“Management of patients on NHS waiting lists: Audit update”
Members have copies of the report. The Auditor General for Scotland is here, accompanied by a number of members of her team: Angela Canning, Tricia Meldrum and Jillian Matthew. I invite the Auditor General to brief the committee.
Thank you, convener, and good morning. I previously reported on the management of waiting lists in February this year, and the Public Audit Committee subsequently produced its own report in May. The committee asked me to provide an update by the end of 2013, and the report that we are discussing today comments on progress by the national health service and the Scottish Government on implementing the recommendations in those reports.
Thank you. I have a few questions. On page 5 of the report, you note by way of background:
What we have done on page 5 is to recap the findings from our previous report, which was published in February. There were a range of reasons for the increase, and I ask Jillian Matthew to talk you through them.
As Caroline Gardner said, we discussed the matter last time and raised it as an issue in our report. We found that boards were using the unavailability codes and that the numbers were quite high in certain boards, and we highlighted that.
So the figures for unavailability codes started to reduce, but that correlated directly with the rise in the number of patients who were waiting longer than 12 weeks. Because patients are now being recorded as waiting for 12 weeks or longer, that information is now in the public domain as opposed to being hidden, as it was in the past. One figure has gone down while the other has gone up. Is that right?
Exhibit 3 on page 14 shows the trends in waiting times and unavailability for both out-patients and in-patients. You are right to suggest that, as the proportion of patients who are coded as being unavailable has fallen, particularly in the case of out-patients, the number of patients who are waiting for more than 12 weeks—which is the target time—has increased.
Okay. On page 9, you note that
Perhaps Jillian Matthew can talk you through that.
Although there is a legal right for patients under the 2011 act, there is no legal recourse for patients under the act if they are not treated within 12 weeks. However, the Scottish Government can decide to step in and take action if it feels that that is required.
It is a bit of a farce, that. People have a legal right, but if it is not met, they do not have the power to do anything about it. They cannot go to court to enforce it and they do not get any financial recompense or an appointment immediately because the 12-week target has not been met. Nothing happens to those who fail to meet that legal right. At some uncertain point in the future, the Scottish Government might step in. It just makes me wonder what the point is of having a legal right when nothing can be done to enforce it. I accept that that is not a matter for Audit Scotland, but it seems rather bizarre that people have been given that right yet nothing can or will be done if the right is not mentioned.
We have reported clear progress on the management of waiting lists, with better recording of the reasons why patients are unavailable and better monitoring of that by boards. At the same time, as you say, we are seeing signs of increased pressure in relation to meeting the waiting time targets, particularly the target that out-patients should be seen within 12 weeks.
In our discussions with the Scottish Government, it has been very aware of the trend and it is working closely with boards where it is aware that there are capacity issues. In the report, we specifically highlight NHS Forth Valley, where 20 per cent of patients are waiting longer than 12 weeks. The health board has recognised that locally and is taking additional measures and allocating additional staff to put on additional appointments.
Exhibit 2 shows that not a single NHS board met the 12-week guarantee, so it is just as well that there is no legal implication from that legal right that patients have. Every board right across Scotland would be in trouble if any action followed from that legal right. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is not far away from meeting the guarantee, as is the Golden Jubilee hospital. However, notwithstanding what you have said, in addition to the NHS Forth Valley figure, which stands out, the figures for a number of other health boards show that they are around 5 per cent short of meeting the guarantee, and the figure for NHS Western Isles shows that it is even further away from meeting it. Have those other health boards given any indication of when they will meet the target?
As Jillian Matthew said, the Scottish Government is monitoring with each health board what its performance looks like and where there are particular challenges that it needs to meet. The treatment time guarantee is slightly different from the 12-week out-patients target, which you can see in the third column in exhibit 2. Six boards were meeting the guarantee at the end of September 2013, but the others were not.
I understand what you are saying. It is the guarantee that is the issue. In that case, only the NHS boards in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles and the Golden Jubilee hospital met the standard—all the others failed on that point. None of the boards is meeting the out-patient targets, and most of them are failing to meet the in-patient guarantee.
I am slightly out of touch with health—I have not been on the Health and Sport Committee for quite a long time—and I want to be clear about this. On page 9 of the report, paragraph 9 says that
All three of the bullet points in paragraph 9 apply at the same time to eligible patients. I ask Jillian Matthew to talk you through how they interact. You are right to say that it is complex.
There are two separate periods of 12 weeks. It is 12 weeks to the first appointment at hospital, and at the first out-patient appointment or at a subsequent appointment it is agreed what the patient’s treatment will be. That has to happen within 12 weeks under the treatment time guarantee. However, the 18-week referral-to-treatment standard lies over those two periods. If someone goes on to get in-patient treatment, the period is not 24 weeks—it still has to be within 18 weeks overall.
So, someone could wait 12 weeks to see a consultant. Let us suppose that, after they see that consultant, they require surgery. That surgery would be guaranteed within six weeks because of the 18-week—
Yes, but that is not a guarantee, it is a standard.
The patient has a legal right, though.
The legal right is for 12 weeks.
Is that to wait 12 weeks to be an in-patient? Is the target 18 weeks from referral by the general practitioner to treatment?
Yes. That is not a legal standard, though. That is the overall—
In that case, someone could wait 12 weeks to be seen as an out-patient. By simple arithmetic, if 18 weeks is the overarching period for referral from GP to surgery, surgery will take place six weeks after the patient has seen the consultant.
Yes—if it takes 12 weeks for them to see the consultant, but the patient might be seen in a shorter time. A lot of people are seen in less than 12 weeks.
I appreciate that. I needed that clarity.
That is something that we have tried to highlight. Such an increase in out-patient demand places a big pressure on the boards. It is not entirely clear why there has been such an increase, but there are a lot of possible reasons, including the ageing population and the fact that more people are getting ophthalmology treatments in hospital. You can see that the out-patient standard is not being met by boards because of the increasing demand. Not every out-patient will go on to get in-patient treatment. The number of in-patients has stayed fairly steady, whereas hospitals are having to manage increasing out-patient demand.
Can you tell me the timescale to which that increase of 20 per cent applies? Did that increase occur between September 2010 and September 2013? Was it an increase of 20 per cent over those three years?
It occurred over that time, yes.
That is a significant change. Did that coincide with the introduction of the new treatment time guarantee?
The treatment time guarantee was introduced in October 2012, but the increase started to happen before that.
Would it be more relevant to consider how many patients are being treated within a certain time than to ask about the increasing bulge in the number of out-patients? We want to know that more patients are being treated—there is more demand—and that they are being treated within the treatment time guarantee. I am not sure that the section 23 report tells us that, but we are seeing a huge bulge—a 20 per cent increase—in the number of out-patients.
We did not investigate the reasons behind that in detail. The focus was more on the progress that was being made among boards and how they are managing their waiting lists. We do not know how many of the out-patients went on to get in-patient treatment.
Are you saying that there is a lack of capacity? Are more resources required in order to meet the treatment time guarantees that are outlined on page 9?
There are certainly issues around capacity for out-patients and for in-patient treatment.
Overall, the report is encouraging in relation to the direction of travel in data collection and so forth, which was the key issue that we were concerned about.
As far as we can tell, they do not affect at all the figures in our report, which we highlighted in our introduction. The figures are collected by health boards and we have reported that the way in which health boards monitor them to identify and tackle problems has improved since our report in February. However, boards are not reporting that on to ISD, because the information systems have not all undergone the necessary changes to allow that to happen. The national reporting, which is being done by ISD, is now less comprehensive than it used to be.
I want to make sure that I have understood what you have said. Are we saying that the information is being collected but that some of it, at least, is not going up to Government?
That is right. Because of the time that it is taking to amend the information systems that are being used by boards, the information that is being automatically transferred to ISD is less comprehensive each time. As a result, the national reporting is less comprehensive. The Government expects to have that issue resolved by early next year and to be able to fill in the backlog. At the moment, however, that is not happening.
It seems rather an important point that, if the Government is not getting accurate figures, it is very difficult for it to plan and to monitor what is happening.
We agree. That is why we have recommended that that gap be closed as soon as possible. As we say in our report, there is some manual data collection and reporting going on to compensate. However, the information that is available at patient level is less detailed than it has been in the past and than the Government wants it to be again in the future.
One of the issues that came up after the problem with NHS Lothian, in particular, was that of staff training and the familiarity of staff with systems and with the whole process. Has that situation improved significantly?
We have seen some real evidence of progress. On pages 22 and 23, you will see some of our findings. In particular, NHS Forth Valley and NHS Tayside are monitoring trends in the way in which individual staff members use waiting time codes. There has been progress in training staff in the requirements and the way in which the systems work, and some boards are making real progress in identifying staff who seem to have particular training needs and in targeting training at them.
One of the important things about staff training and awareness is that it is not just a one-off as a result of what happened, but an on-going process. Are you satisfied that it is?
Tricia Meldrum can explain what we know about continuing training and awareness.
A new controls matrix has come in just recently, which has been developed by the Government, the boards and internal auditors working together. It is quite complex and looks at various issues that boards should be monitoring both in relation to how they manage their waiting lists, use their codes, send out letters and communicate with patients and in relation to who has access to patient information and systems. Information about how boards are complying with the controls matrix should be reported internally on a regular basis, and boards and non-executive directors should continue to scrutinise that and make improvements where they are required. There is now a more robust framework in place that addresses those important issues.
Are you satisfied that that matrix is now embedded across all the NHS regions?
It has only just come in.
It is still quite new. We think that the introduction of the matrix is progress. However, as you have said, continued attention is needed to ensure that it stays up there on boards’ agenda and that staff training is kept up to date as the framework requires.
Are there figures that show the waiting times for each individual hospital, or are such figures collected only on a health board basis?
That information is not available for individual hospitals at the moment. Boards will probably have that information locally but it is not reported to ISD. That is one of the more detailed kinds of information that are missing at the moment but that will be in place again next year.
It strikes me that, if there are boards with particular problems, some of those problems could be caused by one or two institutions within those board areas, which would be a real cause for concern. I note what you have said—that the boards should have that information but that it is not routinely reported to the Scottish Government.
You have highlighted the fact that the use of unavailability codes has considerably reduced, which is to be welcomed, but the fall-off has been dramatic, from 36 per cent of patients to 18 per cent. What could explain that?
When we reported on that in February 2013, it was one of the areas that we looked at closely to try to explain it. Our conclusion was that, at that stage, it was not possible for us or anybody else to explain it, because the systems and records for individual patients did not contain the information that was needed. At the time, our recommendation, which was supported by the committee, was that all health boards should start to use their information systems to record the reasons why a period of unavailability had been applied, and the Government’s guidance, which was coming into effect at that point, introduced new safeguards. Those included the need for health boards to write to individual patients when a period of unavailability was applied, explaining that it had happened and what was meant by the date by which they should be seen or treated, and to make sure that there was that additional check on the process.
You highlight the fact that it began to fall at the same time as you identified NHS Lothian as abusing the system.
There is definitely a correlation. It is worth being clear about the fact that we did not identify that in Lothian; it was identified, as the committee highlighted at the time, as a result of whistleblowing within Lothian. The same trend was apparent in the use of unavailability codes across other health boards, but despite extensive audit work on our part the audit trail simply was not strong enough to explain why that happened elsewhere.
So you could not discover that through audit. Since the NHS Lothian scandal was revealed, the figures have fallen from 36 per cent to 18 per cent.
That is right.
On availability codes, the convener said that no one has the right to enforce the supposed legal obligation to meet the targets. You also suggested that the boards are not particularly good at explaining any rights.
I think that we found in the report that boards have made progress in doing that and that the letters that they are now required to send out to patients are a big step forward from the relative lack of information for patients that existed previously. We highlighted that some boards are doing very well. We have a couple of case studies in the report, which I ask Jillian Matthew to talk us through, to explain the progress that we have seen.
Since the treatment time guarantee came in in October last year, boards have had to write to patients to set out the fact that they are entitled to the treatment time guarantee and to pass on information about when they should be treated, and to tell them that they are listed as unavailable or if other changes are made to their status on the waiting list. Boards are doing that.
How did you find that out? Did you ask patients whether they understood the letters?
We did not do that. It was quite a high-level piece of work. Some boards have said that they are working with patient groups and have received feedback from patients about the letters.
One of the most worrying comments that you make—it is on page 12—is about the pressure on boards’ capacity to cope. You suggest that some boards refer patients to national services in order to cope with pressure on demand. Is there an overreliance on those national services in some cases, which indicates a lack of capacity building and a lack of focus on providing services that patients need at their local hospital?
I do not think that that is a conclusion that we can draw from this piece of work. We say in the report that the increase in the number of patients not being seen within the standard times, or within the treatment time guarantee where it applies, is an indication of pressures in the system, which are greater for some boards than for others.
Just to explore that for a second, what do you mean when you talk about a lack of capacity? Do you mean a lack of doctors, consultants or nurses?
That can mean different things in different places. Jillian Matthew will keep me right about this but, for example, NHS Grampian is currently investing in additional theatre space and time and additional doctors and consultants to carry out procedures. The problems might well be different in different health boards.
I mentioned that because, in paragraph 15 on page 12, you talk about
We reported that in our report on NHS finances, in which we talked about the level of vacancies for doctors and nurses. There are pressures, some of which come from things with which we are familiar, such as the changes to doctors’ training arrangements and the working time directive and its impact on the hours that medical staff can work. There is a range of pressures, which is why boards’ ability to understand the demands on their services and to plan for the necessary capacity to provide those services is so important. That information is the starting point, but it is only the starting point.
We would all agree that we want the health service to be able to cope locally with patient demand, but when it does not, it has to take emergency measures. Your report says that NHS boards sometimes rely on national services, and you have also identified the fact that they buy in private sector healthcare. Do you know how much is spent on that?
We reported that in our report on NHS finances, which we published earlier this year. Angela Canning is trying to check on that for you—if we can, we will come back to that in a few moments.
The report mentions that NHS Lothian—just one health board—is spending £27 million on a range of measures, including private sector healthcare. Does that worry you?
NHS Lothian faces particular challenges because of the problems that were uncovered when its manipulation of waiting times was exposed back in 2011. At that point, it had a much bigger backlog of patients who were waiting to be treated than it knew about or had planned for. Catching up with that backlog at the same time as dealing with the referral of new patients is clearly a challenge for NHS Lothian and the specific circumstances there.
Okay. Has Angela Canning found the figure?
Yes. You might remember that the Auditor General brought a report on financial performance in the NHS to the committee back in November. It showed that spending on private healthcare increased by around £15 million in 2012-13 to just over £80 million, which was a rise of 23 per cent over those two years. At that time, we highlighted to the committee that that was a reversal in the trend, in that we have seen an increase in spending on private healthcare. However, we also noted that the increase is quite a small proportion of total NHS spending.
We are seeing more vacancies for nurses and doctors, we are spending more money on private healthcare and we are not meeting demand locally. Those are my three observations.
That is right.
Could you clarify which two years you mentioned?
I am sorry—I was trying to read without my glasses on.
Did you say £80 million?
Yes, it was £80.3 million in 2012-13.
And it went up from £50 million?
Yes, it was around £50 million.
What was the figure of 14 that you mentioned?
The figure of 14.8 is the difference between the two years—
But how does that translate into a rise of 23 per cent?
It was £14.8 million—
Sorry. What we do not have in the report is the baseline figure for 2011-12.
If there is an increase of 23 per cent, that is fair enough, but what I do not understand is that you are also saying that there was an increase of 14 per cent. I am not quite sure—
We will clarify the figures for you. They come from our report “NHS financial performance 2012/13”, on which we briefed you at a previous meeting. We will pick up the point separately, to ensure that we do not mislead you.
Okay.
Mr Keir and I never get a pass on health matters—we were at the Health and Sport Committee meeting yesterday.
The figures come from the financial performance report that I mentioned. I do not think that we were able to break down the vacancies into those that relate to new posts and those that relate to long-standing posts. It is certainly true that there has been an increase in the number of consultant posts, as we said in the report.
I think that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing has been able to confirm that, but I wanted to put that on the record.
There was a lot in your question. I will try to pick up on the range of points that you made. First, you are right that exhibit 2 contains a lot of information about what is happening and shows a mixed picture. On the treatment time guarantee—the column on the right of the table—six boards are meeting the target fully, some are within 1 per cent of meeting it and a handful are not meeting it.
That is helpful. As for the role that the committee can play, members might look at individual tables, exhibits and paragraphs in your report and can pick out things that are of particular interest to them, but I am delighted that you will have a hands-on role in working with health boards to ensure that they better set out how they use the audit information to plan better. What is the committee’s role in following through on some of those things? There is no turf war here with the Health and Sport Committee, which will no doubt investigate winter resilience in due course, I imagine, but is there a useful role for the Public Audit Committee in following through on some of the audit information and in examining where subsequent investment goes? Do you think that that would be a useful exercise? I know that it is for us to decide how to proceed, but I am interested to hear your views on how we use the numbers to better inform ourselves about health board actions.
Clearly, that is a decision for the committee to take. It is always helpful to us when the committee endorses our recommendations, as that ensures that they are taken seriously by people in public services. There is also value in the committee taking evidence both from health boards that are doing well—NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has been discussed in relation to the targets—and from health boards that are facing more significant challenges, so that you understand how they are doing and build up an understanding of what the problems are and what the responses available to health boards might be.
Much was made by the Scottish Government—I am certainly supportive of this—of the new patient advice line, which is for any patient in the country who is unsure where they are in the waiting time system, what their rights and entitlements are and how the process works. I am interested to know your thoughts on how that is working in its very early stages. In the NHS, you are damned if you and damned if you don’t: if people use the line, that means that there are bad things happening; if people do not use the line, it is not being promoted enough. Sometimes you cannot win in that sort of situation. How do you feel that that is going?
The honest answer is that it is early doors for both lines. We refer to the waiting times information line and website in paragraph 28 of our report. It was introduced only in October 2013, and it is designed to give people general information about, for example, what the treatment time guarantee means, how it relates to the other targets, and other complex things of that sort. It is not a substitute for detailed information from each board about an individual patient’s circumstances, and we would like to see more about how those two sources of information interact to give patients better information.
I will sneak in a final question. You piqued my interest when you referred to the new patient advice line giving general information and how that would marry with the detailed information that each health board would have. Do you envisage that, in future, if the patient had their Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection number or a reference number, the computer system and the patient advice line would link directly to the patient’s own care circumstances, so that they could get immediate information about where they were in the system, rather than just general information about their rights?
That is a question for Government but, obviously, technology is making it increasingly possible to provide such tailored, personalised information, based on good computerisation. I suspect that that would not only provide more transparency about waiting lists in general but be welcomed by patients.
On page 21, you state:
That is a really good question. Patients with additional support needs have been a focus of our concern in all the reports that we have done on waiting lists, particularly in the reports that we published in 2010. It seems that they are patients who need and deserve more support but who can be left behind when it comes to ensuring that they are treated properly and in line with the treatment time guarantee and the other standards.
Did the Scottish Government write to boards with an eye to getting that uniform system in place?
Yes. The Government was looking for assurance about the progress that boards had made. At that point, progress was mixed, as we say in the report, and we think that there is more that many boards could do. The approach that NHS Lothian plans to take is promising, and it looks as though it covers the right areas. There is probably scope for boards to learn from each other more in getting that aspect right.
I have a further question connected to that. I noticed that exhibit 6 on page 25 shows that the
I am not sure, but Tricia Meldrum may be able to tell you more about that.
The expectation is that that information would be held within the boards’ own systems, which the boards would monitor themselves. Because there is not a specific field for additional support needs in most boards’ systems at the moment, there is no means to translate that information directly to ISD.
There is a recommendation that there be a specific field for that. If a specific field were put in place across all the boards, ISD would then be able to monitor the information and include it in its benchmarking tool.
We recommended that boards improve how they manage and make information available to patients with additional support needs, and we think that a specific field would help to do that. That recommendation is not currently part of the national guidance, which is really about improving.
We will keep an eye on that.
Auditor General, you made it clear in your opening remarks that there have been clear signs of improvement since your previous report, and you mentioned the improvement in audit trails, letters and communication with patients, for example. Where are the greatest opportunities in the recommendations on page 8 to take us towards the 100 per cent target that several members have mentioned?
There are two different issues in your question. On improvements to the management of waiting lists, the most important thing is probably first to fill the gaps in the information that is reported through ISD nationally so that the comprehensive reporting, exploration and challenge can be done very clearly to identify where there are problems and what is needed to address them. That will require finalising the changes to the information systems, which is due to happen early next year.
Systems and processes get us to a certain point and give us the information that we need to effect such changes. When we initially look at the table on page 11, we think that the picture is not good, but there is a good story to tell if we look beneath that. A lot of hard work is going on.
We think that that is the most important gap in the information that health boards currently report to ISD. Members might remember that, in the report that we published in February, it was possible to compare the reported waiting times for patients with the actual times that they waited, taking into account unavailability codes. For most patients, the gap was not significant, although some patients waited longer for various reasons. However, having that information by health board and nationally is an important way for the health service to manage performance in this important area and for patients to have confidence that they and all of us are being treated fairly. The recommendation to close the gap in the information that is reported to ISD is important to us, as it will give a window on how long patients are waiting at the individual patient level rather than at the average level that is currently reported.
So we will get that information at some future stage and be able to see when people have been seen, rather than just whether the winning posts have been missed, which is what we see with the targets and the columns in this table. We will see that pattern developing.
We have had that information in the past. We reported it in our February report, and the Government expects it to be available early in 2014. We recommend that it is very important that that information is available again for exactly the reasons that you have highlighted.
Thank you for that. That is helpful.
I would like to go through the timeline that is illustrated in exhibit 7. The bill that introduced all the measures was passed by Parliament in March 2011, which means, by definition, that the consultation and the parliamentary proceedings, including its committee proceedings, would have started at least a year in advance of that. However, as you have just said to Mr Coffey, we do not expect to have all the data fully resolved until next year. Correct me if I am wrong, but the Government set out a policy intention to do something in 2010, yet it will take until 2014 to get the data together to allow us to know accurately what is happening.
In broad terms, that is right. A number of things were happening that affected the availability of that information. First, the new guidance on the waiting times framework and the treatment time guarantee was introduced later than planned because of the problems that emerged at NHS Lothian and the need to make sure that the guidance responded to those problems.
I take that point, but exhibit 7 shows that, in May 2012,
The timeline sets out accurately what happened. Questions about why particular pieces of work were started at particular times are for the Government and ISD. However, a lot was happening around waiting lists during that period, particularly in response to the problems that became clear at NHS Lothian.
I am not casting aspersions. I am simply puzzled because, if I was the Government, I would be keen to see the system up and running the minute my bill hit the statute book. Audit Scotland’s timeline illustrates that that did not happen and, although we know to some extent what is going on, we will not know completely what is going on until 2014, which is four years after the bill was an idea in a civil servant’s mind. It seems to be an awful long time to get the data sorted out.
That is absolutely right in terms of the national level data, but we are confident that it is being managed better than it was at health board level. It is a game of two halves in that sense.
Is Audit Scotland minded to make recommendations to Governments that are conceiving of legislation that includes data requirements that they should think through the consequences for the management of the data?
We have made such a recommendation in audit reports repeatedly over the life of the Parliament, but it is often seen as less important than getting the policy or service in place. It should be just as important.
Absolutely. Thank you.
I have a brief question. We keep talking about the treatment time guarantee, but there is no guarantee. Audit Scotland itself says that the treatment time guarantee for out-patients is “deteriorating”. We also talk about legal rights for patients. Am I right in saying that there are no legal rights? There is a treatment time guarantee that cannot be guaranteed, and the so-called legal rights for patients do not exist. Is it therefore right to keep talking about legal rights and treatment time guarantees?
It is a complicated picture and the best that we can do is refer you back to page 9 of the report. The treatment time guarantee is a new right for patients that was introduced in October 2012 under new legislation, which gives eligible patients the right to be treated within 12 weeks of their treatment being agreed.
Yes, but a treatment time guarantee is not being guaranteed and there is no legal right for patients. Is that correct?
It is not legally enforceable under the legislation.
The legal right is not legally enforceable and the treatment time guarantee for out-patients as you state in this report is “deteriorating”, so it is not guaranteed.
The treatment time guarantee does not apply to out-patients. What applies to out-patients is the target that they should all be seen within 12 weeks of referral.
Well, you say in exhibit 1:
Those are two different conclusions. First of all, the treatment time guarantee is not being met and—
It is not a guarantee if it is not being met.
It is not a legally enforceable right although it is enshrined in legislation.
Yes, but if I have a guarantee, I think that it is rock solid. If I have a guarantee that something will be done in 12 weeks, I assume that it will be done in 12 weeks. It is a bit of a misnomer to call it a guarantee and a legal right.
To be fair, we can take that up with ministers rather than with the Auditor General.
Like some of my colleagues, I see some improvements in the report. I am happy with the likes of paragraph 34, on page 22, which says that better audit trails and better scrutiny have been identified.
You are right that NHS Lothian has specific problems. It would be facing the same problems as any of the big health boards anyway due to rising demand against the financial pressures to which the NHS as a whole is having to respond. The big backlog that arose when the suppression of waiting list numbers was uncovered has made it more difficult to tackle the backlog and achieve the standards for new patients who are being referred. Obviously, that is still reflected in the performance figures for NHS Lothian, as you can see in exhibit 2.
I was just asking about the continuing management. There has been a major problem, but there are many other problems, particularly centring on the royal infirmary and new assets that will have to be built at some point. However, I am comfortable as long as there is a mechanism for reporting back.
Auditor General, I am aware that you will provide some further information. I thank you and your staff for your contribution to the meeting.
“Police reform: Progress update 2013”
I reconvene the meeting. We are taking oral evidence from Scottish Government officials. I welcome to the meeting Leslie Evans, who is director general learning and justice; Paul Johnston, who is director of safer communities; Hilary Pearce, who is head of police finance team; and Stephen Woodhouse, who is head of finance and workforce sponsorship unit—which is an intriguing title. They are here to contribute to our consideration of the section 23 report “Police reform: Progress update 2013”.
Thank you, convener, and thanks for the opportunity to provide evidence to the committee in response to the Auditor General for Scotland’s report on police reform.
Thank you. Why did the Scottish Government not prepare a full business case?
As you will know, we prepared an outline case, which formed a very strong and effective basis for the financial memorandum for the 2012 act. In doing so, we were differentiating between an outline business case that explains the feasibility of savings for that particular route of reform and a full business case, which requires due diligence for how the savings are going to be delivered and therefore owned by the new leadership and the new organisation itself.
So, was there no need for a full business case?
It was essential to have an outline business case and for the information before Parliament—
No—I am not talking about the outline business case. Are you saying that there was no need for a full business case?
There is a need for a full business case, which is what the Police Authority is working on now with support from us, from Police Scotland and from others.
You are preparing a full business case after the event. Just for argument’s sake, suppose that that full business case shows that what you have proposed is a bag of mince. What would you do?
I think that we are confident that it will not be “a bag of mince”.
No—but just suppose that it is, for argument’s sake, since you are preparing a full business case after the event.
We are asking the SPA and Police Scotland to realise the outline business case based on strategic decisions that they will make, changes to services, how they manage their estate, the resources that they deploy, the structure of the new policing in Scotland, and the balance between national and local policing. There is a wide range of decisions; it is very important that they be reflected in the financial circumstances of the authority in the future. The new authority and Police Scotland are not preparing a full business case exceptionally or separately but are doing so based on what has already been prepared, and will deliver it themselves. It will be in place before the end of the financial year.
I understand all that, but we have been told that this is the biggest single structural change of services since 1999—since the creation of this Parliament. You prepared—as you described it—
Absolutely. That is why the outline business case was so comprehensive—
No, no, no. Forget the outline business case. You have just agreed with me that a full business case is part of the justification for change, but you are not providing such full justification until after the event.
I think that the last thing that anybody would have wanted and the least helpful approach would have been for a bunch of civil servants sitting in St Andrew’s house to decide how the services were going to be delivered. You cannot separate the full business case from the way the services are going to be constructed.
No. The business case is not about determining how services will be provided. That is an operational matter for the chief constable; it is also an issue for the board of the SPA. That is a side issue. We are talking about whether the case that was made would justify the change. You have just told me that part of that justification is the full business case, but you did not provide that; we still do not have it. The change has been made but there has been no business case to justify that. Why is that?
The outline business case that informed the financial memorandum as well as the 2012 act and the decisions around the act was scrutinised and held up to account. That was the basis on which the decision for reform was taken; indeed, it was discussed when and how a full business case would be brought to bear. The police, civil servants and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice himself all said that there would be a full financial business case and a corporate strategy to support that business case. Both of those are being enacted now. I think that Audit Scotland said in its report that there should be a strategy of that nature by the end of the financial year. We are well on target—working with the SPA and Police Scotland—to produce that.
If other organisations were planning change, they would normally make a full business case to justify the change to shareholders, boards or whoever. As far as the Scottish Government is concerned, is it correct that when major changes are to take place, there is no need to have a full business case ahead of that?
There is a need for very explicit understanding of the impact of reform and how that will impact on a business case. That was done through the outline business case, which formed the basis of the financial memorandum, in keeping with Treasury guidance.
As far as the civil service senior management team is concerned, is it a matter of policy that you do not provide a full business case ahead of the decision being made when major structural changes take place?
We have to provide a business case that will inform and satisfy Parliament of the case for reform, which is what we did. Parliament was satisfied with the financial memorandum, so it was agreed. We then have to ask the incoming organisation to put flesh on the bones. We ask how it will organise its estate and human resources practices, what the top, middle and lower layers of its hierarchy are and what its staff costings will be. It is then for the organisation, on that basis, to put flesh on the bones.
Is it correct that you are a member of the senior management team in the civil service?
It is.
In your time in the senior management team, has the Scottish civil service produced a full business case to justify any major structural change that has taken place, or is it the case that full business cases are not produced?
Undoubtedly we must have sufficient information in the business case to inform a decision on reform. That is what formed the basis of the financial memorandum in the 2012 act.
Is Audit Scotland therefore wasting time by making reference to this?
No—not at all. Audit Scotland said that a full set of strategies needs to be in place, including a financial strategy. Vic Emery calls it a corporate strategy for the SPA. It has to be in place by the end of this year and it will be.
In your professional judgment, there is no need to have a full business case ahead of a decision to make a major structural change.
In my professional judgment, we need to be satisfied that the content of the business case as examined at the time of reform is sufficient for the decision. That was the case with the 2012 act. The requirement is then to put flesh on the bones and to ask the leadership of the organisation what specific actions it is taking and what strategies it is following to ensure that the business case is realised.
You told me that it is necessary for you to consider the business case, but if no business case is made, how can you consider it?
The information in the outline business case—which, as I have said, was cited as one of the best that the gateway review team has ever seen—was comprehensive. It was not a short or small document; it was based on a significant amount of research, on the police objective analysis cost allocation modelling that was undertaken, and on a range of consultant, internal and external advice. The police were involved absolutely in creating that.
Why not call that the full business case?
That would have assumed that the decisions that would be taken by the leadership in the early months and the first year of the establishment of the organisation could have been taken at that time.
So, is a full business case actually something that happens when operational decisions are made after the event, in the early months?
I am trying to differentiate between an outline business case, which is about savings being feasible and examined—
I know what you are trying to outline, Leslie.
—and the due diligence that is required, which will require decisions on strategy as well as cost.
I know exactly what you are trying to outline and I know what you are saying about the outline business case. Are you telling me that a full business case does not need to be prepared until after a decision is taken and that that is a matter of policy?
I am not sure what you mean by “a matter of policy”.
Is that what happens?
It is certainly a matter of practice that the outline business case needs to be comprehensive enough to inform the decision on reform.
Yes.
It has to be convincing and it must lay out options and costs. The outline business case and the financial memorandum did that.
Since you became a member of the senior management team, have you been aware of outline business cases that have been prepared in other areas?
I am aware of reform that has been undertaken on the basis of deciding which model to use and how to do that, and of further work being done by the incoming Administration.
I want to be clear about what you said. Have outline business cases been prepared on other issues since you became a member of the senior management team.
Do you mean other than for police and fire services?
Yes.
That was done for fire services as well, of course.
Yes.
I do not know whether they were called outline business cases, but they would have differentiated between the costs and savings from reform and the decisions that would have been taken by the leadership of the organisation to put flesh on those bones.
Are you aware that any full business cases have ever been produced by the civil service?
I cannot answer that—I do not have information on that at the moment.
We can clarify that with the permanent secretary.
I have a couple of supplementaries on the business case, but I will try to be brief.
A couple of issues at least would have arisen from that set of circumstances. First, if reform had been delayed by another year, there would not have been the savings that have already been accrued in the current financial year.
That is helpful, because that was also the evidence that we heard from Mr Emery and Mr House. In your answers to the convener, you had not articulated that particularly, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to put it on the record.
I suppose that “flesh on the bones” is shorthand for what you have described. However, I said earlier that it would not have been appropriate—nor would it have been feasible—for a bunch of civil servants in St Andrew’s house to start taking decisions on issues that would have such a fundamental impact on the operation of the police in Scotland.
Thank you.
Before we move on, how did you arrive at the expected figure of £1.1 billion savings by 2026?
That figure was arrived at based on production, testing and scrutiny of the outline business case. It also informed the financial memorandum.
Although there is no full business case or detailed justification, are you fully committed to that £1.1 billion of savings?
We are committed to it, and we tested the figure again after the 2012 act was passed. We asked the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland and Kevin Smith to do some due diligence work on the likelihood of savings and where those savings would be amassed on the basis of the decision to go to a single authority. Kevin Smith did further work on it at that point.
Will the future funding for the police be predicated on that £1.1 billion of savings?
Yes.
I refer you to appendix 2 of the report, and the progress that you have made in police reform against the recommendations in Audit Scotland’s report, “Learning the lessons of public body mergers”. Out of 10 recommendations, you have achieved two. Of the other eight, one is a definite no, one has not started and six are in progress. Did you read Audit Scotland’s report and act on its advice before you prepared your outline business case?
Yes. We were aware of the public body mergers information and have been using it as a benchmark. Most of the recommendations are in place or in progress. As you might imagine, some take longer than others, and it would not be possible to complete some before the new authority has been in place for some time.
Well, two out of 10 is not exactly great progress in my book.
But we have talked about the full business case—
I know, and I do not want to return to that issue.
No. In terms of the post-implementation review—
Surely it is not beyond your ability.
Absolutely. We have started it internally in the first instance—
Well, it was not started when the report was written. Did you start it after the report came out?
No. We had already put the bare bones in place. However, since the publication of the report, we have begun to look at what we have learned internally and I have given a commitment to the boards of the fire authority—
So has Audit Scotland got it wrong? This report was published in November. Have we been given misleading information in it?
It might not have been aware—
The report says that the review was not started.
It actually says:
Yes, but I do not think that it is fair for you to pass the buck to the SPA and Police Scotland. The recommendation in the report is that
Absolutely.
It is not entirely outwith your responsibility.
No, and that is why we have started it.
You have started it.
Yes.
But not before the report was written.
I suspect that we started it before the report was written, but I can confirm that for you if you would like.
Obviously then there has been a lack of communication between you and Audit Scotland—
There may be some confusion.
—because it is under the clear understanding that the review had not even been started.
As I have said, the comment in the report is that the Police Authority and Police Scotland “have no immediate plans” in this respect. I actually think that that is understandable, because they have quite rightly and understandably been focusing on the transition process and trying to get the service under way. To give them credit, they need some information and operational experience before they can begin to reflect on the reform.
There is considerably much more to be done. As Mr Doris and other members have pointed out, we have taken evidence from Mr House and Mr Emery, but there are a considerable number of responsibilities that the Scottish Government has—if you like—failed on. For example, paragraph 45 on page 17 mentions
Absolutely.
So do you take responsibility for failing to ensure that the process could have been much smoother and relationships much better?
I would be naive if I did not say that some things could go better in any reform process, particularly when it is the size of this one. That brings us back to the point about us learning lessons, which is one reason why I wanted to instigate the process quite quickly.
All that we have is the Audit Scotland report. That is what the committee is tasked to look at. Has Audit Scotland got it wrong again on paragraph 2 of page 8, where it says:
It was written earlier than November actually—I am not splitting hairs.
Audit Scotland refers to “difficult relationships”. We expect more from professional people.
Things have changed since the report was written—I think that Audit Scotland would recognise that. It is not surprising, given the dynamic nature of reform and the fact that it is the first year of the operation of the new authority and the Police Service. There was certainly a responsibility on all parties to try to ensure that the relationships were as productive and effective as possible.
But we see in the Audit Scotland report that
I think that it depends what success is measured by.
I can only go on the information that is in front of me.
The fact that we had eight different forces and 10 different policing organisations operating in Scotland undoubtedly meant that the creation of a baseline was pretty challenging. One of the areas in which we have invested in reform is in the creation of a single finance ledger and the harmonisation of payroll and HR information, which will assist with the benchmarking and baselining of information. I will pass over to Hilary Pearce, because she might want to give a little more detail on how that difficulty with baseline information was overcome.
Yes—thank you.
Before I bring in James Dornan, there is something that I want to clarify with Leslie Evans or Hilary Pearce. I think that Leslie Evans said that the £1.1 billion of savings would be achieved. Do you know how those savings will be achieved?
The £1.1 billion is the figure up to 2026. We have the savings plan that identifies the sources of the savings for the current year, which come from three main groupings—people, procurement and property. Those three areas will be the sources of the savings in future years as well, although the proportions of those savings are likely to change as time goes on. We do not have the detail up to 2026.
So how do you know that the savings will be achieved?
Because the majority—in fact, all—of the savings in the current year will be recurrent. It is the expectation—the police are committed to this—that they will be in future years, too.
So the police are committed to making the savings and you think that they might make them. You said that they will make the savings, but the SPA and Police Scotland have not finalised their strategy to show how they will be achieved. Therefore, the correct answer is that we do not know whether the savings will be achieved.
They are completing their financial strategy for the coming years—it is at an advanced stage at the moment, and it will be published in the spring. However, they cannot do a savings plan up to 2026, because that will depend partly on what the Scottish Government’s draft budget will be and on funding allocations.
I think that that is a reasonable answer, so how can you tell me that the savings will be achieved?
Because, based on the savings plan for the current year and the plan for the next two years, which the police are working on at the moment, the areas from which savings are being generated will continue to generate savings into the foreseeable future.
So the savings that are being made this year and next year will be recurrent.
Absolutely.
That is what will deliver. If that is the case—
There will have to be additional savings in future years as well, but the recurrent savings—
That will be only a proportion of the savings.
It will be the majority proportion of the savings—
Okay. Will you provide a detailed breakdown of how the savings up until 2026 will be achieved?
As Hilary Pearce said, we cannot give you a business plan or rather—
No, no, I am not asking for a business plan.
We cannot give you a financial plan up to 2026. However, what we can give you—it will be present shortly based on the information that we are getting from the police—is the proof of the savings that have been achieved this year and the proof that they are recurrent, so that is a chunk of the savings already.
Leaving aside that small gap for the moment, you can provide me with details about the contribution that the savings for this year and for the next two years, which you confidently say will be recurrent, will make to the £1.1 billion. You know that already, so you can provide us with that information.
That is the information that the police is compiling for us. I do not know the date when that will be published. Hilary Pearce might know.
Never mind about when anything will be published. That information is the working basis for what you have just said about the savings. You have that information, so I would appreciate it if you could provide the committee with information on how much of the savings that have been made this year or will be made over the next two years will recur and how much of that will contribute to the £1.1 billion. You can then tell me how much of a gap that leaves and give me an indication, given that you are confident that the savings will be achieved, of how you think the gap will be met.
Yes. We can do that.
I am sorry to do this, but I want to return to the outline business case very briefly, so that a matter can be clarified. The outline business case was part of the financial memorandum that went to the Parliament. We all, as MSPs, voted that through—[Interruption.] Yes, we did as a Parliament. Some of us now seem to think that the issue has just come out of nowhere and are shocked and cannot believe that there was not a full business case. That should not be the case, because the outline business case was part of the reason why the Parliament passed the legislation in the first place. Am I correct?
That is correct. Indeed, the police, civil servants and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said that the full business case was the responsibility of the incoming leadership of the new organisation.
Thank you. Will you comment on how you see the Government reforms being met now and in the immediate future?
Sorry, did you say how the savings will be met?
No. I asked how the reforms are being met now and how they will move forward in the immediate future.
The reform has three strategic aims, as you will probably recall, having seen those go through in the act. The first aim is to protect and improve local services. Within that, savings are on track, as we have just discussed, and they have come from the bringing together of the 10 organisations that previously administered the police in Scotland. I think that the whole range of processes, including delayering, as you might call it, voluntary and early retirements, and having a property asset plan, are well on track to fulfilling that strategic aim of reform.
Have you had any feedback on the new relationship between the single police force and the community?
Interestingly enough, there are two ways in which we might get such feedback. One way is through the local community planning partnerships, which are getting to grips with the way in which policing is working in different ways in their areas. Some of them have adopted a scrutiny role through a full-council approach, and some have taken a community safety perspective. We have had full engagement with, and interest from, community planning partnerships—and other partners, too, particularly in the health sector.
Do you know when that report is due?
I do not, but I can find out for you.
That would be helpful.
To fill the gap by the end of this year, savings of £2.985 million, which are still to be identified, are required.
I will just call that £3 million.
Okay.
Are you confident that you are on target to achieve that? What role does the Scottish Government have in ensuring that those targets are met?
I will ask Hilary Pearce to say a bit more about the role that she is playing, but we are confident. There was a meeting this week at which we were keen to ask the police about what the savings plan for the rest of the financial year is looking like, not least because of recent tragic events involving the police that have required a good deal of additional overtime and investment. We had a very confident response from them that they will meet the target, and they gave the same response to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in November.
I have regular meetings: Stephen Woodhouse and I meet the directors of finance for the SPA and the Police Service to go through the savings activities. We look at the areas from which the savings are coming and how the process of identifying and generating savings and recording and tracking them is going for the current year. The police said at the meeting on Monday that although they have still to identify just under £3 million of savings, they are fully confident that they will do so.
Does the Government have a role? For example, if the committee heard that there were savings not of just under £3 million but of £13 million to be made, at what point would the Government step in to try to get the police to achieve those savings?
We have a key role in ensuring that the savings are on track. I would be disappointed if we were to discover a gap of that size at this point in the financial year, which is why we have such regular contact and dialogue to exchange information between Government officials and the SPA and Police Scotland.
So it is an on-going process?
Very much so.
Thank you.
I must apologise to Mr Dornan—I did not mean to interrupt his question.
I was not there at that point, but my understanding is that the intention was always to have an outline business case, because that was what was required to compare and contrast the three different routes of reform that were being discussed as part of the decision that led to—
That is not what I asked. I asked whether the Government planned to have a full business case prior to 1 April 2013. I know that you were not there, director general, but do you know whether the Government planned to have one?
The intention was always that the new leadership would take forward the full business plan, but those people were only in place from October 2012—in fact, the new leadership team was not completely in place at that point—so it was always going to be after that point that there would be the opportunity to develop a full business plan, and that is what is being worked on now.
Given the Audit Scotland recommendations on how to conduct public sector mergers, did the Government plan, in the initial stages, to have a full business case prior to 1 April 2013—yes or no?
I do not think that I can answer that question on a yes-or-no basis. The intention was always to have an outline business case and to have a full business case, and it was always going to be a requirement that the full business case would need to be fulfilled by the leadership of the organisation, for reasons that we have discussed. Those people came in, as it happened, towards the end of 2012. It was unlikely that the leadership could have taken decisions on operational and strategic matters before people had a chance to discuss what those might look like. We would never have said, “It has to be done by this date,” because that would have pre-empted decisions that are the responsibility of the board, informed by the chief constable.
I do not understand that. In evidence to this committee on 20 November, the Auditor General said that the full business case
That is correct. It would be developed by the service, and that—
At some point in the future, not—
Well, at a time when the service was in a position to do it, with encouragement, support and investment from the Scottish Government, and that is what is happening.
Now?
It is happening now, and it will be delivered, as Audit Scotland has recommended, before the end of 2013-14.
Are you familiar with paragraph 80 of the Audit Scotland report? It states:
That could mean one of two things. I am not absolutely sure, but I will give you my interpretation of both. When we took forward the 2012 act and its financial memorandum, we were looking at three different models of reform, as you know. I am not sure whether the intention of that paragraph is that we should be checking and reverting back to the alternative models—for example, the model with eight forces or a version with three structures.
I am completely lost by that, because that paragraph is actually about Parliament being clear about the choice that it was asked to make in reflecting on the single service or different options. What that paragraph states to me very clearly is that the costs of the different options were not clear. That is what that paragraph says. Do you agree?
No, I do not agree. I think that—
You cannot not agree. With the greatest respect, director general, the Audit Scotland report is cleared by the Government. As with all Audit Scotland reports, you have an opportunity to say, in private to Audit Scotland, that you do not agree with it, so how can you not agree with it now?
We give feedback to Audit Scotland. The outline business case and the financial memorandum examined and scrutinised three different models for reform and costed them carefully, based on the information that Hilary Pearce referred to earlier.
So you disagree with the paragraph?
If it is saying that we should be looking back to the other models that were considered for reform, that would be possible to do, but I am not sure how productive it would be. Certainly, however, the outline business case and the financial memorandum—which Parliament scrutinised carefully—considered the three different reform models that were up for discussion at the time, and the one that was agreed on, on the basis of costings and savings and on a strategic basis, was the single police service model.
The Audit Scotland report—
Just before you move on, I should say that we can get clarification from Audit Scotland: we can find out from the Scottish Government and Audit Scotland whether the Scottish Government made any comments on that issue.
Thank you, convener.
I think that I mentioned earlier that we were aware that the changes in the way in which the police operate as a result of reform might have wider implications for other justice organisations. The financial memorandum says that the costs of those implications are unknown and too complex to estimate accurately. Assuming that we are able to calculate those costs, it is rather too soon to do it at the moment, as there is insufficient reliable data for us to use. That would be something—
How, then, can Parliament have any confidence in the savings figure? You have said that the costs are complex and potentially impossible to discover.
Those are costs for parties outwith and beyond the police. They are part of the criminal justice—
What proportion of the savings would that cover?
I do not have a figure for you, but I am sure that we could find out. The problem at the moment is that reform is in its first year of operation and the implications for other parts of the justice system are unknown. There might not be any implications and, if there are, many of them are likely to be beneficial. However, if there are costs associated with those, we would want to capture them. The financial memorandum says that the costs of those implications are unknown and are too complex to estimate. I would expect that we would need a year of operation before we could make any calculations.
That is a fair answer—but how fair it is depends on the size of the savings, which we will presumably find out in due course.
Hilary Pearce could perhaps add some detail.
We are tracking the accurate costs of police reform in the current year. We have the costs for the previous two years, which Audit Scotland published. After the end of the current year, we will be able to do a comparison. That will not be possible until April.
Quite. Is that the main and sole reason why the Government chose not to distinguish between the costs of restructuring and the costs of wider police reforms?
My understanding is that the costs that I described earlier are the ones that we want to examine most closely after the first year.
So that is the main reason for that decision. Thank you.
As I mentioned earlier, a fair amount of work was undertaken by all the police as part of the contribution to the outline business case. In particular, work was done by Kevin Smith. We commissioned him to do some further work on behalf of ACPOS on the explicit and implicit costs in the model that had been agreed. He asked other members of the police to contribute to the evaluation of those costings, in order to put a bit of flesh on the bones before the new Police Authority took that responsibility forward.
What happened when they were reluctant?
We asked Kevin Smith to return to the issue and to encourage them to support him in that piece of work. He did that and we got the reassurance that we needed at the time that the savings were credible and realistic.
Okay. Thank you for that.
I think that that is accurate, in that we are all responsible for the success of police reform in Scotland.
That is not what he said. He was specifically asked who decides what a visible police presence is, and he said that it is all of you.
We all play a role in it. Clearly, his is the operational role, which is absolutely crucial. However, as the Scottish Government, we provide the funding and strategic framework and objectives that inform the Police Authority and the way in which the chief constable administers the police.
That is fine. Thank you for that.
I think that there was a discussion about interim chief executives on 20 November. The first chief executive of the SPA was quite clear in the early stages that it was going to be an interim post. My understanding is that applications for the full-time, permanent chief executive post for the SPA closed earlier this week, on Monday. We will therefore have a permanent chief executive very soon.
That is all good, but it is not what I asked about. I asked whether you have any reflections on the fact that there have been three finance directors and two interim chief executives, and on the board micromanaging, all of which happened under Mr Emery’s responsibilities as chairman.
You asked me to comment on my appraisal with Mr Emery. Clearly, I cannot comment on the detail of that, but he and I have been in regular contact. We have quarterly meetings, and Paul Johnston has monthly meetings. We are very aware of the way in which Mr Emery is operating and leading the board, and it has been very successful in terms of the transition to 1 April 2013.
So it is not a concern that there have been two interim chief executives and three finance directors, and that the board was micromanaging.
I do not think that anybody would think that the interim nature of senior management was ideal, but there was a set of circumstances that was very difficult to pre-empt. I do not believe that any of the interim chief executive changes had anything to do with Mr Emery’s style, if that is what is being implied.
Okay. Thank you. I was not implying anything at all; I was just asking you.
I refer to the statement that heads paragraphs 74 to 77 in the report, which says:
I mentioned the recruitment exercise that is under way for the chief executive of the SPA. The recruitment of permanent directors of finance for both Police Scotland and the SPA is also under way. Over and above that, we have provided support in a number of ways. Paul Johnston might want to discuss the issue in more detail, but, for example, we have three people on secondment to the SPA, and the Scottish Government’s finance section has given advice about operating in a new financial circumstance. We have also provided cash, if you like—we have supported reform by providing some private sector advice and expertise on financial matters for the SPA.
As Leslie Evans has made clear, it is a matter of close engagement at various levels to ensure that the capacity of the new organisations is built up. An entire team in the Scottish Government is in regular contact with both the SPA and Police Scotland to provide them with on-going support on the development of the financial strategy and the corporate strategy. In addition, we have provided support through the provision of staff for short periods of time when that has been necessary, such as through short periods of secondment. Some of those staff are currently with Police Scotland and the SPA. We have also worked with Police Scotland and the SPA as they have looked to recruit permanent members of staff. We are currently involved in that process.
That sounds like quite a commitment of resources. I would think that there would be a substantial cost for that. You are seconding three people to Police Scotland and providing support to the SPA, and you mentioned giving cash to Police Scotland. Can we quantify how much that has cost? We are plugging a gap for which the police apparently did not have resources.
We can quantify that. I think that Hilary Pearce will probably want to deal with that detailed question.
Yes. We are tracking all the costs that Mr Beattie mentioned. However, the reform budget investment that we are putting into improved information and communication technology systems, for example, would have been needed, regardless of the people involved. That is a separate element of investment to assist the development of the single ledger and the other modernisations of the finance systems.
The secondment of three people and so on can provide only short-term support. I presume that those people will leave eventually. Leslie Evans said that Police Scotland is in the process of recruiting a director of finance. I presume that it will need other resources to support him if there is to be a professional approach to the financial strategy and doing the business plan. What timescale are we looking at?
Applications for a finance lead in the Scottish Police Authority and a director of finance in Police Scotland closed earlier this week. Staff will of course support those individuals, and many of those staff are already in place in those organisations.
I would be interested to know the on-going costs of the additional resources.
We can provide those figures for you.
I want to touch on governance and the issues between the SPA and Police Scotland in the past, which other members have touched on. I hope that you will be able to reassure us that all those issues are in the past and that everything is going smoothly now.
Yes. I think that there is clarity and that some of the decisions that the SPA board took earlier this year have confirmed the clarity about roles and responsibilities. It is clear that we will want to continue to talk to the SPA and Police Scotland about that and maintain close contact with them, but the clarity in the governance arrangements that were passed by the SPA board earlier this year has certainly helped to establish great understanding of the roles, responsibilities and complementary nature of the SPA and Police Scotland and the role of the Scottish Government.
Is there a plan to revisit those governance arrangements in the future?
There is no plan to do that, but it is clear in the first year of reform that everything needs to be reflected on in due course. That goes back to some of the lessons that have been learned. However, as I said, there is no plan currently. Everybody is content with what has been described in the governance arrangements that the SPA board has agreed and undertaken.
There is some negative mention of the accuracy of police statistics and baseline data in Audit Scotland’s report. How far down the line are we in getting accurate information?
Audit Scotland’s June 2012 report entitled “Learning the lessons of public body mergers” recommends that newly formed organisations should have a system for reporting publicly on performance information no more than two years after they were formed. Therefore, in theory, there is a two-year period for the new performance regime to be undertaken, developed and put in place. In fact, we are much further down the road. There has been a huge amount of work and, nine months on, we are at quite an advanced stage of work on the performance regime.
That work is clearly continuing. Do we have a date when we hope to reach the end point?
Yes. The intention is that, by the end of the financial year, a national performance framework will be in place. Perhaps Paul Johnston would like to say a bit more about that.
I can certainly say a little more about it. The Scottish Government has provided resources to ensure that a national policing performance framework is developed this year. The SPA is leading on the development of that framework. It leads a performance steering group and a performance practitioner group. The Scottish Government, Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary and Police Scotland are actively involved in both those groups as the work is taken forward.
I, too, will pursue the limits of the responsibility of the Government, as opposed to the new police service, for the financial strategy and the full business case, which we have all pursued. The issue is not new; it was a concern before the 2012 act was passed. Do you regret reassuring the Parliament during the passage of that act that work on a full business case was under way?
Work was under way, as I mentioned earlier. There was continuing work on what the new structure would look like and what the financial responsibilities would be. That work was being done concurrent with the act going through the Parliament, but it was always clear and was stated during the passage of the act that the work on the detail of the costs and savings—not the feasibility of the savings, but the due diligence for, and the reality of, the costs and savings—would have to be undertaken by the new organisation as it got to grips with the strategies that Mr Doris mentioned, which would inform the nature of the financial flesh on the bones, as I called it more colloquially.
My question was whether you regret offering the reassurance. At the time—as you say now—you said that the full business case would be prepared by the Police Authority or Police Scotland and that it was not your responsibility. At that point, the organisations had not been established and the legislation had not been approved. Many members of the Parliament raised their concerns, the Government specifically reassured the committee that work was under way and the committee accepted that assurance.
The important thing to hold on to and understand is that we had absolute faith in and were completely reassured about the credibility of what was put before Parliament about the nature of the reform and that we understood that the outline business case gave us a robust and consolidated piece of advice on the savings and the feasible savings that could be gleaned from the reform models that were put forward. It was always going to be the case that the new authority would have to put its stamp of approval on this and take some hard decisions about how it would operate the police in Scotland. As a result, it was always going to have to take the role of making a finite decision about the financial strategy and the corporate strategy that would inform the financial strategy. That is why we are in this position.
Indeed, but it was not people from the SPA who reassured Parliament—it was the Government itself. After all, the SPA and Police Scotland did not exist at that point. The reassurance was given not by them but by you. Do you now regret that reassurance to the committee?
The important thing about the process of introducing the 2012 act was that the Government made it clear that that role would have to be undertaken by the Police Authority. The outline business case that was presented to Parliament and the committees was not just sufficient but one of the best that had ever been seen in a gateway review for making a decision on that basis. The review and Parliament were convinced that the financial information provided in the outline business case was compelling.
The point is that you justified the reform not on the basis of the outline business case but on the fact that work on a full business case was under way.
And a full business case is about to be produced.
I have been referring to evidence from February 2012. It is now December 2013, so we are talking about just under two years.
As I think the chief constable said, he and the SPA were sighted on ensuring that a full business case and financial strategy, as we would call it, with a corporate strategy wrapped around it were produced. However, as he made clear to the committee on 20 November, bringing nine budget, financial and HR systems together into one system was particularly challenging. A lot was going on in the SPA and Police Scotland at that time. Work continued on a financial strategy, but the transition process had to be produced between the passing of the 2012 act and 1 April 2013.
My difficulty is that you and the chief constable have outlined how difficult the process is, but the Parliament knew how difficult the process would be before it passed the legislation. That was utterly predictable; the process is very complicated. We do not need to be told now how uncertain and difficult it is. We asked at the time and were assured specifically by the Scottish Government—not by anyone else—that work on the full business case was under way. Here we are, two years on, and work is still under way. Do you think that that is acceptable?
As you said, it is a very complex piece of work. It would have been unacceptable for me or another civil servant to take a decision about an estates strategy for an organisation that was not yet constituted. The alternative was not very appealing—hence my previous answer.
On that point, you say that it would have been inappropriate for civil servants to take decisions on an estates strategy, but civil servants decided to rent Bremner house at quite extensive cost—a cost that has been singled out in the Auditor General’s report. Was that signed off by a minister?
The decision was signed off by two ministers. The advice was based on our understanding and expectation that there was no office base for the new organisation to take up. We knew that it needed to concentrate on the really important things that it faced at the time: making a smooth transition and making savings in the first year.
From whom was the written assurance?
From the chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority.
Which chief executive?
The first one.
Right. Which two ministers signed off the decision?
The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice.
So Mr Swinney and Mr MacAskill both approved Bremner house.
On the basis of the appraisal of the five options, we advised them that Bremner house was the best fit. We believed that it was our role and responsibility to ensure that there was an office base for the new organisation. Vic Emery described it as a “prudent” decision when he was before the committee on 20 November.
I am having difficulty in this situation. You have said today several times—or twice at least—that it would not have been appropriate for civil servants to intervene or make decisions that would affect the Police Authority, specifically in the estates strategy, but you intervened in that decision and the cabinet secretary, Mr MacAskill, signed it off.
You need to differentiate between what I said about taking decisions with operational implications and ensuring that a new organisation has an office base to operate from, with some support in it. That was considered by us to be a prudent decision.
I understand that the Police Authority is shedding buildings—in other words, it has way too many buildings. In that context, why did you take on a new one?
I explained why we took on that office accommodation. The reason why we took it on, apart from the criteria that we went through, was that it was not associated with the previous estate. We were keen not to assume that one previous building from a previous police authority would absorb the new authority. There were sensitivities about where the new authority should be placed, so we decided that it should have some independence.
You declined to offer any regret over the assurance that you offered the committee about a financial strategy. Do you want to take the opportunity to offer some regret over buying Bremner house?
I could have been here in different circumstances, in which I would have been asked why I did not have an office when the new authority was milling about, trying to find somewhere to base itself. It would have been inappropriate for us not to have provided for that.
Was it a good decision?
It was an appropriate decision for a new organisation that required office accommodation, to ensure that it could focus on the important tasks in hand.
As well as the lack of a financial strategy, there is no workforce strategy in place yet. What do you make of the fact that the chief constable said that
I think that what Mr House—or Sir Stephen House, as we should call him—meant was that it happens occasionally. I do not understand from him, or from what he said subsequently, that that is a routine approach. He uses backfilling when he needs to, for flexibility.
If he had said, “It happens occasionally,” that would have been in keeping with what the cabinet secretary has been saying. However, he did not say that. I will quote him directly and in full, as I do not want to get it wrong. He said:
I trust Mr House in his assessment of the situation, and I trust him to take a balanced approach to back-office to officer work ratios within the workforce of Police Scotland.
We need to bear in mind the size of the workforce that is being referred to. As you know, the workforce is well in excess of 17,000 officers, with a police staff of many thousands. My understanding is that, as Leslie Evans has said, it is entirely to be expected with a workforce of that size that there will occasionally be people off sick, on maternity leave or unavailable for other reasons. There is therefore a need for some flexibility in the deployment of staff in that context. That is not the same, however, as suggesting that there is a routine and widespread policy of permanently filling jobs that were occupied by police staff with police officers.
I am not suggesting that it is a policy. That has been explicitly denied by several people, including the cabinet secretary, but backfilling is routine and widespread. The chief constable said that it is routine and widespread—he said that it is “daily and on-going”. That could not be more routine and widespread. Do you disagree with what he said?
I am not taking issue with what he said. I am suggesting that, when we bear in mind the very large size of the workforce in relation to both police staff and police officers, it is not surprising that a degree of flexibility is needed on a very regular basis in order appropriately to manage the way in which the workforce is deployed.
“Very regular” is different from “occasionally”. It is “very regular”, is it?
As I say, I am not taking issue with the way in which the chief constable described it. It is clear from his evidence and from what the cabinet secretary has said that there is no policy around routine backfilling as it is commonly understood.
There is clearly a lack of common understanding here. Members of the Parliament have repeatedly raised the fact that backfilling is happening. It is taking officers off the street. The cabinet secretary has explicitly denied that as a matter of policy, but the point is that it is a matter of practice. It is routine, widespread and regular, and it should be corrected.
I cannot see a link in that respect. Steve House has said that he wants as many officers as possible to be on the street in an operational role. There is a huge workforce, and some flexibility will be expected, but there is no evidence of endemic backfilling. It happens from time to time for the reasons that Paul Johnston has given—it would be surprising if it did not happen in operational roles. However, I have no reason to believe that Steve House, of all people, has any interests other than maintaining the highest possible number of police officers on the street.
My understanding is that the majority of the savings that are being made by the new Police Authority are being made by reducing the number of civilian staff. That is your main saving. When some of those staff leave, police officers are having to backfill. Are you suggesting that there is no link between those two facts?
I am not surprised that the majority of the savings this year—56 per cent, I think—have come from reducing people costs. It is not surprising that a large number of those people might be back-office staff because of the nature of the organisations that we have inherited. There is always a responsibility to ensure that as many officers as possible stay on the street so, given that there were eight duplicating structures, it is not surprising that the first stage of reform implementation is to take out a large number of duplicated back-office roles. That is sensible and to be expected.
The difficulty is that if you try to make savings without a financial strategy or workforce strategy and you ask people to come forward for redundancy and civilian staff are leaving, there is a huge danger—I cannot believe that you will not accept this—that officers will end up having to fill those posts, even if it is on a temporary basis. Do you not accept that?
I accept—and I think that we have accepted—that that will happen on an occasional basis. I suspect that it has happened before. In other words, there will be times when people do not turn up for work or have been unable to get into work for a range of reasons. Therefore, an occasional interim process would be undertaken.
Not all the people savings come from the savings from voluntary redundancy schemes. Quite a lot of the savings have come from reductions in overtime and reductions in the number of senior officers. It is not just the staff VR savings that constitute that figure of more than 50 per cent of the savings.
You accept that there are large-scale savings to be made. Backfilling might have happened in the past, but this is an organisation in transition in which hundreds and hundreds of staff are leaving their jobs. Is there not a danger that police officers are filling in for those staff?
It is important to be clear that not all staff members who indicated that they would like to leave have been able to leave. Rather, particular and detailed case-by-case consideration is given to every single application for voluntary early release in order to decide whether that member of staff can or cannot be released. I suspect that, to the disappointment of some members of staff, the advice thus far is that they cannot be released. In some cases, that is because it is not possible for them to go, as that might result in backfilling, for example, and therefore those members of staff are still in place. It is important to emphasise the interest that there has been in taking voluntary early release, but very detailed consideration is given to every case.
There have been about 2,000 applications, but nothing like that number have been agreed to—that number is significantly smaller.
I am glad that a great deal of case-by-case attention is being given, but do you accept that there is no overall workforce strategy?
The workforce strategy is absolutely being developed alongside the corporate strategy, which has already been discussed this morning.
Is that also alongside the financial strategy?
Indeed.
I do not want to dance on the head of a strategy pin, but the corporate strategy will be the overarching document that the SPA will produce. Underneath that, there will be separate informing and interdependent strategies that will include estates and human resources, and the financial strategy will wrap those together in identifying the savings from each of the changes. That will be in place by the end of the financial year. The fire authority produced its strategy a few weeks back, so we are not very far behind.
Director general, do you understand the committee’s anxiety? You are saying that you have not yet produced a workforce strategy, a corporate strategy or a finance strategy, and yet you are in the middle of making huge savings. You have laid off hundreds and hundreds of staff. You have been given repeated advance warning of this and yet you expect us to accept that the strategies will be in place once all the savings have been made. I do not understand what is strategic about that.
We are in only the first year of a savings plan and those savings have been identified as part of the reform settling down and the construction of a new authority. Those savings were the ones that were identified at first hand.
I am glad to hear that future decisions will be strategic.
Paul Johnston might want to come in on the detail. I am absolutely confident that the performance regime that we will have brought in by the end of the financial year will be fit for purpose for the new organisation. It is important to note that it will also include some aspects of previous data that were reported, so that we do not lose the trends. The regime will need to complement the Scottish Government’s official statistics, so it should be cohesive and strategic from that point of view.
I do not think that we should expect the regime to be the same. As Leslie Evans said, the police service has a new statutory purpose. We would therefore expect the performance regime to be geared towards assessing the extent to which that is being met. The performance work is therefore focused on looking at the statutory purpose that is set out in the act; the strategic priorities that the Scottish Government has set for the policing of Scotland and the way in which they will be measured; and the specific objectives that the Scottish Police Authority has set for Police Scotland. The work flows from the strategic framework that is already in place and the aim of ensuring that the achievement of that will be properly and thoroughly measured.
That is great. However, I was just asking whether those figures will be as comprehensive as the figures that were previously presented to boards.
We have to be clear that the regime will flow from the priorities and objectives that have been put in place. In some respects, there will be a considerable amount of additional material in light of the new priorities of Police Scotland as enshrined in the act.
So there will be additional material in the performance reporting. Will some of it be more selective and give less information?
We are certainly not proceeding on the basis that the reporting will be selective in any way. If you were to look at the performance reporting that was shared with the SPA board a few weeks ago, you would see the extensive nature of the performance framework that is under development.
The Auditor General has specifically said that, at the moment, the reporting is more selective. Do you accept that, at the moment, you are being more selective in the information that you provide?
I think that the Auditor General was referring to the fact that a fully developed policing performance framework is not yet in place. We have explicitly acknowledged that it is still under development and therefore, inevitably, the information that has been provided has not been subject to that overarching completed strategic framework.
James Dornan wants to come in, but before he does I would like Lesley Evans to clarify a couple of things.
It is for the SPA and the police to decide where the posts should be and how they should be identified, and then to propose them for redundancy.
Okay. Which business case are you referring to? Is it the outline business case?
I am talking about a business case for the investment of reform cash in the changes that are being proposed in structures and staffing levels. On each occasion—
Is that a separate business case from the outline business case and the full business case?
It is a case-by-case proposal for applying for funding for reform. When the SPA asks us for funding to execute aspects of reform, such as investment in ICT or voluntary severance, it explains to us why that is a good use of reform money. We will expect that investment to pay back over a period of time.
Okay. Will that form part of the final business case?
That money will have been expended and given to the SPA in-year. The business case will—as a strategic strategy, as I mentioned earlier—be looking right across the organisation. What we have talked about relates to particular aspects of reform.
We will just leave it at that.
We explained what we understand the circumstances to be with regard to when backfilling takes place.
Yes, but is “daily” occasional?
I would not wish to contradict Stephen House—
I am not asking you to contradict him; I am talking about your definitions. Do you believe that “daily” is occasional?
That is semantics, isn’t it? I think that what Stephen House describes as “daily” is—I am sure—accurate.
Yes.
However, I have total faith in him that his efforts are placed in ensuring that the maximum number of officers are put on the streets of Scotland.
Sure—we all accept that, but when he says “daily” you believe that it is occasional, and you stand by that. You have said it on a number of occasions.
I cannot possibly say that it will finish, because we understand, for reasons that were described earlier in our conversation, that the chief constable expects occasionally—or “daily”, as he says—to be able to use the posts on the basis of somebody being ill or on maternity leave.
I understand that, and I think that the committee understands that. Most people understand that.
I do not know whether I said “short-lived”, but my understanding is that there will be occasions when that will have to happen, so I cannot say that it will never happen again.
You used the words “occasional” and “short lived”. Now you are telling me that the practice could well go on, and the chief constable has said that backfilling happens on an on-going basis. Why did you say that it would be short-lived if that is not what you mean?
I suppose that I am trying to describe the fact that I understand that there will be occasions when the chief constable will have to make use of the mechanism. He would not want to do that any more than any other chief constable would. I trust him on that. If your interpretation of my words is that I was saying that it would never happen again, I was wrong and I withdraw that.
In respect of the chief constable’s evidence that backfilling happens on an on-going basis, you said that the practice would be short-lived. Now you seem to be resiling from that.
On 20 November, the chief constable also referred to the fact that work needed to be done—work which I think has started—to determine the correct final balance between officers and civilian staff. At some point, the need for officers to step into other posts for a few hours or whatever will dissipate as the balance is found and the correct ratio is achieved.
There is no doubt that the chief constable said that the use of officers to fill civilian posts happens
It was the phrase that Mr Johnston used. I just repeated it.
He would say that it is not—
I said that it was not widespread.
Paul Johnston made the point—and it has been implicit in other bits of the conversation—that in an organisation as big as Police Scotland, which has 17,000 police officers and 22,000 or 23,000 employees in total, it is likely that, at any one time, there will be an area that is not covered by one member of staff and which needs to be covered by another. I know that that happens in my organisation and I am sure that it does in others. It is not surprising that that has to happen occasionally.
We must remember where we are in this process. The director general said that we are nine months into a process that probably represents one of the biggest transformational changes in the Scottish public sector since local government reorganisation. When we spoke to the chief constable, all of the committee congratulated him and Police Scotland on the seamless service that they have continued to deliver for the public, which has seen the delivery of a 39-year low in crime. That must form the background to the discussion.
You will be aware of, and have probably seen, some of the correspondence between Westminster and ourselves. Ministers feel that they have pressed, and would like to continue to press, to have that situation changed.
I have had the chance during the meeting to work out the figures. There could be about £280 million of VAT over the 13-year period to 2026. That must clearly have some kind of impact on how Police Scotland delivers services during that time. Have you made any kind of estimate of that impact?
I shall ask Hilary Pearce to answer that, but I can say that we have certainly had to take account of the issue in our funding and financial planning for the new authority. As you say, it is because the police are no longer funded by local government but are now funded by national Government. My understanding is that it would require a change in the legislation to allow the police authority to be in receipt of the capacity to claim VAT.
Part of our reform budget for the current year and the next two years is intended to cover the costs of VAT, which have arisen because of the reform happening. That will be covered for this year and the next two years.
I am sure that our colleagues in Northern Ireland will be delighted to hear that they are basically being treated as a local authority when it comes to VAT issues.
Instead of having to navigate and interrogate eight different sets of information and data, it will be a matter of looking at one, although I should add that a reporting process is being put in place now with local community planning partnerships and local authorities. The part of the organisation that holds the police to account locally will be in receipt of reports on local statistics.
All I would add is that it is very much a feature of the work that is being undertaken that, as well as there being good, consistent information available at national level, there is information available at local level. Comparing and contrasting the situation is much more straightforward under the system that is being developed.
My last point on that would be to make a plea that we should not lose sight of the importance of information at a local community level. I have seen some samples of the local reporting that can be achieved, and it is very impressive.
Can I mention one aspect in connection with that? The approach will also depend on how local authorities have decided to model their scrutiny processes. I think that I mentioned earlier that some are doing that on a full-council basis. Some councils have given responsibility for scrutinising local policing to their policy and resources committees, and others have included it in a subsection of their community planning partnerships. Therefore, depending on where you are in Scotland, you may have a slightly different scrutiny version.
Was there another structure that could have been considered that would have avoided VAT?
As you probably know, the point of principle here is that the new police authority is paid by Government. The tipping point for a decision being different would have been if local authorities had continued to pay. Others will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding of the models that were being discussed is that, aside from the current model—in other words, eight models—the other two models would still have required a shift of ownership. Is that right, Stephen?
Yes.
In other words, under the reform the funding would always come from the Government.
Would it have been possible to have a single police force in which the board was largely comprised of councillors and where the funding would, in the majority, have been channelled through local councils, which would have avoided VAT?
I can explain the situation. The VAT exemption that the forces used to have was predicated on the fact that they had the right of precept over local authority funding. You would therefore have to set up some sort of arrangement around that. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is different; it has a specific exemption from VAT.
I understand that; I am just asking about Scotland. In theory, it could have been possible to construct a set-up that would have avoided the VAT.
To be honest, I do not know. I would rather write to you on that than give you a false reassurance today.
Has it been normal practice for officers who are unfit for front-line service to be asked to work in the back office while they are recuperating, rather than being sent home?
That is certainly my understanding.
Okay.
There are two aspects. One thread involves the baseline figures, which came up earlier, and how we have supported the amalgamation of HR and finance data through investment in IT. Another thread is more to do with operational services. Members might have heard of the ICT project i6, which the SPA discusses regularly. In June, the SPA board agreed the contract to produce that ICT system, which has been awarded to Accenture.
We are providing funding to help the Police Authority and Police Scotland to deliver an ICT blueprint that will bring together some of the systems. Part of that process involves looking at standard operating procedures. The police will standardise processes and look at how to merge computer systems to deliver the new processes.
If Audit Scotland looks at the situation, will an easy reporting mechanism be used to explain it?
The ICT department is reporting internally on the progress that it is making. I am not sure whether that is easy to follow.
Will all the Auditor General’s recommendations be easy to comply with in the next few months?
We are working hard on all the recommendations. We have discussed in detail today some of the most challenging ones. We are well ahead on the performance framework, which would not be expected to be brought in for two years after the merger. We are on target to produce savings and, in alliance with that, a new corporate strategy will be produced before the end of the financial year.
You have mentioned the speed with which the reform was devised and implemented. At the beginning, an assessment was done that was based on budgetary constraints and how to keep the service moving. That is why ACPOS and the Scottish Police Federation were united in their desire for a single force.
It would have been a very significant decision for the cabinet secretary to implement the Winsor reforms and one that he would have wanted to resist. He has been open and public about his unhappiness with those reforms and the fact that he did not want them to be reproduced in Scotland.
I have one further thing to clarify, going back to discussions on savings and budgets. Either Hilary Pearce or Leslie Evans indicated that it is estimated that, in the financial year 2014-15, the SPA and Police Scotland will have to save up to £68 million. Certainly, that is what is quoted in the Audit Scotland report.
The target is £88.2 million.
Is that for 2014-15?
Yes.
Right. Audit Scotland says £68 million for 2014-15. Anyway, whichever figure it is—we can clarify with you and Audit Scotland which is the accurate figure that needs to be saved—exhibit 7 of the Audit Scotland report indicates that, in 2014-15, the Scottish Government will provide £70 million as a contribution to the cost of reform. In essence, therefore, the saving for that year will be met by a grant from the Scottish Government.
No. The reform budget of £70 million is intended to cover the costs of VAT, which arise out of reform, and other costs that have arisen out of reform and will help to generate savings that will recur in future years, such as the VR costs and ICT investment costs.
So that will not show in the books or on the balance sheet as income and expenditure.
Yes, it will. It is part of the costs that I am tracking.
So the savings of £68 million or £86 million or whatever will show, on the other side of the equation, £70 million of a grant coming in. In that year, the pressure on savings is being helped by the £70 million that is being given for reform.
It helps to achieve the recurrent savings, which will go on in future years.
It also includes the VAT charge, which we mentioned was £21 million.
Okay.
With that, we move into private.