I welcome members of the press and public and our witnesses to the public part of the 30th meeting in 2005 of the Finance Committee; we opened the meeting in private. I remind everyone to switch off mobile phones and pagers.
It is a pleasure to appear before the committee. I know that it has a fearsome reputation, so it is with not a little trepidation that we appear before you today. I hope that we can work closely with you on this important aspect of Scottish Executive policy. I welcome the committee's continued interest in the relocation policy and look forward to working with the committee on it in the future.
We will begin our questions by focusing on specific relocations.
Has the Executive made any decisions on the relocation of Registers of Scotland and sportscotland?
The decisions on Registers of Scotland and sportscotland have still to be announced. It is important that we make the right decisions on those bodies. As members are probably aware, changes have taken place to the senior management and board of sportscotland, so it is important to ensure that new people are in place before final decisions are announced. Ministers are still considering the location review report on Registers of Scotland—we hope that a decision will be announced soon.
So an announcement is imminent on sportscotland and further discussion is to be had on Registers of Scotland.
We hope that we can make an announcement soon on sportscotland. Because of the change of chief executive and chairman—of which I am sure the committee is aware—a slight delay has occurred in order to ensure that the new people are in place and comfortable before the decision is made and announced.
We have heard that three times now.
I understand the committee's frustration, but it is important to ensure that the new leaders of the organisation are in place and fully comfortable before the decision is finally made and announced, especially in view of the Commonwealth games bid that is coming down the track.
Will decisions on sportscotland be predicated on the relationship that the body will have with the national facilities strategy?
Yes; that is still the intention.
Obviously, I have a partisan interest because of my constituency—I might as well declare that openly in case people are suspicious. The reason why I ask is that, wherever sportscotland is relocated to, there will be a related debate in the national facilities strategy about building into the development the office and support accommodation that the sportscotland headquarters will require. Will that be taken into account in the assessment?
That is still the intention. I understand the slight frustration, but I assure you that, now that the new people are in place, it is important that we make the decision and announce it. I hope that will happen soon.
So we will get a decision, but you will not tell me in which year it will be.
A decision is unlikely to come before the end of this year.
I have been interested in this issue for some time as I was one of the reporters for the committee when we produced our report. At the time, I thought that it was an example of the Executive and the committee working well together.
I will ask my officials to answer that in detail. However, I imagine that most of the posts came from Edinburgh. The policy is about relocation from the centre. The vast majority of the organisations will either have been based in Edinburgh or are so new that they did not previously have a base in the first place.
A couple of the organisations in the table did not come from Edinburgh. However, as the minister said, the majority are either new organisations or have moved out of Edinburgh.
I am worried about the entry for Forest Enterprise. It says that 20 jobs were moved to Inverness and Dumfries. However, those jobs were already there; only two jobs moved from Edinburgh to Inverness. It is a bit misleading to say that that is a relocation.
That is, perhaps, a fault of the table. The sub-total over the page, which shows how many jobs have moved, does not include jobs such as the ones that Dr Murray just mentioned. There are 2,300 jobs in the first part of the table but only 2,171 are shown to have involved relocation.
That accounts for the difference between the two figures.
Perhaps we could make the table clearer.
I do not expect the minister to be able to tell me now, but it would be interesting to know how many of the relocated posts involved relocating people—that is, a human being moving to another location to follow their job—and how many jobs were filled locally. Obviously, areas of high unemployment would be interested in vacancies being transferred whereas other areas need people of working age to be transferred. Can you provide such a breakdown?
We can come back to you on that. My officials will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that about 75 per cent of the relocated posts have been recruited locally during the transfer. In the case of the transfer of the Accountant in Bankruptcy to Kilwinning, 100 per cent of the posts were filled locally. About 50 per cent of the posts that were created in Tiree as a result of the relocation policy were filled locally and I think that relocation of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency resulted in about 85 per cent of the posts being recruited from the local population.
In June 2005, you published the new relocation strategy. I was a bit disappointed when I saw that, of the 785 posts that were relocated in 2005, all but 26—around 97 per cent—go to Glasgow, which does not seem to me to fulfil the purpose of the relocation policy.
That figure gave me cause for concern when I first saw it. Clearly, however, if the strategic objective of the policy is regeneration, that must apply to urban areas as well as to rural areas and there is a powerful argument that those jobs will help to regenerate parts of Glasgow, just as there are powerful arguments for other jobs to go to rural areas that we have identified as being in need of regeneration.
I am just a little bit concerned that a widely welcomed provision seems, at the moment, to be resulting in loads of jobs going to one place.
Previously, North East Scotland, the Highlands and the Borders all benefited from the policy. However, I accept Dr Murray's point. That is something that we will have to keep a close eye on. As I said, there is a powerful argument that relocation might help to regenerate some of the most deprived areas in Glasgow. Therefore, they cannot be ruled out.
I certainly was not suggesting that—
I think that your colleague, Mr McAveety, might have some concerns if we were to do so.
The report claims that more than 2,000 jobs have been moved. However, if we add up the numbers in the "moved" category in annex A, they do not add up to anything like 2,000. Does that figure represent the number of jobs that could possibly move?
I think that the jobs do add up to more than 2,000. Unless we have done the sums wrong, the numbers that are associated with the organisations in the first column—from the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Department to the Accountant in Bankruptcy—should come to 2,171. In fact, they come to more than that.
They come to 2,088. If you take the 505 jobs that are yet to be confirmed—the 245 from Scottish Natural Heritage and the 260 in the second phase of the relocation of NHS National Services Scotland—that reconciles to 2,088, because the total figure of 2,593 in annex A comes to 2,088 if you subtract 505. The numbers do not square.
Again, there is a frailty in the table. We included the SNH jobs as jobs that have moved because they have been advertised and the recruitment process is under way. Perhaps that is not as clear as it could be. You are right to say that the 260 jobs from the NHS National Services Scotland relocation are not included in the figure. My understanding is that the jobs in that column come to about 2,300 but that, if you take out the ones that have not moved, only 2,171 have been located or relocated. We will double check the table and try to make it as clear for the committee as we can.
That would be helpful.
We will clarify that point for Mr Mather.
I want to return to the relocate-to-regenerate issue, specifically the jobs that moved to, or were located in, Glasgow in 2005, such as those in NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, NHS Health Scotland, NHS Education Scotland, transport Scotland, Communities Scotland and so on. What areas are those posts moving to?
I will ask my officials to identify the areas. I know that the consideration is that sportscotland will be located near the proposed new sports arena development.
We have asked Glasgow City Council and Scottish Enterprise Glasgow where they would like the jobs to be targeted. For two of the special health bodies, it has been proposed that an area in the east end of the city centre or the city would be suitable. For the others, the council and the enterprise company are keen for the jobs to be as close to the centre as possible, because that would benefit all communities in Glasgow.
I thought that that would be the answer. My point is that it is perhaps a tad misleading to suggest that there is a direct link between relocation and regeneration. The minister said that those jobs were being relocated in areas that were deprived and which required regeneration. The last time I looked at the city centre of Glasgow, it was pretty bustling. I quite accept that locating sportscotland's headquarters in Mr McAveety's constituency might act as a magnet for regeneration in another area, but I think that it is misleading to suggest that there has been a big input that is driving regeneration when what is actually happening is simply that excess office space in the city centre is being used up.
That is a fair point. However, you might recall that the committee criticised the Executive's piecemeal approach to the relocation policy. One of the strong recommendations in the committee's report was that the Executive should take a more strategic approach. I am trying to set out what the policy now is. Previously, the committee criticised the Executive for having no underlying strategic approach to relocation of jobs. That was a justified criticism and we responded to it. We engaged with our local authority partners and with local enterprise companies to draw up a list of 500 areas and buildings that can play a part in regeneration. John Swinney's point is valid in that previously—before we changed the policy in response to the committee's criticism—the approach was piecemeal and there was no strategic approach to decisions on where jobs would go. That point was picked up by the committee in its report and we responded to it.
You said that a number of the relocations reflect the urban-rural split—again, that relates to points that were made by Elaine Murray. However, when I look at the map, the overwhelming majority of locations seem to me to be either in the central belt or in major conurbations such as Aberdeen and Inverness. There are obviously exceptions, but the majority of locations are in the central belt. When you look at the map, what is your reflection on the statements that you have made about trying to secure an impact on rural Scotland as well as on urban Scotland?
The map reflects the committee's criticism about the lack of a strategic approach. It was because of that criticism that we amended the policy. We now have a database and there is engagement with local authorities and local enterprise companies about where jobs can best be placed. That is part of the approach that we have to take to ensure that relocations go to the right places to help those places to regenerate. Those places can be in urban Scotland or in rural Scotland.
The policy has been revised and a series of decisions has resulted in relocation of civil service jobs to Glasgow. Now that the Government has responded to the committee's criticism and taken a more strategic view, can we expect that, when you come back in six months' time, we will have a list of relocations to rural Scotland?
I certainly hope that we will see relocations to both urban Scotland and rural Scotland. As the minister, I certainly intend to try to ensure that that happens.
Will there be a greater reflection of both rural and urban Scotland? At present, relocations are often exclusively urban.
Ultimately, the policy is driven by the strategic approach of regeneration: we must ensure that it is taken into account. However, I do not hesitate to say that we want a proper balance between rural and urban Scotland.
Without wishing to be picky, I respectfully point out that the legend on the map describes number 44 as the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service transcription unit in Dingwall, but the number 44 on the map appears to be in Lairg.
It does indeed.
Lairg is about 50 miles further north than Dingwall. It has a formidable sheep sale every year. I encourage you to reflect on that—I am nothing if not precise.
The point that I was trying to make was that the efficient government policy relates to the relocation policy. In England, efficient government is the underpinning rationale for relocation from the centre. When the best-value measures are introduced throughout the public sector in April, they will have an impact on the relocation policy. However, as I made clear, overall the relocation part overrides the other two factors—it is the priority. Although we have to take the other two matters into consideration, at the end of the day, if we were to base relocations on cost alone, the policy might well stall. I certainly, and perhaps the committee, would find that unacceptable. We need to take into account efficiency and best value—those two policies might in their own right create opportunities for further relocations—but at the end of the day, to pursue and deliver the objectives of spreading jobs throughout Scotland and ensuring that the rest of Scotland enjoys the benefits of devolution, the relocation part must be the primary objective in the policy. That will be reflected in our decisions.
If I understand correctly, you are saying that the relocation of civil service jobs is the number 1 priority and that efficient government and best-value issues are of secondary importance.
Those issues will be given serious consideration, but we must be clear that, if we judged matters simply on best value and efficiency, we might in some instances rule out relocations. It is up to ministers to take the correct decision. However, if we are to pursue the relocation policy that we have laid out, the relocation element will in some instances take precedent.
My final question is on the number of civil servants. You were asked earlier whether people have been relocated or new people have been recruited. You said that, in the Kilwinning example, there was 100 per cent new recruitment. What has been the impact of the policy on total civil service numbers?
It has had no impact on total civil service numbers, because the jobs have been relocated. Even initial reflection on one or two of the early relocations shows that the policy has had benefits for the organisations and communities that are involved. For instance, in the Scottish Public Pensions Agency relocation, 85 per cent of the jobs were recruited locally. Although there was an initial dip in the organisation's performance, the cost savings have been substantial in the longer term.
I do not dispute that, but I am asking whether, as a result of the policy of moving jobs from A to B, the total number of civil service jobs in A has reduced and the number of jobs in B has increased. If that is the calculation, no increase in civil service numbers should in theory have occurred as a result of the policy. The question I am driving at is whether all the jobs that have been relocated have been truly relocated or whether there has been an increase in total civil service numbers.
I will try to answer that, although the answer will not be as categorical as you would like. With relocations that happen over an extended period, it is sometimes difficult to extract the impact of the relocation itself from other changes that are taking place in an organisation. Registers of Scotland is a good example of that. Through the introduction of technology to many of its operations, its long-term staffing numbers will change considerably, irrespective of any move as a result of the location review.
Minister, in your letter of October 2005, you note my request for information on the evaluation of the relocation policy and, in particular, how many existing staff moved to new locations in each of the bodies that have relocated. Your response was:
We hope that we will be able to let you have the completed report in spring. There are three strands to the evaluation, which we are considering in order to give the clearest picture of the outcomes of the policy. First, we will conduct an analysis of the benefits; secondly, we will consider benchmarking impacts; and, thirdly, we will carry out a comparative international study, which will consider other countries' policies and compare them with ours.
So the report will be completed by the spring. Your update report says only that there will be some indications of the outcomes by early summer. Can you be more firm?
We are hopeful that we will have the information completed by spring.
Do you have any idea how many relocations you might be announcing?
I hope that we will be able to announce a good number of relocations in the new year. Again, that is subject to ministerial decisions. I will endeavour to let the committee have that information as soon as possible.
But the information in the evaluation will be too late—
I think that you perhaps misunderstand. The evaluation will be of what has already been done, not of what is to come. We will do a proper evaluation of all the early relocations such as those of the Scottish Public Pensions Agency and the Food Standards Agency Scotland. I hope that we will be able to provide the committee with information on the analysis of the benefits to the organisation and the wider community, which are important.
In the business improvements section of your report, you talk about
That issue should be covered in each location review. Running cost evaluations have been carried out because ministers should not be asked to make decisions based on nothing. However, you are right to suggest that, arguably, consultants have been inconsistent in their approach to the issue in the past. Indeed, that is partly why we have established a new central team to drive things.
In your responses to Mr Swinney's earlier questions, you seemed to be saying that, if a relocation proposal met all the objective criteria but was inefficient in cost or operational terms, you would still go ahead with the relocation. Is that really the case?
Ministers will have to make judgments on such matters. In many instances, we might choose to disregard that element if we thought that there was a justifiable reason for doing so. After all, we need to honour our commitment to relocation and if the policy was driven purely by efficiency and best-value considerations, it might well slow down or stall. I—and the committee—would certainly not want that to happen.
Are you saying that cost is a factor or that, as in Ireland—
I am simply saying that it is one of the factors that we have to take into account. However, the relocation policy's overriding driver is to ensure that it continues to deliver jobs to other parts of Scotland.
It is important to take a long view of any benefits or cost impacts. Sometimes, an approach that defines best value or efficiency too narrowly and with too short a timeframe might conflict with certain elements that could bring benefits or produce efficiencies over a longer period. Some of the tensions that the minister has referred to and that politicians have to resolve arise from different timing considerations.
For example, the Scottish Public Pensions Agency has carried out the first bit of the evaluation, although it has not yet completed the whole process. Looking at the cost of the initial relocation and the disruption of the work programme through the loss of 85 per cent of the staff, one might think at first, "You wouldn't do this, because it has such a strong impact on the business." However, the wider benefits in the long term from the cheaper accommodation costs soon start to look like a sound financial proposition.
You mentioned the Accountant in Bankruptcy, which lost 100 per cent of its staff when it moved to Kilwinning. Surely when an organisation loses all its staff, that has a huge impact on its organisational capacity—the organisational memory goes.
As I understand it, the Accountant in Bankruptcy's relocation took a considerable time, so it has been able to do a little bit of double running while the new staff are recruited and put in position. There has been criticism of the amount of time that it has taken for that relocation to happen. However, that has had benefits for the organisation, as it has been able to train the new staff while the old staff started to run down. Therefore, the staff loss has not impacted quite so hard on the Accountant in Bankruptcy's performance. That is the general feedback that we are getting. Carrying out the relocation over a longer time has brought benefits.
Mr Ballard makes a valid point. One of the considerations in any relocation review is the impact on continuity of business. One of the reasons why some organisations move to locations in the central belt—an issue that was raised earlier—is that that permits them to have some continuity in the retention of key staff. A distinction should be made according to the type of job. Some jobs can be fairly readily grasped over a short training period; others are at a different level of experience and seniority. However, the impact on the continuity of a business is a key factor in any relocation review and different organisations cope with the issue in different ways. Continuity is one of the factors that are taken into account in a relocation review.
I am getting concerned about a couple of points as the discussion goes on. One is that the message that we are getting from you is different from the one that we got from your predecessor about how cost would be managed and factored into the process. If I understand your response to Mark Ballard correctly, you are saying that cost is a secondary factor and that the prime issue as far as you are concerned is meeting the target for relocating jobs.
I did not intend to say that there was a blank cheque. I hope that the committee did not take me to mean that.
That is what it sounded like.
Certainly not. I am saying that we carry out proper evaluations and provide criteria to evaluate each relocation. Decisions are made on the basis of the information that is presented.
Where is the information published, so that we can see it? One concern in the past was that the way in which locations were being identified seemed to lead to a high proportion of relocations to places within 20 miles of Edinburgh. The result was that institutions popped up in Dunfermline, Livingston and Linlithgow. We seem to have moved off that track and on to a track that involves more institutions moving to Glasgow. There may be circumstantial issues attached to that. For understandable reasons, I may feel differently from John Swinney about the matter. However, at present we do not have the transparency that we need in order to see how decisions are being made and to identify the triggers for those decisions and the benchmarks that you are using to evaluate whether relocation should proceed.
We will introduce the transparency that you seek—the case study for each relocation will be published. We will also carry out evaluations, which will be important in informing us not only of the financial benefits of relocation, but of the benefits to the wider community. It is important that we take those into consideration as each decision is arrived at. We are certainly not saying that there should be relocation at any price. Each relocation will be evaluated on the basis of the information that is provided and the case that is made for it. In future, that information will be published.
I will indulge John Swinney with a supplementary before coming to Derek Brownlee.
I want to pursue your response to Mark Ballard's question about the Kilwinning example. Any layman who is told that an organisation that is relocating from Edinburgh to Kilwinning will have to double run for a period, because only one of the existing staff is moving, will automatically think that a heck of a lot of money will be needed to fund the relocation. Are you prepared as a priority to publish the evaluation of the entire transfer of staff and to give us today a figure for the cost to the public purse of the Kilwinning transfer?
The information will be published as soon as the relevant piece of work has been done. We will make the evaluation available to the committee. Are you talking about the initial business case or the evaluation that will be carried out once the organisation has transferred?
I am talking about everything. It is all very well putting an initial case that suggests that it would be a good idea to transfer the Accountant in Bankruptcy from Edinburgh to Kilwinning. However, when only one of the 140 staff decided to transfer, it was necessary to double run the organisation—in effect, to have two Accountants in Bankruptcy—in order to secure the relocation to another part of the country. I am interested in the initial evaluation and the practical financial consequence for the taxpayer.
There are two issues. As the minister says, we will publish the evaluation of the Kilwinning relocation. All future reviews will be published. The Accountant in Bankruptcy is currently operating in one North Ayrshire location and one Edinburgh location. The combined rent of those two buildings is less than that of the organisation's previous headquarters on George Street in Edinburgh, even though they have more floor space. The AIB is already saving money on rent, which is its biggest expense.
You say that the rent is the biggest expense, but it cannot possibly be.
It is the biggest variable.
Yes, it is the biggest variable. We cannot change the number of staff, but we can change the space where people operate and where that space is.
I know, but we were told by the minister a minute ago that the organisation was double running. I understand the concept of double running. To me, it means—
It does not mean double the staff. The AIB had taken on a new role, so the office went from having just under 80 staff in Edinburgh to 140 staff in North Ayrshire. That is not because there are two people doing every job; the staff are taking on more work. The original estimate for moving was in the region of £7 million. That is what it would cost to do the whole thing—recruiting, training and double running. The AIB has published figures to show that it managed to do all that for about £4 million. The saving in rental could be about £500,000 every year, which is, as David Robb says, the biggest variable. We fully intend to publish all that information in the evaluation. Audit Scotland will no doubt be very interested in it.
When will you be able to publish that information? If the publication date is a long way away, will you be able to publish an interim evaluation? I would make the same argument for SNH. When can we have an interim evaluation of the costs associated with its move?
In the case of SNH, that will be when the costs are known. There is currently a lot of talk about the various component parts as they emerge—which is quite right. However, SNH has not yet moved into its building and I do not think that it would be right to make an estimate for something that might not happen. Having said that, we would certainly be pleased to inquire about that possibility.
We can certainly look into the matter in the cases of both the AIB and SNH. I suspect that a certain amount of the information is already in the public domain. If it would be helpful for us to gather that together and to speak to both organisations about how much information they are willing to share at an early date, even on an estimate basis, we can consider doing that.
We could perhaps have a letter from you using those two examples, if members are agreeable to that.
We will get a letter to you, according to what information is available.
Yes—to give us an update. That could cover the operational costs of double running, if that is what is happening, as well as any industrial relations issues in relation to SNH. That would be particularly useful.
There is also the information about the rental cost, which would seem to form part of an argument for relocation within Edinburgh or away from George Street. I would be interested to know more about such rental figures.
The comparative rental figures are important. They underpin many of the arguments.
Before I move on to the main thrust of my questions, I want to ask about the list of 500 potential sites. Presumably, the list is not capped at 500.
No, it is not.
Presumably, the list is a living document. Is it available publicly? Will it be published?
It is not yet public, but we intend to publish it. We are working with councils and local enterprise companies on the valuations.
Is there a date by which it is due to be made publicly available?
I think that, as soon as the work is completed, we will make public all the grey areas. Some of the information will already be in the public domain; it is no secret that a lot of work has been done by local enterprise companies and local councils to identify sites—for example, in Inverclyde. That sort of information is in the public domain already.
I will come on to the main thrust of what I was going to ask, which concerns the business improvement aspects of relocation. The paper with which we have been presented discusses relocation as a "trigger" for reviewing more fundamental issues around how services are provided. It mentions
At the moment, the trigger is lease break. Some small units within the Executive are being identified as candidates for relocation. The Procurator Fiscal Service and the administration of the housing grant scheme for crofting communities are two organisations that came to mind. The efficient government exercise and best value might provide us with opportunities to identify other bodies that might trigger the process. We are trying to work out how best value and the efficient government exercise can play into the policy. Doing so might provide us with other opportunities to consider relocations.
If I have correctly picked up what you have said, there will not necessarily be an on-going review of the space utilisation of bodies across the Executive whose leases are some years away from coming to their end, for example.
Once the evaluation is done, the benchmarking work might provide us with an opportunity to consider bodies across the Executive. That opportunity will be discussed at that point. There may be opportunities to reconsider how we approach the policy and to look at how that will impact on bringing more parts of the Executive and its bodies on to the relocation policy agenda.
I want to pick up on the point about rents and the Accountant in Bankruptcy. If double running—or whatever one wants to call it—is set aside, savings in rents would seem to be a good example of how relocation can deliver lower running costs. The section of paper FI/S2/05/30/1 that deals with the comparative study states:
We should consider the context of that part of the report. A London weighting is applied to the salaries of all civil servants who work in London. As a result, there will be direct savings when there is relocation out from the centre as well as the added benefit of lower accommodation costs. There is no Edinburgh weighting and so no direct read-across for Scotland.
But in the light of what you have said about Kilwinning, it does not seem correct to say that it is easier for departments that move out of London to make savings on accommodation costs than it is for Scottish Executive bodies that move out of Edinburgh.
Rental values in and outwith Edinburgh are different, so moving outwith Edinburgh would be a benefit, but the comparison was between the salary levels.
The comparison is with the Gershon review. The Gershon targets might not be directly comparable with the Scottish targets, but the paper clearly states:
A combination of accommodation and staff costs is involved.
We apologise if the wording is misleading in any way. The problem lies with the "not only … but … also" phrase. It has been clearly established that there are differences between rents in the different cities and rents in other parts of Scotland, so it is possible to achieve efficiencies in that respect. However, as the minister has said, the sentence tries to draw out the fact that a salary gradient exists in the public sector in England that does not exist in Scotland. I apologise if that is not clear.
Are not potential savings on staff costs through relocation being considered, even though people have the same salary when they move from Edinburgh to Glasgow or wherever?
Benefits might be achieved such as those that the Scottish Public Pensions Agency has achieved—it has reported greater output. There can be such benefits.
Sometimes there can be hidden savings through reductions in staff turnover.
So, it is an efficiency thing. I guess that a saving through staff turnover could be described as an efficiency saving in the broadest sense of the term. However, there is not necessarily a cash saving in moving the posts, because the posts will be remunerated at the same level in Edinburgh as they would be wherever else in Scotland they were relocated.
It is the same; the salary system is negotiated at the UK level.
I am keen to explore the reporting side, as I think we agreed that it is not unreasonable to expect pretty fulsome reporting. Over time, I would like the situation to develop such that we can see not only the total number of jobs that have been moved but the total relocation cost, average relocation cost per job, percentage of staff that were retained and the number of jobs that were taken up by local people. Perhaps the definition of local people who are looking for work should include people who return to an area such as Tiree to take up a post or who were on the island for six months before the relocation took place. What is your feel about your ability to give us that level of data?
I hope that the evaluation will provide that level of detail. It is important that the committees of the Parliament are able to scrutinise whether the policy objectives are working. I am thinking of the socioeconomic benefits and the efficient government agenda.
Equally, it is not unreasonable to expect to see, over time, the number of jobs that are relocated being reported as a proportion of total civil service and NDPB jobs. That would give us the chance to see how material the policy is. The data should be reported in a way that shows the impact of the policy on the 200 locations. That level of reporting would allow us to see which locations are doing moderately well and those that are falling behind.
I hope that the evaluation will produce some of that information for us to be able to use.
That is entirely positive. I welcome that.
I hope so. At the end of the day, it will inform our decisions on whether to make changes to the policy. Committee members have put forward the strong view that we should adopt the Irish approach. I hope that the evaluation and the comparative study will give us the evidence to allow us to make the correct decision on any changes to our policy. Although I am open to change, I want to see the evidence before we make any further progress.
Do you have any plans to make the policy a little bit more competitive? I suspect that parts of Scotland would welcome the chance to present their attributes, such as lower property costs, better ability to find adequate candidates, higher retention rates and so forth and the ensuing lower recruitment and training costs.
I understand that local authorities and local enterprise companies are already doing that to provide evidence that their area is a good place to come to and should be prioritised as a candidate location for the next round of relocation. That work is also very important.
I will just go back and complete the cycle, minister. Let us take the situation of a relocation in which the cost per job is way out of line, as is the figure for staff retention—it is much lower than we would have hoped. What steps do you plan to take to identify and publish the lessons learned and to tell us what will be different in future?
The evaluation process and the Audit Scotland work will highlight some of the concerns that the committee has on the matter. When I return to give the committee an update in six months, we can discuss the issues further. Audit Scotland's work is due to be completed in April, so we will have that. We hope to be in a position to inform the committee of the evaluation.
The key to facilitating that discussion is a document that gives us the cost data.
Yes. I am happy to agree that that is the right way to proceed. We need the evidence to back up what has happened.
Will the minister explain what is—to me at least—an apparent contradiction? You have told us your policies and your reasons for relocation, yet a new public sector body, Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People, has been established in Edinburgh and the office of the Scottish information commissioner has been established in St Andrews, which has a high employment rate. Does the public bodies unit discuss the establishment of new bodies?
That is a matter for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, because those organisations are creatures of the Scottish Parliament. I understand that Audit Scotland and the committee have considered that matter.
We will return to that.
At the moment, lease breaks trigger relocation exercises. You suggested in answers to earlier questions that you were thinking of broadening that. Would you consider relocating organisations and selling buildings that are owned by the Executive or agencies to realise assets? That is one way in which the Irish fund their relocation policy.
That is one approach. As I said, the introduction of best value throughout the public sector and the efficient government initiative allow us to consider such opportunities, which might bring into the evaluation process other organisations that would otherwise not be available to us because they have no lease break.
You might sell Victoria Quay in the long run.
I am not sure whether I could go as far as that.
Another issue that arose from the Irish experience was transferability. The Irish handled some staff churn issues by transferring people between the civil service and NDPBs. The Executive has taken that on board and produced a list of NDPBs whose staff may be transferred. Is that list comprehensive? How were organisations put on the list? I ask because Scottish Enterprise is not on it. Is that because you do not want Scottish Enterprise to be on it or because it is not likely to relocate?
The Cabinet Office published an invitation to NDPBs to apply to be on the list. The list that we have is the Cabinet Office's list of the bodies that have applied so far. If Scottish Enterprise is interested in being on the list, it will apply.
Is that not a little unfair? It means that the management decides whether the workers can transfer.
That is exactly right—that is how NDPBs work. The management, the board and ministers all have something to say, and I have no doubt that staff are consulted.
However, staff of organisations that decided that they would not go on the list could be disadvantaged. They could lose the advantage of having the possibility of returning to the civil service if appropriate vacancies were available.
Absolutely. However, the answer that the Cabinet Office would give is that, to achieve transferability, it must ensure that people have been recruited in roughly the same way as the civil service recruits, as that provides a level playing field. Individual staff could probably not answer for that.
In that case, is there an argument for the Executive offering NDPBs guidance on applying to join the list? It seems anomalous that Highlands and Islands Enterprise has opted to join the list whereas Scottish Enterprise has not.
I am willing to reflect on that point.
Do you know whether staff who transfer from an NDPB will transfer with continuity of service?
That is the intention.
We are pressing the Cabinet Office for guidance on that.
I appreciate that it is a UK Government issue.
We are very aware of the issue.
Is the public bodies unit's only function to deal with relocations or does it have a wider remit?
I am trading here slightly under false pretences. Nowadays my division is called the public bodies and relocation division, to signal the fact that responsibility for relocation policy has moved within the Executive. Previously, the public bodies unit had responsibility for policy on arm's-length bodies, the public appointments process and ethical standards. Eighteen months ago, we added the relocation team, so our proper Sunday name is the public bodies and relocation division. We still look after all those subjects.
How many civil servants are involved in the relocation side of the business?
There are six in the team and there are some virtual members.
Virtual members? Are they virtually located somewhere?
We draw on expertise from colleagues in economics, in human resources and in estates and property. We have a number of people who assist in particular reviews.
A number of the staff are sitting here in the audience.
We are delighted to welcome them. Are the virtual members located in another part of Argyll and Bute or is that just a conspiracy theory? Is there a budget for the relocation unit's total activities?
I cannot, off the top of my head, break down what the relocation team costs, but I can tell you the total budget for the division.
It would be helpful if you could supply that.
In the earlier discussion, there was a debate about costs and effectiveness. Does the relocation approach that you are moving towards take adequate account of the savings framework that you have adopted, travelling through from Gershon, about saving back-office costs and merging organisations? How does that fit with the approach that you are trying to take?
That plays into the approach that we are taking.
How? Can you give us any examples of where relocation has been linked to a Gershon-type savings framework, and where savings have been clearly identified?
We have some examples of that.
There are a couple of relocation projects. I suppose that the best example would be in Dundee, where the Scottish Social Services Council and the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care were located under the relocation policy. They went to a particular building, where they are considering using Gershon-type back-office sharing, as well as sharing facilities with three other parts of the public sector in another bit of Dundee. Essentially, Scottish Enterprise, Communities Scotland and various other bits of the public sector are all getting together to share, at the very least, meeting rooms and reception and so on. That is an example of a relocation that has led to consideration of wider issues.
In other words, you might consider a sort of clustering of relocated bodies. Is that linked in with the targeting approach that you are discussing with some local enterprise companies? Is clustering part of that thinking?
One issue that is being explored in developing the policy is where the clustering approach could bring benefits.
It is not in any of the documentation that we have seen. It would be quite interesting for the committee to get that information.
I undertake to provide the committee with information on that.
We might include in that a report on what is happening with some of the environment bodies. Stimulated by the decision to move SNH headquarters to Inverness, there have been active discussions among a number of the bodies in that portfolio and in that geographic area about the possibilities for greater co-operation. There is an initiative called on the ground, which is considering environment-related bodies throughout Scotland more widely. We would be happy to provide further information on that if that would be helpful.
There are no further questions from committee members, so I thank the minister and his officials for coming along today.