Chamber and committees

At the moment, the mandate letters from the Scottish Government to public bodies refer to the national planning framework—I am sorry; I mean the national performance framework. The letters also refer to the Scottish public finance manual, which—I have it in front of me—outlines the responsibility of accountable officers with regard to those issues. That work is done across Government, and that is how we manage it at the moment. As I said before, the review will look at any further reforms that are required to enhance that process and make it stronger.

The national planning framework also has the acronym “NPF”—that is what keeps confusing me. The national performance framework is reflected in the national planning framework, both of which are NPFs.

Yes, we are looking at that. We are also looking at how the Welsh are improving accountability and learning from their experience. That is being built into our on-going work, and the advisory group will no doubt look at that as well. I assure the committee that we are very interested in learning from the Welsh experience.

Our position is that we have no argument with the policy intention, in that we recognise that there are issues that need to be addressed. The phrase “implementation gap” has been used, and there are issues around scrutiny and accountability. The national performance framework was pioneering when it was introduced in 2007, and many other countries looked to Scotland to find out how we were doing things, as we set out long-term indicators for how to improve life in Scotland and Scotland’s wellbeing.

That was in 2007, and it is now 2025. We recognise that it is now time for improvement and that some of the gaps that Sarah Boyack and others have identified must be addressed. A number of organisations have said that they do not want overlap or duplication; if the bill was passed, we would have both the national performance framework and the duties under the bill. As the committee will, I hope, be aware, many organisations have expressed concern about overlap and duplication.

We recognise that there are issues that have to be addressed, and we want to explore non-legislative routes for doing so.

At the moment, there is a statutory underpinning of the national performance framework in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which I referred to in my opening remarks. It says that public bodies must

“have regard to the national outcomes”

in the framework. Overall, there are 30 bits of legislation across the Government that refer to sustainable development. That is already in place.

We agree that some of the issues that Sarah Boyack is concerned about and on which the committee is deliberating must be addressed, and that is why we are reforming the national performance framework in relation to scrutiny, accountability and other issues that people have raised in past consultations.

We do not have any objection to the idea that it can be strengthened. Today, we are discussing how to do that—whether to use legislation or whether to use the reforms to the national performance framework. For the reasons that I explained earlier, if we have a new bill that is not aligned with the national performance framework’s national outcomes, public bodies have expressed concern about duplication, overlap and potential confusion, because they will have to have regard to what is in the bill and to the national performance framework.

There is agreement that we need to strengthen accountability, scrutiny and so on, but the Government’s view is that we should explore the non-legislative route first. In addition, the Parliament has endorsed the report that said that commissioners with advocacy roles should be created only “as a last resort”. At the moment, that is being done not as a last resort.

Yes. The Deputy First Minister announced the intention to reform the national performance framework. With that in mind, we want to make it more impactful and effective and to consider the scrutiny and accountability issues.

Therefore, the next national performance framework will be a lot more robust. We will learn lessons and listen to all the responses to the consultations. This committee and others might also publish their views, all of which will be taken into account.

We do not know Audit Scotland’s view on that, and I understand that it did not respond to the consultation. Such an approach would mean that additional duties would have to be given to Audit Scotland. I am not ruling anything out, but perhaps that fact shows that it is not the route to take. We do not have a fixed view on that. I am just explaining that additional duties would require to be given to Audit Scotland for that to happen.

My instinct would be to say that it shows that we do not need a new commissioner, and that we should avoid creating one if at all possible. As I said, it would be very much a last resort, and we should explore non-legislative routes to address some of those issues.

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland told the committee that she was concerned about “duplication” and the risk of

“overlaps with existing offices ... undermining effectiveness and efficiency.”

That quote speaks for itself. A new commissioner would lead to a lot more confusion.

If the bill were to proceed, that should be looked at. However, I do not know the answer to that question, because I cannot see how it could be achieved. Given that there is so much potential for overlap, how could we completely avoid that happening? I do not know the answer to that.