Finance and Public Administration Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Official Report 712KB pdf

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National Performance Framework: Ambitions into Action

Good morning, and welcome to the 17th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is the final evidence session as part of our inquiry into the national performance framework: ambitions into action. I welcome the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, John Swinney. Mr Swinney is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Barry Stalker, head of the national performance framework unit, and Caroline Dodds, team leader in the national performance framework unit. I welcome you all to the meeting.

I invite Mr Swinney to make a short opening statement.

Good morning, convener. I welcome the opportunity to appear before the committee as part of its inquiry into the national performance framework. Although the national performance framework is highly regarded domestically and internationally, we must grapple with the complex question of how to translate the ambition that it sets out into concrete actions for improvement. There will not be one straightforward answer to that question, but by drawing on the experience of those who use the national outcomes to shape policy making and service delivery across local government, the public sector, business organisations and the voluntary sector, I am confident that effective solutions can be found.

Drawing on those experiences and voices exemplifies what the national performance framework is all about: encouraging partnership, collaboration and recognising the part that we all play in improving the wellbeing of people in Scotland. Meeting the challenges of Covid recovery, achieving net zero and reducing child poverty will require more and more of that collaboration, and we must therefore listen carefully in order to unlock more of the national performance framework’s potential.

I have been grateful for the responses that the committee has received to its call for evidence and from the oral evidence sessions that it has held as part of the inquiry. The breadth of responses from across Scottish society demonstrates the wide appeal of the national performance framework and its potential to bring together different sectors on the same outcomes. The responses underscore the strength of commitment to the national performance framework and the progress that we have made since 2018 in making the framework’s approach one for all of Scotland, not just for the Government.

We can and must learn from organisations that have effectively shaped their policies, programmes and systems around the national outcomes and that can demonstrate their impact on them. However, they also present important evidence in highlighting areas in which we can improve. Improvements can be made on issues such as accountability, budgeting for outcomes and integrating the national performance framework into the Government’s systems and processes. I will continue to listen to those important contributions and consider how we will respond.

The inquiry is timely, because the upcoming review of the national outcomes presents an opportunity to put ideas into action. The review, which will be undertaken in partnership with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, will consult widely with communities across Scotland on the national outcomes, and it will go further by considering how the national performance framework can achieve greater impact. Public engagement is due to start on 23 June, and the review is to be launched at the national performance framework conference. Communities, charities, businesses and other organisations in Scotland will be given various opportunities to influence what our national outcomes are and how we can create the environment in which they can be achieved. The findings of the committee’s inquiry will be considered as part of that review. As the committee has requested, we will provide the Parliament with ample time to consider the review’s findings and any proposed changes to the national performance framework that it leads to.

I am very happy to address any questions from the committee.

Thank you very much for that opening statement. You hit the nail on the head, because the most significant issues that have come out of the evidence sessions so far have been accountability and budgeting for outcomes. That has certainly been what I have been hearing. In the round-table session and in others, a number of witnesses made those points. The Scottish Leaders Forum said:

“typically, the NPF is not actively used to shape scrutiny, provide sponsorship, undertake commissioning of work or shape the allocation of funding.”

Witnesses have said that the national performance framework could be more closely linked to budget planning. Questions have been asked about that, but no real answers have been forthcoming. How can we make the national performance framework more responsive to those concerns?

That is a central issue. For the national performance framework to be effective, it has to be a statement of what we as a country are trying to achieve and the outcomes that support those aspirations. Inevitably, funding and policy decisions at an operational level will have enormous significance for whether those aspirations are achieved.

I was interested in some observations shared with the committee by North Ayrshire Council, which is well known to you, convener. The council provided a submission to the inquiry that said:

“The National Outcomes influence the development of our Council Plan which outlines our priorities agreed with our communities and is North Ayrshire Council’s central plan. It forms part of the ‘Golden Thread’ linking national outcomes through to each employee’s daily activities.”

That captures the sense of importance that we want to attach to the national performance framework. In that example from North Ayrshire Council, the contribution from an individual employee is connected right through to the national outcomes as part of the national performance framework. Similarly, budgeting should be so aligned. We must constantly be mindful of that issue in all the planning and decision making that we undertake. We should not take decisions or make judgments that are not aligned with the aspirations that are set out in the framework. Accordingly, we should be able to link decision making at an operational level with the achievement of those outcomes.

The point that you make is important. The phrase “golden thread” ran through a number of submissions and was raised in oral evidence. At the workshop that we held in Dundee and from talking to Government officials and witnesses across the board, I found that there is strong backing for the national performance framework and what it is trying to achieve but there is an issue with how patchy the Government’s response can be to the way that it sets its own outcomes.

That failure to align budgets to outcomes has caused an element of frustration, which came out last week. Organisations that take the NPF seriously feel that, although they are following it, there is no real reward for aligning themselves closely with it. There is also no backlash for other organisations that are more loosely aligned with the NPF. The Government does not take that into account either. It is almost as though the Government has set the outcomes and then allowed people more or less to get on with it without any real focus on what we can do from a financial perspective to encourage more people into pursuing them. That is why we have a patchy situation across Scotland, which none of us wants. People want best practice to be followed everywhere.

How can we tighten that up a wee bit? A number of witnesses have given evidence to suggest that Government departments do not always mention the national performance framework in their own documents when they set out objectives. That makes some organisations feel that the Government is not as focused on the NPF as it says that it is or as it should be. How will the Government address those issues?

The first thing that I will say, which I should have said in my answer to your first question, is that I accept that engagement on the issues will be patchy. That is not satisfactory, but it is an acknowledgement of reality. I will not sit here and deny that reality.

The point that you raise about whether there should be a reward or penalty mechanism is interesting. In a variety of different respects, we should consider whether there is a place for the performance of organisations in the use of public money to influence future decision making.

That is not a route that the Government has gone down. We have gone down more of a route of encouragement and engagement with organisations to get them to acknowledge the significance of the national performance framework and for that to be reflected in the Government’s priorities. However, as I said in my opening statement, the Government will examine with care the outcome of the inquiry and, if the committee comes to conclusions on some of the questions, we will give those issues consideration as we examine the role and content of the national performance framework as part of the review that we will undertake.

I probably put that quite crudely. It is not really about penalising organisations. It is probably about being more favourably disposed towards the ones that have engaged and accepted your encouragement, Deputy First Minister.

We might settle on a term such as “incentivising”, convener.

Indeed.

That might sum up what you and I are going on about and might be a better way to think about it.

This is quite a serious matter because the Government has outcomes that it wants to be delivered and there will clearly be an element in Government if they are not delivered. Therefore, we should surely focus on anything that helps to achieve them.

There is also an issue with who owns the NPF. It seems to be a whole-society approach. There does not seem to be a focused driver for it. Again, people feel that it is not being prioritised as much as it was initially. It has been around now for 14 or 15 years and there is a feeling that it should be re-energised a wee bit with a focus on who is driving it so that people are aware of exactly who that is.

The ownership of the NPF is clear: it is owned by the whole of society but is driven by the Government. That is the best way that I can express it.

The outcomes in the framework will not all be delivered by the Government. We need to successfully engage the business community, for example, on some of the questions as part of that. However, ultimately, the framework must be owned by the whole of society if we are to have any aspirations to deliver its contents. What then emerges is the degree of priority that the Government gives to the framework in its agenda and how we go about encouraging and motivating participation in the framework from a range of organisations.

As to the relevance of the national performance framework, it is more important today than ever. The principal areas of the policy agenda that the Government wishes to achieve are, in summary, an economic recovery from Covid, the eradication of child poverty, and addressing our commitments on net zero. Those three principal aspirations of Government policy will not be achieved in neat little compartments within Government. They will be spread across a range of the national outcomes that are part of the national performance framework. As a consequence, we must encourage a collaborative, non-compartmentalised approach to policy making to ensure that we achieve the Government’s policy objectives in a fashion that achieves the aspirations of the national performance framework.

Thank you for that. It has set my mind ticking over with a number of things but, to reassure my colleagues who are now panicking at the prospect of another myriad of questions from me, it does not mean that I will ask too many more.

I point out that one of the pleasing aspects of the evidence that we took was that the third and private sectors were supportive of, and, indeed, enthusiastic about, the national performance framework. You talked about recovery, poverty and having to address the climate emergency. Fife Council said that it prioritised those three outcomes. There was concern about there being perhaps too many outcomes when we should focus on three, four or five certain ones, not the 11 that we have.

You talked about the importance of the economy but “Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation” has only two references to the national performance framework. There is no alignment with national outcomes. If the Government is trying to ensure that everything is cross-cutting and working to the same agenda, an important document such as that should surely have taken greater cognisance of the national performance framework.

09:45  

I do not share your assessment of the national strategy for economic transformation, convener. I am happy to debate it and, if the committee reaches such a conclusion on some of the issues, ministers will reflect on that. The national strategy for economic transformation sets out an approach to economic development that is inextricably linked to the three themes that I mentioned in my last answer to you: Covid recovery, the eradication of child poverty and the achievement of net zero, all of which are embedded in the national performance framework.

If we are judging some of the questions by the degree to which we structure a strategy document, for example, to align with the contents of the national performance framework, you might have a point. However, the thinking in the national strategy is non-compartmentalised, collaborative and about engaging the various sectors of society in contributing towards the common goals, which are reflected at the heart of national performance by the purpose of the framework, which is to focus on creating a more successful country with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish through increased wellbeing and sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

It is important that the national performance framework is seen to underpin such documents. It is not always easy for people who read them to second guess the Government. That might be what the Government has in mind but, if it is not there in black and white, people will wonder whether the Government is really prioritising the NPF in the way that it should. That is what I am saying about the strategy, not that it diverges in any way from the NPF.

There might be an argument for some of the description and presentation of that to be more explicit. We could certainly consider that.

A number of people said that one of the difficulties with the national performance framework for the wider population—most of whom, I believe, will probably not even have heard of it—is its remarkably dull name. The title “national performance framework” brings to mind the national planning framework, which has the same acronym—NPF. People have suggested calling it the national wellbeing framework, although “ambitions for Scotland” sounds like a better title to me.

If the framework is going to be reviewed, could the title be reviewed? Could it be something that people feel has a bit more vitality? Somebody said last week the one way to ensure that a document is not read is to put the words “framework” and “performance” in the title. That was not a flippant comment; it was a serious comment about trying to ensure that we get buy-in from more people. I ask the Deputy First Minister to take that issue away and consider it as we review the framework. The Parliament is much more enthusiastic about, and has much more knowledge of, wellbeing—as do the public—than the two-dimensional gross domestic product measure that we used to use in the past. The framework talks about that.

I have one final question to cover a couple of issues that some of our witnesses really struggled with, about how we use the national performance framework—or whatever they call it in future—to declutter the public sector landscape and to share best practice. There is a plethora of documents and it seems that whenever the Government wants to do something new, it brings out an additional document rather than replacing existing documents and strategies.

I asked one of our witnesses directly about best practice and how they share it and they talked about sharing it internally. What I was clearly asking about was how they share best practice with other organisations. For example, if a local authority has an excellent way of working and is delivering on poverty outcomes, how can that be shared with other local authorities? One would assume that would happen through COSLA, but it does not seem to be working in the way that it should.

How we can use the NPF to underpin those aims of decluttering and sharing best practice?

Your point about titles and terminology is reasonable, convener. I will take that away and reflect on it. If I had to give my preference today between “ambitions for Scotland” and “the national wellbeing framework”, you would not be surprised to hear that I agree with you that “ambitions for Scotland” sounds a bit more uplifting. There is a fair point to be explored there.

On the question of decluttering, you make a fair point, convener. As time goes on, new policy initiatives are introduced and there are moments when we have to take stock and simplify some of those exercises. We will look to do that as part of the work on the national performance framework, so that it becomes ever more meaningful to people and organisations.

We do not need to build public awareness of the national performance framework; we need to build awareness of the effect of the national performance framework—that is what matters. What is important is the difference that it makes to people’s experiences of public services and the workings of various organisations. The question is what difference it makes in their lives, as opposed to whether they can answer 20 questions about the national performance framework. There is an opportunity for us to make that more meaningful and impactful. We will reflect on that as part of the process.

What about best practice?

Every effort is made to ensure that best practice is shared across the community of governance in Scotland, if I can put it that way. The Improvement Service focuses extensively on that work. We undertake many activities through social investment partnerships, for example, which explore new ways in which we can support some of our more vulnerable population and support individuals into activity. We are sharing that best practice across a range of different organisations.

The challenge is to ensure that there is an appropriate platform to enable that to be undertaken. I would express some frustration that while good and innovative elements of practice can be taken forward in some parts of the country, it takes a long time for them to reach all parts of the country. That is unsatisfactory. However, the national performance framework gives us an opportunity to try to enable more organisations and individuals to see where that best practice lies and how they can learn from it.

I recall that the Improvement Service was very messianic about best practice when the sadly departed Colin Mair was at the helm.

Yes, indeed.

I will open out the meeting to questions from colleagues.

Good morning, Deputy First Minister. As you will be well aware, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 states that public sector bodies, including local authorities, are required to “have regard to” the act in carrying out their functions. We are also aware that that does not apply to city region deals and the new replacement for EU funds.

When the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations gave evidence to the committee, he agreed that policy differences could occur but said that, ideally, those would be resolved through

“regular dialogue and honesty on our part about where we might diverge.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 24 February 2022; c 11.]

In other words, he conceded that there could be divergence.

Given that the Scottish Government remains accountable for the national outcomes, could the 2015 act be reviewed to ensure that all spend—even spend that goes through public bodies or local authorities—must be aligned with the national outcomes?

Michelle Thomson raises an interesting point. She mentioned the requirement that the 2015 act placed on public bodies to “have regard to” the national outcomes. The phrase “must have regard to” could be replaced by “must be aligned with”, which would place a much higher level of obligation on public authorities.

Ms Thomson makes an interesting point about measures that could be introduced that might not align with the policy direction that we wish to take. The Scottish Government has made absolutely clear to the UK Government our frustration and dissatisfaction with the arrangements that have been put in place on, for example, the shared prosperity fund. In our view, it does not provide a satisfactory opportunity for us to ensure that that expenditure—which, before the new arrangements, would have been aligned with the direction of policy travel in Scotland—will be so aligned in the future. I think that that makes no sense and that it is a foolish route for the UK Government to take, and we have said that to the UK Government, but it is proceeding with its arrangements.

Michelle Thomson raises an issue that the Government could consider, in order to provide a greater opportunity to align that expenditure with the prevailing direction of policy travel. We are talking about achieving the national outcomes, on which we are going through a democratic consultative process. That may provide a better route to achieving some of those objectives. It is an interesting suggestion.

I do not think that the terminology of the 2015 act, as it stands, puts such an obligation on organisations, but it might be able to be made to do so in the future.

Thank you. I look forward to hearing more about that as part of the reflection process.

I have a slightly different question, which picks up on some of the threads that the convener pursued. I cannot imagine that many members of the public are watching these proceedings, but I am sure that members of various bodies will be doing so. I do not think that the challenges and complexities that exist in aligning budgetary spend with outcomes are generally understood. It is a highly complex and difficult process.

Could you give us a flavour of those areas in which you think that that is difficult to do in practical terms? An example that is often cited is our use—globally, I mean—of the crude measurement, thus far, of GDP, as opposed to wellbeing indices. In reflecting on that at some point in the future, might the Scottish Government look to adopt more forcefully some of the newer, softer measures around wellbeing that have emerged recently, rather than looking only at hard measures such as GDP? I realise that that is a complex question, but I would like to hear your reflections on it.

10:00  

There are two elements to that question, the first of which relates to the choices that are made about the alignment of spending with the achievement of outcomes. I could go through endless examples of where that is difficult but, as a general theme, there is a substantive challenge to allocate public expenditure to measures that are designed to be preventative as opposed to being reactive to events.

There are many examples of that. We could take a sum of money and have a judgment about whether we deploy that on reactive services, such as the provision of some degree of healthcare that picks up the consequences of illness, or whether we spend that money on encouraging a much greater engagement in things such as healthy living, exercise and active travel which, although they are longer-term investments, will be much more significant and impactful in improving the general health of the population.

The challenge in that example is that, if there is an immediate need of emergency or critical intervention, it is difficult not to fund that at the same time as trying to encourage the preventative interventions. More and more of our funding decisions are being aligned to preventative interventions, but that does not take away the need for emergency and critical interventions as well. That debate or dilemma is an ever-present one with which we have to wrestle, but that probably best sums up the challenge in how we shift spending in a direction that is more supportive of the achievement of national outcomes than the current position is. That is probably the best way to express some of those challenges.

The second aspect of the question relates very much to the effectiveness of public expenditure, how we are able to measure that and what, as a whole, are the central indicators for making a good judgment about the health, wellbeing and vitality of our society. Certainly, over the 15 years for which I have been a minister, the debate has changed from being, in 2007, a discussion that was, frankly, very much focused on GDP growth to a much broader range of considerations. That reflects part of what the convener said in his questions to me.

Similarly, the national performance framework has to reflect that. It is broadly based. In no way could we say that the national outcomes are all about GDP. They are not. They involve a broader range of factors, and that has to be reflected.

The wording of the purpose has been revised. The wording in the 2007 version, if my memory serves me rightly—and I know that we corrected it—was

“to focus ... on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all ... to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.”

The wording has broadened in the intervening years. We need to continue to consider that point as we review the framework, and it is important that we take people with us, because there will be voices from within our society that say that it is too broad and needs to have a harder, sharper edge—for example, around GDP.

I come at these arguments from the point of view that economic opportunity is fundamental to the health and wellbeing of our society because, if people do not have economic opportunity, they cannot support those whom they love. Economic opportunity is therefore relevant right across the spectrum of Scottish society. However, I also recognise that just having a job will not necessarily meet the needs and requirements of everybody in society. The range of considerations has to be broader.

I do not want to take up everyone’s time—it is a highly complex area to consider—but you furnish a good example of the difference that is made by preventative spend having a longer sight of funding to lock that in, given that we have a five-year review point. That is an important point.

As far as I am aware, the public are not getting excited about the national performance framework—none of them sends me abusive emails about it, although they do about other things. Is that important, Deputy First Minister? You seem to be saying that the thinking is the important thing. We, the local authorities, charities and the third sector are all thinking about the values in the NPF but not necessarily talking about them using those words. Are you satisfied with that, or would it be better if more people throughout society were talking about the national performance framework?

We need to have enough people talking about the national performance framework but, if I were to come to the committee and say that I am going to launch a marketing campaign that will spend—[Interruption.] Liz Smith has reacted to that as I predicted. If I said that I was going to launch a marketing campaign of £X million to raise awareness of the national performance framework, I think that it would get the reaction from Liz Smith that it just got and she might not be the only person to give that reaction.

However, it is critical that, in their experience of society, members of the public have the benefit of collaborative policy making that is focused on the achievement of the outcomes. I venture that people want to live in a country in which we

“tackle poverty by sharing opportunities, wealth and power more equally”

and where our children

“grow up loved, safe and respected so that they realise their full potential”.

People in society want to have those experiences, but they do not necessarily need to be able to pass the national performance framework entrance exam through raised awareness. However, public organisations, private businesses and third sector organisations must work together to try to achieve those outcomes so that people experience them.

One of the comparisons that have been made is with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. I believe that the Welsh have a commissioner who can challenge the Government from outside. We have commissioners on many things already and I presume that we will have many more in future. What do you think about the idea of having somebody outside Government whose specific job is to challenge all of us on how we tie in with the national performance framework?

We have many such organisations already. Any day of the week, Audit Scotland could decide to consider those questions—it has in the past—so I do not think that a commissioner would add an awful lot of value.

There is also Parliament, which exists to challenge on such questions, as does the committee. I welcome the committee’s interest in and engagement on the matter, because it gets to the heart of some of the questions that occupy much of my time as Deputy First Minister, which are about how to encourage more collaborative approaches to policy making and service delivery.

Government is inevitably compartmentalised. We spend a lot of time trying to use the national performance framework as a tool to tell compartments that they must collaborate a great deal more with other compartments to achieve outcomes because we will not transform some of the challenges that affect the constituents whom John Mason represents, such as resolving the poverty that they experience, if we do not work more collaboratively.

The idea that we should not work in silos and that we should be collaborative has come up quite a lot, and I fully agree with it. The counter to that—a slightly different suggestion—from some organisations is that it would help for organisations such as local authorities, universities or the health service to be tied more into specific outcomes, rather than everybody being responsible for everything. The thinking is that it is harder to hold bodies such as NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde to account if they are responsible for everything, whereas it is easier to hold them to account if they are responsible for one or two things.

It is impossible to break things down in that fashion. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is exclusively responsible for open-heart surgery—nobody else is responsible for that—but its actions are also relevant and significant to the general health and wellbeing of individuals who might end up needing open-heart surgery in a number of years’ time, because of what the health board can do on healthy living, nutrition advice and support to communities through projects that alleviate poverty, which is such a driver of poor health in our society.

Some organisations have exclusive responsibility for certain things, but they always make a general contribution. It is essential that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde can undertake open-heart surgery, but it is equally important that it contributes to the wider health and wellbeing of our population.

Oxfam said that there is not really an outcome that relates to care, and it suggested that we might add such an outcome or be a bit more specific about that. Do you have thoughts on that?

That may well be a reasonable point to consider. The committee has heard that evidence, and such a suggestion may well come out of the exercise that the Government undertakes to review the framework.

There are 11 national outcomes, and there will always be scope for people to say, “Ah, but.” We must consider to what extent the “Ah, but” comments merit changing the framework. We should be open to challenge on that question.

A moment ago, you acknowledged in response to John Mason that it is not essential for every member of the public to have a comprehensive understanding of what the NPF is, but it is important that those who are involved in relevant organisations, such as public bodies, understand what we are headed towards.

I am trying to understand the difference between those who are responsible for on-the-ground delivery and those who are responsible for strategic planning. How important is it for a heart surgeon to understand NPF outcomes versus the senior management team of a hospital or health board? How important is it for a classroom teacher to know what NPF outcomes they are working towards versus the senior management team of a school or a council education department? At what level do you expect people to recognise tangible and specific NPF outcomes and their relationship to those outcomes?

The national performance framework’s ethos should be known about not just by those who deliver public services but by those who are engaged in trying to achieve any of the outcomes. Mr Greer put to me the example of a classroom teacher versus senior management; in my opinion, the answer is both.

The classroom teachers who I meet see the wider picture. In general, I do not think that they think that all that they need to attend to is the outcome that

“We are well educated, skilled and able to contribute to society”.

They will be mindful of the outcome that

“We grow up loved, safe and respected so that we realise our ... potential”

and of the outcomes that

“We tackle poverty by sharing opportunities”

better and that

“We ... protect and fulfil human rights and live free from discrimination”.

They will live out all that through the strength of curriculum for excellence.

Therefore, I am distinguishing between an awareness of the national performance framework, which needs to be almost a household understanding—because people should experience those outcomes—and the practitioners’ awareness, which needs to be at a higher level than that household awareness.

10:15  

You referred to the “ethos” of the NPF, which relates to the feedback from the focus groups. The group that Daniel Johnson and I spoke to ended up landing on the word “implicit” when we asked about how their organisational plans and strategies align with the NPF. On the whole, the people we were speaking to, who were from a variety of public bodies, were not chief executives and senior managers. The folk we were speaking to were much closer to the level of delivery, and my interpretation of that word “implicit” was that, for them, rather than it being about rhyming off the specific outcomes and how they are contributing to them, the NPF is a set of guiding principles that shape the culture in their organisation .

When we are talking about the level of practitioners, is that approach of being guided and having your broad approach shaped by the NPF—rather than being able to list of specific outcomes—satisfactory? Is that what the Government wants to achieve, or are you trying to achieve a deeper, more specific level of understanding?

That is good and beneficial, but it is probably not quite enough. I used a quotation from North Ayrshire Council earlier:

“It forms part of the ‘Golden Thread’ linking national outcomes through to each employee’s daily activities.”

I chose that quotation because I thought that, in all the material that I looked at in preparing for the committee, it best captured my aspirations. It is not that people ought to be able to rhyme off all the national outcomes but that their contribution to what they are doing should be significantly guided by the aspirations of the national performance framework. That quotation probably best expressed what the Government is trying to achieve.

My final question is the perennial one that is asked every time the Government tries to get broad public engagement. How, through the review exercise that is about to take place, are you going to engage with those people—that overwhelming majority of the general public who have no idea what the NPF is and who do not necessarily have an immediate and obvious relationship with the delivery of NPF outcomes—who are otherwise disengaged from the process and who do not work at the relevant level in a public agency or third sector organisation?

We need to undertake external engagement that will allow us to identify, in essence, what type of country people want to live in, because that is the question that fundamentally drives the contents of the national outcomes. What type of country do people want to live in? We need to hear that from members of the public, as distinct from practitioners who deliver the services or interventions. A fundamental understanding of what type of country people want to live in ought to shape much of our thinking in that respect. We will do that through a range of engagement mechanisms. Some of that might be through community gatherings. Some of it might be through survey material. We will use different tools to gather that information.

I want to go back to some of the points that the convener raised because, ultimately, success—and continued success—comes down to accountability and responsibility for taking the process forward.

It has struck me throughout our conversations that a great deal of enthusiasm for the national performance framework is coming from agencies, and particularly from the third sector. However, that is not necessarily being reflected in what they are being asked to do. You gave North Ayrshire Council as an example, and we have heard multiple accounts of organisations saying that they have found it useful to consult the national performance framework. However, they are also saying that they are not necessarily being asked by the Government to frame their plans.

I wonder whether there is a need to reexamine sponsorship and ownership at a Government level. Do we need to ask your colleagues around the Cabinet table to take specific actions with regard to their portfolios? One observation that has been made is that, when you held responsibility for both the national performance framework and the finance portfolio, that glued the NPF, as a priority, to the money, which is what ultimately tends to drive things. That does not necessarily happen when things are split from the money. Does there need to be a rethinking of responsibility at ministerial level and about where the performance framework is owned within the responsibilities across Government?

I do not think that the particular solution that Mr Johnson puts to me is necessary to achieve that end, although I think that the point that underpins that is necessary. Mr Johnson makes the point that the national performance framework has to be meaningful in Government and that it has to influence decision making. I agree whole-heartedly with that. I think that it does that. However, the Government probably needs to look at whether the NPF is as influential in decision making as it could and should be.

The Cabinet considers performance on issues in relation to the national performance framework reasonably frequently. The Cabinet and ministers are also looking very extensively at the delivery of priorities, and of course the delivery of priorities should be shaped by what they contribute towards national outcomes and the national performance framework.

If we find ourselves taking decisions that are at odds with the national performance framework, that is a completely different question. That would not be an appropriate position for us to be in. The committee might reflect on some of those things in its report. That brings me back to Mr Mason’s point about external scrutiny and who is looking at what the Government is doing and saying “Actually, I don’t think that’s very consistent with the national performance framework”. Well, parliamentary committees can say that to us, and Audit Scotland can say that to us. Ministers are looking at those questions to be satisfied that we are taking decisions that are in line with the framework.

However, the other perspective is that of third sector organisations—and I think that Mr Johnson has put a fair point to me here. I think that they will still feel that they are being asked to do compartmentalised things instead of collaborative things. They will probably feel that they are still being asked to undertake transactions rather than to provide holistic support to individuals. It is an on-going challenge in Government to move from the transactional to the holistic. Getting closer to the holistic approach would get things more in line with the aspirations of the national performance framework.

I really recommend the Scottish Leaders Forum’s work on how to apply the national performance framework. It has done work that goes beyond the level of the work that the Government has done.

On that note, I want to put to the cabinet secretary three suggestions that have been made and which I think make a lot of sense. First, although the point that John Mason was getting at with regard to responsibilities is important, I do not think it wise to ascribe particular measures to particular organisations, simply because of their very nature. However—and you could ask individual departments to do this—when strategies are published, it might be sensible to have, say, a policy of explaining in greater detail how they fit with and contribute towards the national performance framework. It would not need to be a statutory requirement, but could be just a matter of policy. It would make a lot of sense if we were to make explicit—front and centre—almost the first and last things that we are asking people in Government to do and report against, much as we do with sustainability targets.

Another suggestion, which seeks to eliminate the situation in which everyone broadly agrees that the national performance framework is good and no one takes responsibility for specific things, is to have agreements between the Government and agencies that make who contributes what a lot more explicit. That would not necessarily mean putting hard targets in place—a lot of it could be qualitative description—but it would be very much about putting in black and white some of the interdependencies and relationships with third sector organisations that the cabinet secretary has just alluded to. Could those sorts of agreements, which wrap around or sit on top of formal contractual agreements, be an idea to pursue?

Moving on to the third suggestion that was made, as has been pointed out a lot to us, no one is going to disagree with any of the outcomes. They are all good things—they are pretty unobjectionable and unarguable. However, the difficult bit is trying to come up with plans to influence them. Instead of just picking individual targets, do we not need to have some medium-term plan for influencing certain things in the framework? The other two suggestions—on reporting and having agreements—would flow from the plan that would be implemented. After all, having metrics with no sense of how you might influence them is potentially a recipe for making no progress at all.

First, I agree whole-heartedly with Mr Johnson about the Scottish Leaders Forum. Essentially, we said that we needed to translate the national performance framework and the achievement of outcomes into practical realities, and it has really advanced the thinking on that issue. Of course, the forum is a collection of people who influence this whole area of delivery, but I hope that that gives the committee some confidence that such practice is going on in different aspects of the public sector.

In response to the points that Mr Johnson has put to me, I think that there is an opportunity to build on that work. We need to test ourselves as to whether our actions are consistent with the framework. For example, when I read a Cabinet paper that develops a particular policy position, it will narrate the relationship between the policy intention and the national performance framework, but that relationship has then to be reflected the whole way through from a policy development angle, in budget choices, in operational decision making and so on. Coming back to some of the points that Michelle Thomson put to me, I would say that an approach that is based more on picking up the pieces will be less aligned with the national performance framework than an approach based on early preventative interventions. We have to look at where we can establish that alignment in all aspects of policy making.

Recognising the fact that the solutions to issues that members of the public face are not generally found in neat little compartments is an on-going challenge. Government generally operates in neat little compartments and I have said to the committee numerous times that I spend much of my time trying to overcome those neat little compartments.

10:30  

Let us take, for example, the formulation of the child poverty delivery plan, which was published by Shona Robison. Behind that process was an extensive amount of cross-governmental dialogue, which I chaired, to ensure that the plan would get cross-government intervention and support. What came out of that dialogue was a collection of measures that addressed not only direct financial support to families, but employability support and wider holistic support, drawing on aspects of transport, childcare, early intervention, mental wellbeing and counselling for people who are economically inactive. As a result, the plan was much broader. A lot of cross-ministerial dialogue was involved to get to that point—probably more than should be needed, but it was necessary in order to get across all those compartments.

What we produced was a much broader and much more relevant intervention, which was much closer to the aspirations of the national performance framework than it would have been if we had just left the work to the compartment within Government that formally deals with poverty, which is Shona Robison’s responsibility. If we are going to tackle poverty, we need to work on education, health, transport and employability—it will not take place in a neat little compartment.

I explained to the committee the focus on the big themes of eradicating child poverty, economic recovery from Covid and net zero. Those big issues are all tackled on a cross-ministerial basis to give us some chance of ensuring that our interventions are commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

Lastly, Mr Johnson asked me about how to influence methods of achievement. This is where I come back to where I started in this answer, with the Scottish Leaders Forum. We have to turn the NPF into a practical reality, and we have to operate an empowered system. I do not think that we need to wait for Scottish leaders to say, “We shall do this”.

Some of the best outcomes that I have seen achieved have been through members of staff feeling confident that they are doing the right thing and delivering better solutions to members of the public. In so doing, they might not have been thinking, “I must do this to satisfy national outcome 5”, but are thinking about what is expected of them through the national outcomes.

Ultimately, the success of that approach is largely reliant on that quality of the data that sits underneath it. It has always struck me that when you click through the national performance framework on the website, you get presented with lots of bullet points—probably more words than numbers—and that it is not very digestible.

There is a broader point around how to approach the data. However, on a simple presentational point, do you not think that we need to do better at presenting it? I became a real addict of the Public Health Scotland dashboard through the pandemic, which was incredibly helpful for seeing what was going on. Do you think that we need a bit of a refresh and something similar for the national performance framework in order to bring the data to life?

We were all addicts of Public Health Scotland, believe you me. An important point comes out of that: it was absolutely the focus for a certain amount of time, because Covid was the overwhelming issue. That tells us that although we might sometimes think, “Oh my goodness—people don’t want to plough through all this data”, the experience of Covid was that people wanted to plough through the data, because they wanted to know where we were heading. That is the crucial question: where are we heading?

We have to learn a lesson from that as we look at the material on the outcomes from the NPF. I have certainly been part of discussions in which we have wrestled with the question of data presentation in the national performance framework and have taken the view that, “We can’t present all that complex data, because people will never plough their way through it.” However, the example that Mr Johnson puts to me completely refutes that, because the data mattered. We have to find a way of making sure that we identify the data that matters.

We have had various attempts at that—performance maintaining, performance worsening or performance improving—and there are vast data sets sitting underneath that. However, it is a fair point for us to explore whether there is a collection of data sets that really tell the story of whether we are progressing. Some of those data sets are to hand. I am mindful that colleagues would not look at GDP and say, “Well, that’s it,”—they know that it is one of a number of data sets. There are several data sets that I look at all the time that make me think, “Are things moving in the right direction at this particular time? What I am troubled about?”

We look at those data sets on a constant basis. However, perhaps we need to draw them out, label them officially and have them endorsed by Public Health Scotland—then everyone would look at them.

That would be a good start.

I will ask about an important dilemma in all this, which has been raised by three sets of witnesses—when we took evidence from Fife Council last week and from the third sector about four weeks ago, and at our workshop in Dundee. All those people are broadly in favour of the national performance framework’s principles, but they said that the best outcomes are those that are owned locally. When local communities come up with ideas and feel that they are making the best progress, that is when they—perhaps led by local government—have ownership of what they are doing.

The dilemma is that, if the best performances can be driven from a local bottom-up scenario, some of the 11 projected outcomes in the national performance framework may get more emphasis in one region compared with another region or in one local authority compared with another local authority, and other outcomes will be lower on the agenda. Dundee City Council gave us the example that it felt that it was making good progress on child poverty but that, as a result, it was not focusing on the other outcomes.

Are some of the best outcomes being driven by local empowerment? If so, does that challenge the need for such prescriptive oversight from national Government of what we are trying to achieve?

I agree entirely about the importance of locally empowered solutions, and a lot of fascinating work is going on. I am closely observing the work that is going on in Dundee in the pilots that relate to the complex relationships around child poverty, employability and engagement in society. Really interesting work is emerging on that, and it is emerging in Dundee—not in other places. That is great, because it may give us an approach to best practice that we can share with others, so that we can begin to move on. There is a really sound platform that enables us to take that forward. Inevitably, that probably gives rise to greater emphasis being placed on some areas of activity than others, which is understandable.

I am interested in the characterisation that Liz Smith gives—that there is a prescriptive approach from the Government. I do not think that the approach is prescriptive. As I look at the evidence, some voices are saying that the Government needs to be more prescriptive, because we need folk to be absolutely complying with the framework.

As you can probably sense from my evidence, I am not persuaded by the get-more-prescriptive approach. I am much more interested in making sure that people are empowered at local level to define the solutions that work for them, provided that they contribute towards the national outcomes.

If that is true, does that imply that, when it comes to accountability and measuring achievement of the outcomes, the Scottish Government has to allow the measurement and the ambitions to be developed much more from a local perspective? Some people have used the word “prescriptive” to describe the 11 outcomes that are on the diagram.

People feel that their local communities can do things in their own way with considerable effectiveness, without having to worry too much about what the national performance framework says. I have some sympathy for that, because I have certainly seen examples of good practice that has been informed not by the national performance framework but by what works for a local community.

Last week, we debated community wealth in Parliament, and we have had the levelling-up agenda. In principle, both of them are good things, even if we might debate aspects of how they are run. What I am getting at with this dilemma is that many local communities across Scotland feel that they have an awful lot of ambition, talent and resources that they can best use if they are the decision makers, rather than having to apply themselves always to a national performance framework. That is the issue.

I am not sure, but we might potentially be in danger of talking at cross-purposes. If a community is developing its approach to tackling child poverty, that will obviously be with the objective of eradicating child poverty, which is right at the heart of the national performance framework.

Liz Smith might have a point if the Government was saying, “You must do the following,” but the Government is not saying that. The Government is saying that we want, by our collective efforts, to eradicate child poverty and that the Government will put in place certain things, but that is not exclusive. If people think that other things can be done in their community to eradicate child poverty, by drawing on their resources and capacity, they should just get on with it. Let us hope that that makes a big impact on the child poverty levels in the country.

The degree of prescription is in the Government saying what type of country it is trying to create and inviting a variety of private, public and third sector organisations to work with us on that journey. We are not specifying, “You must do the following.”

I will cite comments from the Wise Group, which has done fantastic work. Its point was that, although the national performance framework’s principles are extremely important, if the organisation is doing its job properly, it does not need the national performance framework to tell it what to do. It feels that it has enough examples of really good practice—of collaborative work with the third sector, local government and the private sector, I may say—that is helping to achieve national performance outcomes, but it does not need the NPF to get those outcomes in the first place because, if it is doing its job properly, the outcomes will be there. Given that observation, do we need to be slightly less prescriptive about the national performance framework so that people buy into its principles but we do not have to set too many parameters about how it is delivered?

10:45  

I come back to the word “patchy”, which the convener put to me at the start of the session. I would be stunned if the Wise Group found itself at odds with the national performance framework or the need to refer to the NPF. I have known the Wise Group well for about 25 or 30 years; its thinking, ethos, outlook, perspective and practice have heavily shaped the NPF. However, some organisations in the country are not operating at that level and need the NPF to give them a clear idea of where they should be heading.

On the specific example that Liz Smith put to me, I do not think that I have anything to teach the Wise Group to any discernible extent, but there are other places in the country that would benefit from learning from some of that experience.

You said something interesting when you said that, if you felt that people were not performing as well as they should be, the accountability level might be raised slightly, so that there were sticks rather than carrots to get them to perform better. Is the Scottish Government seriously considering that?

In our performance approach with organisations, we put challenging demands on them in what we expect of them. The Government is not entitled to do that in relation to local government but, if you look at the reports from the Accounts Commission when it looks at individual local authorities, it has pretty bruising things to say to them on occasion and it may have bruising things to say to them in a comparative sense. There will be challenges to performance and we should be willing to consider those challenges to performance.

To go back to the point about the golden thread and local authorities, you mentioned the North Ayrshire Council submission. We also had a submission from Fife Council, which said:

“In terms of our funding to the voluntary sector we do not assess grant awards against their contribution to the National Outcomes directly, nor do we map the awards to the National Outcomes that they contribute to.”

I asked the council about that and it said, rightly, that they are mapped against its LOIP instead, and I think that I made the point that—

Mapped against what, sorry?

They are mapped against the local outcomes improvement plan. I would say that the golden thread still runs through that, because the LOIP has to have due regard to the NPF. However, although third sector organisations will be contributing to the NPF, they might not be aware that they are contributing. Do you see that as a problem? Is it an issue at all?

The question that it raises in my mind is whether the local outcome agreements genuinely contribute towards the expected outcomes of the NPF. In theory, I understand Fife Council’s point, but I have a question in my mind as to whether that is all as closely aligned as is being expressed.

Would it be a problem if a voluntary organisation was not aware that it was probably making a good contribution to the NPF?

No—I do not think that that matters, as long as we are all operating in a way that contributes constructively to the direction of travel that the national performance framework expresses. I suppose that that comes back to comments that I made earlier. If organisations were using public money to operate in a fashion that was contradictory to the direction of travel, that would give me concern. I would not understand the point of that, because we have decided on our direction of travel and on what we should be aiming towards. That does not mean to say—in any shape or form—that every approach has to be identical in every part of the country, but we want to be satisfied that people are moving in a direction that complements the national performance framework.

You have made the point that it is all fine, as long as the LOIP aligns with the NPF. Where is the check and balance done?

It is not done formally. If I looked at an Accounts Commission report on a local authority, I would be surprised if I did not see some commentary on the degree to which the local authority’s planning and thinking were aligned to the national performance framework. The Accounts Commission is mindful, from a regulatory perspective, that that is a relevant issue for it to consider.

That might tie into what the Auditor General said last year, when he raised issues around accountability and delivery. He said that Scotland is suffering from

“a major implementation gap between policy ambitions and delivery on the ground.”

He went on to say:

“I am not convinced that public sector leaders really feel accountable for delivering change”.

Do you agree?

I do not think so. I go back to a point that Liz Smith previously made about the Scottish Leaders Forum, which is generally made up of public sector leaders in Scotland at an operational level, not a political level. As I look at the work that comes out of the forum, I see those individuals as being very much signed up to the agenda that I have talked about extensively this morning, while recognising that service changes have to be made and improvements have to be delivered to enable that to happen. I therefore do not really think that there is an absence of engagement and accountability on such questions.

Given the challenges that we face, we have to be satisfied that there is sufficient pace and intensity to such work. For example, I want us to move at pace to eradicate child poverty. We and all public authorities have to ask ourselves whether we are moving quite as fast as we could.

How could you increase that pace?

That is about the political leadership that we need to put in place to move the organisations. We might need to think of different policy solutions that will enable that to be the case and give particular areas of policy greater priority than others.

As Liz Smith suggested, is that about looking at how organisations are funded and using the carrot or the stick to make sure that they are aligned to the NPF?

There are always different approaches that can be taken. We have to satisfy ourselves that organisations are operating with good will in a direction that will help us to achieve the national outcomes.

I thank my colleagues around the table. I will touch on one area that committee members have not covered. You talked about delivery of priorities, and one of the focal points of the national performance framework is continuous improvement. Of course, it used to be more target driven. In response to Douglas Lumsden, you talked about the need to move at pace to eliminate child poverty.

You have said that you want the outcomes to be delivered in a less patchy form. However, if we have continuous improvement, what does that mean? Does that mean that the Government is satisfied with an improvement rate of 1 per cent a year, 5 per cent, 10 per cent or something else? If we are not going to return to having targets, would milestones be a more effective way of assessing where we are in reaching each outcome? Would that enable you to incentivise and encourage organisations that might not be doing as well as they could be?

There is a mixed picture with regard to some requirements. For example, Parliament has put into law statutory targets that must be achieved in relation to child poverty, and the same thing exists for net zero. Parliament has legislated for certain elements, and it is just a matter of fact that they must be achieved. That means that we must have a degree of intensity that is commensurate with achieving those targets. However, that does not exist in all areas of policy—it cannot because, inevitably, we have to give some areas of activity more attention than others. The Government has made its choices—we are giving more attention to Covid recovery, child poverty and net zero.

The national performance framework helps us to have as clear a shape and concept as possible of what is going on, so that we can judge whether progress is being made. Daniel Johnson put to me—fairly—the issues about data. The national performance framework should enable us to compare the situation in the country today with the situation 12 months ago and to judge whether that is satisfactory. That is an important measure, because we need to be able to judge whether our society has advanced as much as we would have hoped that it would.

That is a fair point, but a number of organisations and people, including me, are goal and task driven, and one person or organisation might have a completely different idea of what continuous improvement means from another person or organisation. That comes back to delivery of the NPF being patchy, which is why I mentioned milestones. Is there a way in which we can, as it were, square the circle of the two philosophies so that we optimise the response that we receive for delivery of the NPF?

We have to consider that issue. Nobody wants the process to be vague—that is what we are trying to avoid. It has to be meaningful and discernible. The Government is making a genuine effort to construct a national performance framework that enables us to do that. However, the review that we will undertake, which will reflect the feedback of the committee and its inquiry, gives us an opportunity to judge whether there is more that we could do. You put to me an important point that we will consider.

We will finish on that point. I thank the Deputy First Minister for his frank and detailed responses to our questions, and I also thank him and his officials for attending. That concludes the evidence-gathering part of our national performance framework inquiry, and we will consider a draft report after the summer recess.

We will take a short break before we move to our next item of business.

10:58 Meeting suspended.  

11:07 On resuming—