Budget Process 2005-06
The next item is further consideration at stage 1 of the budget process for 2005-06. I am pleased to welcome back to the committee Peter Wood, who is from Tribal HCH Ltd. Members have a copy of the submission that he has kindly provided. I invite him to make an opening statement before we move to questions.
Peter Wood (Tribal HCH Ltd):
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am recovering from a slight cold so, if I am more incoherent than usual at any point, that may explain why.
The committee's letter asked me to comment on stage 1 of the budget process and, in particular, on the system of objectives and targets surrounding the "Annual Evaluation Report 2005-06". Bearing in mind that request, I commented briefly in my submission on the treatment of objectives as set out in the AER and the relationship between objectives and targets. I also made some suggestions on how the process might be improved.
I was asked to comment specifically on the replacement of the five priorities and two themes that appeared in "Building a Better Scotland" with the four challenges that appear in the AER. The four challenges—growing the economy, delivering excellent public services, building stronger communities and revitalising democracy—are clearly high-level fundamental objectives, so it is appropriate that they should be set out. Arguably, the four challenges are much more statements of objectives than the initial five priorities because they are clearer and more succinct.
However, it appears to me that that change is largely presentational. I am sorry if I am wrong on that, but most of the specific objectives that were found in the earlier documents remain. The objectives have simply been restructured or regrouped under the four challenges. For example, the specific targets that appeared in "Building a Better Scotland" are replicated. I make these comments only because I was asked about the issue, but it is not clear to me that there has been any fundamental change connected to changes in decisions about resources. However, that is an issue to which we could return.
I have said most about how objectives and targets are specified and whether they are useful, particularly to the committee in its scrutiny of how public money is spent in Scotland. It is important that we do not recommend or pretend that we have an ideal model; we must be conscious of the realities with which we work. In a simplified textbook world, the budget would state what our objectives are, what the outcomes will be and what is being spent on each set of target outcomes. However, the Scottish Executive's budget, like that of every other public agency or Government in the world, is complex and is the result of multiple decisions taken over time. Public spending objectives are complex and variable and priorities are implicit and emerge, rather than being decided in a clear-cut process. The point was raised in our previous discussion about economic development that spending patterns are determined largely by decisions that have already been made. We cannot shift the overall budget very much in any year. In any case, fundamental changes in spending patterns are pretty unusual. We must acknowledge that we do not start with a clean sheet from a zero base every year and there is no point in pretending that we do.
We need to consider how the process can be improved practically and sensibly. Before I talk about that, I want to say a bit about the existing system of objectives and targets. The sets of targets that appear in the AER need to be improved. There are too many targets and they vary from tightly specified targets such as that every patient should have access to a primary care team member within 48 hours—regardless of whether the target is good, it is precise—to vague targets such as that we should enable more older people to live in their own homes. How many more are we talking about? Many targets are scarcely credible as measures of progress against objectives. I have picked out examples of that; I could have picked others. I will not repeat them all, but they include saying that we want to promote social inclusion in public transport, which I take to mean providing better access to public transport for all the community, perhaps especially for those who are less advantaged. To say that we will measure the success of that according to how many people visit a website seems to make a tenuous connection.
I noticed that I have said in my submission:
"Not all targets are amenable to".
I meant to say that not all targets are amenable to measurement—the word "measurement" disappeared. There are ways in which the targets could be improved. It is quite possible that I have that wrong and that all the targets have been chosen carefully, but I have to say that they all give off an air of the ad hoc.
My final points are about the way ahead. I would not recommend the adoption of an impractical ideal, but perhaps the AER and other elements of the budget process might pay attention to certain principles. In considering any spending area, such as education or health, we should start with a statement on the basic aims, which by and large already happens. Then one would like to see robust data on throughput or output measures, such as how many people are treated in our hospitals, how many people are educated or how many kilometres of rail or road we have built. That would give us a sense of the broad indicators, which we could track year by year, so that we could say, "We have moved in this direction or that direction."
We could also consider the issue of productivity. There should be a statement of the funding required in the forward period to maintain the level of current activity and output—how much we need to increase the budget just to stand still. We should also say where there is a shift and what the rationale is for it. If there is a shift in priorities from one area of spending to another, that should be spelled out. Additional spending that is required not to maintain the current service but to improve it or to provide additional outputs should be specified clearly, preferably with an attempt to outline related targets and measures, to give us some idea of whether it has been successful.
I am really suggesting that there should be two main thrusts of the budget scrutiny process and two main questions to ask. First, in doing what the public sector has done for many years, are we becoming more or less efficient in our use of resources? Secondly, where we are increasing or reducing spending or shifting it from one area to another, what is the rationale for that and how are the effects to be monitored and assessed? None of that would rule out undertaking from time to time more searching reviews of specific spending areas and asking whether we should be doing something at all, but that would not be routine. My suggestions are for what we might call the regular or annual process.
Thanks very much. I must say that I am sympathetic to quite a few of the points that you made in your presentation. I will home in on three specific issues. From a business management point of view, you are quite right that we would end up with fewer and more measurable targets with what you suggest, which is in a sense where management and business have gone. However, there is a political dimension to the budget. If the Government moves to reduce the number of targets, it gets accused of leaving certain things out. It is really a question of how we square that circle. Once targets are set, they immediately become the subject of controversy and debate, in relation not only to whether they are achieved but to the signals that they send about Government prioritisation and so on. Do you see a way in which we can begin to separate out the process of setting targets so that they are more useful to us in the management of government and less subject to becoming the bargaining chips in a political process?
There are a number of points there. Perhaps I said rather quickly that the number of targets could be reduced. I am not necessarily suggesting that they be reduced drastically, because the Government's activities are diverse. I am always reluctant to make the comparison between government and business, because businesses generally have relatively simple objectives by the Government's standards, although some people might disagree. I accept that the targets for the Government have to be more complex and that one of the dangers with targets is that they become the focus—there have been enough complaints about that—and people think that we have to play to the targets. I have heard medical spokesmen criticise the target of everyone getting access within 48 hours to a primary care team member as a distortion of priorities, so it is not easy to get the targets right.
However, there is real variability in the suite of targets in the AER. Some of them look terribly ad hoc, as if they were put in because something had to be put in. I return to the principles that I suggested might be developed. One was that for established spending we should perhaps focus our attention on measures that might give us a handle on efficiency and productivity and allow us to determine whether we are getting more or less out of the money that we spend. Secondly, where we set new priorities, such as to improve cancer care, skills in the work force or aspects of the environment, attention should be focused on specifying meaningful targets. I am suggesting that rather than a plethora of targets, we should have targets that fall into one of these two categories: they should be either about measuring on-going performance and productivity or about assessing the outputs of a specific change in spending priorities or similar initiatives.
I have a question on the budget horizon or timeframe, whether in an annual context or spending review period. If we were to make significant changes in pushing towards rationalisation in higher education—to pick an example relatively at random—or changing the pattern of health care, to some extent the timescale needed for managing them is more than one year and probably more than a spending review period. There might be a view on the part of Government that, to some extent, because the effects cannot be realised within the timeframe, it is not worth making the change. Behind what you are saying is the idea that we should have a kind of anticipated-needs database, which would take into account the cost increases that are coming through, and a management timeframe for public expenditure that allows us to make decisions in the context of a realistic timeframe. Is that a fair summary of what you are suggesting?
I think that you put it better than I would have.
It is commonly accepted that annual budgets are a curse. Even the three-year strategic planning horizon, which is a welcome improvement, is still quite a short period.
When setting out strategies, it would be desirable for Parliaments and Governments to look four or five years ahead in most areas and even further ahead in other areas. A strategy does not bind a Government year to year. We know that the year-to-year budget will be affected by all kinds of things, such as crises that might arise, and that, if there is an economic downturn, a Government has to trim its sails. There will always be changes at the margins, but the broad thrust of spending should be considered over as long a period as is practical. Having five-year horizons for strategic planning would be welcome, although sticking to such priorities would require a degree of discipline on the part of Governments. I am not politically naive and I understand that demands arise and I would not wish to dampen down the political process. We have to be pragmatic, to use that fine word, and accept that events will confound ideal models, but we have seen the benefits in other areas of public life of taking a slightly longer-term strategic view. That is particularly evident when we compare macroeconomic policy management these days with the situation 20 years ago.
In the kind of framework that I was talking about, Governments need to ask what they need to spend just to keep the show on the road; where they are going to make changes to improve efficiency; where they are planning to make changes in their spending priorities; and how they will assess whether they have been successful.
We need to recognise the fact that, although the challenges have changed, the Executive was obliged to report on the targets that it set at the time of the 2002 spending review. In a way, we should not be expecting the Executive to do more than that.
You said that not all targets are amenable to measurement. Did you mean that some of the Scottish Executive's targets are not amenable to measurement?
The specification of some of the targets means that it is not clear how it is intended that they will be measured. For example, one target is that more older people should be able to live in their own homes. How is that going to be measured?
That seems to go against what the Executive claimed, which was that its targets would be measurable and achievable.
I did not say that none of the targets were measurable; I said that not all of them were. Most of them are. Indeed, one could argue that the targets have been chosen because they are measurable. The bigger problem is that it is not easy to translate some of the objectives into targets. Quite clearly, 80 per cent or 90 per cent of the targets have been chosen with an eye to their measurability.
I take the point that the Executive is obliged to continue with the targets. If they had been abandoned, the Executive would have been open to various accusations. I am conscious that it is terribly easy to be critical of other people's efforts when one is asked to discuss something such as the AER. My comment on the change—which I was asked to comment on—was that it did not seem to mean much at this point. It was not intended as a criticism of the Executive.
I sit on another committee that is examining the targets in more detail. There is some concern as to what "on course" means. Target 2 in the transport section of the AER says simply what the current levels are without saying whether they are going up or down. We are told that those levels are on course, but we do not know the direction that they are going in.
I am grateful to you for making that point. I should have said that I think that the "on course" classification is vague and not helpful.
Obviously, we need to consider the Executive's objectives in relation to the improvement of services in Scotland and so on, but perhaps there should be a few broad targets that are more clearly linked to the objectives and which have within them specific milestones that are reported on annually with some sort of narrative about how they contribute to the broader targets. I know that I am simply throwing that concept into the discussion, but I think that it might provide a different and better approach that would enable targets to be reported in a way that linked the vision and the building blocks.
I think that there can be a hierarchy of objectives. Let us take the broad objective of improving the health of the Scottish people as an example. That could be measured in the changes in mortality and morbidity rates. For example, we could say that we want death rates from this, that and the next thing to come down in the next 10 years. At the level beneath that, we would have to ask what can be done about that. If the main causes of the death rates have been identified as being related to diet, smoking, alcohol abuse and so on, we would focus specifically on those areas and try to come up with ways of measuring the success of the programmes that would be put in place to achieve our aims in that regard. Operationally, the departments need ways of determining whether their spending is on budget and the programmes are being run correctly, although that level of monitoring need not necessarily be represented in the AER.
It is quite right for the Executive to say, "Judge us on whether we have achieved this change in 10 years' time," and also to set out the actions that it will take to pursue that high-level objective and how they will be measured.
One problem is that a programme might do everything that it attempted to achieve but not affect the high-level objective. That could happen, but that is just a fact of life. You are right in saying that we need to make a separation between broad objectives and operational targets that relate to specific programmes. At present, there is a bit of a mix of things in the AER.
I read your paper with interest and share many of your aspirations. I consider your paper to be an accurate and fair assessment. I certainly believe, like you, that there should be fewer targets and that they should be more outcome oriented. In the 1970s, companies managed to get away without having outcome-oriented targets, but that would be utterly unheard of now in either the public or the private sector.
Your paper and some of the recent responses that we have had paint a mildly depressing picture. A couple of weeks ago, Andy Kerr told the committee that he felt incapable of having macro-level targets in certain key areas because he did not have the levers to control the outcomes. Do you have a view on what macro-level targets we could legitimately have?
I understand ministers' reluctance to sign up to targets whose outcome they do not control. I would certainly argue that that is right. There is no point in purporting to be able to change something that you cannot change. I can think of programmes—although not Executive programmes—that are simply too far away from the objective to provide a way of measuring it. One has to consider the specific circumstances. The remit and responsibilities of the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament are quite wide-ranging. I know that macroeconomic policy is not controlled in Scotland, but the greater part of public spending certainly is controlled here. That spending has objectives such as improving the health of the population and making people more productive. It is right to have what I would call quite high-level targets, as long as you are realistic about timeframes.
Let us say, purely for the sake of argument, that the Executive decided that a major priority, requiring a big effort, was to raise the level of productivity in the Scottish economy. If the aim was to achieve European levels of output per head in 10 years, it would be right to come back in 10 years to ask whether the measures taken had worked or whether we were still where we were 10 years ago. In the intervening period, you would need targets to let you know whether you were on course.
I use the analogy of driving down a road. Let us say that I am going to drive from Edinburgh to London. Suppose that I have just landed from Mars and have never done the journey before. The first thing I need is a United Kingdom map showing me where Edinburgh and London are. Then I need a road map to help me to find the road that I will drive down. Then, as I drive along, I need specific instructions about where to turn. At the same time, because I am driving, I need to know how fast my car is going, at what rate it is consuming fuel and, therefore, when I will have to stop. The high-level question to which I need to know the answer at the end is whether I got from Edinburgh to London; but, to have done that, I will have needed lots of information on whether I was going in the right direction, at the right speed and so on.
The same kind of thing applies to the control and use of public expenditure. We have high-level objectives to get from here to there but, in doing so—and the process may take years—we need to be able to measure whether we are on course. We would start by asking whether we have spent the money we said we would on the things we said we would and whether the money is having the effects we expected. I see a connection: there is a rational or logical order between the high-level objectives and the specific information that is needed for management. Specific management targets belong in operational departments; the targets encourage people to get on with things. However, what have to be reported to Parliament or to this committee are the higher-order targets. Those targets are still meaningful. They answer questions such as whether we are on course. They tell us whether, on our journey from Edinburgh to London, we have reached Newcastle this week or Derby, or only as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed.
I take your point and will take the analogy a bit further if I may. In effect, Andy Kerr told us that he was sitting in a car with no steering, no pedals and a tow-rope pulled by other people.
That was a polemical point.
It is all right; the analogy has come to a full stop.
What Peter Wood was saying on productivity was very interesting, We live in the real world and those points have been very much endorsed by the guest celebrities in the Allander series of lectures—such as Nicholas Crafts and James Heckman. I am interested in the impact of public sector productivity on national competitiveness and productivity in the overall economy. I would like Peter Wood to consider two points.
First, with the presence of a regulator, we have seen dramatic efficiency improvements at Scottish Water. At a Scottish Trades Union Congress event yesterday, Douglas Millican said that the first 20 per cent of savings was actually quite easy to achieve once there was a focus. I might ask a tongue-in-cheek question on whether there would be mileage in getting some civil service personnel to fulfil regulatory functions across all departments.
Secondly, if we consider the "European Competitiveness Index 2004" produced by Robert Huggins Associates Ltd, what worries me is that Scotland is falling behind in competitiveness. How can we remedy that?
Those were wide-ranging questions. I will say something about your second point but I am not sure what to say about the first. Obviously, improvements in productivity in public bodies such as Scottish Water are very welcome. Regulation and regulatory environments play an important role—in the utilities in particular. I feel that a good regulatory environment in which people can work is a good way of ensuring progress.
On your second point, I considered productivity merely to illustrate one of the issues that Government might address. However, if the Executive and Parliament are concerned that Scotland's productivity rating is not as high as it should be, I would have sympathy with that. The question that would arise is what we would do about that rating, and answering that question would be a major exercise. However, broadly speaking, there are two, or perhaps three, ways of increasing productivity. First and foremost, we have to increase people's relevant skills. The more skilled, educated and trained people are, the better able they are—provided the skills are relevant—to do their job, and that will increase their productivity.
The second main way of increasing productivity—one that is not always relevant but is well established—is to increase levels of capital investment. The more capital a worker controls, whether he or she is in a factory or in an office, the more productive he or she is likely to be. The third main way would be through what we might call better management of the organisation and the process. We have to make engineering processes—as the management consultants say—more efficient.
If you were to ask me where we are falling down the most—in training and skills, in levels of investment, or in the way we organise our work—I could not answer right now. However, I suggest that those are the areas on which we have to focus and those are the questions that we have to ask.
I accept that, and I would also focus on the retention of skills. Having created the skills, we would have to ask how we would retain them in the economy.
I have a final question. Given the absence of macro-level Government targets, should we pay attention to macro-level indices that other agencies produce? Should we use such information to inform the debate?
It would depend on what the information related to. As far as the general performance of the economy is concerned, we have talked about measures of productivity, which are relevant, and there are other measures. We have to focus on such measures over the right period of time. I was going to talk about things that take longer to build than expected, but I have changed my mind. Large-scale change does not occur rapidly. I have seen in some documents—although nothing to do with present work—a focus on targets that cannot be expected to change in the period under observation. What is the point of that? We must acknowledge that change takes time.
It is right that the Parliament should concern itself with issues such as where Scotland stands now, where it will stand in five years' time and how we will measure whether we have made progress in line with our aspirations. It is relevant to consider broad macro-level targets—or indicators, or whatever you want to call them—and to say that we will measure ourselves by them.
Those are certainly issues that interest the committee.
Good morning, Mr Wood. Have you a view on the level of transparency, or—should I say?—lack of transparency in the budget document regarding the use of public-private partnerships as a method of capital asset delivery?
I would put that question in a more general context. The document as it stands is not very transparent. I do not mean to suggest that anything is being concealed; I am talking about the way in which information is presented. We are told how much is spent in broad areas but then we get discussion of priorities with variable and not always comprehensive treatment of how those priorities will be tackled. I can think of only two or three instances in which the document says, in effect, "This is a priority and we are going to spend this amount of money." Much of the rest of the time the document does not tell you that and there is no clear spending commitment attached to a particular priority.
Within that, questions to do with the mechanisms of funding would also be relevant. How is a priority to be funded? Is it through what we might call conventional public spending or is it through PPPs of some sort? What resources will be involved? In general, if things are set out as priorities, there should be an indication of the resource implications that will follow.
We have to bear in mind the fact that the initial strategy document is not the actual budget document, and the real detail of the spending is presumably in the main budget document. However, we should be setting out the resource implications and the requirements of highlighted priorities.
Is there sufficient lateral thinking from the Government about the way in which it spends its money? Let me give you a specific example. Everyone is talking about prisoners who are being escorted all over the country and how that will allegedly cost £127 million over seven years. Can no one take a step back and ask why? Why not just take £10 million of that £127 million and build a little courthouse inside each prison and take the sheriff to the courthouse? That would mean no danger to anyone and it would save £100 million. There does not seem to be any room in the current budget process for lateral thinking.
I do not know about that example; something like that might be too detailed to appear in this type of document. Work should be being done in individual departments—and one assumes that it is—on the most efficient ways of delivering services.
I commented on two themes in the strategy document. For the past few minutes, we have been talking about the first one—where we are spending extra money and what our new priorities are. The other theme that I talked about was productivity, which I take to mean making good use of money in general. One would expect the strategy document to talk about how a department will use better procurement or various efficiency changes to improve the return on public expenditure by X amount. I would not expect the fine detail to be spelled out in the AER, although there should be an audit trail, so that if the Justice Department decides to become more efficient, for example, it can be called on to account for the detail of that. One would not expect the operational and managerial level of individual programmes to be discussed in detail in the strategy document.
That was an interesting idea, John, especially if advocates were required to stay overnight as part of the process.
It is not safe for the public.
Peter Wood's presentation has been impressive, reasonable and very polite. However, had I received his submission when I was a journalist, I would have thought that it was a scathing indictment of the Executive's strategy and targets. He uses phrases such as
"the system of targets has very serious weaknesses"
and
"Many targets are scarcely credible";
I agree with a lot of that.
Does he agree that the AER is more of a wish list of good things that the Executive would like to happen, but does not have any map for the journey and no way of working out how those good things will transpire?
I am grateful for your comments. Journalists use such phrases as "scathing indictment", and I was recently accused of slamming something when I thought that I had made some mild criticisms.
It is easy to be a critic, but the work that goes into the production of such documents is impressive; there is a massive amount of work behind them. I also agree that the documents articulate a range of ways in which the Executive seeks or aspires to improve the quality of life in Scotland. I have already talked about the structure and variability of the targets and the ad hoc quality of some of those targets, and I used a flippant metaphor earlier about trying to judge the problems of a car by using very fragmentary data. I think that that is a problem, but I am also conscious of the work that has gone into the document and of how things such as the transparency of the process and the discussions have improved over time compared with what happened in pre-devolution days.
Perhaps the civil servants would say that they are always being pressed to come up with targets and they are doing what they can to meet those aspirations. All sides in the discussion have to agree on what it is appropriate to measure, over what period of time and what they will be content to work on. I am sure that there are already pressures to produce indicators across a wide range of activity.
I was intrigued with the example that you gave in your submission about the objective to encourage and support lifelong learning and to widen access to skills opportunities, for which the only target that the Executive came up with was to
"Increase graduates as a proportion of the workforce."
That is at a time when society is crying out for carpenters and plumbers and so on.
I have to confess that that is how I felt. When I read that target, I thought that it was a bit disappointing. It is not self-evident to me that increasing the proportion of graduates in the work force is the answer, or even that it is the number 1 priority. I thought that that was a particularly disappointing example.
Since 1999, overall public expenditure in Scotland has increased by 41 per cent, direct spending on primary economic development has increased by 19 per cent and support expenditure has increased by 22 per cent. In the context of the spending review, what do those figures say about the Executive's number 1 priority, which is supposed to be about growing the economy?
I will probably get into trouble here.
Oh, go on.
The spending suggests that the Executive's main priority has been to improve aspects of the quality of life in Scotland, particularly in health and education. I have talked about education being supported, but health seems to have been more of a priority. Some people might say that it should be, but that is a matter of judgment. There is no doubt that priorities change over time.
I think that it is worth doing this. It is right to stand back after several years and ask questions such as, "We said that this was our number 1 priority, but did we behave as if it was?" I am not saying that spending is the only measure, because setting priorities is not just about spending the most money on what is important. We spend the money where we believe that it can have an effect.
People might also say that health spending is driven by the demands of the population and so it cannot be controlled. I would want to make a balanced judgment about that, but health has been a very high priority.
Compared with other countries, is Scotland's economy over-reliant on public expenditure?
A bit of a weakness in the structure of the Scottish economy is that it has a relatively large public sector. The answer might be not to make the public sector smaller but to make the private sector bigger, if I can put it that way. We are a bit reliant on public spending, but we are perhaps not so reliant on it as is, say, Northern Ireland.
I am struck by the analogy that you used earlier. Given that the place of my birth is Berwick-upon-Tweed, I think that a car stopping there would be an indicator of success rather than failure.
Many witnesses have come to the committee and said that there are too many targets, but none has outlined a better system. I accept your caveat that it is easy to be a critic.
Many members of the committee, including Jim Mather, want some macro elements to be brought into the budget. Many of the indicators—for example, on longevity, reducing the number of mental health in-patients, business confidence and start-up businesses—are statistics that might indicate how successful the Government's policies are rather than the qualitative outcomes, and are dealt with by a range of different organisations with varying degrees of quality using various different sampling data. Therefore, there is a lack of consistency and it is difficult to get a picture of how successful we are. Is there a role for Government in co-ordinating those statistics and indicators? Is it an impossible task? You have been working through the AER and have provided a coherent critique, so what are your thoughts on where the starting point would be?
Data collection in Scotland is pretty good. Data are available from a range of sources, but recent years have seen an improvement in the quality of available data on aspects of Scottish life. The Scottish household survey, in particular, is a welcome innovation that has improved our window on various aspects of Scottish life. I think that more use could and should be made of that data source as it matures and develops.
I am not convinced that the main priority is to invest further money in data collection because, generally speaking, a pretty good job is done on the data side in Scotland, especially by Government statisticians. Everything can be improved—I always wonder why the census results take so long to come out—but the data situation is not bad. A couple of years ago, I was working on a project in Finland and I was struck by the quality of Finnish data, but that is perhaps the result of a different political culture and a different attitude towards the collection of information. By most standards, our data are not too bad, but we should examine specific areas in which we can improve. As I have said, the Scottish household survey is an example.
The issue is more about how we use the information. I return to the point that target setting in the budget process should be simplified. I suggest that what I would call the detailed targets should be a bit more concentrated on, and show more of a connection to, the things that are being changed. If we say that we are spending X tens or hundreds of millions of pounds more in a particular area, that signals to me that we want to focus our attention on what we are procuring from our expenditure in that area.
Many targets have different reporting cycles and, even if they are on course to be implemented or have already been implemented, for some of them a much longer feed-in time will be necessary to determine whether we have been successful. For example, although some of the work that is being done on the later start in primary schools may not be reflected in budget documents, in 15 years it could have the most radical impact on school leavers. That is something that it is difficult to quantify in the budget documents. Changing attitudes to public health is a similar example.
I wonder whether an opportunity exists to have an annual indicator. All constituency MSPs have received constituency profiles from the Public Health Institute of Scotland. I have to say that some of the information is highly inconsistent with the other statistical information that I get, which is why I ask the question. Even though the Executive might not be able to add authority to such a document, could it be presented in the same timeframe as the budget documents, to allow us to have a better public debate about where we are in relation to the kind of macro issues that Jim Mather—whose views I whole-heartedly support—has been talking about?
That is an intriguing idea; I had not thought of it. At different times, people have produced benchmark documents. An annual state-of-the-nation summary might be quite interesting.
If you had said "state-of-the-union", Jim Mather and I would have separated in our views.
I am sure that we can find some acceptable terminology. I find your idea interesting, because I am interested in monitoring over time and benchmarking against reasonable comparators.
I have a final question. Last week, we heard extensively from Andrew Goudie about the performance and innovation unit and various other mechanisms within the Executive for drawing together different strands of information and policy. Should there be an administrative mechanism within the Executive for making progress with the agenda that you have mapped out, which is to simplify, clarify and ensure the appropriateness of the targets that are set, so that the process of target setting and target management is conducive to more effective management of Scottish Government?
My answer to that is that I am surprised that there is not such a mechanism. I would have thought that that process was going on. We should bear it in mind that other organisations are considering such matters. For example, the Audit Commission does work in that field, so there are public servants in the area. There are lessons to be learned from other bodies, including—dare I say it—bodies south of the border.
In my experience, work of that kind goes on in various bits of Government. Communities Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and the different departments will be doing their own things. I would have thought that it would be beneficial for some work on improvements in that area to be done centrally—if, indeed, it is not already being done—through a task force or whatever. That would be a worthy thing to do.
I suppose that there are two issues. The first one that you are flagging up to us is the fact that there is not even proper consistency in the process of target setting. Your point is that the Executive may simply be measuring what is measurable instead of identifying the proper targets that provide the best indicators on a desirable process of change.
That is my impression. It surprises me slightly, because I can think of—and, if I were given enough time, produce—documents that have been published in various bits of Government at different times about how to measure a particular programme and the principles that should be used in doing so. There is a body of knowledge and even, I would say, of good practice. From time to time, Government produces guidance. For example, one of my bibles is the Treasury's green guide on project appraisal. Everyone who works in project appraisal knows that guide and knows that it provides a lot of information on how to do it.
I am pretty sure that, in the past, the Treasury has examined good practice in target setting, for example. It seems to me that a considerable amount of work exists, which, if it could be brought together and reflected in the procedures that are used in the budget documents, would help to move us forward.
I think that we have concluded the questioning. I thank you very much for coming along today. I remind members that at the next committee meeting, which is on 25 May, we will be considering reports from the subject committees and taking final evidence from the minister, so we will be able to integrate into that process some of the information that we have received from Peter Wood and previous witnesses.