We can discuss any additional work that we want to do on efficient government when we go through our work programme. Susan Duffy, the clerk, has given us a detailed note that contains a summary of the work that we are already committed to doing and makes some suggestions for future work. In particular, members are asked whether they agree to the suggested approach to submitting comments to the Executive's relocation guide and to the initial approach that is being suggested on efficient government—particularly whether we want to take further evidence on civil service reform under that banner. We are also asked to agree whether we want to take forward the proposed crosscutting expenditure review on deprivation.
The clerk is doing a grand job.
The paper is excellent in general. I was somewhat daunted by the five bills that are likely to be published in February and the prospect that we are likely to have to deal with revised financial memoranda as well.
One of the reasons why I suggested looking at deprivation—and you could argue that it is needs analysis and deprivation, rather than a more narrow understanding of deprivation—is that we have the opportunity this year, because we do not have the full budget round and our budget adviser is probably the leading expert on those issues. Given that the Burt committee is working on the future of local government finance, it makes sense to look in a cross-cutting way at those other issues, so that the bits of work can be dovetailed. The deprivation inquiry would be a useful bit of work for us to pursue. There are some interestingly ad hoc decisions made about the subject, but there are also some longer-term issues that are beginning to emerge, particularly in the context of social care, and we need to look at those.
In our earlier inquiries into Scottish Water and into relocation, we made use of reporters, which was quite successful. We need to manage our inquiries effectively and we should bear it in mind that we have just spent two and a quarter hours hearing evidence from one panel of witnesses on one subject. That reflects the point that Wendy Alexander made. As well as making use of our budget adviser, is it possible to appoint reporters to do some of the groundwork before bringing the matter back to the committee, especially if some members have a specific interest in the topic?
That certainly might be a way of dealing with some of the efficient government issues, perhaps at the expense of some of the public evidence-taking sessions. We could reflect on that proposal. The difficulty is that many stakeholders want their views on the record. We found that with the water inquiry. Although we had done the work via the reporters to scan out where the issues were, we still had to have the evidence-taking sessions to follow that up, and the evidence-taking sessions were often better because the preliminary work had been done.
If people want to get evidence on the record, there is no reason not to have a call for evidence and to make the written submissions public, even if reporters deal with some of the issues thereafter. That at least gives people the opportunity of contributing to a public record of their views.
The inquiry on deprivation sounds pretty interesting. What worries me is that we might get into that and end up with a considerable narrative that does not really give us that much additional clarity. It strikes me that there might be some merit in trying to accumulate data that give us a genuine feel for what is happening. What was the average income back in 1999 by area across Scotland, for example? How has that moved and how has the percentage of economic activity moved? What sort of money is currently being spent in the various programmes to alleviate deprivation? If we can start to see some numbers, we can get some clarity that way. The narrative approach could result in our being as confused at the end as we were when we started.
That is an interesting point. There are two ways of looking at the issue. One is to get an analysis of how the formulas work and how they were arrived at, which is in a sense a budgetary approach. Another approach might be to say that we want to look at the outcome—to what extent the operation of the policy has led to significant change in deprivation factors and what changes it has delivered. Different people might be required to do those two different exercises. We can perhaps reflect on how we go about that, but I am looking for in-principle agreement to consider those issues. We would need to take a primarily budget-based approach to stay in line with our remit. I take the point about whether we need to focus on that without looking at the impact on the ground. Perhaps it would be best if we spoke to Arthur Midwinter about that, because he has direct experience of it. I am not slow to suggest that other people could do work that he feels that he cannot do. We need to identify what kind of additional expertise might be required should we need it.
We had hoped to speak to Arthur Midwinter about bringing a paper to the committee, but he is on holiday until the beginning of February. We hope to bring a paper to the committee either for its meeting on 8 February or for that on 22 February—we have the recess in between.
When we are trying to eliminate world poverty we find out that in our own little corner of the world we have exceptional deprivation. I do not think that anyone around this table realises how deeply deprivation affects many people in this country. I would give that paramount importance.
You are right to keep us on the budgetary implications, convener. However, at the same time, extremely interesting data came out this week from the former governor of Barlinnie prison on how a large percentage of prisoners in Scottish prisons are from areas of deprivation. There are socioeconomic aspects to that, but at the same time the cost of keeping people in prison rather than dealing with them in another way obviously has a budgetary implication, which goes in a lot of directions.
Going down the route suggested might propel us in interesting directions. The first thing to do is map out what is happening and how the purposes for which the budget is being used are identified.
There might be a case for our looking at the 50 wards again to try to make the data more manageable and see what has been happening on the ground, what has been spent and what have been the outcomes.
I have not read the original report, but my initial thought on reading the press release was, to some extent, "So what?" I would expect that to be the case. One of the interesting scientific issues is what definition of deprivation we pick and how appropriate that is to the identification of ward boundaries. There are serious issues around the way in which the Executive has chosen to identify a particular percentage as the threshold as opposed to other possible percentages, which might give different outcomes in relation to the allocation of resources. Those are precisely the questions that we need to get into. How does the Executive make those choices? Are they based on facts? Is that the most significant basis on which to make judgments? Do we need a particular combination of factors to allocate resources under deprivation and is there consistency between them? Is there a logic across the board? Are things being missed out? We need to explore those issues. It seems to me that that provides the link between the budgetary process and closing the opportunity gap. Deprivation resources are intended to be those resources that help us close the opportunity gap. The questions that we are getting at are how those resources are allocated and whether they are being used efficiently. That is one of the big issues that I think the committee should be examining.
I apologise, convener, but I have to go at this point. I am being shuffled across committees, so this will be my last meeting as a member of the Finance Committee, but I will follow its work closely.
We all wish Jeremy Purvis well and we look forward to meeting his replacement.
He is a good farmer.
I take it that members are content with the broad thrust of the proposals before us. There is perhaps one thing to add at this point. I mentioned to Jim Mather that I was interested in considering transport spend on a more analytical basis. I do not think that we would need to bring that into the main work of the committee. However, to pick up on Elaine Murray's point, it is perhaps an issue for which we might wish to consider using a reporter. I would be interested in doing that. If another member of the committee is interested in examining transport issues on a comparative basis, they should get in touch with me, and we will try to develop some of those issues and report back to the committee in due course. Is that agreed?
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