Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Meeting date: Thursday, May 16, 2024

Official Report 798KB pdf

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National Outcomes

Welcome back to the meeting. We will continue to take evidence for the inquiry into the Scottish Government’s national outcomes and indicators relating to international policy. We are joined by Louise Davies, head of policy and communications at Scotland’s International Development Alliance; Lewis Ryder-Jones, advocacy adviser at Oxfam Scotland; and Dr Graham Long, senior lecturer at Newcastle University. I thank you for proactively approaching the committee about your work in this area.

In response to the Scottish Government’s public consultation, you called for measurement of more relevant indicators and better alignment with the United Nations sustainable development goals. What is your assessment of the document that has been laid before the Parliament for consultation? Have you had any role in the development of the new international indicators? I will start with Ms Davies.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for inviting us to the meeting. We know that you have been looking at the national outcomes—and particularly the international outcome—for a number of meetings, and we are pleased to be here to talk about the global responsibility aspect of the international outcome, which we would argue is the most important.

The parliamentary report has been circulated. A key point that we made in our submission was that the indicators are flawed. They do not accurately reflect what we could be doing as a good global citizen. However, the report looks not at the indicators but at the outcomes that have been presented and the vision that accompanies them. I am happy to talk further about how we would like the indicators to be developed but, at this point, they have not been worked on, so we cannot really give any thoughts. We have not yet been approached by the team to feed into that process, but we hope that we will be able to do so.

Broadly, we welcome many of the changes that are presented in the report. It feels like a step in the right direction in acknowledging our global impact and global responsibility, but there is definitely room for improvement. If the national performance framework is to be a wellbeing framework, we need to think about wellbeing beyond Scotland’s borders. We cannot have wellbeing in Scotland at the expense of communities in other countries, so we are keen to see that reflected across the whole of the national outcomes.

We have a commitment to do no harm, and that should be the very least element that we see across everything. Beyond that, we talk about being a good global citizen, which means having a positive impact on communities. That should be the ambition. As an example of that, if we were looking at supply chains, doing no harm would mean working with companies that are not breaching human rights regulations; having a positive impact and being a good global citizen would mean promoting and using fair trade. That is the kind of shift that we would like to see.

We would like to see more reference to global responsibility across the outcomes, but in the international outcomes specifically, there are certainly areas to welcome in the changes that have been presented. It does feel as though there is a stronger reference to global citizenship and interconnectedness, which is positive, but there are still contradictions. For example, the report talks about enhancing our prosperity, but what we want to see is enhancing our wellbeing and, ideally, the wellbeing of everybody else globally. Enhancing our prosperity through international trade could cause harm, so we at least need to say that, if we are enhancing prosperity through trade, it must not cause harm. Ideally, that would be reworded to start talking about things that are not about prosperity but about wellbeing.

Our overarching view of the changes that are presented is that there is definitely some good stuff in there. We can go into more detail, particularly about welcoming the new climate action outcome, for example, but we would like to see a thread that runs through about global responsibility. There are lots of opportunities to address that, for example, in the wellbeing economy outcome.

Thank you for having us today. First, Oxfam fully endorses everything that Louise Davies has just said. We have been involved in the current process. We were also involved in the process during the previous review, in the run-up to the 2018 to 2023 national outcome period. The process for developing the new national outcomes was very different from the previous process.

10:30  

This time round, the level of public engagement was relatively low, having been slightly more comprehensive in the previous round. Oxfam was involved in the public engagement in 2018. Broadly speaking, however, the engagement on the international outcome at that point was not fantastic. In fact, that outcome was added after the other outcomes had been broadly agreed by the public engagement process. We think that adding that outcome was a very good thing, by the way. It was really important, especially as the attempt to align with the SDGs—the United Nations sustainable development goals—was made so clear, so its retention this time round is hugely welcome.

In fact, if the international outcome was not there, that would be hugely problematic for alignment. There is no way that we can have alignment to the SDGs if there is not a universal and international dimension to how we view not only wellbeing but economic development and other elements of the framework.

The process this time and the content of the international outcome have improved, and we welcome a lot of the wording, as Louise Davies said. We also welcome subtle changes to other elements of the framework, such as the addition of the climate action outcome—there was no explicit outcome on climate action previously. Within the extended vision and definition of that outcome, there is a clear connection to the global issues on which our progress, or lack of it, on climate action has an impact, which we really welcome.

One thing that we are less sure about this time round—Louise Davies mentioned this—relates to the understanding that wellbeing in Scotland can be pursued only if we fully understand, or attempt to understand, our international impact. We cannot pursue wellbeing here at the expense of wellbeing elsewhere. That underpins the concept of the SDGs and was globally consulted on—I am sure that Graham Long will speak to that later—and underpins the foundations of the concept of sustainable development. Oxfam is clear from our work globally that collective long-term wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of everyone else.

There is no inherent connection in the outcomes. For example, in the economy outcome as it is currently worded, there is a lack of stated understanding of that issue. Oxfam thinks that, from a scrutiny perspective, the committee’s role must go beyond the international outcome; it must look at each outcome through a global lens. If you do not do that, I do not think that any other committee can or will do it. My overarching call to you is to take the scrutiny period that we have until the end of November to look at not just the international outcome but the other ones, and to feed back to the Finance and Public Administration Committee on the need for the global lens.

On Louise Davies’s point about potential inherent contradictions, there is a mild elephant in the room around what we could call brand Scotland, or Scotland’s reputation globally and our impact through trade, and its connection to global responsibility. There is a strong argument that brand Scotland should sit within Scotland’s economy outcome and not our international outcome. The similar Welsh model has a global responsibility outcome but, in Scotland, that sits separately from elements of what would benefit Scotland. There is an argument to be made that we need to see the inherent contradictions that exist in the international outcome and in some of the evidence that the committee has received versus what we are telling you today. That is worthy of consideration.

Thank you for inviting me to be here; I will tack on one or two small points.

First, it is clear that wellbeing and sustainable development are linked. We have to understand those concepts as connected. Wellbeing, and the wellbeing of Scotland, is in the background of the NPF and its refresh, and sustainable development clearly has a global component that is inescapable and unavoidable. I also throw in the idea of future generations, which is a term that is talked about in the same area. It is important to clarify how those three things relate to each other and how you develop the indicators, policies and institutions that would do a good job of addressing all those concerns at the same time.

I have three further points. It is interesting and important to note that the international outcome is found across the other outcomes, too—there is no sense in which it can be wholly separated. That is consonant with the SDGs and the idea that they are “interlinked and indivisible”. It is also found across a lot of different indicators in the current NPF, and I take it that that will be the case in the future iteration.

As Louise Davies said, the report before Parliament that arises from the consultation deliberately does not go into the indicators; it takes the view that you set the outcomes first and then develop indicators that reflect those outcomes. From that perspective, the international outcome, in the way in which it is framed in its new version and its expanded text, is clear about the emphasis on good global citizenship. It seems to be a positive way of setting the direction for what the indicators should be—it sets a clear trajectory. Conversely, an indicator set that did not address aspects such as Scotland’s spillovers or citizenship, or its global impact, would not be fit for purpose from that perspective, given the content of the international outcome that we have before us.

The indicators are important as one bit of the picture. Almost by definition, the national outcomes are aspirational and are designed to be readily communicable, but indicators can track, in a much more detailed sense, what needs to be done to achieve the outcomes. Arguably, there is a role for identifying more precise targets or ambitions, too. Indicators have an important role in the process, but they are not the only element. Behind the scenes somewhere, it would be nice to have a stronger sense of exactly what sustainable development and wellbeing are taken to mean.

We know that indicators can be quite blunt tools for steering policy. They are quite useful, because what gets measured gets done, but that can lead to people teaching to the test or simply doing what they are being asked to assess themselves or report on. It is therefore important to have a framework of guidance and support to ensure that the learning and the practice goes alongside simply reporting on paper, in a report card, whether there has been no reversal or positive progress. Indicators have an important role, but they are just one part of the larger picture, alongside ways to establish those aspects of a wider understanding of what sustainable development, wellbeing and international contributions involve.

Could you dive more deeply into your comments on measuring progress and what gaps you think that there are in the current framework? I go back to Dr Long initially.

We did some work on that with the alliance. The gaps, as we saw them, were partly around just following up better on some things at home. In particular, there is an outcome that relates to migrants and their experience; we might want to see that deepened through better disaggregation of data on how migrants actually fare in different respects in Scotland. There is currently a very interesting debate in the United Kingdom, in the white paper on “International development in a contested world: ending extreme poverty and tackling climate change” and other such things, around remittances and remittance structures. Perhaps Scotland could pick up on some of that work in the future.

A clear element where we felt that there was scope for improvement was in the measurement of the impact elsewhere in the world of Scotland’s consumption at home. That might, as a minimum, with regard to environmental impacts, take the form of some kind of material footprint measure, which is a measure of raw material extracted in the course of consumption. That is a useful complement to enable us to look more widely to carbon emissions and those sorts of metrics. I think that it does a distinctive and worthwhile job in speaking to a wider account of environmental sustainability and environmental protection.

Measuring socio-economic spillovers and impacts elsewhere is quite difficult, so I do not blame Scotland’s national performance framework for not doing a great job of that the first time around. Even countries that you would expect to be front runners do not do a great job on it, because the data science is very difficult. Drawing out individual country-level attribution of different points of the global supply chain and global value chain is very hard work.

It seems that you might be able to do something around measuring and aggregating the behaviour of firms across particular spheres. The garment industry is one area where lots of work is being done by firms that have a substantial retail footprint in Scotland, and you might draw on and aggregate that work. You could measure compliance with standards that are already out there, or develop new standards. You do not have to measure performance on a statistic; you can measure compliance with a framework that supports the statistic that you want to get to.

There is also a question about the impact of Scotland’s production. Looking at that, the two things that stand out as obvious components, because they are measured in global-level metrics, are around arms exports and oil and gas exports.

There are some concrete steps that might be taken in those ways. The environmental stuff at a global level is fairly well established, and there is stuff that you can draw on. The Office for National Statistics already measures material footprint for England, for example, and I think that Zero Waste Scotland measures it for Scotland, so it seems fairly painless to adopt that. The social and economic agenda takes a bit more work because the data science is harder, but that could be approached creatively and in partnership. It looks as though thinking about Scotland’s production and exports would be rather easier, because some of that data is already available.

I have a couple of follow-ups. One is to say that I have a short briefing that outlines eight of the key recommendations, which I am happy to leave with you.

The other is to mention the flaws that we see in the current way in which the international outcome is measured. For example, we are looking at Scotland’s population size as one of the indicators, but that does not say much about Scotland’s contribution internationally.

There is another indicator called

“contribution of development support to other nations”,

on which the Scottish Government commissioned quite a lot of research, which was published in 2020. The research explains a really rigorous way of measuring the indicator across more than just the international development outcome by looking at the way that it links with climate, trade and migration. All the statistics are there and were pulled together for 2017, but we have had no updates since then. We have six years of no metrics on what could be a really useful measure. However, that work is already out there.

To follow up on what Graham said, there are some softer spillovers that could be considered for measuring. For example, Scotland’s role in having a voice on key global issues and the work that Scotland did on promoting loss and damage and vaccine equity could be measured somehow. Our suggestion is that the global south panel could assess whether Scotland’s voice on the global stage has been positive or negative over a period of a year, which would be a useful indication of whether our work is perceived positively.

On the production elements of fossil fuel extraction and export and the arms trade, our point is that those must be measured so that there is transparency and so that a reasonable conversation can happen with the Scottish public about whether those things are positive or negative. It is not necessarily taking a stance on those things, but without any of that data it is quite difficult to have those conversations.

In truth, I do not have much to add. It has all been said, with perhaps one exception. The need to follow on with meaningful measurement connects very much to alignment with the SDGs. The SDGs have targets in place, which we do not within our NPF. You can take either side of the fence on the merits or not of targets for the NPF. It used to have them pre-2018, but now it does not.

Oxfam’s position is that targets are useful because they drive progress, particularly against the scale of measurement within the NPF that goes from “worsening” to “maintaining” to “improving”. To use climate as the example, if you look at the NPF measurement of climate impact over the past six years it says that we have been improving the whole time, yet we have missed eight out of 12 targets and we have just scrapped our interim 2030 target.

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There is an inherent issue with the visualisation of the data that we measure. To improve alignment with the SDGs, we think that connecting NPF outcomes to existing targets, where there are legislative targets, makes sense. The measure of whether we are improving, worsening or maintaining should be benchmarked against that target, not against whether the arc is up or down. That is an important point to make—it is also how the SDGs operate.

When indicators are developed over the coming period, which they will be, there will be a real need to think through their alignment to the SDGs so that that is done where it can be done. Of course, some SDG indicators and targets are not applicable to Scotland, which is why we need a local framework, such as the NPF to deliver the SDGs in Scotland. That connection is really important, even though it is not across the board.

There is no doubt that the outcomes are linked, and there is a strong commitment to having that. We understand the complexities of the wellbeing economy and fair work. We need to balance good international trade and the relationships that we want to have, while, at the same time, supporting existing industry and sectors that we have and ensuring that we avoid potential harm to them.

You touched on the climate action outcome, which is vital, because we want to have a good global impact and to be seen as a global leader. Although we want to maximise what we are trying to achieve, actions to reduce climate can have harmful aspects in the world. We touched on the fact that many targets have been met but many have not been met. Many of those targets have been removed, changed, cancelled or dropped.

When we are thinking about being balanced and positive and making real progress, how can we as a nation produce the image that we want? At times, that image has been tarnished because of our deeds and our actions to date. It is about trying to balance that by ensuring that we can be taken seriously. We have not always managed to receive and attain what we should, but it is about making sure that we have that positivity, that balance and that practice. It would be good to get a view from you on that. I will start with you, Ms Davies.

The point on the wellbeing economy outcome is interesting. You talked about the fact that it references that we want good international trade. We would question that. It is about exploring those definitions and what we mean by those terms. Who defines good international trade? A wellbeing economy is not just money. We would say that that wording needs some thought—“sustainable international trade” might be a better term.

The outcomes give us the opportunity to think holistically and make sure that things are not contradicting each other. We at SIDA have worked for some time on policy coherence for sustainable development. All policy decision making and spending should be in the service of sustainable development and we should ensure that we are not making those contradictions.

As you say, within climate action, there are human rights issues around the minerals that we are sourcing to support our transition. That needs to be addressed and considered as part of that. In theory, the outcomes could help us do that if they are very clearly defined.

The other thing that would assist is legislation to help embed the national outcomes in decision making and ensure that public bodies are adhering to them in terms of not only accountability, but ensuring that public bodies have support, leadership and communications to help them understand how best to make those decisions.

We support the introduction of a wellbeing and sustainable development bill that would service all those things, along with a future generations commissioner who can provide support and toolkits to enable that decision making to happen in line with what the NPF vision sets out.

Oxfam has strong, well-documented views on some of those areas. What should we be looking at to find that balance and make that progress?

If I interpret it correctly, the question is about how we make this more useful for everyone. That is a big question. We are very supportive of the existence of national outcomes, which supports a journey of moving away from crude measures such as gross domestic product, and the development of a more meaningful wellbeing economy monitor, which is linked to the national outcomes. Those things are really positive. However, fundamentally, they do not drive policy and spending decisions. There is a complete disconnect between the vision of the national outcomes and the practice that happens—not all the time, but often.

Part of the problem is that, in the legislative underpinning of the national outcomes, there is a statutory requirement to consult as ministers see fit on the development of national outcomes, and a statutory requirement for the Parliament to be given a chance to look at them, but no statutory requirement for the Parliament to vote on those national outcomes nor a statutory requirement to think through how they are used. To echo what Louise Davies said, we probably need to change that.

We backed the wellbeing and sustainable development bill concept from very early on. For us, that is about strengthening what the national outcomes mean to this Parliament, the people of Scotland and decision makers in all sorts of public bodies—and businesses. Business is not the problem but part of the solution. However, there needs to be a level of accountability as to how shareholders act and what the priority is on profit versus other elements of sustainable development. The wellbeing and sustainable development bill could help that. That is about not just a stick, but a support mechanism and toolkits.

I will use one example. The Parliament’s sustainable development impact assessment tool was really well developed by your colleagues in the Scottish Parliament information centre and should be used across all committees to help us take a global lens, using the national outcomes as a frame. That is a very practical way. The truth is that that is more time-consuming and more effort, and it takes more thought, but we cannot shy away from that. We live in complex times.

The idea of balance in your question is very common to definitions of sustainable development, to what we owe future generations and to notions of a just transition. The only way for a country to decide what its balance ought to be, and then be held responsible for what it has decided, is to have a national conversation of some kind, through its institutions and with the public, about what weighs for what in that balance. What goes on what side of the scale, and how much do those weigh against each other? Indicators can be a helpful part of that, and the outcomes can be helpful. They can frame that debate in a certain way.

Scottish public bodies are already under a range of duties to act sustainably in different ways. In some ways, it is a bit of a shame that there is no clearer sense of what that really requires. We need to get into the detail of some of that. The terms are very widely thrown around, and it would be easy to say back to you, yes, what we need is a just transition; however, the terms of that transition are genuinely contested and you have to have some way of sorting through them and thinking them through. The debate over what to measure—what things would be right—is always political and always reflects that conversation. What you end up measuring informs a further conversation about how much we should balance those things.

Lewis Ryder-Jones is right. For example, the point of having a metric on arms sales is not to say that arms sales are terrible, but to say, “We sell arms. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” and have a conversation as a country about what should happen on that.

Having visibility on that data is an important first step. What gets measured gets done. However, we also find that what people want to do or want to be seen to be doing is what they end up measuring. Those things are intertwined. It is a good chance to have that conversation about what a transition involves, how the balance should be struck and what counts for what.

Is there more need for public participation in some of that? Government and industry have a role, but could we talk about creating a bigger role for a group or a focus to which we could bring people from different parts of society? It has a bigger impact on them as a nation; they do not seem to be part of the solution, but they can be looked on as a problem. Giving more potential for such public participation—creating some kind of opportunity—might be a way forward to dealing with some of that balance.

There are ways in which you can encourage more of that national dialogue. Every country does that differently, and I do not want to lay down any rules about how any country has to do it, but Scotland has a tradition of doing things in a participatory way—for example, there have been climate change assemblies and those sorts of things—and it would seem appropriate to use that tradition of open government in this case.

It seems clear that the SDGs have a localising component, which is helpful. Their language assumes whole-of-society implementation, with all sectors being involved. Maybe a commissioner would have a role to play in that, but even if you do not end up with a commissioner, having some kind of multistakeholder commission might be helpful.

There should be coherence between what is thought about these questions in Scottish public life and the kinds of institutions and policies that are put in place. It is about gently encouraging those things to align and go in the same direction, so that sustainable development becomes more widely understood across Government and it becomes a norm that people understand, including understanding why it is important and what its implications are. Then the conversation about the terms of a just transition will look a bit different.

I absolutely agree that public participation is important, and there are lots of ways to get it. Legislation might be an important part of that, and a commissioner or something similar might also be an important part of that.

Thank you. Time is tight, so I am happy to leave it there.

The Scottish Government is under new leadership, and one of the first changes that was made in the Cabinet was to remove the word “wellbeing” from the economy minister’s job title. There has also been quite a shift in the language in the last week or so. There is much more strident use of the term “economic growth”, and I think that I even heard the First Minister go back to using the phrase “sustainable economic growth”, which I had not heard for some time.

I am interested in your thoughts on that, because you are painting quite a positive picture about what has been happening up to now in terms of the review of the performance framework and the inclusion of a more well-rounded picture of what sustainable development means in that context. What are your thoughts on what the Government’s direction might be, given those very public, headline indications about its priorities, which are for economic growth?

The overarching decision not to change the name of the national performance framework to something else speaks to some of those points. There are tensions around what “wellbeing” means to whom and those tensions are clearly playing out at a political level, too. We strongly support the idea that the framework needs to have a name change and that “wellbeing” should appear front and centre in that name. That would help to develop more of a long-term understanding; it links to what Graham Long was alluding to about the need for building a shared understanding of these issues. I think that the national outcomes have a big role to play in that.

On the overarching purpose of the national performance framework linking to the politics of today, I think that we need to remove the politics of today from the framework. If we do not, this becomes a political conversation, whereas the framework is supposed to sit separately to that. That is how we understand it at Oxfam: a wellbeing framework must sit separately. The titles of ministerial roles and of portfolios are, for us, irrelevant to the delivery of a framework such as this, which should transcend the short to medium-term changes.

From an Oxfam perspective, the economic growth question is an interesting one. This might be moving us away from the focus of today’s meeting, so I will be brief. The value of economic growth is quite clear—nobody is arguing with that. The way in which economic growth is shared, however, is the most important question, and, in our view, that is not being approached in a sensible way politically. We would like to see a much more grown-up conversation about what economic growth means for different sectors, why, and for whom within those sectors. Then we can start having a meaningful conversation about what that really means.

Oxfam takes issue with the term “sustainable economic growth”, because it can perpetuate the problematic idea that we need perpetual economic growth in all sectors. To bring us back to the global lens, there are clear indicators that some sectors, such as the oil and gas sector, must ultimately not produce the same level of economic growth that they once did. In fact, they are not going to—we all know that. Oxfam’s perspective is that we need to see economic growth through a more nuanced lens, and this framework helps us to do that.

11:00  

Do the other panel members have brief comments? I have one more question as well.

The national outcomes paper that has been presented to the Parliament has the same kind of tension in it about growth. It wants to mention growth, but we all know that, as Lewis Ryder-Jones pointed out, ultimately, for growth to be compatible with a vision of sustainable development, it has to be decoupled from environmental degradation. Academically, the jury is out—or more than out—on whether that is possible, both in absolute logical possibility terms and in terms of whether the technology and the resources are in place to allow the transition to effectively decouple, so that we can continue growing at the same time as not harming the environment. I think that it would be a fair summary to say that that seems unlikely.

The political headwinds emphasise the importance of having other parts of the framework there and having a multilevel system. In some respects, having a legal framework in which this is talked about and having indicators that ensure that attention is paid and that there is transparency around the environmental aspects of the agenda become even more important if we do not have the same level of political focus on those aspects. If they are not front and centre in politicians’ minds, and if you do not have that wider framework that calls attention to those things and allows the conversation to continue, the conversation will go one way.

Briefly, on the political point, the Government made a manifesto commitment to introduce a wellbeing and sustainable development bill, and that has continued to be referenced in programmes for government. We therefore expect and hope that that will happen, and we look forward to seeing the report on the consultation in the next month or so. If that does not happen, it would be hugely concerning, based on the commitment so far that we value wellbeing and sustainable development as a society. That bill would include definitions of the terms “wellbeing” and “sustainable development”, which would help us to better understand what we mean by a wellbeing economy, and there may be supporting definitions of a wellbeing economy. Again, that would be valuable in providing a shared understanding of what we mean and what we are trying to achieve.

That leads on to my last question, which is about one of the provisions in that bill: the establishment of a sustainable development commissioner. You may be aware that there are active conversations in the Parliament about the value of commissioners, about where they sit in relation to committees and about the expense of commissioners and of running commissions. Why is a sustainable development commissioner a critical part of that bill? Can a better case be made for having a commissioner? If we are to continue with commissioners, why should we have a sustainable development commissioner?

For clarity, there have been conversations about a wellbeing and sustainable development commissioner in some places and a future generations commissioner in others. Our view is that it would be one and the same. [Interruption.] It is just a question of semantics.

Graham Long can speak more to this, because he has done research on the different options and has looked at how the role could be serviced in different ways. However, our feeling is that a commissioner is needed to scrutinise delivery of a wellbeing and sustainable development bill, which would be about implementing the national outcomes, and to provide accountability and leadership. There are ways of doing that through other means, but it would be challenging and all of those ways would cost money.

The future generations role is about long-term and joined-up thinking, and eventually we would see cost savings because of that long-term thinking. We have the example from Wales: we have seen the impact that the role there has had. It would be very difficult for Wales to deliver its Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 without a commissioner to lead and service the delivery of that act. We have quite a lot on paper on that, which we can share with you later. Graham is perhaps best placed to follow up on that.

I will try to provide a quick summary but we have a paper on that, and we will send it to you.

One clear point that comes out of the question about the current political situation is the really important one about how we represent the interests of future generations within a political system. There seems to be a widespread mood that we need to move in that direction. We are seeing a lot of thinking about that issue at lots of levels in institutions—the European Union is thinking about it, as is the United Nations—and there is clearly a role for the commissioner in terms of representation. There are also functions around accountability, moving the national conversation on and creating some sort of institutional home for that discussion, as that is how you cement something as being part of a way of thinking in a country.

I would just highlight that, in other countries, it is not simply a question about having a commissioner, because they have a commissioner and other things. For example, Canada has a commissioner and also a committee that does the scrutiny work, as does Finland, with the roles being split differently, so there are different ways of achieving the same ends.

If you decided that you could not afford a commissioner but you wanted to achieve the same ends, you could, for example, put in place a reporting duty on the part of the Government and a scrutiny duty on the part of a parliamentary committee or a set of parliamentary committees to do the accountability work. Alternatively, you could have some kind of stakeholder-convened commission that could do some of the investigative and supporting work, or you could create a series of networks that would bring together businesses and civil society organisations to develop some approaches.

If money is the obstacle, there are ways of putting in place some of the same functions through a range of alternatives. We can look to other countries to see how possible alternatives might work, but we should bear in mind that each country’s context is different, so there has to be careful consideration of what will work for Scotland.

I agree with all of that. Part of your question concerned things that would make this commissioner different. In the existing commissioner landscape, the Scottish Human Rights Commission is an existing body that could take on some of the roles that we propose that the new commissioner could do. However, there are key distinctions between human rights and sustainable development that get to the very core of why the issue is an overarching one. We are talking about not just the rights of people who live on planet earth now but about people who do not yet exist, and, crucially, we are also talking about the planet, and neither of those things is covered by human rights.

The other proposals for commissioners that are before the Parliament right now, including a disability commissioner and a commissioner for older people, concern important issues, and those commissioners could have an important role to play, but they are group specific. Sustainable development, on the other hand, is not about one person; it is about absolutely everyone on the planet. That is the distinction, for me.

Further to that, although there are clearly other routes that could be taken, what remains important from an Oxfam perspective is that we should not go down a route where a future generations commissioner becomes a Government body rather than being accountable to Parliament. There is an important distinction between those two types of commissions. The commissioner should be part of the accountability structure that is required to ensure that the national outcomes actually drive policy and spending. That is another dimension with regard to why the issue is critically important, from our perspective.

As I did earlier, I will play devil’s advocate. A number of issues have been raised in the discussion, but I will start with the proposal to have a commissioner, as it has just been raised.

There has been talk that we should all be thinking about future generations. I do not disagree with the need to do that—I think about them every single day. There has also been a lot of talk about the number of commissioners that we have and the proposals to have even more. Many folk out there among the public—and the public are the most important people—think that commissioners are a complete and utter waste of time, in most regards, and that, with regard to the issue of accountability, which Dr Long and Mr Ryder-Jones mentioned, it is politicians who should be accountable. Is creating a commissioner taking away the accountability that every one of the politicians around this table should have?

No, I do not think that it is. It is not an either/or question—it should always be about both Parliament and the commissioner. A commissioner’s role can be quite extensive. They can introduce quite an important support mechanism for the role that you as parliamentarians play. That is critically overlooked in the role of commissioners a lot of the time. Nonetheless, Oxfam’s position is that there are other routes to do that. A commissioner might not be the most cost-effective short-term route—that is fine. We think that they are because of the potential for a change in approach that would ultimately lead to preventative policy and spending over the medium term to long term, which would save the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government significant amounts of money. I think that the specificity of the accountability mechanism is less important than the principle of thinking long term, which is what a commissioner would support the Parliament and public bodies to do. That is the critical point that we want to get across.

I do not have a huge amount to add. As Lewis Ryder-Jones mentioned earlier, it is unfortunate in a way that we are being presented with a whole bunch of commissioners, which makes us feel as though we have to make the case for commissioners as a whole. Our position is very much that a future generations commissioner is quite a distinct role that would be very difficult to service through other means. The role is not that of a rights-based commissioner—it is not about arguing for specific groups’ rights. It is a much more holistic role that would consider planetary boundaries, the whole of the existing population and future generations. That is quite hard to service through other means.

It is worth thinking about where the accountability ought to be and for what. It seems to me that, in Scotland, we are still at the stage of deciding what the accountability should be for. The commissioner has an important role in developing that. The commissioner might play a part for five, 10 or 15 years, and then wither away once—

We have not seen any wither away.

There is no reason why this one could not break the pattern.

You might think about what the accountability position ought to be. Accountability is always accountability of someone to someone in respect of some standard. The standard is not yet very fixed there, and it is not necessarily fair to expect the public of Scotland to come up with that in their spare time. Giving somebody the task to come up with that and develop it over time might be a very sensible way of thinking about it.

Would you want the commissioner—not the Parliament or the Government—to develop the standards?

No, although I think that the commissioner has a role in developing the standards, partly because of the concern about future generations and where they are represented in the system. It seems clear that we live in a world in which Parliaments are under short-term political pressures, and you might want to introduce a longer-term political perspective. Different countries do that in different ways. Singapore has a commissioner whose job is not about representing future generations in the sense of speaking to their interests so much as horizon scanning for future risks and projecting into the future what Singapore needs to do as a society to avoid those risks.

There is the question of how you want to encourage long-term policy making, or at least ensure that long-term policy making has a voice in the cycle somewhere. It may be that a commissioner ensures that, and the issue of independence is important.

Again, I am playing devil’s advocate here. We could set up a future generations commissioner who is a horizon gazer, if you like, and comes up with all that might need to be done—the long-term thinking—but we could still be stuck in a rut because we have a UK Treasury that gives only one-year funding and no long-term funding like that which exists in other places, including Singapore. How will all of that work when that commissioner can do nothing about UK Government policy and UK Government spending? What is the point?

The point depends on each country’s context. If what you are saying is that the Scottish position does not support the creation of that, I am not going to gainsay that. You are here representing the Scottish people to address that question in that capacity. It is not my job to tell you anything different. However, I point out that, in the situation that you mention, some of the same outcomes can be achieved in different ways.

11:15  

There is no single way of representing future generations or of trying to encourage long-term policy making, nor is there only one way of ensuring that the Government is accountable for what it does or does not do about those questions or that Parliament is accountable in a range of ways to the public as a whole—no one thinks that there is a single way in which Parliament should be accountable; the idea of using commissioners and watchdog bodies for different things is widespread across the world.

This is about thinking through the best route to achieve those aims, given your financial constraints. The idea of a commissioner should not be off the table, but a parliamentary system with committee scrutiny involves giving committees space and time. If you want future generations to be properly represented but do not want a commissioner to do that, the next most obvious body to do that work is one that involves youth, which might involve injecting more life into a youth Parliament or integrating youth representation more fully into your parliamentary structures.

If you do not have that already but think that it is important to do it, there is no way of doing it justice without institutional change, but I cannot see institutional change ever coming without some sort of cost in time, effort or cash.

I want to see massive institutional change, but we better not go there.

I will return to another important point that you made earlier, Dr Long. I am paraphrasing, but you said that there is already a range of duties for bodies to act sustainably. One good example of an area in which we have done well, but not quite as well as we could, is fair trade. The Economy and Fair Work Committee has been looking at procurement, but there is no particularly great definition of fair trade.

How do we move forward with meaningful measures? Would it be a good idea to look at the range of duties, tidy up definitions and get them right where they are not quite right, to ensure that folk are living up to their responsibilities?

I do not see an either/or in anything that you have just said. If you want those things, and, to paraphrase you, if you want to hold people to account for their responsibilities, there must be some mechanism for that take place, either by improvement of the democratic politics that you have or by institutional change to ensure that that occurs.

Or by enforcement of existing legislation.

My sense is that the existing legislation is not ripe for enforcement. When legislation is written, there is always a question about how much creative ambiguity to leave and whether that serves the purpose of the legislation. Legislation achieves its aims not only through enforcement but through what it says about norms, about where a society is at and about what the ambition is.

A sustainable development bill has a key job. You could revisit all the bits of legislation and insert a definition of sustainability into each one. When the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 says that public bodies, including Parliament, Audit Scotland and the Government, have an obligation to act sustainably in fulfilling the climate change duty, you could add detail to that bill—and every other bill—to explain what that means. However, that might turn out to be more costly than having a new bill that just says, in some detail, what it means every time a bill says “sustainable” or “sustainable development”.

I do not know how the costs stack up, but I imagine that one argument for having a wellbeing and sustainable development bill or something like it would be that there are a number of definitions of sustainability out there, as well as of the word “wellbeing”, which is widely used in health and care contexts. It is important to get some clarity. You absolutely could do that by revisiting each bit of legislation, but you have to do that before you can start holding anyone to account, because if it is not at all clear what you are aiming at or trying to ensure, it is unfair to hold people to account for that.

That all points in the direction of having a body that would advise on, support and concretise those things. A bill is one good way of achieving clarity on some of those definitional questions.

Does anybody else want to come in?

I am very conscious of time, so I ask for succinct answers that do not repeat what has been said.

Through the research that we—actually, Graham Long—carried out, anecdotally, we heard that most public bodies are not using the national outcomes or the national performance framework as a decision-making tool. They are reporting after the event, but it is not influencing their decision making. Therefore, it would help if the bill underpinned that.

On the other point, about scrutiny, the national outcomes come to Parliament every five years for Parliament to take a look at, but there is no parliamentary scrutiny of how we meet our indicators. Therefore, through the current process, we are not checking whether we are doing what we say we do.

Another option would be to do annual scrutiny of performance against the national performance framework. There is currently a framework and an element of scrutiny, but all that is scrutinised is what we actually want to measure, not whether we have achieved it.

On sustainable development, around 10 per cent of Scottish legislation refers to sustainable development. Having definitions of what we mean by sustainable development would help with what you spoke about; there is no doubt about that, and the legislation is the perfect vehicle for it. I will stop there because if I go on I would be repeating what Louise and Graham have said.

I could go on for much longer, convener, but I will not.

I am sure that you could. Mr Brown, I am conscious of time, so if you could make it a quick question, and if we could have succinct answers, that would be helpful.

I will ask my questions in one go, but first I will make a couple of points. On the commissioner, perhaps it is just a bad time to make the suggestion, because the Parliament is thinking about reducing the number of commissioners. I also have to say that appointed accountability is probably too widespread these days, and elected accountability is not widespread enough.

On the point that was made about climate action, I do not really see the issue with reporting the fact that there is an improvement, but that we have failed to meet climate targets; both things are true, and it is important to be true and accurate in such things.

My questions are about the framework in general. I am interested in your views on its purpose and effect. If we ask somebody in the street about the national performance framework, what kind of response would we get? Would it be wrong to ask that, because the framework is meant for a different purpose? If so, what is that purpose? Is it mainly for the Government, non-governmental organisations and others to self-check?

The second point is that, if we take forward whatever is agreed on in terms of the outcomes of international activity, is it essential or desirable that we have a network of overseas bases in which to promulgate the activities, or is that by the by, and can it be done by another means?

On the purpose and the public awareness, perhaps the consultation process was a missed opportunity to get more public awareness of what the framework is. It is supposed to be a vision for all of Scotland, and the public should know what it is. We probably all agree that, if we asked our families or friends, they would not know what it was.

As we talked about, there the name could be changed, so that it was called a wellbeing framework or something else that resonates a bit more with people. Further, the consultation process was under-resourced, and there was not enough consultation with different groups and in different ways. SIDA has a global citizenship group that represents voluntary organisations, researchers and activists from diaspora groups, and that would have been a perfect group to consult about its vision for Scotland, and particularly how global issues are dealt with.

On a point of clarification, at the start I was asked about whether we had been consulted on the indicator process, and I can confirm that we were consulted on the development of the international outcome and were pleased with the outreach that the national performance framework team did in terms of talking to the international development sector about encouraging responses to the consultations.

I do not have a comment on international offices. As Lewis Ryder-Jones said, there is a conflation between the international outcome where we talk about global responsibility and our global impact and the outcome that involves Scotland’s reputation and brand Scotland, which is what those international offices are there for. Those are quite distinct things. In our global sustainable development work, we are concerned about global responsibility. Perhaps that work should sit in an economy discussion, but I do not want to comment on that.

On the climate point, I agree with the statement that both are true. However, we need to present both things. Currently, we only present one, which is problematic for us. It is a question of having publicly available data visualisation that shows progress in the simplest way—on whether we are getting worse or better—and on whether progress is related to targets that we set ourselves. Both are important, so I agree with that statement.

When Mr Brown asked about the issue of public understanding of the national performance framework, the first thing that I thought of was a friend of mine who lives in Finland whose child is five years old and sees SDGs on her local bus to school. That is the ideal: those frameworks and concepts being advertised quite clearly to the public. We do not have that in Scotland. I ask any one of my family members—I think about this all the time—if they know what they are, and they do not know until I tell them. That is just the reality.

Therefore, from the Oxfam perspective, these tools and this bill are primarily for the Government, public bodies, businesses and civil society to sense-check our direction of travel. That is the right place for it to be right now. In an ideal scenario, we would be investing in campaigns to improve public awareness, but I appreciate that we are not there yet.

On the international offices side, I echo the point that I have made a few times and that Louise Rennie has just made. There is a clear need for brand Scotland to be promoted globally. I do not question that. We live in a competitive world. The question is whether that sits alongside global responsibility. For us, it is quite clear that that is an uneasy link and that there is an inherent contradiction in promoting a brand—

Do you know whether there is a directive that says that those offices can only promote brand Scotland and cannot talk about global responsibility? Why are the two antithetical? Perhaps I am missing a directive that says that you can talk about one but not the other.

I suppose that I am coming at this from the perspective of the framework that we are talking about today: the national outcomes. For us to have a clear understanding of our global responsibility and what we are measuring in that regard, it does not make sense for the brand Scotland promotion to sit alongside that. I am not saying that the offices themselves cannot do both things—I cannot comment on that and I do not know whether they do. The point is that, from your perspective, looking at the national outcomes, those two things do not sit well with each other, especially when we do not have data to know how we are doing on the global responsibility side. That is the critical issue on which we need to feed back to the Government.

I do not think that it is important that every member of the public knows all the NPF outcomes or which indicator falls under which. However, it is important that, if you were to spend an afternoon or an hour with those people talking through what they wanted in the Scotland and world in which they want to live and in which they want their children to live, it would make sense and they would be able to see what they wanted mapped against the set of outcomes. It is also important that those people who want to can go on a Scottish Government website and see the data, transparently, on how Scotland is doing on those things, given that there is that connection.

I would widen out the point on the international offices to a point about partnership. International partnerships are very important as vehicles for learning. There is a clear case that Scotland’s international development partnerships would be useful vehicles for tracking Scotland’s international impacts, both positive and negative.

It is quite apparent to me that global responsibility has always been a component and an underpinning of the brand. I have no view on brand Scotland, except to say that it seems clear that Scotland’s global responsibility is clearly part of that picture, and, obviously, undercutting that will harm the picture. That will become more important in the future. I do not see people becoming less ethically interested in sustainable development, the fate of the planet, what goes on elsewhere in the world or how we are involved. Rather, the link will become stronger.

I have a final point, which is not a question, because there is no time. I had wanted to ask about how your attitudes may have changed because of Brexit and because of what seems to be a very live discussion about whether the UK should come out of the European convention on human rights. If you want to submit something in writing, that would be really helpful, but we do not have time for an answer.

I am very sorry that we have been so squeezed for time today, but that concludes the session. Thank you very much for your written communication to us and for coming along this morning.

11:29 Meeting continued in private until 11:30.