you put off making a difficult decision, the more painful and costly it is to make that decision. A penny saved now. What is the phrase? We have to start thinking in that way and be bolder. Let me see if there is genuine consensus across party, across institutional. Let us take advantage of it. I have said this to the committee before. The committee potentially has a huge role in this. If it can unite, come up with some really bold suggestions and then take that into the chamber where the silly politics take place, but the serious stuff that we know goes on in committee, that would be a real advantage. Professor Roy, you said in your statement, and I am obviously asking you to further elucidate on what Professor Mitchell said, but you said that, in a quote, the lack of attention to delivery means that the Christchurch commission has become almost an idealist document in the eyes of some, rather than a usual guide for delivering public service reform and practice. In your answer, can you add why there is a lack of attention to delivery in your view? The first thing is that the Christchurch document was very aspirational. It set out the objectives and the overall approach that we should do, but it did not actually talk about how you do the delivery part of it. Sometimes, when we always hark back to Christchurch, we think about Christchurch getting the answer, and it posed a lot more questions than it did answers. I think that, in the difficult bit, building what Professor Mitchell said is that the delivery bit is key. You have principles around prevention or community empowerment. How do you deliver that in practice? For me, one of the other areas that I think is important, particularly if you look at the economics and business world and the powers and the use of the levers that we have there, is the commitment around evaluation and appraisal. We do not have that same culture of an idea—a great idea—but we have actually thought about how we can implement it. If we implement it, does it deliver the objectives that we were hoping it would do? That is not to say that it has been a bad idea or that the politics of it are the reason why it has failed, but have we implemented it in a way that we would hope to do? Can we change it there? One of the things that I think about is that we do not focus on the delivery. It is that culture of appraisal and evaluation. You look at the examples all around, whether it be city deals or whether it be individual policy programmes. We do not have that real laser light scrutiny about whether it is achieving what we said it would achieve. If not, why not? Can we make the amendments to make sure that it achieves what we want to achieve? That is, for me, a key gap in this debate. Steven, that is your area of interest. I wonder if you can follow on from that. One of the things that you have said in your submission in paragraph 6 is that a report last year on affordable housing noted that the Scottish Government had not set out the outcomes that it intended to achieve from its investment. Do you think that there is an issue there about not being able to see the wood from the trees sometimes? People say, well, obviously, building houses is a good thing. You get new modern houses that are easier to heat, safer and more comfortable, etc. Is that perhaps an aspect of it? I think that that is fair, convener. Listening to Graham, I think that there is almost an irony in that a lot of our thinking, and this has talked about implementation gaps in the round, is delivering public policy, but there was perhaps an implementation gap from the Christie commission itself when it talked about principles but without the route through to making the changes and the consensus that has been agreed upon. Audit Scotland has talked about the need for closer alignment between public spending and outcomes from the delivery of public services for many years. I know that that has been an area of keen interest to the committee. We have regularly promoted the fact that the national outcomes, the national performance framework, and I am keen to see that progress has made it in its widest sense between those two areas to better track and monitor. As Graham rightly says, there needs to be more rigor, more data and more milestones as we implement public policy. We have repeatedly commented in our audit work where there has been the delivery of a policy that can be measured in terms of outputs. Affordable housing is one and many others with it, but that does not track what impact is that making in the longer term. Is it having the preventative benefits that will be a benefit to people's lives? Also, by extension of the public purse, many, many reports and academic research points to that we are more effective in spending the preventative terms than we are in the reactive measures that we have. One last point, I would make, convener. The measures that we have for how well public bodies are performing feel very narrow. We are commenting on the number of police officers that we have, and the number of teachers. A and E wait times is perhaps an overused example, but there is no real measure as to what does that mean for the health of Scotland's population, how safe Scotland's people are. I think that there needs to be another go at having a much wider conversation about how we agree a set of measures and contract those over a longer term rather than what feels like very short-term thinking at the moment. For example, going back to housing, having a warm, comfortable, safe home, what impact does that have on, for example, mental health or physical health or whatever, as we go forward? I am going to stick with you, Stephen, to change the order of things a wee bit. When I was a chair of the Finance Committee in the session 4 in March 2016, we wrote to the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, with a number of recommendations and proposals. One of the things that we said was that borrowing powers, for example, under the fiscal framework, would help to create a culture of innovation, and the use of digital technology provides potential solutions to achieving a decisive shift towards prevention. At that time, after we had spent some five years on preventive spend, which went back to a number of occasions, as Professor Mitchell would recall particularly well, as he gave a lot of evidence, as he commented on. We were very optimistic about that. Obviously, there is a feeling that that has not transpired as we would have wished. However, what progress do you feel has been made in terms of creating a culture of innovation and delivering improved milestones, benchmarking, performance targets? How have we moved forward? Are we 10 per cent of the way there? 40 per cent? 70 per cent? I am trying to find out where we are on the way up the mountain at this point. I will maybe decline the opportunity to put a percentage around that. It feels sporadic. I think that we have seen some examples of innovation. I maybe agree with one of the points that Graham Macon makes in his submission that some of that innovation and change is perhaps happening in newer areas of public service delivery. We would recognise and agree with some of the work that we have done on social security Scotland, that seeing some of those innovations, some of the preventative, inclusive thinking that is taking place in that organisation, and it is hard not to disagree with the conclusion that Graham Macon reaches that it is maybe easier to do that in new areas of public service than it is on areas that are well-established, for some of the reasons that James refers to. I will be seeing the level of innovation in pockets. That would be a consistent theme from our reporting that there is anecdotal evidence of very good work and good practice, but it is not having the reach across public service delivery. Whether that is because of constraints and some of the factors that you are mentioning in terms of the powers that the Scottish Parliament has in terms of its investment. I think that that may be one factor, but it is perhaps more cultural issues about the measures that we are setting for public leaders, some of the longer-term spending and thinking and how we are mapping that spending to outcomes. I mean reach and there are pockets where things are happening. Professor Roy, where are we doing well and what kind of pockets or areas can we learn from at this point in time? Just picking up on Stephen's point about the new areas, it is quite striking that the conversations that we have as a Parliament about taking on the new powers coming through Smith and how we design those powers. Even not just in public service reform, but in public sector in terms of the spending side, but if you even think of the conversations that we have around tax, for example, the conversation that we have had over the past few years about income tax and how we might do income tax differently, I would argue that we have been much better than the conversation that we have had over council tax, for example. There is something about an inertia or a fear of what is already there, changing what is already there versus being given a blank sheet of paper and being able to think about it from the bottom up. There is something in there about, can we learn from those experiences of areas where we are taking on new powers? I am not saying that there will be different views about how we are delivering them and people will have different opinions about that, but if you look at the quality of the conversations and how we are able to embed those wider objectives around reform into those conversations relative to the historical things that we have had for 20 years or so, I think that there is a lesson in there for us to think about how we frame those conversations and look at the areas that have been around for a long time relative to those new particular areas. Professor Mitchell, you talked about how difficult it is to change and move people away from existing budgets. It is obviously easier to preventive spend existing change when budgets are growing rather than under stress and strain. I am just wondering if you can say what can be done even in those adverse circumstances, because there is clearly an issue whereby one could cynically say that we will bring in those wonderful new changes but we will have to take all the kind of flack from vested interests now and someone else will see the benefits in 10 or 15, 20 years and that can be a selfish approach because obviously politics is often the year and now. How would you address that in practical, pragmatic terms? I think that it was Ken Gibb and I put forward a proposal to this committee on some of this and that might have fed into some of the ideas that you then put into the Deputy First Minister around borrowing, but I do vaguely remember writing that, but it was quite some years ago and it was to try and get round that problem because I think it has become very clear that it is extremely difficult to stop spending and if you are going to make that kind of shift it can only really be done incrementally, it can be done slowly, it can't be done in one big bank, you can't just suddenly stop spending and you're right, it is so much easier when spending is on the up but much more difficult when it's tight. I do think that money can often be found and certainly if the planet was to use some of its powers it could do some of those things, but again it doesn't seem to be the case that there's a political will to do that, but I'm glad that you picked up on that borrowing thing and I do think even if you didn't get all you wanted back then there's no reason why you shouldn't go back and ask again and ultimately when it comes to public policy it's very very rare indeed except through crisis where a certain change to occur or change to occur you have to keep hammering away at it and about making your case so maybe instead of kind of looking for new ways of doing it go back and look at what you did and I'd said in the various reports that this committee particularly this committee and in fact this committee was looking at these issues well before Christie and you know there's some really interesting work on prevention done by this committee well before Christie that's maybe worse reflecting on and I think you'll find that it's really not a case of trying to come up with some new idea it's just reasserting putting it into a new context. Thank you for that and lastly for me because others want to come in. The commission's report in the main doesn't offer specific recommendations to the government on how to progress the proposed programme of reform and indeed that's obviously been touched on already. I mean is this a weakness and do the panellists feel that the kind of reform acts that have come through in recent years such as police and fire reform scotland act 2012 public bodies joint working scotland act 2014 and community empowerment scotland act 2015 are steps in the right direction and we'll start with Professor Roy this time. So I think there are so one thing I think just one general comment I would make is that we're talking obviously about Scotland and Christie etc these things are difficult for any government for any country to do so we're not unique in in that regard so I think there's sometimes we can think that it's just us that have a difficulty here this is really difficult for absolutely everybody there. I think again one of the things that I think that has been a success is the fact that we are still talking about this and we have a framework for talking about this and we're not having repeated commissions all the time thinking about public service reform we've done that and that again building on Stevens work that was the great success of Christie that's the fact that it's still there the fact that we're not going over again in every single every single Parliament talking about a new report and how we do public service reform is a success and I think that in time it's the conversations we're having about public service reform will seep through into the way reform is done so I would argue that the police and fire reform the institutional form would have taken place irrespective of Christie but some of the changes that you are seeing around shift to prevention and particularly in the fire service are in the spirit of Christie now how much that is driven by what Christie said or how much of it would have happened anyway is always going to be difficult to do but the fact that we're having these conversations the fact that everybody in Scotland in public service reform understands what Christie is trying to achieve is a success the question then is how do we take the next step to really start to implement it so the first 10 years have been I think really useful getting us to all agree about what we need to do I think the next 10 years are going to have to be about how we actually deliver it I was just at Christie it was just one moment and in time you know maybe it's my age but one of the first pieces of work I was involved in when I worked at Glasgow University many many many years ago was a was an evaluation of gear the Glasgow East area renewal project which is of course seen as the great urban regeneration project the biggest in Europe at the time and such like and actually all the issues we're talking about today we're talked about back then the difficulties of collaboration the difficulties of measuring success the difficulties of actually tackling inequalities in the same places that we still struggle with and the same points were being made and I think that's not insignificant there is nothing absolutely nothing new in Christie and actually on things like police and fire the police and fire reform was well underway while we were deliberating as Christie so it was already well underway but what I think in that case perhaps wasn't fully taken into account initially were some of the Christie principles so I don't think there was enough account taken of collaboration the relationship between police and other institutions and certainly some of the work I did subsequently would suggest that for example relationship with local government wasn't taken into account adequately in the process of reform the community dimension wasn't taken into account I think I think police scotland has done that since then but in the early stages it certainly didn't and so I think when it comes to all of these reforms the key point that Christie's selling and making that many had made before is keep your eye on all of those pillars and don't lose sight of them that's not easy but you've got a constant battle as it were and I think if you do that you'll get things right I think there has been some there have been progress well before Christie going right the way back 20 plus years and there's been progress since but it has been itty I think that's that's my sense also some days we've done the easy stuff frankly and you know some of the stuff which I think is really good on community empowerment is really good but we've kind of done it the easy stuff when Scottish government is good at telling local government to do that it's not so good at doing it itself you know and I think we need to ask ourselves well turn that mirror on ourselves are we doing this ourselves are we just telling others that of course it's against the spirit Christie when you've got this kind of top-down you know commander control approach so I forgot what the question is but I've let you get back if you do something there on the way question as well Stephen not terribly much to add convener I think I think if I may I think Christie's first of all a qualified success you know that it bad it remains so firmly in the consciousness of people who have an interest in the delivery of public services and the change is really unusual you know so first colleagues are quite right that in each of the four pillars we don't have to think too hard to say examples of where you know there have been deficiencies and on aspects of delivery of public services in the intervening period but I think what has changed is accepting everything James says that you know the principles that Christie set out were being thought about you know for many years prior to it but the notion of preventative spend improving outcomes or reducing inequalities is firmly in the thoughts of public leaders you know that we interact with there is an appetite for change but it's collectively finding the and setting the conditions that allows for Scotland to make the change that's so clearly needed particularly when we reference back to all of the the challenges around inequalities and and how with you know as we emerge from the pandemic potential constraints on public spending and all of the what that will mean so all the examples that you mentioned in the legislation convener I think I've been examples of how aspects of Christie have been taken forward but perhaps a qualified success but much more to do as we move on. Okay thank you so I'm going to open out the session now and the first person to ask questions will be David Skenvier. Thank you very much. A number, well I think all of you have said that a lot of the things aren't new some of these themes you have been talked about before. In some ways and some of this stuff I like to go back to the Fulton committee in 1965 because if you look at that it talks about a lot of the same things you know about accountability about kind of measuring outcomes so in a sense this has been talked about a long time. If I look though at kind of the difference between public administration and the private sector I wonder if there's a strand which is under examined which is about organisational reform as opposed to structural reform and in a sense I'm taking as read the points around measurement I think they're well made and I think there's a lot of work to be done but I wonder if there's I mean I think there's a case to be made for structural reform and I'll come back to that in another question but if you look at a lot of private sector organisations whether it's about matrix structures or you know again you're looking at a lot of financial institutions they'll have organisations for running the organisations and other bits which are dedicated to changing the organisations I mean you'll hear a lot of banks talk about build the bank run the bank for example is that the sort of reform that we haven't seen if you look at the civil service it's still very siloed and then you have structures that then deliver that follow those silos as opposed to people that are organised around change so that's not necessarily a structural reform but potentially a reform of the organisation itself of the central civil service is that potentially something that needs to be examined and are there lessons from the private sector and the way that they organise organisations that can be learned from in terms of aligning the central administration along Christie principles go to Professor Mitchell first I'm not going to be able to answer the question you're much better qualified than I am on the private sector lessons but I would say that the the issue of civil service reform and I'm trying to get that kind of collaboration at the centre is it's been a running theme of government and it's one of the reasons why you know the generalist is seen as significant that's why we move civil servants around I sometimes wonder whether we could do with actually another dimension of that or see more of another dimension of that and that is getting civil servants out and about a bit more now I don't mean that to sound too critical because a lot of people I know who are civil servants are friends and I think they do an enormous amount of work in the get out and about but I wonder whether you know we could get them to kind of spend more time you know once a condiment whatever and say local government or wherever are in our communities because I think that would make a big difference to understanding what actually happens when it comes to delivery of services happens in our communities it doesn't happen anywhere else and I sometimes think that if we had a greater experience of that in our decision making at the centre it would make a big difference and I really think this is an invaluable resource in our communities both people who are citizens but also the front line service deliverers you get more ideas more thinking at that level than you will anywhere else but I don't think we do that and sometimes I think we should maybe turn the whole thing upside down shake it up even but yeah I've drawn the private sector if necessary I'm just not as informed enough to answer that directly but yeah I do think we could do with more of that the thing that in a sense is is lacking and I don't want to overstate this as empathy understanding what others are having to deal with I think that's one of the things an empathetic public servant is worth an enormous amount the other thing I would say is I think I come across frequently people who just get on with the job and they actually ignore their regulations their rules the standard operating procedures and anyway I think we need more of these people but equally we do need to have systems and it's that tension I think that needs to be considered I I I can think of a number of people who I know and I've just ignored the rules because they were focused on outcomes do they feel does our system encourage that do people feel that those line managers or the line managers line manager has their back I'm not sure I think we've got a very rigid top-down system and we could do we're listening up it's quite interesting Paul Gray when he was head of the NHS in Scotland frequently made the point do what needs to be done we'll have your back and I thought it was a really important message and I think we could do with hearing more of that thank you bring in the others if they but can I also just ask them to respond to one point that that professor Mitchell is a generalism is a useful thing to have in the civil service and again that's one of the probably the stand-up bits from Fulton I mean is that correct because is that would that not be a if we had more specialists at the very least would that not help drive change but but that wider point do we do we need to have people more focused on change from the civil service Professor Roy so a couple of things I would say in that I should just declare that I was a civil servant so I think there's a couple of things I would say I would say that actually the the Scottish government is is much more aligned with your thinking about organisational structure in that matrix thing than the other civil service in the UK and there were changes after Christie to move to director generals to have much greater collaboration and oversight across there and some of that is by some of that is helped by size the fact that you can get every director in the Scottish government into a room to have conversation has really helped so I think the Scottish government is probably perhaps further forward than maybe perhaps many other governments but I do think the point you're making it you know is a challenge within any organisation around where you've got these big cross cutting issues that are absolutely crucial and one of the problems though I think the public sector different from the private sector is that they're spending taxpayers money so I can understand about being bold when we have your back etc but at the end of the day this is taxpayers money and there will always be that nervousness amongst any level of government about just that accountability and how far you can push it and what you can do there. Just one final point before I get on to your point about specialists if you accept your charge though that maybe the civil service might not be structured in a way that helps look at these cross cutting issues again one thing I would play back to you would be is Parliament set up for that as well so do we have the structure in the scrutiny across committees to be able to look at let's take tackling poverty can you look across all the different elements to see about how you turn the dial on that outcome or is it that it appears in it appears in one committee and that's what they look at but the economy committee look at something else so the finance committee look at something else so if you take your argument then I think there's also a chart an argument there for the for the for the Parliament I think in the specialists I think one of the strengths of the of the UK civil services is you have that generality and you can move around I think where I would say that maybe building on your point is that other particular areas where actually bringing in specialist help on on technical is really important or on the on and thinking about the delivery so you can maybe come up with a good policy idea and you can think about this is this is the overall objective we're doing but it's how do you deliver it and I think that's where the specialist can really come in and help so you take the idea you take the the the political will to do something and then you hand it over to to people or at least get people to be involved more who can tell you what this will be like on the ground who can tell you how you should deliver it how you roll out a particular programme again in the example of economics there and we have lots of really good ideas about how we can support research and development or innovation or business growth and we can come up with great ideas either in academia or all in the civil service but actually speaking to businesses speaking to people who've done it that's where they can actually become really useful in order to turn that these good ideas into something that you can actually deliver so Stephen I don't know if you've got anything to add yeah I agree with colleagues contributions deputy convener I think the siloed nature of the generalism versus the I think Graham's analysis is right that and I probably there are examples of the Scottish Government that have embraced more specialism probably over the course of the past 10 years France digital aspects of commercial skills too that are feeding through into the government I think the wider point of culture though is quite dominant and whether we have yet moved on from what appears quite risk averse in harnessing innovation learning from failures you know there's many examples you'll be familiar with I'm sure deputy convener if you look at the nuclear industry the airline industry whereby that culture of learning where projects fail you know shared across the organisation I'm not sure we see that yet in government that would and it's difficult and Graham's right is that it is public money but inevitably if we wish to make improvements in how public money is spending there will need to be innovation and some projects will fail and Audit Scotland's thinking carefully about that because you know quite often we can be synonymous with a what went wrong style report whereas we need to kind of broaden our own thinking about that and yes promoting accountability but at the same time you know there's an acceptance that not all projects will go well but what happens next that matters most around that I'm really tempted to go off on the tangent on examining the aviation approach to risk because I think it's fascinating and has lots of lessons but I won't do that and I also reckon that the answers have been expensive just I'll just ask a second and final question but I'll put it to the whole panel I mean one of the things that strikes me looking at Scotland in comparison to the rest of the UK is actually how little structural reform we've done in the last 20 years and you know while you know I think Graham Roy said well we you know we've had 10 years to contemplate Christie and hopefully we'll get around to some change in the next 10 years and I am paraphrasing you in a very unfair way but there's a sense that this has been very slow and I think the UK has been done too much structural change but we have I think orphaned structures in you know the Scottish public policy landscape you know for example health boards are organized around you know a regional level of public administration that hasn't existed in Scotland for 25 years and that is odd in fact we're adding to it with health and social care partnerships you know you look at police Scotland I don't think that was done for christy reasons at all that was just purely economies of skill and in fact actually you look at the sort of some of the handbrake turns that had to be done it was about returning to community delivery because it all become very centralized so not only we don't have we've had very few examples of genuine public service reform despite the fact the changes both in terms of the devolution itself but also society changes I mean and and and what's more you know what has happened hasn't happened along christy lines you know is is that a fault you know is there a is there a need to actually ask more searching questions about do we have the right structures do they have adequate public accountability and are they delivering to the outcomes that we've aligned I mean probably starting with health and that comes with all the forgive the pun the health warnings that come with discussing the NHS and health policy Professor Mitchell you're nodding your head most vigorously so I'll go to you first point for a very very long time that we need to to look at the structures within Scotland we spent I think we could do with I'm trying to say we've spent so much time talking about more powers and all that jazz that we've neglected how we govern within Scotland I strongly believe that we need to spend more time on that that's why I was delighted the scottish government cosla launched its local governance review and I spent a lot of time I advised coslaw on this and and spent a huge amount of time going around different local authorities listening listening to people and it was a governance review local governance not local government review and it did raise we did raise questions around the health boards and the relationship at that local level and I I'm not necessarily arguing for a major structural reform for a variety of reasons I think there are some problems I think it can take a lot of time cost and often you don't quite get the changes you really want the outcomes aren't that much better than before but you can do it incrementally and I'm certainly off the view we should be doing that sadly because of the pandemic the review seems to have gone you know it's been pushed on the back burner I think it's now re-emerging what I would hope is that genuinely is as I argued this was my this is why I was invited to be involved in it it would be it would involve the christi principles and that means that collaboration that local level it needs you know efforts to to ensure we can be more preventative and community based but what we don't want to do is simply focus on one of the easy bits this is what I worry about with the review is that we'll just emphasise community empowerment of a type in other words local government got on with it and ignore it everywhere else we really need to get this right and we're up for it I mean Neil McIntosh who probably in my mind is one of the great public servants that we've had over the last half century and more I was in conversation at a causal conference with him in 2019 and it was fascinating to bring out his thinking on all of this and he was saying we need to kind of big look at these big reform type things that we we generally have every 20 30 years and if you go back over history that's what we've done we're due one now he was saying but it has to be local governance and it must also tackle finance resources capabilities we've got to make sure that we don't just say right you get on with it down there at local level dump the problem the devolution of penury it's got to be the devolution of power it's got to be the local communities the local authorities have got to be given the fiscal empowerment they need as well so I don't know where we're going with this local governance review but I understand it's going to be revived understandably put in the back but I think that must be part of all of this and if it's done properly it's a great opportunity to move forward just really quickly I think I agree I think there is there is a role for structural form and having a looking and having a look at that and and it's probably been 2007 I think was when we had the bonfire of the clangos and when the SNP came in they did a proper they did quite a significant look at that and you could argue that actually since then more things have been added we've spoken about in the past about the cluttered landscape and the economic development world we have lots of different people involved in that and it makes it difficult the only thing I would caution with that and I think so I think structural change and reform has a role in there I'd caution that that then becomes the focus of our attention and we spend a number of years looking at structures and then the questions that you talk about the reforms we do in public service to change outcomes just get sidelined as we're having a big debate about who should do what where should that sit and I would think that you see that at particularly a UK level in a number of areas where departments and structures of change name every year or if there's been a new minister come in every time you'll have to look at bays or energy to see the constant churn and change there and I think that that what then happens is you spend so much time talking about personalities about structures that actually the big questions just get sidelined so I think it has a role but I don't I think you've got to be cautious it doesn't become the focus and crowd out other things and not terribly much to add I suppose I'm slightly less able to comment on kind of will be policy changes ultimately on in terms of future structures but recognising that you know for the structural changes that we have seen over the over the course of the past 10 years and that some of the risks that we talk about for what future changes might we've seen evidence of that that is a focus on the structure itself as opposed to the improved outcomes and I guess that will be a deterrent almost for and I would expect and James an agreement will know better than I as to why we haven't seen some of the more recent probably overdue structural change that might yet have happened if we are going to do more structural changes in a country that that we don't rush into it we take the time to say what are we going to get out of this what are users of public service actually going to see benefits from and for all the factors we know but long-term financial planning mapping that spending to delivery of outcomes milestones better quality data that allows us to track the delivery of improvements in public services and but I can see for all the evidence that it would suggest that we are overdue that that level of change that we've seen in the past can I come up with one point that I think is important in this respect and that is to go back to the IBR in a better budget review which always should be read in conjunction with Christy they must be read together and in there the list on all these different public institutions and suggest that for a country of this size we've got an awful lot too many and amongst that it's actually 20 universities they suggest too many it's a bit scary but but it's interesting that that a number of these have been tackled but one of the things I think we've got to be careful not to do is to add to the institutional kind of network we have I mean it's a complex and I think too many institutions so if we're going to make reforms that change there's not add another you know another for collaboration of whatever else we really need to look at that and that that was a big message more from the IBR than Christy and I think it's a very important message yes as Professor Mitchell on the one being keen on decluttering the landscaping major public sector structural reform we'll move on to Liz to be followed by Ross thank you I think I'm most interested in this issue about how we empower local communities because as you rightly say and it was a part of the little podcast that you did Professor Mitchell when you were being interviewed by Professor Roy in terms of if you are going to get local communities to deliver well they have to feel empowered but they also have to feel trusted and I'm particularly interested in this word trust because let's be honest we are in a very good place at the moment with politics and trust and my party has got some responsibility for that but I worry that when it comes to that trust that especially with a pandemic where government has been encouraged out of necessity partly but out of design as well to become more interventionist that they have had to take more decisions as a state and therefore that by definition has made it more difficult for local communities to feel empowered so I'm interested in asking you do you feel that getting to this trust that has to be imbued within the local communities is possible if we have Governments that are a bit more interventionist and I trust is really important I think the pandemic's really been interesting in this respect we had a conversation with Audit Scotland about this and my sense is and again because the pandemic's made it very difficult for me to get out and about as I would normally do but my sense is that in a lot of our local communities we've been really successful and ultimately when we do things in delivering services there's been a freeing up, a loosening of standard operating procedures and it's worked remarkably well. What would be interesting to see is whether as we move out of the pandemic we go back to our old ways or whether that degree of trust because it involved a lot of trust will continue and what was really notable was the way in which local communities are self-organised, collaborated and worked very effectively with people on the ground in public bodies, health boards and in local government most obviously this is going to be patchy across Scotland but the message I'm hearing and Stephen's much better position to know than me is that there was a lot of really exciting things happening there and certainly we've heard people who are very much involved in this saying we need this to continue and a lot of us about trust we trusted the local community to what there are issues and Graham will no doubt rightly point out there are kind of financial accountability issues have to be kept in mind but the pandemic has shown what we can do. When it comes to health boards for example one of the things that I think was extremely impressive in the first wave of Covid was just how well hospitals coped with the intense pressure and I heard it more than once people were saying well that was because the doctors and clinicians were taking charge of how they organised the wards to look after people with Covid and those who had non-Covid but nonetheless very serious issues I heard it about schools that because teachers were in charge of their school rather than at the behest of a lot of government edicts they were getting on better what I'm interested in and I think you're very interested yourself in this is if that is going to continue into the future by definition I think that means that Governments have to be less statist in their approach and freeing up perhaps devolving some areas to local authorities whereby they can get on with the business of government rather than that this sort of I think quite bureaucratic and top down you know do as I say rather than you know let's be free thinking at the level would I be correct in interpreting your view on that that would be my view the one thing I would add and I don't think this is anything you would disagree with this to make sure that local communities have the capabilities and the resources to deliver that we're not just dumping problems in our communities that would worry me that you know you basically say you got on with the job but we're not getting any of the resources the resources have to follow I mean if it's not meaningful empowerment it's not empowerment it's disempowerant when you actually dump a problem in a community so that's a crucial part and that's why I think touchiness already Graham's touching on this the finances the local government finances and we've been through this so often and there are so many reports on this and recommendations the thing that's been lacking has been political wealth and that's where I think we need to look at this and of course align it with the very local thing you know participate budgeting and it's important it's a step in the right direction but we could do so much more work so the logic of that professor Mitchell is that if you are going to change the budgeting format you're going to hopefully be providing a higher percentage of that budget that comes from central government that will be opened up for the choice within local government as to how they spend that is that yeah I mean we are half I mean there's only one part of Europe that's washed in Scotland in terms of decentralisation and that's England I mean it's absurd people come to this country and look at it and think what the hell are you doing how is this possible how does it work well the answer is it's not working and that's why we really need to address this I mean it's happened over a long period of time every political party has been guilty of this it's happened over decades the gradual erosion of local autonomy of and we've really got to reverse that that is central to it was not there was a huge emphasis in christian on on police and local police and that again comes back to the point I was trying to convey earlier about turning this thing upside down but we really got to make sure that it's not just you know dumping the problem got a resource properly it's really got to be empowered could I ask the other two gentlemen on this question that you rightly point out Professor Mitchell that this raises questions about accountability would we be in a situation where the organisation of local government would have to change so that there was enhanced accountability about how they were spending their money or do you think it's possible within the existing framework I'm not sure if I'm being honest actually I think I recognise the points that James makes about accountability the flow of funding arrangements and perhaps Audit Scotland has said with my colleagues in the Accounts Commission that there needs to be easier for the delivery of public services across local government, central government and national UK government as well that matters that the relationships between the parity of esteem between these spheres of government is operating effectively. Whether that means to answer your question directly my Smith that Scotland needs to restructure its local government arrangements I'm not sure because effectively we are seeing some terrific examples of how local government is delivering effectively for its communities. I would agree with the point that James makes and we've seen over the course of the pandemic it's unfortunate that it's taking life or death circumstances for which to empower communities and give them some of the levers with which they want to deliver for the people that they know best and that we don't snap back to lose some of that innovation that we've seen but the money has to go with it you know the funds have to flow and there has to be the opportunity for service delivery to happen the decisions that will enhance service delivery to happen closest to our communities but fundamentally I think it is that parity of esteem that again it's a cultural point that has to be embedded across all the components of government in the UK and Scotland. Two quick points I think one is I think the pandemic has opened up some really interesting lessons about empowering communities I think we'd need to be careful that we don't generalise too much because I think that some areas you know it's potentially widened inequalities so some regions where it's got that social capital and structures that have been able to respond very well to it where they are there's it's been much more difficult. I also think as well as there's been quite significant variation by individuals so we've seen you know good examples great examples of local communities coming together to support elderly within their local communities but if you look at the evidence that colleagues that used to work with at the Fraser of Allander did around people adults with learning disabilities it's been much much more challenging so I think there's huge inequalities in there in terms of the ability of communities to respond for a whole variety of different areas which reasons which make it difficult. I think then the point about funding I think there's a general point that comes back to Dianne Johnson's point about you know structures in there we've there's a question about structures which obviously local governance review picks up and you can look at more broadly as well but the funding issue is absolute crucial and what's really interesting is is how much the centralisation of funding particularly local governments has evolved to the last 10 years relative to what Christy was saying so we've gone from a concordat in 2007 which was basically about you know no imposition of what money should be spent on to a world now where there's questions over local budgets being squeezed and whether that would be more squeezed or less squeezed and the central government is a whole but what we can all agree on is the fact that there's much greater direction about what local councils should spend the money on and then if you add that in alongside type budgets the discretion that they have that's left is now really really is much much smaller so I think before you think about structures there's a question to think about financing and are we getting what we want out of that direction and that parity of service and quality which might be the reason we're doing it but does that come off against a trade-off of actually giving communities and local government the ability to do things differently if they want and that is a fundamental trade-off but I think we need to resolve before we even think about structures. Thank you. Ross to be followed by Alasdair. Thank you. I'd like to continue with this wider question around local government for a moment because I think that it raises a question around scrutiny and we constantly grapples a parliament with whether we are effective at scrutinising the government or not but by nature of being a single institution we can have a national conversation about effective scrutiny of the Scottish Government. That's different when you've got 32 different local authorities. I ask the panel, do you think that there is effective scrutiny at individual council level of delivery of public services in that area? I don't ask that question to imply criticism of councillors. My concern is that we are full-time elected parliamentarians with considerable staff and resource support behind us. The role of a councillor is a part-time one with almost no support behind it and that raises concerns about how effectively councillors are able to scrutinise the delivery of public services in their communities. Do you think that that is a barrier to the kind of delivering on Christy in the way that we've spent the last hour or so talking about? I would say that there is extensive scrutiny of local authorities in Scotland. That has even gone back to 2008 and the Creror review that referred to scrutiny bodies tripping over each other in terms of how the scrutiny was exercised and then led to the Creror review, the co-ordination of scrutiny, the work of the Accounts Commission, which is overseas local government spending, the best value audit regime. There is undoubtedly scrutiny that takes place. The arrangements that we have in place have been in for 10 plus years. The effectiveness of that will be reported publicly through audit reports, best value regimes. You are asking swiftly, Mr Greer, on whether there is a disparity of resource available and the effectiveness of scrutiny in individual councils. I suspect that it will be a mixed picture and maybe a little bit more remote now from where I would have been about the range of quality. I appreciate that there will be members on the panel that will have specific views on that. Whether that leads to, again, a structure review or the components of local government, I think that there are perhaps opportunities for finessing before we get to that point, particularly the long-term funding arrangements and translating spending to outcomes. I feel like steps before we get to the point about thinking as the adequacy of scrutiny and resource within individual scrutiny components of local authorities the next step in that process. I should probably refine that question slightly, in that you are absolutely right, Auditor General, that local authorities are extensively scrutinised, typically by national bodies such as the Accounts Commission. My concern here is going back to the points that Liz Smith was raising about empowering communities. Those who are scrutinising local authorities nationally do not live in the community that local authorities deliver services to. That is the role of a local council, or that is the role of the elected members in a council. My concern is whether councils as elected bodies are effectively scrutinising the public services—the delivery of the public services that they are responsible for, rather than whether we at a national level, in whatever form, are effectively scrutinising those bodies. Maybe I will say a word or two more. I think that it is really important—I do not ever would disagree with the notion that there needs to be effective scrutiny in all organisations, that there is appropriate accountability within local government and within central government for how well public money has been spent, that taxpayers can get assurance that there can be interventions necessary, changes to how public services are delivered. You are right that there is national body component to that scrutiny, but there is also effective scrutiny happening day in, day out within local authorities, within the committee structure, the council structure. The councillors and individual councils will have examples of where that is working well and where it is working less well. We have seen evidence of reporting on how that process is working through the best value regime in Scotland. It has really taken that process forward. Is it an appropriate comparable example between the resource of the Parliament relative to 32 local authorities? If that makes a case that there is not that level of parity, I am not sure, Mr Greer. I am left with the sense that there are more steps to happen before we get to that wider review of thinking that this needs a more fundamental look. I am frequently struck by, speaking to councillors across the board, how often, when something goes wrong, they soon know about it from their local community. I am often told, or not often, but recently often, that they hear from the community about problems in the health service, because the local community does not know who else to go to, but their councillor. That is interesting in terms of accountability at that level. I am not suggesting that we have a problem in our GP surgeries up and down Scotland, but, occasionally, we do. It is notable, I think, and certainly from what I am hearing, admittedly anecdotally, that the first port of call is often the local councillor or council, because they do not know who to go to. I suspect that you guys next, if not at the same time or even before. For me, that is one of the reasons why our governance review is important in looking at issues of accountability. I am much more concerned about that beyond local government, rather than within local government, if I am honest. I am not saying that you have not got an important point, Ross, but I think that we should be broadening that out. In addition to that, one thing that we have seen is a significant cutback in capacity within local authorities to develop policy and to develop ideas, so less so by the councillor, but within the local authority officers in there. You see that in particular in areas around, again in my world, of economic development, city deals, et cetera, some real strains and capacity of local authorities to be able to do the work that is needed in order to develop policies and ideas, and that is no criticism of people who are there. It is just that when you have really tight budgets and you have lots of different pressures, certain areas get squeezed and it is that capacity which gets squeezed there. I think that that is a nuance and an additionality to Ross's point about ability to scrutiny within councillors. I think that there is a capacity issue within local authorities in some areas as well. Thank you. My second question, which I will be brief with, has fallen up on some comments that Steve Macdonald made a while ago about what we are measuring. The data that we are collecting will spend a lot of time focusing on inputs rather than the outcomes that we are trying to get from those processes, which touches on something that you put in your written evidence, Graham, in relation to the national performance framework. The NPF was supposed to be what changed this. The NPF was supposed to shift us away from a focus on inputs towards measuring those outcomes and actually delivering on that aspect of Chris Day. Has the NPF helped from your perspective? Has it had a tangible impact? I will go first, Ross. I think that the NPF, for me, is very good at setting out the overall macroeconomic picture or the macro picture about the outcomes that you are trying to achieve. The idea that the NPF could be used on a day-to-day basis to look at changes in public policy is just not going to do it. If you take tackling poverty, for example, if the numbers for poverty go up in Scotland, that changes the indicator that we are looking at in the NPF. Why has that gone up? Is it because of economic conditions? Is it because the UK Government has changed welfare reform? Is it because the Scottish Government has not done something in the new social security powers? Is it because of housing issues? Is it because of transport issues? There is a challenge there, and that gets back to the point that Stephen has already made about moving away from inputs to focusing much more on outputs, but then being very clear about how those outputs feed through to the outcomes. That is the gap for me that we do not really focus on. We think about public policy reform and we have a big narrative about how that is going to change the outcome. We do not, in any way, think through the steps that need to happen for those inputs to change outputs to then have an impact on the outcomes and then how those outcomes are going to be impacted by other elements. That is the part that I think the national performance framework in some ways has been unhelpful in some ways because it has been almost all the end goal. If we develop all those indicators, then suddenly public policy will naturally fall into being wonderful and all those outcomes will change. I think that it is much more difficult than that. That, for me, is one of the big gaps that we do not talk about at the moment. Could work could help, but it is never going to answer at all. I will tell you one thing that would have really helped. If the political parties had stopped putting 1,000 more x, y, z in their manifestos, that would really help. We have reported ad nauseam on countless examples where data has not been strong enough for the implementation of public policy. We remain very supportive of the national outcomes and the national performance framework. I have mentioned it a couple of times already today about improving the connections and receiving your own budget scrutiny report, the enthusiasm to make those connections between spending and outcomes in the national performance framework. As we move away, and I hope that we do move away from recording outputs rather than outcomes, I think that at that point we will see the true impact. It will take many years though. I think that, as others have mentioned, there is a political dimension to that. The impact of spending might take multiple parliamentary terms to see, but some things can happen now. One of the recent examples that we reported on was the investment in early years experience. We have moved to 1140, and I think that the Government reported over the past few weeks that that has been applied across all 32 local authorities in Scotland. However, one of the components of that review in our reporting was not enough longer-term outcome measures, particularly the economic implications around that. It is not just our own work, but across the piece there are opportunities to make some small-scale changes to how we measure and improve the quality of data that we would expect to see made quite a big difference. Thank you. That is all from me, convener. One of the things that we have been talking about or talking around through a lot of that has been the issue of culture. Of course, at least one of the definitions of culture is a collective behaviour that takes a long time to change. I am interested in knowing from your self, Professor Mitchell and others, what we do to change that and possibly to make use of some of the opportunities in that cultural change that COP provides. What COP appears to be doing, among many other things, is challenging all of us, and particularly located in Scotland, appears to be challenging all of us in Scotland, to think about the culture or institutional culture in a different way as something that can and must be changed quickly. I am just keen to know what the relationship is between that whole thing that is going on around COP and everything that is going on around Christy. I am not. Despite using the term earlier, I hate the term culture because it is behaviour, but I take the point that we are both on the same page in terms of what we are talking about, even though I use the term culture because it is so commonly used. I think that it is about behaviour and it is behaviour that becomes embedded in the sense that we are talking about the same thing. What COP may do, as indeed I think even more in terms of what we are talking about, the pandemic may do, and the pandemic has done, is alter some of the standard operating procedures, the way we have done it. We have always done it this way type of style. It is capturing an opportunity and crucial to this is leadership. I am talking about leadership throughout the system, not just the top leadership, the command and control, leadership at local community level, leadership throughout the system. Almost every public servant has a line manager, and that is a leader. Giving permission and trust is important in that respect, but you are absolutely right, Alistair. It is not easy. It is a gradual process, but when you get an opportunity, COP may be one—I certainly think that Covid is another—grab it with both hands and highlight the good that has come out of it and drive that through your system as fast as you possibly can before we slip back into bad ways, but it is incredibly difficult. The other thing is to look around and see examples from elsewhere and what it has done elsewhere. Bring in new blood, new ideas, but you are absolutely right. It is not easy. That is embedded in what we are doing and what we have always done that way. The final point, which I will reiterate a point that I made earlier in a slightly different way, is that if somebody does something and with outcomes in mind, they might get it wrong. Is it because you have outcomes in mind and that is okay if you have learned from it? Or is it because you did something wrong that you should never have done in the first place? We are pretty damn good at keeping an eye on that. I think that in Scotland we are very fortunate that we do not have that. We do not have corruption in and like in many other countries, so we should be a little bit more relaxed about that, and so therefore encourage—this may not be a view that everyone is going to share, but I think that we should encourage it. In fairness, I think that Audit Scotland has, over many years, come closer to my more relaxed attitude to those things than they did in the past. I think that that is a really important thing. There is an acceptance and an awareness that counts often cannot be counted. I agree with James that it is about behavioural change. We are talking about whether COP is the catalyst for some of the behavioural change and the energy and enthusiasm that seems to have come out of the conference, and there are no doubt some very fundamental decisions that we will all have to take as individuals, but for public bodies, too. Whether that will happen in the confines of existing structures and improvements for outcomes remains to be seen. As we have touched on a couple of times this morning, if I recall rightly, it comes through in the submissions, too. An event as fundamental as whether it is a pandemic or it is moving towards net zero, there will be the risk that there are winners and losers in that process. What we have seen up until now is that it is the most disadvantaged in society who have borne the brunt of some of those changes. The point about taking risks is well made, and James is right to challenge us. The accountability in Scotland is strong, it is well embedded. We do not see many examples of corruption or fraud. That is not to say if the conditions were right that it would not happen. You would expect me to say that we would remain vigilant and we need to have an assurance framework that supports deterrents and safeguard and evaluation of that, but we still need to take risks. Especially if we are going to move to net zero and make some of the changes that we will make personally and organisationally, that will require spending, innovation and sometimes we will get that wrong. That goes back to some of the conversation that we have had this morning. It is how we react and learn to where things have gone wrong and that will be our key test. The other question that I had was, and I suppose that I am using copy risks and analogy or metaphor, is that people are increasingly engaged compared to previous cops. There is a public awareness of what the problems are. Perhaps not yet the public awareness of what the changes will have to be in terms of policy. However, it strikes me that one of the things that drives forward the kind of change that you are talking about, or any one else is talking about, is public engagement in what those outcomes might be. Therefore, there does come a point that is useful, although those conversations are, when we have to start talking about quite specific outcomes, which is, of course, why political parties do put in their manifestos things about X number of Y, because that is comprehensible, unlike the very important but quite abstract conversation that we have just had. So, what do we all do to engage people in specific outcomes? If you were drawing up a short list of what those outcomes should be, what should they be? The outcomes would have to be pretty abstract. Actually, we had this conversation in that away day that I mentioned earlier, because someone challenged me to write a manifesto, which was an outcome-based manifesto. I said, well, you know, it would be a pretty short manifesto, but I would say, you know, improving the wellbeing of citizens and such like. I mean, you know, that is what I would go for. I would point out, go back and look at manifestos of the past. It was not uncommon. Manifestos have got longer and longer lots of silly commitments that create problems over time. I'll go back to the old system and, you know, I would suggest that that's the better way to do it, but then I'm never going to be writing a manifesto. I'm never going to stand up for election, so I take the point that it's a difficult one and, you know, that's the answer I gave X years ago and it's not much better now, I'm afraid. But, you know, I think it can be done. I can be done. What I would say is that I wouldn't underestimate the intelligence of the electorate of the public. I know you weren't, but I would say that, you know, nobody should, but some of these people are writing these manifestos, must be, because I think people get that. They must get that. They understand that it's about improving the wellbeing and so on. That's what we'll count. Admittedly, there is another aspect that has to be taken into account and that is the way in which it is mediated, the way in which debates are conveyed to the public and a headline, you know, it's easier. But do be quite seriously, do the people write manifestos, are they public policy literate or are they expert in areas that I'm clueless in, and that is about communication. Because you're not getting the two together and work together. Surely that's not impossible. Actually, if we look back, some of the most memorable campaigns I can think of were of that type. You know, the 97 election was built on not so much detail, but who can remember the detail? You remember the basic messages. So I'm straying into territory, I really feel uncomfortable in it, but I don't believe it can't be done, that's what I'm saying. And putting the right people in the room together to do it would help. A challenge. I think it's a really fair point you make, and I think that the challenge is how do you communicate this and do this. And I think that something like COP is really good, because it brings what the outcome, the big broad outcome that we'll think about here, or what we'll have in the national performance framework, into everyone's day-to-day lives. I think that the interesting thing about COP without setting us off in another tangent in there, the really interesting thing about COP is that, and it picks up something that Christie commission didn't do, was how you prioritise things. Climate change, transition to net zero is now foremost in everyone's mind about this is what we need to do this, we need to take action here. Whereas Christie talked about all different principles, going for all different outcomes, and I think that that's one of the interesting things about on the communication bit, and how you deliver change is to tap into where people's moods are. So it's not just about changing people's behaviours, but it's actually where do people really want change and be able to use that, like Covid, like COP, as an opportunity to actually make the changes that we need now. I think that you would be able to have much more open conversation, a much more useful conversation with people in public sector about the reforms that we need to do on net zero than you would have done six months a year ago because people's attitudes are now much more aware of that, and I think that that's where there's an opportunity to deliver change. Very briefly, I would only say that there are mechanisms in place pre-climate change that would appear to be working. If people are engaged, whether it's the experience panels that Social Security has been using, or citizens assemblies and so forth, there are opportunities to explore further in addition to capturing the citizen voice, capturing so that it extends beyond the election as a mechanism for people who will be most directly affected by it to have their opportunity and their opinions noted. Thank you, convener. Just come back to the point that Daniel was making earlier about different boundaries of 14 health boards, 32 local authorities. Without real structural change, have we got any hope of success in this, or do we really just have to bite the bullet and really agree that we need to make big overhaul of public services across the board? I think that it's complicated. To be honest, you're never going to get something that might look wonderful and neat on paper, might not work, and that's why we have all these different institutions in this cluttered landscape, and it's inevitable. Sadly, our people live in this way. That's where populations exist in. For the Western Isles, which is appropriate, it's not going to be the same as elsewhere. Health coverage there will require support from beyond the Western Isles, for example. However, if we approach it from a bottom-up perspective and look at what is required locally, we could do it. That might mean, for example, that you may have areas that have old-purpose public bodies. Orkney has been arguing for this for a very long time. There is no reason not to do it just because it's not going to be done elsewhere. We should think about that. I strongly believe that that would be the way forward. What's notable is that, I don't think that we've mentioned community planning partnerships once today. It's a big thing in Christie. We should be asking ourselves, well, have they worked? What could be done? My sense is that they're better now than they were 10 years ago as effective collaborative bodies. 10 years ago, for the most part, there were just chiefs sitting around the table producing a document, and that was it. Now, I think that it's much better, but we've still got a long, long way to go. However, if we do it from below up, we'll get it. However, we should be careful to avoid having some nice symmetrical system. A population of countries is messy, a geography is messy, is it where? That needs to be reflected in our institutions. So, again, come back to experimentation risk. Why not push to allow Orkney to go the way Orkney Council has been arguing for this for a long time? Actually, the Western Isles has been playing with this. I recall speaking to chief executive leaders of the council on this some years ago. They've got a different idea, a different model. Let's see it. Let's particularly see it from the Highlands and Islands. The really radical part of Scotland, that central belt, that's the most conservative part. I guess our opportunity to do something about this, as opposed to just talking, is the local governance review that you mentioned earlier, and really trying to find out where that is and to get that back on track and be pushing for change to that. Push for change there. I understand it where we're at the moment. There are lots of ideas, pilots that have been proposed, but nothing's happened, for good reason, but we need to push ahead with that. Again, let's not just rush ahead and think we've ticked that box. This is a process, but if there's one area and there are areas that want to really push ahead, let them do it, obviously, with constraints and with caution, and monitors, so we can all learn from it. I certainly think that we should be doing that. Thank you. Very much, convener. I mean, it's very interesting that we've covered a lot of ground, so I realise I'm the last questioner. I mean, I suppose I, coming from an accounting background, I'd like to kind of pin down some numbers, and especially Professor Mitchell. Well, I would tell you what I was going to ask you. You said we should be bolder, so I was going to suggest should we take 10 per cent off the hospital budget and put it on to primary care. However, you then said that we can only do things incrementally, but would it be useful to have some kind of fixed concept over the next few years to say, right, well, every year we're going to give 1 per cent less than we might have to secondary hospital care and 1 per cent more than we might have to primary care, or the equivalent figure. That would give us something maybe we, as a committee, could agree on and put to the Parliament, and it would be kind of solid, because, as you've said, as everyone said, we've not made the progress that we might have. You raised this in an earlier session, and I'm probably going to give the same answer. I think, in principle, yes, we should think about doing that. 10 per cent is one helluva big percentage. I don't think that's realistic. If we are going to do it, we need to do it properly and seriously. It is about accepting that there will be winners and losers, and we may need to make very careful decisions on that, particularly if there are losers, as there will be. I think that it will only be done incrementally. Budgetary politics generally are incremental, and it's a bit dangerous to try to do some big radical things. When it's been tried in many countries, it's tended to fail. As much as I want to get there as quickly as possible, as you do, I think that we have to do it gradually. I think that there's nothing wrong with that, even though it might well suggest that I'm swaffing my position on targets, but that would be an interesting one. We'd have to be careful in monitoring it in terms of making sure that it's truly preventative at its long term. I would go further and point out that, if we're talking about public health, it's not just health budgets that are involved. We need to engage with, and maybe the health budget, but we need to engage with many others to discuss this, because it is a public health. A lot of the work that local government does is very good public health work. I think that we heard about some of that earlier, in terms of libraries, in relation to lesion recreation. Before I bring either villas in, that leads me on to another thought that I was having, which was that the points have also been made that one of the principles of Christy was more joint working, more collaboration, that kind of thing. I think that out of that came the health and social care partnerships or integrated joint boards, whatever they're currently called. Yet, from my perspective, that's just a new body, it's another new body, and somebody said again, Professor Mitchell, about not just adding more institutions, but now, instead of just having either I write to the chief executive of the health board or I write to the chief executive of the council, now I've got a third one, I can also write to the chief executive of the integration joint board. My question for all of you would be, has that kind of thing, not maybe that specifically or generally, is that a mistake? Has that not worked really the way it was meant to? It's a general point, and it comes back to the point about structures and things and all of this, is that you could come up with good reasons and good argument about why that sort of structure works, about the need for that specialism, the need for the particular accountability in these areas. The point is, do you have the relationships in place that deliver that collaboration, or do you go the other way, and have much fewer institutions, much greater oversight and accountability to do that internally? That builds on a point that Daryl Johnson was making about, within organisations you can have silos, so just the fact that you've got different structures doesn't guarantee you won't have those silos in there. For me, structures are important, but there's a lot that you can do before you start to then have the discussion about structures. So what is it that you want to try and achieve in terms of outcomes, in terms of collaboration across areas, and then what is the best structure that comes to that? I come back in many ways. It's easier to do it when you have a blank sheet of paper and you're starting out in a new area. It's easier and perhaps where there's lessons learned that we could look at some areas and say, well, if we were to start this again hypothetically, what would it look like and what would we want to achieve, and then how we might have the structures that go around that? The one interesting thing that I think is quite interesting from a public finance point of view is about how you push money into areas of reform or prevention. It's so interesting that so much of the times when we talk about tax and raising taxes, it's to pay for something that's bubbled up so that at the UK at the moment, we're having the big conversation about the national insurance increase to pay for health and social care, because it's not our problem. We can't fund health and social care, so we're having to increase tax to do it. It is really interesting that the discussions that we have about taxation and how much taxation we have always come when we've got a problem that we need to pay for, rather than the conversation that we might be wanting to have now about what's the optimal structure of taxation to fund the reforms that we might need, rather than wait until we get to the point to have a discussion about tax when it's bubbled up as being a problem there. I think that I would broaden out your conversation not just on how much you allocate within budgets, but the conversation that you might have about what's the optimal structure of taxation. Are we taxing too much in some areas? Are we taxing too little to pay for the reforms that we would want to have in the long term? So just on that point before I come to Mr Boyle, you're kind of arguing that we could, whether we'd have to choose whether we wanted to, but just as there's been a need for extra tax for care services, you could have taxed extra preventative spending to launch it all, in a sense. I think that it seems to me that we've all waited and said, well, we can't cut anything, so we'll just wait until we've got extra money, and once we've got extra money, we'll put that into preventative care, and that's never going to happen. So my point is not so much whether we need a new tax, but the point that I'm saying is that I would come back to the point that Professor Mitchell made around you have to look at Christie in the context of independent budget rate, which is all about fiscal sustainability. So we need to have a conversation about fiscal sustainability, about what we're paying for, what is the state not doing, or has to pull back from relative to what you might want to do, in order to fund not just existing services, but the changes that you need to make. And that for me is the broader conversation that we need to have about, we know that demographic pressures are coming down the line, we know that demand for health and social care is going to continue to increase, we know that we've got the legacy of Covid to deal with, we've got all the other objectives that we're trying to achieve, that's got huge fiscal sustainability issues, which should be front and centre to what this committee is thinking about. So you need to have that conversation and what you're doing there at the same time as you're having the conversation about what public service reform you need and how you pay for those public service reforms, because they're all completely interlinked. Okay, thanks. Mr Boyle, you can comment any of that as well, but you had a specific comment that I was interested in, which I think you said it would be better to measure how safe people were rather than how many police we have. I just wonder if you think that that is practical. I mean, as an auditor, I did a tiny bit of auditing earlier in my life. I mean, it's easier to mention measure the number of police than it is to measure people's safety. I mean, what would Liz Smith and the Daily Record and everybody else complain about if we were safer but we had less police? Thank you. I have a couple of those points. I recognise the point. It's far easier to report on quantitative than it is on the qualitative. I think that's broadly what we've done, whether that means that we should limit our ambitions and I suppose that to just the quantitative, I think that we see the enthusiasm and back to the national performance framework that we're able to find appropriate ways of measuring those harder things that matter more, so whether it's place numbers, teacher numbers, A&E wait times, we all feel quite limited measures of how well public services are performing, so looking to step beyond that would be, I think, is the right level of ambition for how we are measuring what we are achieving for the very significant sums of public spending that have taken place in Scotland and, of course, that have grown over the course of the past 18 months. Your first point, Mr Mason, about you touched on health and social care integration. I think that we neither have a model that's strong enough in terms of collaboration nor clarity of accountability at the moment that we have a somewhere in the middle. There are many anecdotal examples of where areas have done tremendously well and improved public service delivery, the right level of collaboration. We've gone really over the course of the past eight, ten years from having the framework, the ministerial direction through to legislative and then now structural change, but the question remains open as to whether we are seeing the improvement in the delivery of public services and a number of steps or bones of contention that remain, I think, your challenge to Professor Mitchell about 10 per cent change in budgets from the acute setting to preventative. You would see and I agree with the point that James Mason was incredibly difficult and challenging to do that, but nonetheless, if that remains the ideal of Christie that we are shifting into preventative spend, there needs to be a better way of having those earlier interventions and improving and averting some of the downstream spending that we're seeing in Scotland. There will be a last point. You made the point that during Covid we have seen some action, and a couple of things that I've seen in Glasgow would be that we've got cycle lanes quickly, with no consultation with the community, but we got them quickly. Immediately there's a trade-off in my mind that there's going to be consultation to see if they're permanent or not, but there wasn't to put them in. For example, we got most people who were sleeping on the street off the street, but that meant that people who were overcrowded in their housing couldn't get another house because that was being used up by someone else, and the answer to that would be more housing, presumably. Is it just always the case that there's going to be those trade-offs? That's politics, isn't it? It's about choices, and they're not always easy choices. That's for sure. My main point was really that the balance needs to be tipped the other way, to some extent, not entirely, but I do think that we need to shift that balance. There's an implicit message in Christy that the way we had been doing things and over a long period of time was too top-down, paternalistic. We just didn't take account sufficiently of communities, and we had, even then, and I think we've done more since then, just kept adding and cluttering the institutional landscape. That respect, I think, is much more powerfully expressed by the IBR. There's a need for a shift. That was the message, the implicit criticism and the suggestion of a direction of travel. It's not going to happen overnight, and we've got to be careful that we monitor it in a way that gets us closer to that ideal. However, there will be difficulties. I don't think that 10 per cent of the health budget into prevention is enormous. That's why I'm not against the principle, but it wouldn't be anywhere near 10 per cent. With that, we'd have to recognise that it's going to be difficult to monitor that, to audit that, because we may not see the effects for a very long time. However, that's part of the risk-averse criticism that we make, and it's also about the trust that we didn't need more into our operation. I'm just looking at the Christy report itself. It only mentions technology three times and not really about change itself. Do you think that technology is one of the things that it under-focused on and is a source of potential change for the better in public services? There was a lot of discussion on whether we should have more on IT, and there was a conclusion that—who was it that produced the report? There had been a big report on it just before it, so it was kind of the decision we lost. Remember, we only had about eight months to produce this report and get round, but I think it's a valid criticism, and I've got many other criticisms of the Christy report. I think we'd do it differently, and I think at that time, in truth, there wasn't quite the awareness now of the opportunities, and there are real opportunities across the board, collaboration and so on. Again, that's one of the things that we've learned through the pandemic is just how incredibly useful modern technology is. I say that as someone who—my job—we've been forced to use social media and so on and so forth, all sorts of things. Again, we should grab that and take advantage of it, but it's a valid criticism. I've got one question. I'll just ask it to Professor Roy, unless anyone else wants to come in. It's just that you say in your submission that it's an area that we haven't really touched on too much. We've only briefly covered it. You say that there needs to be more focus on empowerment, particularly at a local level, and you talk about reforms hindering progress. On empowerment, how much do people in communities actually want to be empowered? Do people actually want to have that level of responsibility? My experience in 30 years, as I like to represent it, is that most people just want service to work efficiently and effectively. A minority wants to be empowered and they want more to say in their community, but a lot of people just want to get on with their lives and the rubbish to be collected. I want to be collected to use a very pertinent point at the moment. Are the streetlights to work, to have no potholes on the road, to schools to be good, to have a working NHS? How much is empowerment a reality in ordinary people's lives? How do we ensure that empowerment just doesn't mean a town of 10,000 people passing down responsibilities to 20 or 30 that might go to a monthly meeting? I think that I'm probably less sceptical than you in that regard. We use big language-like community empowerment and things like that, but it's about the ability to have local decision-making control over what really matters within your local area. Many communities would have that view. You see it as we've touched on through Covid in the pandemic. Communities react and respond to behaviour of stuff. Communities are thousands of people and they talk as if they have a collective view. What you mean is that a number of people who are vocal within those communities is that what you mean, as opposed to elected representatives who are elected by several thousand people probably in those communities. I think that there are a number of things in that. First, what you are not saying here is that this is to replace the role of MSPs or MPs in overall service, delivery and setting a political agenda. If you go down to most communities, communities will have views about what really matters in their local area. Whether the structure is then in place so that it's a vocal minority who might dominate the discussion or whether you actually go to people to empower them to take decisions that matter in their local area, you would find that. I think that a lot of the evidence would suggest that communities, however they want to structure themselves—again, it could be 10,000 people, it could be much smaller than that—that local communities will want to have a role in the decision-making that matters in their day-to-day lives. I am less sceptical than you there. I just find that, offered if it is something negative, you have a large turnout at meetings, but if it is day-to-day, it can be a very small number of people in a community. Whether they are representative or not is arguable. Do you know that they produce newsletters and updates and all that to let people know what they are doing and how effective they are? The thing is, the variance across Scotland is monumental. Some will be really first-class and some less. It is really about how, if we are serious about community empowerment, how we deliver it and who we deliver it to. At that point, I do not know whether Professor Mitch or Stephen would like to comment. You do not have to, but if you so wish, you are going to take the fifth gem on this one. This will be up a whole host of questions and issues. One of the most important ones that Graham has touched on is the relationship between participatory democracy and representative democracy. We do not pay enough attention to that issue. We did not just talk about community empowerment, but also about personalisation, and we need to take account of what individuals need. It is not just one-size-fits-all for communities but also for individuals. We have to move away from that. I think that having the opportunity is important here. Maybe people do not take advantage of it, and you are right. It is often said that communities are like families. They come together for weddings and funerals to celebrate or things go badly wrong. Otherwise, they do not want to see one another. I think that there is a balance here. One thing that we have to be careful about is that we do not hand power or resources over to minorities who are not representative. We should also acknowledge that, while there is great energy in our communities, there are some communities that have pretty unpalatable views. We need to be careful there, and we also need to take account of the importance of financial accountabilities, and, having said all that, I still think that there is a long way that we could go in terms of empowering or at least allowing communities to take advantage of resources and give them the opportunity. The debate at the budget has been, I believe, a really big success, for example. I am not terribly much to add, and I am sympathetic to the point that you make, because people just want public services to work, and they will become energized and engaged to whether it is around the status of potholes, schools, when they feel that they are not working to their satisfaction or the future of a local hospital, for example. We have all seen examples of that order. We produced a short paper recently about community empowerment and examples that we focused on, of where services and work communities had come together, most principally over the course of the pandemic, and some of the real success in galvanising a community. However, I think that the point that I am left with is that much of that, as we have seen over the course of the pandemic, and James is right, where aspects of control or bureaucracy were taken away and allowed some examples to thrive, but perhaps too much of it is rooted in life and death still circumstances that there needs to be a stronger model and more encouragement and enthusiasm that communities can come together, perhaps less around the notion of a hospital closure or life and death, that there is scope for people to opt in and out in a way that can feel a bit more stabilized. So, just about to finish, do our witnesses have any further points that we should add on any area where they feel that we have not covered effectively, or we should come back to? Excellent. On that very positive note, I want to thank you for your evidence. I think it's been a really fascinating and interesting session. I also want to thank our members as well for their questions. I would like to close this session.