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The next item is evidence from members of the commission on the future delivery of public services, which the Scottish Government has established. We have invited commission members to give evidence because the delivery of public services has been a recurring theme in our work and we have considered such issues as part of our budget scrutiny.
Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting us to meet the committee. The meeting gives us the opportunity to discuss where we are at this early stage of our work and to hear committee members’ views on issues that they would like us to address and on any relevant work that the committee has done.
Thank you for those opening remarks. Over the piece, we have examined some of the issues in detail with various stakeholders and academics in round-table sessions. We have received evidence and produced a number of reports, which are in the public domain, and we will ensure that they are made available to you for your information and interest.
Stop now or it will be four.
Maybe I should recap what I said, for clarity. How does your commission intend to build on the work of the independent budget review panel? Do you believe that the Scottish Government—if it is re-elected—will accept your recommendations, given that it says at this point that it will consider them? Have you had any buy-in from the other political parties that suggests that they might accept your recommendations?
Thank you for those questions. My colleagues will intervene as they feel appropriate, if you do not mind.
Do you expect to do better than the IBR in terms of Government acceptance of your recommendations? Many of the IBR’s recommendations—and not necessarily only the longer-term ones—were not accepted by the Government. Will you draw anything from the IBR experience? The people who work on your commission have made a commitment, and we are six weeks away from an election. I am confused—it might be a bit longer than that, but we will be out of here a lot sooner than that. The independent budget review panel did extensive work and made many recommendations, and many of them were rejected. Do you expect to do better than that?
We hope that whoever receives our report will seriously consider our recommendations. We anticipate that the recommendations will be forward looking and will require courage. It is interesting that in the meetings that we have had with political parties and others, there has been a call to us to be courageous and bold in what we suggest. I have been around politics long enough to know that, once elected, Governments decide what they are going to do and Parliament decides whether to approve it, so we will need to see what happens.
I am sorry to labour this point, but I think we have to put all this in context. The independent budget review panel would have claimed that they were being bold and courageous. Certainly some people would have claimed that what the Arbuthnott review of joint working and shared services in the Clyde valley was proposing was bold and courageous. Some people would say that some of the ideas that have been put forward on education, police and fire and rescue services have been courageous—indeed, those bold and courageous ideas have come in for a great deal of criticism from some members of your commission. So, what gives you the confidence that you and the commission, which is undoubtedly committed to the public sector, can achieve what others have not, between now and June?
I am not dismissing that line of questioning—I see absolutely where you are coming from—but from my perspective, which is outwith the political system, I think that it is quite clear to everybody concerned with the commission and everybody sitting in the room today that the status quo is not going to be an option, regardless of how the Scottish Government is configured after May. I regard the work that the independent budget review panel did, the work that Arbuthnott did and the work that we hope to be doing as important pieces of research that will help any incoming Government take what are going to be difficult decisions.
There is no magic bullet. We are going into a period the like of which none of us in the public sector has ever been in. The cutbacks in public expenditure are one thing, but even more challenging are the new expenditure burdens in the system, which will have to be funded—I refer to the rising elderly population and the environmental measures that are coming from Europe. The challenge that we will all face will increase.
Alex Linkston is speaking as a former local authority chief executive who delivered. Those are the sort of people we have on the commission.
We understand. We have had evidence from Mr Linkston in the past.
It is impossible for us to answer the question about exactly what will happen to the report once it is handed over to the Government of the day. I dare say that none of the committee members would know that or like to answer that question. We think—probably as the committee does—that the timescale is very tight. It will be extremely challenging to do the work in the time that we have, but we will attempt to do it and to ensure that we produce for the Government of the day a report that is not only factual but evidence based. Our job is very clear: it is to present a succinct, evidence based and forward-looking report to the Government of the day by June, if that is possible.
I am glad to give you the opportunity to interact with a Conservative. We will see what we can do.
No. Public services are delivered in various forms. Some are delivered by the public sector, but many public services are delivered by the voluntary sector and the private sector. We are not examining the public sector; we are examining how we can deliver public services in a way that will react to economic pressures and increasing social pressures, such as the length of people’s lives.
What we used to call the voluntary sector has evolved into something rather different called the third sector, which has an important role in the provision of public services in Scotland. Will you explore how that sector could be extended and developed to produce efficiencies in public services?
We will examine the role of the third sector and the extent to which it might have a bigger or more comprehensive role to play. All that is on our agenda. Clearly, we will have a debate within the commission about the extent to which it is possible to deliver public services—in a way that is underpinned by democracy—by either the private sector or the third sector with an extended role. All that will come into play in our considerations, but we are not starting on the basis that public services are delivered by the public sector. We are quite clear about that in our terms of reference and in the evidence that we seek. Indeed, the public services group of the Confederation of British Industry has come along to see us and to give comprehensive evidence of their role and how they deliver that. We have promised to go back to them to discuss the role of the private sector in the delivery of public services.
You have covered what I was going to ask about next—the potential role of the private sector—but I will raise the subject again. One or two local authorities in the south have made radical decisions about farming out services to the private sector. Will you look at that? If not, is that because you would have to go into too much depth for the level you are dealing with?
We will examine whatever evidence is submitted to us. We have already had an invitation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s right-hand man.
Danny Alexander?
We have already been invited by the Westminster Government to talk about what it has been doing. We will want to look at any good examples that it has to offer us.
That is very good. Thank you.
Good morning. My question is similar to Alex Johnstone’s, and I think that you answered most of it in relation to the distinction between public services and the public sector. The remaining question is how you make that distinction. Dr Christie outlined earlier that police, fire and rescue services and health reviews are taking place. How does your commission see itself fitting in with those public service reviews? We have been told that you are charged with looking at the breadth of public services, so surely the three reviews that I mentioned should come under your remit as well and tie in with what you will do. We know that local authorities work jointly with health boards, the police and fire and rescue on the delivery of services at local level. Will that not skew your outcomes with regard to how you view the future delivery of services?
I will ask Pat Watters to respond to that. However, part of our remit is for the reviews of those three areas to come to us so that we can consider them. I was anxious to make it clear when we were discussing the setting up of the commission that I did not want it to be seen as the long grass into which on-going work could be sidetracked. We want to ensure that we know what is being proposed or implemented and that we are happy that it should go ahead. So, the reviews will come to us for comment, and not to be kicked into the long grass. Would you like to say something on that, Pat?
Campbell has covered most of the issue. On the reviews, the police and the fire and rescue services reviews are out to consultation. We have an understanding that the results of those consultations will come to us.
Thank you very much for that response. As Dr Christie mentioned earlier, the issue of democratic accountability arises with regard to delivery of public services. Is the commission prepared to look at that?
I emphasised the importance of delivery of public services in the context of a democratic underpinning, which will be an important issue for us. Democratic underpinning can be at the level of the Scottish Government, local government or whatever. We can have democratic underpinning with other forms of delivery, as current operations show.
I will return briefly to the process and when the commission’s findings will be published, after which I will move on to specifics. You will produce your findings, analysis and recommendations pretty much immediately after the Scottish elections. Is that timeous? If you make radical or bold suggestions for the reform of service processes and structures, surely any incoming Government should see a window of opportunity to act quickly in its first year. I know that your timescale for reporting is challenging, but is that the ideal time for you to report?
Yes—although my personal wish would be not to report in such a short timescale. Two and a half months or so into the work, I am even more conscious that the volume of evidence and information is huge, so the timescale is difficult. However, I was convinced by the argument that publishing by the end of June at least provides an opportunity to influence the incoming Government’s policies. It is interesting that some politicians tell us to be bold. I hope that they will be bold if we make bold recommendations.
It is not just the public sector that often works in silos; political parties work in silos. If radical or bold recommendations come from the commission, is it incumbent upon all political parties—we do not know the outcome of the election in May—to put party politics to one side and to try, given that we will just have had an election, to find a consensus to introduce the legislation that will be needed to underpin the recommendations? In other words, should it be seen as the Parliament’s work rather than the Government’s work when the commission’s recommendations are made?
Some of my colleagues might want to comment, but I want to say that I was involved over the years in the campaign for a Scottish Parliament and in the founding of the constitutional convention and I was hopeful that that would result in a consensus position in Scotland, which perhaps was not apparent elsewhere in the United Kingdom.
I am very interested in what Bob Doris had to say. We would need to extend the commission’s remit if you are talking about our coming back with a recommendation on how to amalgamate the political parties within Parliament. That is perhaps a cost-saving exercise that would be worth considering.
I point out that I am not up for that.
I want to mention specific structures. I do not hold out much hope for consensus this side of 5 May, but we will see what happens afterwards. We will leave that to the ballot box.
I will ask Pat Watters to say something about that.
Bob Doris is right in that each of the 32 democratically elected local authorities will defend their own positions. However, we would take the wrong tack if, in considering structures, we looked only at local government. Local government has said for a number of years that it is happy to get involved in a debate about structures as long as everything is on the table in that regard and not just parts of the public sector. The value of the commission is that it will look across the public sector at the interaction of the different parts, which all have a role in delivering to communities. As an elected councillor, I am comfortable about doing that. Will I put some local authorities on the line as sacrificial lambs? No, I will not. However, if there is a good arguable case about how we can improve delivery at local level by looking at the structures of the whole public sector, I think that all local government will be on board for that.
As was said, we are looking for a cultural change in how we do things. If we just make incremental changes to the way in which we work, there will be a serious mismatch between resource and demand. I have seen no evidence that changing structures necessarily improves efficiency or saves money; it could in fact increase costs.
I come into the commission as someone who is interested in the citizen, the user and the consumer. That is why, when Campbell Christie asked me to participate, I agreed to do so. I, too, had a question about the commission’s timescale and wondered whether it was possible. However, I talked with Campbell and concluded that this was an important time to have a commission on reform of public services.
Thank you.
That last point refers to an important aspect. We have taken a lot of evidence from the voluntary sector about outcomes. However, the other side of that coin is the producer side, and a question that arises is what impact how we treat those at the bottom of the public sector who deliver crucial services will have on vulnerable people and other consumers of public services. I am talking about how the lowest paid in local government have been treated, which the committee has raised. They are the only group of workers at that level who face a pay freeze. Even the Tory Government is not imposing a freeze on public sector workers down south who earn less than £21,000. Will that impact on the services that the very poorest workers deliver to the most vulnerable? There is a concern that the voluntary sector is constrained by its wage structures, and wages are being kept down at that level. There are issues there. I hope that how the treatment of the lowest paid and the conditions that they are working under will impact on the important services that they deliver to the most vulnerable is taken into consideration; I hope that that is on the horizon, as well.
One of the things that concerned us at the last full meeting of the commission—in between the evidence taking—was that, accidentally, we might exclude the very people whom you are talking about: the people who are in the greatest need, who often have the smallest voice in attracting attention to that need. At that meeting, we all took the decision to take a fresh look at our sources of evidence. We will now include in those sources of evidence the sections of society that you are discussing, so that when, for example, we go to conferences, instead of hearing only from chief executives, we will talk to carers, users and consumers—the people on whom the greatest impact will be made when services are reconfigured, as I believe, ultimately, they must be.
I think that the convener’s point is very important. From a trade union point of view, I have never in my 35 years’ experience detected, in any of the hundreds of reviews that have been carried out by central Government during that period, any willingness on the part of a Government of any political colour to understand the need to take with it the workers who deliver those services when changes are made, and to make them part of the process instead of leaving them outside it. That will be a big factor in implementing change. Governments need to realise that, if they are to bring workers with them, any continued pay discrimination or threats to jobs will have a big influence on whether workers will find it possible to co-operate with them in looking at what may well be radical change.
I have always believed that the public sector is a people industry—in the main, the services that we deliver are delivered by staff such as doctors, nurses, social workers and teachers. We have to motivate staff. Hopefully, whatever we come up with will have employees at the heart of it, because that determines the quality.
Pay freezes have been accepted right across the board, and built into them has been protection for the workers at the very bottom of the scale, apart from in local government in Scotland. I do not know whether that can be sustained without it having an impact on the most vulnerable people. Many people in local authorities are delivering care for their communities every day all over Scotland, and the fact that they are on low pay is not recognised. There is a battleground here. If you like, there is an area in which we need to keep pay down—the paying of the price by low-paid people for the financial mess that we are in. How will the public sector ethos apply to those people?
It is difficult. To generalise, there are certainly financial problems in local government and right across the public sector. In local government, we do not have the luxury of overspending, which is a luxury that other parts of the public sector might have. We have to live within the limits that we are given. Within those limits, local authorities are now considering how to deal with low pay in their area of the public sector. However, if the commission is being asked to consider how low pay is dealt with, as well as considering how structure, outcomes and the delivery of services are dealt with, you might receive a report in June, but in two years’ time.
I would contend that these issues must be considered in the round. You cannot pick and choose. We hope for good, bold, radical and sustainable decisions from your report, but can we do good, bold and radical now? Mr Christie mentioned his awareness, even just a few weeks in, of the scale of your task. That issue has been mentioned a number of times this morning, and it was not something that the committee made up. It comes from evidence that we have heard from people with long experience in the public sector. For example, Consumer Focus Scotland is very sceptical about what can be achieved between now and June.
The answer can only be a judgment. Even with a blank sheet of paper and no other activity—the investigations that we want to carry out and the evidence that we want to gather—we would not have thought that the end of June would be an appropriate time by which to produce a report of this nature. However, we see clearly that, if we want to influence the direction of travel in the period ahead, there is value in producing a report in the early stages of a new Scottish Government that is determining its spending plans for the remaining three years of the present expenditure period. There are two sides to the argument. It may be that, when presenting our preliminary views, we will suggest that further work needs to be done. We can work along those lines. We had this debate with the Government—I certainly did—and I am convinced that there is value in producing a report that can feed into the decision-making process that will take place after the election. What happens thereafter is a matter for our commission to determine.
Good morning to you all. I do not want to labour the point, but I would like clarification on the timescale for the report. I have to be frank and say that it is very challenging, given what the commission is being asked to examine. Clearly, decisions are being taken now by local authorities and other public sector providers that will have an impact in the future. The commission will not report until June and it is likely that whoever forms the new Government will look at the report. That means that it will have limited impact on next year’s budget rounds. At what stage does it become difficult to make recommendations that will be effective, given that some decisions might already have been made?
The decisions on 2011-12 will be taken by the Parliament today or in the immediate future, and I imagine that that will be the position for that year. We are looking at the following three years of the four-year cycle. In producing a report by the end of June, we are hopeful that it will have an impact on what the new Government puts forward in its spending plans for the next three-year period. One of my motivations for agreeing to chair the commission was that, without something trying to pull it all together, the cuts in expenditure are being made piecemeal. There are different cuts in different areas and different services are affected in different ways. I was concerned that, as a result of that, the easy targets—as Pat Watters says, the targets that would achieve the budget for the year that they cannot go beyond—would be the ones that would be hit. I was anxious that we at least put into the public domain options that would not result in indiscriminate cuts. Obviously, we cannot conjure up new money, but we can maybe recommend how the money that is available can be used in a way that would be fairer and that would not result in those least able to defend themselves being the ones that suffer.
I am reassured that you think that the commission is worth while and that you will do what you can within the timescale. I suppose that, for all of us, the proof will be when we try to make the changes. I will not labour that point further.
In a sense, the commission has no view on anything yet. However, I can say with confidence that the commission will have a view on examining the issue of charging as an alternative to other means of raising funds and it will be for the commission to work out what that view is. In fact, charging is currently being implemented by some local authorities and providers as an alternative to cutting services. That is happening in my area. The issue is on all our agendas and I am sure that the commission will want to express a view on it.
Understandably, we have spent a lot of time this morning on structures and on how things are done, because that is obviously what informs many budget decisions. However, some of the evidence that we have taken, including from a witness last week, was more about what we deliver. What we deliver sometimes ceases to be appropriate in its existing form. Teasing that out will be an important way of looking at the future as well.
My understanding was that the commission would look at the general issue of what is provided by the public sector as a whole, anyway. However, the issue is how we fund that. Will the commission look at everything that is provided and consider whether it should be funded from the centre or paid for directly, and whether we should introduce means testing for certain services? Is everything on the table? If not, what areas have you ruled out?
Our primary concern is how to get maximum efficiency from the public sector and our recommendations will address that. However, I do not think that anybody believes that the gap can be closed purely by efficiency savings. Parliament and Government will have to make choices about the level of service provision in some areas and whether some services should be stopped or charged for. I hope that we can close part of the gap through our recommendations but, within the timescale that we have and given our direction of travel, I do not think that we will look specifically at the areas that Mary Mulligan suggested and make specific recommendations on them. It would be for Parliament to make such decisions. The independent budget review report was excellent. We would look to comment on it, but we would not seek to redo its work.
I understand what Mary Mulligan has suggested, but the size of the task would make it difficult. If we were to look at every single part of the public sector and at how they interacted, and consider whether there should be service charges and whether those should be central or local charges, and whether the services should be funded nationally or locally, it would take longer than the timescale that we have.
My question, indeed, was about issues such as free personal care and free bus travel for older people.
Free prescriptions.
The question is whether those issues would be looked at because they are identified as being free at the point of service, or whether you think that accepting charging for some things means that it should also be accepted for others. I was trying to get a feel for whether the commission thought that it would have time to consider that and whether it would produce a view that the only other way in which resources can be provided to fund some services when budgets are tight might be through charging.
We have said that we have looked at the independent budget review report and had discussions with the independent budget review group. It is not our intention to reinvent what it did.
You are happy with what the IBR said.
I am saying that we will take that into account and that we have not reached a conclusion on anything.
That is not the same thing. Is it that you will take the IBR into account and comment on it or that you will just take it into account?
You already have the independent budget review report.
Yes, but we do not have the commission’s view on it. Are we likely to have the commission’s view on what the IBR said on charging?
We will not necessarily comment on the IBR report’s recommendations. An early chapter of what we will look at will obviously be consideration of the finances that will be available in the immediate future and how those are accrued and collected, and we will perhaps identify some principles. However, clearly, we will not be able to look at all individual services and recommend whether they should be charged for or whatever. We will, though, want to try to identify any principles, if we can.
The committee has raised a number of questions about principle with regard to this matter. Of course, we are talking not only about local government in this respect; we have made some comments that are principally about local government, but we also absolutely accept that the public sector as a whole can do a lot more. In any event, we have been critical about how we monitor efficiencies; indeed, what you have described as the very good independent budget review report concluded that there were no meaningful targets, that cost reductions were poor and that the record in efficiency gains was disappointing. Consumers and, indeed, committee members would expect to find that efficiencies and productivity have provided as much value as charges.
If you are suggesting that the committee would like us to examine that issue, convener, we will take that on board. I assume, in any case, that we will be looking at it.
You will have had evidence from people in local government that increasing charges reduce demand. After all, one of the biggest problems that has emerged in the evidence that we have taken and which is just as significant with regard to the level of spending that public services will have is that demand is increasing. How do we reach a situation in which we spend less money but meet increasing demand? The answer, it seems, is to increase charges. Is that not the case? Perhaps Mr Linkston or Councillor Watters might comment.
I do not think that anyone in local government would suggest increasing charges to reduce demand. We accept that demand is increasing, but perhaps that might be met if, convener, you were to move in today’s debate that local government should receive a bigger allocation.
Pardon?
Perhaps you should move that there should be a bigger allocation to local government.
I am not in the Government, Mr Watters—I am a convener of a cross-party parliamentary committee.
You are all asking about local government, but the commission is looking at the whole public sector. If you want to submit evidence to us, we will be happy to accept it. After all, we, like you, are here to take evidence.
We have taken reams of evidence, including from COSLA. Unfortunately, you have not attended any of those meetings. I think that Mr Linkston will agree that increasing charges reduces or depresses demand for local government services.
I am not aware of any local authority that has introduced charges purely to reduce demand. Charges are introduced if it is decided that funding should come either wholly from those charges or from charges and subsidies from the council tax fund. That will reduce demand, but I do not think that that would be a motivating factor for any responsible body.
I note your use of the word “wholly”. However, charges will still reduce demand and principles must be in place to ensure that they are based solely on the cost of the service being provided to the consumer.
If a service is worth providing, why would you want to introduce measures that reduce demand? You might reduce demand among the people who need the service the most.
The commission is at a very early stage. There are lots of questions that we need to consider, and it will be useful for us to take away some of the issues that committee members have raised. We can give our individual points of view, but we will have to come together as a commission to discuss what committee members have been saying. These matters are important, and we will want to consider them in detail.
Thank you, Kaliani. Convener, the commission has not yet taken decisions on the issues that you raise. We are gathering evidence, and we are taking decisions on how we gather evidence and on how we can examine it properly. We have not taken specific decisions to exclude this particular thing or to include that particular thing. The commission has not yet taken a position. As committee members will see, individual members of the commission are bringing their own experience to bear. My colleagues and I will have to see how we can pool that experience in a way that makes sense, that helps to take us forward, and that meets the principles set out in our remit.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I want to go back briefly to Dr Christie’s opening statement. Dr Christie—and later Councillor Watters—referred to the challenging timescale and to the breadth of the commission’s remit. In the commission’s early deliberations, did issues arise that you felt could have been helpfully included in your remit? I would not want to add to the timescale considerations, but would having more issues included in your remit be helpful as the commission heads towards its eventual outcomes?
I do not think that we have felt restricted in considering any area of how public services are delivered. I do not know whether you have seen on our website or in hard copy the questionnaire and guidance that we have sent out to the people who are submitting evidence. The evidence that we are seeking is pretty far ranging. I do not think that it has been suggested to us that our brief is too narrow and that we should extend it.
We said in our deliberations that where other investigations and pieces of research were being undertaken and possible collaborations or mergers were being discussed, any evidence that they provided or conclusions that they reached would be fed into what we are discussing. Quite clearly there is no point in reinventing other people’s wheels. We would need to know what conclusions they had reached and for what reasons when we came to make our own decisions.
That is helpful. I find both Dr Christie’s and Dr Wishart’s comments reassuring, because in the past commissions have reported on various things—not just Arbuthnott but others—and have felt that their remit was too tight, which did not allow a proper or full outcome.
The answer is probably not really. Looking at structures is part of our remit and we will want to examine them. We are conscious of the evidence that we have seen from elsewhere—and one just needs to look at history to see this—that restructuring is time-consuming and costly up front. In this period, the last thing that we want to do is to increase immediate cost. It is an area that we have been asked to look at and we will look at it. However, restructuring is not an easy option for precisely the reasons that you make.
We are not that far into the commission’s work. We are in the process of gathering evidence and looking at it as it comes in. Before we look at structures, we need to look at what we want the public sector to do and what needs to happen for that to be carried out. It is too early for us to say that we need to look at the number of local authorities, health boards, fire services, police services or whatever structure in the public sector. We need to consider what we want to deliver and then what we need in order to deliver it.
Thanks for that.
We are aware of what is in the Scotland Bill and of the debates that have taken place in the Parliament on it. The commission has not yet discussed it, but one of the early chapters of the report will look at the financial situation and the future moneys that will be available to the Scottish Government. Tax-raising and borrowing powers and other such issues will be part of the examination of the likely economic position in the immediate period ahead, for which we have information, and beyond that. We will want to take the matter into account in our deliberations and consider whether it is another means by which we can provide public services that we would otherwise not be able to provide.
Thanks for that clarification, Dr Christie.
The commission’s remit refers to the role of public services in improving outcomes and to how we can reduce demand through early intervention. I want to explore briefly what issues that might take you into.
No, it is central to what we have been asked to do, because we have been asked to look particularly at outcomes and at what obstacles are in the way of achieving them. I first became involved in the trade union movement in 1960 and I remember reading then some material about the importance of early interventions as a means of improving health and so on. The issue has remained on the public agenda, but the aim has never really been achieved in 50-odd years. I assume, maybe naively, that that is because it is not the sort of issue that gets the juices flowing for politicians or the public, because it does not produce immediate results but, if you are talking about outcomes, it has to be on the agenda. I note that work is again being done on early interventions.
If we take that approach to its logical conclusion in the financial situation that we are in, we see that it is not simply a matter of saying, “Early intervention is a good thing”; it is a matter of saying, “Early intervention is a good thing and we need to spend more money on it, which means that we will spend less money on something else.”
Yes. It might well mean saying that.
A focus on early intervention and prevention does not automatically mean that we spend more money in the area. It means that we join up different bits of the public sector better and use mainstream services to deliver on wider issues as well as on the service objective. It is not all about money; it is about how we use resources.
My question was about health, but on a more general point, Dr Wishart and Pat Watters said that you have all been considering whether the public sector should do certain things. Is there much scope in that regard? Are there significant activities that the public sector should not be undertaking, which use significant resources? I do not want you to commit yourselves in advance of reaching your conclusions, but are we talking about an area of substance or an area that you must consider without expecting it to deliver much?
I am not sure who can bail me out on that question.
As I tried to say, we are at too early a stage in our evidence gathering to be able to come up with a response. The commission does not have any hard conclusions that it must reach. We know which areas we must consider and we are looking at the evidence as it comes in. We discuss the evidence and mill it about.
When I was talking about the need to consider the what as opposed to just the how, I did not mean that we would necessarily find that lots of things are being delivered that ought not to be delivered. I meant, rather, that what we have already found from the evidence is that some of the ways in which we go about delivering services and some of the things that we are offering people are not of much assistance in the world of today and tomorrow.
Good morning. To be frank, your remit is daunting. I admire you all greatly for taking it on. Throughout our discussion, I have been conscious that we are talking about a period in which demand will increase and budgets will reduce. Your remit is not just about squaring those two issues against each other; you are also charged with driving up standards. The remit says that
In truth, we have not had such a debate yet. We have concentrated on our own structures and on requesting and analysing evidence. We have not really had the sessions on such matters, but we will have them in the period ahead. That is why we say that we have not excluded anything or identified areas that we might not consider—we have not reached that stage, so I do not know whether I can respond to your question.
Many good examples are out there. We hope that people will provide us with some of those good examples, which we can study. We will ask what characteristics make such initiatives succeed and what learning from them we can take to the wider public sector ethos and embed in the culture, so that good practice becomes not the exception but how we do business as a country.
You have answered what was to be my second question, which was whether you expect to have the scope to do such work. That is helpful and saves us from discussing that.
It is unlikely that we would not want to produce a report at the end of June, but that report might say, “Here are areas that we’ve looked at and here are recommendations. We seek more time to look at some longer-term things.” This is only my view, but we would certainly want to be able to produce a report by the end of June. If, as we are drafting that report in April or May, we begin to think that we have not really had the time to do all that we would want to do, we might want to say something about that in our final report. At the moment, we are certainly working on the basis that we will produce a report with recommendations, which will be bold and will address the issues, so that it comes into play for the rest of the spending review period.
I wish you all very good luck in coming to those conclusions.
Thank you.
I have another bid for questions from John Wilson.
Mr Linkston, you referred to a public sector ethos. Dr Christie, in the note that you kindly gave us before today’s meeting, you referred to a “public service ethos”. Will you expand on what you see as a public sector or public service ethos in Scotland? Do you envisage that being different in other parts of the UK?
I cannot talk for other parts of the UK, but I have seen tremendous commitment to public service across the public sector. When I was chief executive of a council, we did a lot of partnership working with the health service, the police, Jobcentre Plus, the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, the voluntary sector and the private sector. There is a huge commitment to serve the public. People want to do a good job. A lot of the time we get in the road of that by bringing in rules, organisational structures and silos. Staff from different agencies come together to resolve what are very complex issues. I have seen it time and again in my period as a chief exec. I am now convinced that there is a very strong public sector ethos. It is not a case of people just turning up on a Monday morning and working till Friday and it is just a job; they have a very strong commitment to delivering public services well.
I lived and worked in Kent for 15 years. I came back to Scotland in 1985 to be general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. Did I see a difference in community approaches between leafy Kent and industrial Falkirk? Yes, I did. There is a Scottish ethos of fairness, of helping those who need help and of wanting to see people prosper and go forward to achieve their objectives and so on. I found that stimulating. After spending a number of years in another environment, I was convinced that there is a distinct Scottish ethos of justice, fairness and helping those who need help and giving them priority.
Does the commission not have a dilemma on its hands in examining the services that should be delivered by public authorities as opposed to what the public expects and wants from those services? We have discussed the issue of 32 local authorities doing 32 different things in their areas. There may be 32 different delivery systems because the residents in those areas want a service to be delivered in a particular way. The issue is how we get a common approach throughout Scotland to delivering services that benefits everybody in Scotland and that tackles in particular an issue that Dr Christie raised: social justice.
There is a tension between having a local agenda for service delivery that reflects the needs of local communities and having a postcode lottery in service delivery. However, we are charged to consider how both can be done: delivering what local communities need in their particular circumstances; and delivering overall outcomes. That is one of the challenges, but it is endemic to the area that we are in.
One of the reasons why the committee has heard the word “outcome” so often this morning is that we determined early on that, rather than retread old ground and take the status quo as a template for tomorrow, we would first look at what was most desirable at the end of the road and then work out the best pathways to that.
I think that it was Alex Linkston who referred to the good practice that there is in Scotland and how the commission would refer to that. Will the commission look beyond Scotland for good practice in public services?
Yes. We would want to look at best practice. Our colleagues south of the border have asked us whether we want to look at some of the things that they are doing, and we will want to do so. We are also aware of various international reports and surveys. I would want to look in particular at northern European countries—Scandinavian countries—to see the sort of things that they are doing, whether they have any relevance for us and whether we can add that to the information that we will get from people in Scotland. We are anxious to look at best practice elsewhere and we will certainly try to do so within the timescale to which we are operating.
It just remains for me to thank our witnesses for their time and the evidence that they have provided. If nothing else, your commitment is confirmed by the time that you have spent here this morning. We realise that you are all busy people and we wish you well in your deliberations and evidence-taking sessions. We look forward to your report offering us solutions, given the situation that we face now and into the future. We wish you well. I hope that this will be the beginning of work with various committees of the Parliament in the next session.
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