Our second item of business is an evidence-taking session with the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body as part of our scrutiny of the 2014-15 draft budget. I welcome to the meeting Liam McArthur MSP; the chief executive, Paul Grice; and Derek Croll. I ask Mr McArthur to make a short opening statement.
Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, colleagues.
I am very grateful for this opportunity to present details of our budget submission for 2014-15. This is the final year of our four-year programme of savings, which set out to match the planned reductions in the Scottish budget over the term of the United Kingdom comprehensive spending review. As the graph in the Presiding Officer’s letter demonstrates, we remain firmly on track to deliver that programme and, by the end of 2014-15, we will have achieved an 11 per cent real-terms reduction in the SPCB’s budget. As you will observe, the profile of our annual budget reduction was considerably steeper in the programme’s first two years, as we delivered the vast majority of our savings early, and levels off in the remaining two years, although it still shows a modest real-terms saving.
I will update the committee on a number of areas in which members have previously expressed an interest. First, we reported last year on the decision to proceed with the construction of an external security facility, which is the most significant project that the SPCB has undertaken since the move to Holyrood. I am pleased to confirm that the project was completed on time and within budget and that we were able to meet all the ESF’s costs from within the SPCB’s overall resources, as previously advised to the committee. Indeed, at an SPCB meeting later this morning, we will discuss and—I hope—sign off the formal completion report for the ESF.
The committee will be aware that pay accounts for a substantial proportion—approximately 62 per cent—of our overall budget and, following the end in March 2013 of the two-year pay freeze that covered SPCB staff, MSPs, and members’ staff, we have continued to exercise restraint in this area with below-inflation settlements. After our discussions at last year’s meeting, we wrote to the Finance Committee earlier this year to confirm the terms of the two-year pay deal to March 2015 that had been agreed with SPCB staff and which provided for a 1 per cent increase in pay scales this April and a 2 per cent increase in April 2014. MSP pay increased by 1 per cent this year in line with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s determination for MPs and will increase by 1 per cent again next April. Members’ staff pay provision will be uprated in April in line with the provisions of the members’ expenses scheme.
With regard to income, at our last appearance before the Finance Committee we touched on the opening of the Queensberry house lounge in September 2012 and the associated discontinuation of the members’ restaurant evening service. I can report that we are on track to pay back the capital outlay within two years of operation. At the same time, the move has created an excellent space within the members’ restaurant for hosting larger events such as the maritime reception that I am hosting this evening from 6 pm and which members are most welcome to attend. The important point is that we have been able to open up opportunities for reducing the subsidy on the catering front.
As members will be aware, the SPCB is charged with the oversight of commissioners and ombudsmen and the Finance Committee has rightly taken a strong interest in how we exercise that. The 2014-15 budget submissions of the various bodies amount to £8.2 million, which is an increase of 1.3 per cent in cash terms compared with the equivalent 2013-14 budget. Overall, the office-holders’ budget is 9.9 per cent lower in cash terms than the budget in the baseline year of 2010-11, which is equivalent to a real-terms reduction of 16.7 per cent. The Scottish Information Commissioner and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman have requested funding for additional staff and, following robust scrutiny that concentrated on the efforts of both office-holders to try to reduce the numbers of applications that they receive, the SPCB has approved their requests on a fixed-term basis.
As for office-holder accommodation, I advised the committee last year that we were working with office-holders to effect savings by reducing the number of properties in Edinburgh and that we hoped that we could co-locate a number of offices on the Government estate near Haymarket. Unfortunately, that proposal fell through because the building was let to a single tenant, but we continue to look at accommodation options, particularly as one of the office-holders has been given notice to vacate the premises that they occupy by the end of March 2014.
Finally, I place on record the corporate body’s appreciation of the work that has been done by the chief executive and by Derek Croll and his team in preparing the SPCB’s 2014-15 budget submission.
That concludes my opening remarks. I hope that I have managed to convey a sense of our approach to the budget for 2014-15 and the following years and have addressed some of the issues in which the committee has taken a particular interest in recent years. My colleagues and I are more than happy to answer members’ questions.
Thank you very much, Mr McArthur. I am pleased to say that Jamie Hepburn has now joined us. As is usual in these circumstances, I will begin with a number of brief opening questions and then open up the session to colleagues around the table.
Mr McArthur, you mentioned the significant reduction of 11 per cent in the budget over the past four years and the fact that 10.8 per cent of it was actually achieved by 2012-13. With the 2014-15 budget, that reduction comes to about 11 per cent. Given that the situation appears to have levelled out, is there any scope for making further savings or does the SPCB feel that any further savings would be detrimental to the good working of the Parliament?
We have been wrestling with that issue quite a bit, particularly over the past year. The decision to implement the savings early on was absolutely the right one and followed a pretty comprehensive review of services in the Parliament. As a result of that review, the SPCB felt confident about making those early reductions but it was felt that, on the back of that, there would need to be a period of time to allow the changes to bed in and ensure that services to MSPs and other building users were not being disrupted.
Although we do not feel that our work in this respect is done and although we will continue to look at areas where we can bear down on costs and deliver efficiencies without disrupting the service to members and other building users, I should reiterate that the profile of the savings that have been made was a deliberate attempt to get ahead of the game following the comprehensive review that I mentioned. As I have said, we then wanted to ensure that the changes could bed in in a way that minimised disruption to the workings of the Parliament.
Thank you.
The budget provides for a contingency of £1 million, which represents a 100 per cent increase in the figure for 2013-14 and follows a reduction of 60 per cent to £500,000 in 2013-14. It looks to me like the figure has decreased from £1.25 million to £500,000 and then has increased to £1 million, which represents a 20 per cent reduction over two years. Can you talk us through the thinking behind that figure coming down and then rebounding?
I agree that those figures stand out. As you and the committee will be aware, in taking forward the proposals for the external security facility, which came on the back of clear and consistent advice from our security advisers, we tried to accommodate them within the budget envelope that had been set out for the committee. That required us to look right across the field and, as a result, we decided to reduce the contingency down to £500,000, which was probably the minimum that we would be comfortable with. The £1 million that is in there now is probably a more standard figure for that sort of provision, so I think that we are seeing a return to the traditional position. I do not think that there was any additional risk last year in having the contingency at £0.5 million, but having it at £1 million is probably a more sensible accommodation.
In terms of indicative forecasts for 2015-16, the budget submission states:
“The SPCB’s proposal will deliver cumulative savings of 11.7% in real terms over the five years since the 2010-11 baseline and incorporates a real terms reduction of 14.9% in the directly controllable costs of the Scottish Parliamentary Service.”
The budget submission goes on to say that the “challenges ahead remain considerable.” Can you talk us through the challenges?
One of the obvious challenges is the new powers that the Scottish Parliament has. We are already seeing some signs, no more so than in this committee, that they will impose additional pressures on the staffing and resourcing of committees and on work in the chamber.
We also have challenges in taking forward planned projects for maintaining the fabric of the Parliament building. We believe that we have a programme for undertaking the work that is sensible and sustainable over the longer term, but it will present challenges. I do not know whether there are any other specific challenges that Derek Croll or Paul Grice want to mention.
No. I think that you have covered it.
There is no doubt that we are entering a period of some uncertainty in terms of how the Parliament will function. We clearly attach a very high value to aspects of the way in which we work, such as being open and accessible and so on. As we take on additional powers and roles, however, ensuring that we have the personnel and facilities to help maintain that openness and accessibility, as well as the rigour of our scrutiny functions, will continue to present challenges. As I have said, just as we have tapered out the savings in the past couple of years, we will continue the process of bearing down on costs. I do not think that we will move out of that climate in the very near future. It is against that backdrop that we are taking on those additional challenges.
And do you envisage having any potential future income streams, even minor ones? Obviously, we have one or two, but they are relatively small, given the size of the budget. Do you envisage having any others in the future?
There is nothing specific. The obvious one to refer to is, as I said in my opening remarks, the reduction in the catering subsidy of £50,000 as a result of relocating the bar to Queensberry house and to a large extent discontinuing the evening meal service in the members’ restaurant. There might be other such things that we can look at. It is certainly an issue that the corporate body will return to, probably early in the new year, and discuss proposals with officials on. However, as we found with the Queensberry house move, we have some difficult issues to balance. I think that we need to guard the reputation of the Parliament building very carefully. We want to ensure that we are bearing down on costs where we can and that we are not putting that reputation at risk at all.
It is perhaps worth noting that although the Parliament shop, which has been an issue of concern to the committee in the past, incurred in the most recent year a loss of £8,000, that is down from a loss of £46,000 the year before. With the recent tapestry exhibition, which I know you were fortunate enough to visit—as were many thousands more—and the more recent Warhol exhibition, we are confident at this stage that we will see a modest profit in the shop.
There are things that we will continue to look at, but against the backdrop of ensuring that we do not do anything that would cause anybody to question the reputation or the functioning of this building.
Thank you. A number of members have indicated that they want to ask questions.
10:15
I apologise for my late arrival—I had a cancelled train to deal with.
I am sorry if Liam McArthur has already covered what I will ask about, which is the budget bids for 2014-15 from the six office-holders—the commissioners and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. I acknowledge that all the bids are below the approved baseline in 2010-11, so it is clear that everyone is playing a part in bringing down costs. However, there seems to be quite wide variation in the bids. The Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland envisages a 1.5 per cent reduction in budget, while the Scottish Information Commissioner is looking for a 6.9 per cent increase on this year’s budget. Why is there such a wide disparity?
As I said, there is a reduction in real terms of—I think—16.7 per cent in the budget for the office-holders across the piece, which is a significant reduction in comparison with what is happening in the SPCB’s overall budget. The corporate body has returned to the area on numerous occasions. We need to strike a balance between our robust scrutiny of the budget—I put on record the corporate body’s gratitude for the Finance Committee’s help in that regard—and the office-holders’ operational independence in carrying out the functions that we have required them, by statute, to carry out.
We have looked closely at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s bid in recent weeks. There has been a marked increase in applications to the commissioner, despite efforts to triage applications so that only those that require detailed investigation make it through to that stage, and despite efforts to increase awareness in public bodies about what they could be doing to bear down on the number of complaints to the commissioner about freedom of information requests.
We are cognisant of the need to be robust in challenging the figures that the office-holders bring to us, and the need to challenge office-holders to look at ways of managing their budgets as effectively as possible. However, we must also recognise that we are talking about independent office-holders and there is a limit to our ability to second-guess how they manage their budgets day to day.
Are you saying that budgets are allocated on a needs basis and that there is no formula whereby changes are made in relation to all the office-holders? Office-holders just come forward and say what they need—is that the case?
I think that that is right. It struck all members of the corporate body as slightly strange that there should be such a marked increase in applications to the Scottish Information Commissioner at this point after the enactment of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. However, there are reasons for that. Awareness has been raised and demand has gone up as people have begun to use the approach as a tool to extract information that they have not been able to get through other means.
There is always a need to ensure that local authorities and other public bodies apply best practice in handling requests for information, and to ensure that there is effective triage of complaints that come to the commissioner’s office, so that time is not spent on complaints that should be dealt with elsewhere. However, despite those efforts, we are seeing an increase in the numbers. We need to respond to that and to make sure that not just the information commissioner but all the office-holders have adequate resources for the functions that we have required them to carry out.
Just to be clear, this is the corporate body’s bid on their behalf. What were their bids to the corporate body? How do those relate to what we see here?
I think that it is fair to say that we apply the robust scrutiny and challenge function that you would expect us to perform.
I sit on the Education and Culture Committee and we are just about to complete stage 1 consideration of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill—the Finance Committee was involved in the bill in relation to the financial memorandum—which proposes that the powers and responsibilities of Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People be extended. I am conscious that that will have implications for the budget.
Just as this committee has exercised its role in scrutinising the costs that are attached to the extension of the commissioner’s powers, so the Education and Culture Committee has taken the issue on board, and the corporate body will also deploy the challenge function. At the end of the day, however, if the Parliament chooses to sanction that extension of powers, we need to make sure that the resources are in place to allow them to be properly fulfilled.
I do not doubt that the corporate body is doing a rigorous job in assessing any bid that comes forward, but all that I have in front of me is a statement of what the bid is. I do not know what was bid for originally or whether that was different. I am not necessarily saying that there should be a difference, but if we as the Finance Committee are to try to look at these things, it is helpful for them to be as transparent as possible.
It is an iterative process and some challenge function will be applied initially at an official level. I ask Paul Grice to address your point about specific figures for the initial bids and the final figures.
We did not really do it in that way. I made a pre-emptive pitch, if you like, to the office-holders. On the basis of the expectations of this committee and the corporate body, rather than just invite them to make a bid, I gave them a clear steer as to what we thought would be acceptable. There was not a number from them and then a response from us. I thought that a better way to do it was to give them a clear sense of what I thought the corporate body would live with overall, which was very close to where we ended up after negotiation.
That is distinct, perhaps, from previous years, when a bid came in from the office-holders. I felt that it was appropriate to give them a clear steer as to what I thought would be an acceptable bid from the corporate body. That explains the position that we have.
Thank you.
Liam McArthur mentioned several times the physical changes to the building. There have also been some organisational changes. Will you give us an idea of the cost of equality impact assessments of those changes? Has there been testing to see whether the changes meet requirements?
You also talked about the reputation of the building; it would be interesting to hear that the changes have improved the situation, or at least that tests have been carried out to see whether that is the case. A specific example is the change to the entrance to the MSP block. Was an equality impact assessment done? A colleague has made me aware that they now find it more difficult to enter the MSP block because of the changes. There have also been organisational changes to the members’ restaurant and what have you.
I will ask Paul Grice to talk about the specifics, but I can say that we have been painfully conscious that the programme of change over the past four years, particularly in the context of staff reductions, had the potential to have a dramatic effect on the numbers of men and women that the Scottish Parliament employs. The corporate body publishes its equality plan annually, which I think demonstrates that, notwithstanding the changes, we have succeeded in adhering to the equality principles to which you would expect us to adhere.
Paul Grice might talk about specific changes in relation to the accessibility of different parts of the building. Certainly, the corporate body had received a number of complaints that the fire doors that lead to the lift area at the bottom of the MSP block were extremely difficult to negotiate, even for people who do not have great difficulties with mobility, so that needed to be addressed. I do not know what feedback we have had on the changes; I have picked up anecdotally from members who have offices on the floor where my office is that the changes have been beneficial to them. However, we want to ensure that in addressing problems for one member, or group of members, we do not simply create additional problems for others.
We routinely use equality impact assessments. As Liam McArthur has said, improvements in access to the members’ block were driven by issues that a number of users of the building—MSPs and their staff—raised. As with any change, we will keep the matter under review. If Michael McMahon wants to pass on feedback on specific issues, I will be happy to act on it. I have had positive feedback on the changes, but we are open to considering further changes.
On the point about the members’ restaurant, we are interested in getting feedback of any sort on the new arrangements. Our general impression is that they are working fairly well, but if there are elements that we need to look at again, we will be more than happy to do so.
The convener asked about the change in the contingency arrangements. How does the accounting for that work? I take it that we are talking about real money in the budget, as opposed to a contingent liability, which is not real money but a risk that people are aware of—the Finance Committee has sometimes considered the issue. The contingency is part of the budget; is that correct?
Yes, it is part of the budget. I suppose that that is what enabled us to reduce it last year, to accommodate some of the costs of the external screening facility. It is real money.
Is the contingency generally used by the end of the year?
The contingency is in two parts this year, which is normal—Liam McArthur explained why what happened last year was unusual. For approximately half of it, even at this stage we have an idea of the sort of projects that we might use it on, provided that it is not needed for other things. In a sense, although it is a contingency there are a number of potential areas in relation to which we might bid against it.
About half of it is purely for emergencies—unexpected, unpredicted costs. Therefore, we tend to hold on to about half the money pretty much right up to the year end. Over the year, as we monitor spend, we look to release some of it for reasonable projects. Although the contingency is presented as one figure, it is really in two parts: a pure emergency fund and a fund in relation to which we consider bids for specific projects or initiatives.
If you get to 30 March, or whatever the date is, and you have not spent it all, do you rush out and spend it?
No. We give it back. I would never countenance rushing out and spending it, whatever the amount; there must always be value for money. It is better to give the money back than to spend it on something that does not represent value for money. You know how public financing works. There must always be a margin at the end, and that is what we would hold on to—that last £0.5 million, probably.
10:30I should also say that, although our budget is relatively modest compared with the overall budget, we still liaise and continue a dialogue with Government finance officials throughout the year. We have in the past put money that we thought we did not need back into the consolidated fund and the Government officials with whom we liaise would advise the cabinet secretary when we thought that we would be able to return money from the contingency. That would happen through the normal supplementary process, which you are obviously well aware of.
That also explains why we were comfortable with reducing the contingency to £500,000 last year. However, for the reasons that Paul Grice has highlighted, it seems to be sensible to move the contingency back to £1 million in order to take forward projects, if necessary.
That is great. The process as you have described it sounds good.
Schedule 3 of the submission contains more detail on various budget items. The first is staff pay, about which you say:
“Staff pay including use of contractors is budgeted at £22.3m”.
Are all those contractors’ staff on the living wage?
The short answer, I think, is yes.
That is good.
The section in schedule 3 on revenue projects—the pages are not numbered, but I am sure you have already turned to it—contains a breakdown of the £2.4 million that is being spent on various projects. Can I have a bit more detail on, for example, the “Digital Parliament Programme”, which will get £1 million, and “Voltage Optimisation”, which will get £250,000?
I will leave Paul Grice to talk about voltage optimisation; I know that it is a passion of his.
With regard to the digital Parliament project, you will know that the way in which we as MSPs operate has evolved since the opening of this Parliament building, and continues to evolve. Some MSPs could be portrayed as early adopters of technologies but, nevertheless, travel is in only one direction and the corporate body needs to support that development. Clearly MSPs are not demanding this just for the sake of demanding it; our constituents and other stakeholders have expectations about how they engage with Parliament, so it seems to be prudent to keep on top of that without necessarily having the rate of churn through information technology refreshes and so on that we have had in the past, and which can make it difficult for the overall function to accommodate certain things and for MSPs to get to grips with others.
There is always a balance in ensuring that we are providing the support that MSPs and their staff need without running the risk of the whole thing tipping over because of the pressure that we place on it. The digital Parliament programme is all about spotting where we as an institution are going and looking at how MSPs will operate in the future and how the public will engage with us.
Can you give me an example of how that £1 million is being spent?
Some of the work has related to the use of iPads in committees; Parliament staff are now using iPads far more. I also thoroughly recommend to members a very fine DVD that illustrates ways in which MSPs can use technology to be on call and accessible almost 24 hours a day.
If they do not want to sleep, that is.
You can, of course, take a view as to whether that is a good or bad thing, but there are pressures on MSPs and their staff and there are public expectations. Through this strand of work, we are attempting to anticipate and plan for some of that.
I just want to add two things to that. A lot of the investment is to change the way we organise information and data. If we are truly going to exploit the technologies that Liam McArthur talks about, we have to reorganise the architecture of how information is held so that we do not, in essence, just digitise paper. That will give us some benefits, but if we want to change completely how, for example, we produce committee reports and if we want to offer more interesting options—combining media such as sound, pictures and the written word—we have to reorganise how we do the data. Quite a lot of that spend is on behind-the-scenes stuff; it is not just on the hardware that Liam McArthur talked about.
I also think that this is one of the remaining areas in which we probably can extract some more efficiencies in the medium term. We still spend quite a bit of money on printing, for example, so I hope that there could be efficiency savings down the line on that. When we appear before the committee next year, we might be able to give you more detail; the work is currently under way.
When you asked the MSPs to share printers, you did not get a good reaction.
That would not have been efficient.
The discussion was interesting. Occasionally, a tactical retreat is the best way.
I am going to have to disappoint on the voltage optimisation question. I will drop you a note, or perhaps Derek Croll can answer.
Voltage optimisation is an energy efficiency proposal; a lot of electrical equipment does not require electricity at the voltage at which it comes into the building. A piece of kit would sit between the mains voltage and our equipment that would step down the voltage and reduce the amount of electricity that is being used. We have looked at the issue in the past and we struggled to justify the cost benefit, but the figures are looking much more optimistic now.
You have made Derek’s day by asking that question.
It just jumped out at me. I am sure that that was a good answer, but I did not understand it.
There is obviously an overlap between the items we have just mentioned in the context of revenue projects, and capital expenditure, which comes two pages later in schedule 3. Do we sometimes replace equipment too soon? There was a suggestion, or a rule, that we have to keep our BlackBerrys for two years, but I think that that is too short a time. A lot of equipment can last longer than that. Could we make savings by making equipment last longer?
We might well be able to do that. My understanding of how such contracts work is that, within the timescale, providers offer deals that mean that it is efficient to churn the technology. There is also an issue about reliability and resilience of some technology. We all use it intensively, so problems can disrupt our ability to carry out our function. We do not want to wait until equipment is on its last legs. We need to strike a balance between ensuring that we do not churn the technology too quickly and ensuring that MSPs, staff and other users are not left with increasingly problematic bits of kit that disrupt them in carrying out of their functions.
As I say, the structure of the contracts means that it is efficient and cost efficient to have the turnover that we have.
That is right, and the two years is a minimum. If a member wants to keep their BlackBerry for longer, they can.
The big chunk of the capital figure of £2 million is for replacing broadcasting equipment, which is 10 years old—very old in technology terms—and a network refresh, which means replacing servers. Much of the spend will be on the big infrastructure in the building, in addition to the hardware that Liam McArthur mentioned.
Well, 10 years sounds very sensible to me, so that is good.
Maintenance costs for 2014-15 seem to be 13.6 per cent higher than costs in the current financial year. You have added a helpful note, which states that maintenance work is cyclical, in line with our 25-year maintenance plan. Will you expand on that a bit to reassure me that the increase between 2013-14 and 2014-15 was always expected and planned and that we are not looking at drastic increases over the medium-to-longer term?
We keep a constant eye on this to make sure that we are getting the balance right. We are in a large, complex and iconic building. As the years pass, the fabric of the building will inevitably need more regular attention. We cannot really do anything about that. We might make short-term savings from year to year, but the chances are that if we do not adhere to the 25-year maintenance programme that we have set out, we will only be storing up more significant problems for subsequent years. We have tried to get the balance right so that we carry out planned routine maintenance as per the 25-year plan, make sure that the bigger-ticket items are planned in a sensible timeframe and thereby avoid dramatic spikes caused by things going wrong simply because work was not done.
There is an increase in non-domestic rates of £223,000. Is that simply a consequence of the increase in the poundage for business rates?
Principally, it is. Derek Croll can answer that question.
The increase is principally a consequence of the increased poundage rate. There is also a slight increase for the additional floor area in the external security facility; about £60,000 of the increase is down to that.
The rest is down to the increase in the poundage.
Yes.
I want to go back to IT provision. Are you thinking at all of widening access for the public through better IT services than we have at the moment? I have mentioned this before, but I am thinking particularly of the University of the Highlands and Islands. Extraordinarily modern equipment is being invested in and used there, which I think we would do well to look at in order to engage with people who are not in the central belt. The Jimmy Reid Foundation has done a bit of research into people giving evidence to committees and the ability of people from further afield to do that by videoconference. I know that we occasionally take evidence in that way from people from Europe—we are doing it today, in fact. Is that in your sights when it comes to upgrading IT?
Absolutely. As the MSP for Orkney, I am painfully aware that my constituents will have a great deal more difficulty accessing this building physically than constituents of Lothian members. We are seeing development by individual committees in that regard. I know that the Finance Committee is taking evidence from Robert Chote later this morning—it is odd to be his warm-up act, I have to say. In the previous session, the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee, which I was on, took evidence from European Commission officials and MEPs by videoconference. I think that we will see greater use of that facility. The investment that we are putting in to support broadcasting is not self-aggrandising; it is about making this building and what goes on in it as widely accessible as possible.
There are opportunities to use videoconferencing in other areas. Those are based not simply on what we do in this building but on facilities at the other end. UHI is a good example of a place where facilities exist, although they might not have been used as widely as they could be within the communities in which UHI is based. That is not something that the SPCB can do a great deal about, but we can maybe help provide support in the future.
Outreach work is something that the Parliament has done very well and we attach huge value to it. When we can use technology to support its expansion, we certainly will.
10:45
On the running costs as laid out in schedule 3, reference is made to the in-house service of the Scottish Parliament and Business Exchange, and the Scottish Futures Forum. Do they have different budgets that they work to or do they have good ideas that are funded? How does that work?
I am sure that they have good ideas. In fact, I have been involved with both so I know that they do. Paul Grice can perhaps talk about how their funding works.
Each has a fixed budget, but they also draw funding from elsewhere. I think that the SPBE also has members who part-fund it. The SFF has a small amount of core funding from Parliament and the rest of its funding comes in through collaboration. For example, it has just done a major piece of work with the Goodison Group in Scotland that brought in funding. It also works with various universities through the Beltane public engagement network. Those groups get a cash limit and must source funding from elsewhere to undertake particular projects.
What kind of service do we buy in through outside contracts?
One of the key services is the specialist IT support that is provided by CGI IT Ltd. That is an obvious type of contractor that we would use.
So that is in the figure for the running costs as well.
In schedule 4(b), under the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, there is a figure for income. What is the income? How does the SPSO make an income?
There is £110,000 in the SPSO budget for income. There is £10,000 from a parking space rental, £50,000 from renting office space to the Scottish Human Rights Commission, and £50,000 is projected to come in for training service provision, which will expand from this year to next year because it will be providing more training to the bodies that use its services.
Finally, is the figure for the Parliament shop just a net income? Is it just money in and money out for goods? Is there no other cost put against the retail figure?
The income is the turnover figure so it is just sales, but in schedule 6 we give a breakdown that shows the direct costs, so you can see the net contribution.
As I said earlier, the shop made a loss of £8,000 in the most recent year, which is down from a loss of £46,000. Part of that reflects changes in staffing and streamlining of the product line. Again, we need to be careful in what we do. The shop is a bit of a showcase for Scottish products; that is a useful function. However, the changes and the demand that has been driven by events that have been held in Parliament, such as the “Great Tapestry of Scotland” exhibition and the Warhol exhibition, mean that it is possible that there will be a modest profit from the shop. We will continue to keep the situation under review.
I am delighted to be able to say that the tapestry exhibition will be back for three months next September, so we will be able to plan for that demand. The popularity of that exhibition took us all by surprise, so with more warning next time around, we might be able to use that popularity to better effect and improve takings in the shop.
Thank you. That has exhausted questions from the committee, unless there are any other points to make.
It has been a comprehensive session and I know that I am holding you back from other matters.
No, not at all. Thank you for your evidence. We will now have a break in proceedings to allow members to have a natural break, and allow me to talk to the deputy convener a bit more about voltage optimisation.
10:50 Meeting suspended.