Budget Process 2004-05
Agenda item 3 is consideration of the Executive's response to our report on stage 2 of the budget process 2004-05. Members will see that Arthur Midwinter is looking tanned on his return from Tenerife.
Members should have a copy of the Executive's response, together with a paper from the clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre. Arthur Midwinter has supplied us with a supplementary briefing paper, which was e-mailed yesterday. Members will see that various issues have been picked up from the response, which we may want to discuss. In addition, as agreed at our meeting on 16 December, we need to decide on the format for our budget seminar, for which 27 April is the suggested date.
I offer Arthur Midwinter the opportunity to say a few words on his additional briefing paper or on anything else that he would like to highlight.
Professor Arthur Midwinter (Adviser):
I should say a few words about the paper, because most members will have received it late on—I did not get home until the early hours of Saturday morning. I wish you all a belated happy new year and I thank the convener for mentioning Tenerife. I hasten to add that we had problems with the water, which may or may not have been due to slippage in Tenerife's capital programme.
I was heartened by the way in which the Executive responded to the committee's report. There are three groups of issues that we ought to consider. The first is fairly straightforward and concerns the issues on which the Executive accepts the committee's recommendations. I add the caveat—and on this I agree with Ross Burnside's paper—that we should continue to monitor whether the issues on which the Executive has accepted the committee's recommendations are delivered in a way that is acceptable to the committee.
The second set of issues relates to areas where the Executive says that it notes the committee's comments and wishes to improve its performance. I think that those are all issues where the Executive can improve performance, but we have to deal with them very quickly. If the committee is willing, those matters should be grouped together and tabled for discussion between officials on both sides to ensure that we are progressing them and having an input into deliberations on how information might be improved. We should not simply leave those matters to the Executive and come back to them later. I would like to have an early meeting with the Executive officials.
The third group of issues is more problematic, as I do not think that the Executive's responses are adequate. There has been a long-term difficulty with the block allocations, going back to the previous session. The Executive suggests that it may not necessarily produce those figures in the draft budget. That is fine, as long as it does not produce them after the draft budget, which has happened. The two relevant committees—the Health Committee and the Local Government and Transport Committee—should be able to discuss the block allocations while having the financial assumptions before them. A committee complained previously that it was being asked to approve the budget in a vacuum. Therefore, I would go back to the Executive on that point.
On the assessment of financial prospects, I read what the Executive says as being slightly less of a commitment to provide such information than we have had in the past. I think that the convener ought to reaffirm that the Executive committed itself to providing as full a financial assessment as it can, although it is clear from statements coming from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's residence that we can get useful ballpark figures for a preliminary discussion. Again, we should remind the Executive that it committed itself to providing a financial assessment around the beginning of the spending review process.
On the stage 1 spending recommendations, the committee asked for a corporate response so that it could be sure that all parties on the Executive side were signed up to the recommendations. We wanted a corporate record of what the outcomes would be so that committees could monitor what was happening. I am happy for the spending recommendations to be in a separate document. I also think that specific recommendations should be before subject committees separately, so that the committees can deal with them more easily.
Probably the most problematic area is the assessment of costs and service outputs. The Executive used the phrase "practical and helpful" in its response, which I do not think is practical and helpful because it is kind of meaningless. What is meant by "practical and helpful"? I would be astonished to find that there were programmes for which it was impossible to quantify the costs or the expected outputs. I cannot see why ministers should be approving expenditure programmes if they do not know the cost or what is expected for the money. I fully accept that measuring outcomes is much more problematic, but I think that we must have further discussion with the Executive on costs and outputs and clarify what the difficulties are.
On the budget seminar, I hope that there will be discussions next month between officials about where we moving to on the revisions to the budgetary process. If there are, some of the budget discussions will happen well before the committee's seminar.
I noted that, in the budget debate in December, the convener of the Equal Opportunities Committee, I think, rather kindly asked us to give guidance on how to equality proof the budget. I certainly do not feel competent to do that, so it might be helpful if we had a session on equality proofing, which is in danger of becoming a running sore in our negotiations with the Executive. People are unhappy about the progress that has been made. It might be useful to have a session in which people considered the practicalities.
Are there any questions or comments from members?
A comment and a suggestion about end-year flexibility arise from paragraph 3. The minister's response is:
"we think that the announcement on September 11 provided a clear explanation of the level of EYF".
Our briefing paper reminds us that the committee took the view that greater clarity in future EYF announcements was required. We have heard during the meeting, particularly from Wendy Alexander's probing questioning, about EYF in relation to the water industry and how difficult it is to obtain clarity. It struck me that the budget debate that took place this year immediately followed the EYF statement. However, in previous years, the EYF statement was made on the previous day, which meant that there was a proper opportunity for us to go away and consider the implications of what is, by definition, a complicated matter.
I wonder whether the committee might suggest to the Executive that—other crises permitting and provided that the Parliamentary Bureau can schedule it—discussions of EYF should, in future, be decoupled from the budget debate. Preparing to ask the minister questions about EYF and then having all the budget documents landing on your desk just as you are about to get to your feet to make a speech is not satisfactory. The previous arrangement at least gave us 24 hours and the opportunity to make a more considered and constructive contribution to what is undoubtedly a difficult topic. I have meant to make that suggestion before, but now seems to be a good occasion. I hope that other members feel that the suggestion is sensible and could be discussed with the Executive.
The particular circumstances this year meant that the budget was produced much later than normal. We hope that those circumstances will not be repeated. The suggestion that the statement be taken in advance of the debate is perfectly reasonable. That arrangement would assist all members of the committee to contribute to discussions. I am happy to see whether we can get the Executive to adopt that practice, which is better than what happened this year.
Are members content that Ross Burnside's paper and Arthur Midwinter's suggestion of separating the issues into three broad areas represent a reasonable way in which to proceed? I will try to find ways of dealing with the points that Arthur Midwinter highlights in paragraph 5, with the aim of producing a draft committee response to the Executive.
Just before we leave this agenda item, we should discuss the seminar. Susan Duffy may want to say something about that.
It would help with the organisation of the seminar if we could find out today what members feel would be the most suitable format and if we could get a feel for the number of attendees to expect.
We are midway through discussions with the Executive, so we should wait to see whether we can reach agreement before we try to give structure to a seminar whose feel will depend on the result of the discussions, which started last September. Big issues are outstanding on historic data and on performance data, as well as on the restructuring of the process. We should wait until the discussions are complete, which will, I hope, happen in the next month or so.
That is a reasonable suggestion. I suggest that we have a kind of seminar sub-committee—perhaps including Wendy Alexander, Jim Mather and me—to thrash out the issues. Arthur Midwinter could join us, too. We should determine which issues we want to bring out and then come back to the committee with a firmer proposal. Are members content with that suggestion?
Members indicated agreement.
Agenda items 4 and 5 are the consideration of draft reports on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill and the Local Governance (Scotland) Bill. We have already agreed that those two items will be taken in private.
Meeting continued in private until 12:58.