Finance Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Official Report 523KB pdf

---

Draft Budget Scrutiny 2014-15

Under item 2, we begin our oral evidence sessions for the committee’s scrutiny of the draft budget for 2014-15. I welcome Kim Atkinson of the Scottish Sports Association; Amanda Coulthard of West Dunbartonshire Council; Amanda Roe of Aberdeenshire Council; Derek Shewan of the Robertson Construction Group, who is representing the Scottish Building Federation; Shona Smith of Scottish Borders Council; and David Stewart of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.

We are in a round-table format, so there will be no opening statements. If anyone wishes to speak, they should indicate that to me or the clerk. The session is intended to be a fluid discussion, so please feel free to contribute at any point. There is no Buggins’s turn, and I do not intend to go round everyone one by one. You may want to contribute once or twice, or you may want to contribute half a dozen times or more. Feel free to do so.

I will structure the discussion around the questions in the committee’s call for evidence and begin by asking for views on the progress that has been made by the Scottish Government in meeting its targets as set out in the national performance framework. Kim Atkinson’s in-depth written submission is very interesting. It states:

“It is reassuring to note that the National Indicator for increasing physical activity is identified as related”

to the outcome of “We live longer, healthier lives”.

It continues:

“However, the benefits of people participating in sport and physical activity are not recognised as factors in delivering this Outcome, nor is the inactivity of the nation recognised as a main challenge to this.”

The SSA recognises

“that achievement of this Outcome requires ‘work across all areas of Government’”.

The indication is that sport should be at the heart of everything. I wonder whether Kim Atkinson can talk us through that. We can also discuss how the Scottish Government is meeting its target, as set out in the performance framework, from the SSA’s perspective and the perspectives of others around the table.

I very much appreciate being here and thank the committee for the opportunity. We are coming at it from a sport and physical activity angle. We are the representative body of the governing bodies of all the different sports in Scotland, representing the 52 governing bodies that represent 13,000 sports clubs. A fifth of the population are members of a sports club, so we represent a pretty significant number of people.

One of the Government’s strategic objectives is a Scotland that is healthier, and a key national outcome is people living longer, healthier lives. That sounds like a super aim that we can all support. If you speak to Sir Harry Burns, the chief medical officer for Scotland, he will tell you that the key indicator—more so than any other indicator—of how long people in this country will live is how physically active they are. Therefore, there is an aspect of mismatch if the key indicator for the healthier Scotland objective is people living longer, healthier lives and our chief medical officer is telling us that the key indicator is how physically active people are. The recommendation is that the indicator of increasing physical activity should be given a little more prominence across the 14 other related indicators in which we believe there is a strong correlation.

We need to think about physical activity in its broadest sense. There is a dose-response relationship between how physically active somebody is and the health indicators and benefits that they get from that. If you talk to Sir Harry Burns, he will tell you that there is a spectrum between physical activity and sport. The more physically active we are—the more of us who participate in sport and get our heart rates going—the greater will be the health benefits from that activity. We need to look at what that means for that indicator in terms of people being even more active and the settings in which people can participate in sport.

As I said, there are 13,000 sports clubs in Scotland, and people who participate in a sport through a club participate for longer and more frequently than people who participate in other settings. Added to that, there are mental health benefits that come through meeting different people, as well as intergenerational connections and a different sense of community. Volunteering is also a key aspect, because evidence shows that people who volunteer live healthier and happier lives.

In general, we feel that sport and physical activity could be given more weight in the indicator. I think that that is where the cross-budget approach would work. We demonstrated in our written evidence how the prevention agenda could impact strongly on the areas of education, justice, community and a number of others and provide a basis to build on.

We obviously have a fixed budget here and the committee is wearied every year by endless bids from specific sectors for additional money, without their giving a corresponding indication of where that should come from. However, you have indicated that savings could be made from the health budget to support what you propose. Is that your view?

The health budget is always a difficult one. I appreciate that there are health budgets and health improvement budgets. Our written submission refers to the cost of obesity, which is £175 million a year. We can add to that the costs of the consequences of obesity in terms of hip fractures, diabetes, premature mortality and mental health. Obesity has obvious financial costs, but we cannot forget its human cost. As our submission indicates, 2,447 people die every year in Scotland simply from being physically inactive. I will repeat that figure: 2,447. I am staggered by that figure for what is one of the world’s developed nations.

Scotland’s physical activity strategy states that if we were all 1 per cent more physically active, we would save 157 lives a year and £85 million for the economy. I am sure that focusing on the prevention theme would not cost £85 million, but I do not know how we can quantify financially saving 157 lives a year. There are clear opportunities in that regard.

When we think about the prevention agenda for sport, we must not forget that 90 per cent of investment in sport in Scotland is made through local authorities, which is a massive spend. What does that mean for single outcome agreements or community planning, given that physical activity is not even one of the focused targets in the health indicators? It is in there, but it is not one of the focused targets. However, 90 per cent of where we could invest goes through local authorities. The question is how we can be a bit smarter about prevention.

John Mason was at last week’s meeting of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on sport, and I am sure that he will remember the interesting discussion there. There was a feeling of synergy around the active travel lobby’s proposal that 10 per cent of the transport budget could be spent on active travel. An interesting question was posed—I think that John Mason would agree that that is the fairest way of phrasing it—about what a similar ambition for the health of people in this country would look like if a proportion of the health budget was invested in sport and physical activity. No statement emerged, and there was no direct answer to the question but the possible opportunities were highlighted. We could use them to make the radical shift towards prevention that Campbell Christie called for.

The prevention agenda could feature much more strongly in the Government’s overall purpose for health and be bulked up. Our argument is that sport and physical activity could be a key part of that. That is a reflection of some of the discussion in the cross-party group, in which John Mason was a key participant.

Coincidentally, John has asked to speak next.

My comment was not going to be totally about what Kim Atkinson just discussed, but I will follow on from that. The question of the indicators in relation to sport was raised, but I am also interested in what Mr Shewan’s submission said about the indicators. For example, the paper refers to the indicator on increasing the number of businesses in Scotland. When that indicator was set, I think that we would all have agreed that it was a good one because we want more businesses. However, if I understand it correctly, you are saying that there are bigger businesses and smaller businesses—there are different kinds of business. You make a similar point about modern apprenticeships, in which you say that there is a range of quality.

We could change indicators every year, but that would not work either, because we would get no consistency. How do we get the balance right between keeping consistency and being adaptable?

As you rightly say, there are two elements. The Scottish construction industry consists of a wide range of businesses, from one-man businesses to multimillion-pound businesses. The construction industry in particular has lost a large number of businesses over the past four or five years—655 businesses went into liquidation in that period. Those businesses will never be recovered, which gives us considerable concern going forward. As our industry improves, as we hope it will, we will struggle to address how to cope with that and with how we measure the benefits that come back into the industry.

We get a confused message in that the Government, as I perceive it, puts house building and construction under the one umbrella although they are two different elements of the industry. House builders are specific to house building. Seldom do construction companies build houses. They have the same elements—such as building work and joinery work—but there are two different facets to the industry. In the construction industry, we feel that we lack recognition. All that we hear about is how house building is helping the construction industry. It is helping to a certain extent, but there is no recognition of construction. There should be some sort of indicator that reflects the benefits that the budget brings to the construction industry, rather than just house building.

On the point about apprenticeships, traditional apprenticeships for joiners, bricklayers and such trades are very much on the decline, as far as the Scottish Building Apprenticeship and Training Council is concerned. We have lost something like 43 per cent of our apprenticeships over the past four years, so we have lost perhaps 1,000 apprentices from our industry and we find them extremely difficult to replace because our industry is in such a dire state that companies cannot afford to support young people coming through.

An apprenticeship lasts four years. It takes time, money and effort. We are finding that our mentors—the full tradesmen who support guys through their apprenticeships—now do not want to support them because it affects their earning capacity. That causes us a real concern.

Although we applaud what the Government is doing on getting young people back to work through modern apprenticeships, the quality apprenticeships—the traditional trade apprenticeships—are still really struggling to get people back into our industry and give them a grounding. That will become more and more of an issue. As our industry gets back into its perceived norm, we will not have the skills within it to deliver what we need to deliver. A major issue will hit us in the next five to 10 years due to the lack of young people coming through with the skills that we require.

Do the indicators need tweaking or do they need a major revamp?

They do not need a major revamp but they need some tweaking to reflect a major change in where we are as a country and as an industry. We need to have a better appreciation and a greater acknowledgement of where business is now, compared with when the indicators were originally set. They need to reflect a changing market.

The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations does not agree with the Scottish Building Federation that there is

“merit in developing additional national indicators to measure Scotland’s performance in fostering the positive environment needed for the construction industry as a whole”.

The SFHA has said in its submission:

“There is a strong argument for fewer indicators and targets expressed in a clearer manner.”

In our submission, we were trying to get across the point that, on the one hand, when trying to examine what investment in housing achieves, we find that there is an argument that investment in social housing has a benefit on each of the 16 national outcomes. However, on the other hand, because those outcomes are general—understandably so, because they attempt to measure the benefits of investment in all sectors and areas that the Scottish Government funds—they may not be that helpful in measuring the real impacts of investment in social housing.

There are two national indicators that relate to housing, but they are really about providing access to affordable housing and advice for the most vulnerable—in essence, preventing homelessness or helping people who are homeless—and, secondly, measuring the number of units completed. Those are important indicators that need to be measured, but investment in affordable, quality housing achieves much more than that. For example, investment in improving the energy efficiency of housing would create benefits for members of the Scottish Building Federation. It would improve educational attainment by providing a warm, secure home for young people and it would have benefits for the health of the nation.

10:15

Similarly, investing in medical adaptations in social housing and in housing support would have impacts along the lines of the preventative spend that was promoted by the Christie commission, to which Kim Atkinson referred.

It is not that we feel that the indicators are wrong. We strongly believe that it is right to have a national framework to measure the impact of investment and to direct investment based on that. However, we feel that there is perhaps scope in social housing for refinement or further development of the indicators.

You issued a press release today saying that you want an extra £21 million to be spent on energy efficiency, but you have not indicated where in the budget that money should come from.

I absolutely take the point that the committee could get sick of hearing interest groups and bodies say that they are looking for further investment without saying where the money would come from. On the other hand, it is not really right for a housing federation to tell Governments and politicians how to make spending decisions. By putting out that press release, we are saying that we believe that investment in energy efficiency is extremely important. It is a very positive thing that the Scottish Government continues to invest in home energy efficiency, because the United Kingdom Government does not. We absolutely acknowledge that.

However, the Scottish Government has set tough climate change targets and still has a target to end fuel poverty, if practically possible, by 2016. What we are really saying is that in order to achieve those ambitions, investment in energy efficiency needs to be increased.

One of my local housing associations said that we should put £50 million more into housing and/or the bedroom tax and take it out of the culture budget. Would you go along with that?

I would not. As I said, we can make a case for the social, health and economic benefits of investing in housing. A recent report from Audit Scotland identified challenges faced by the housing sector and the fact that the demand for social housing continues to outstrip supply.

It is perhaps for us to make a case for the benefits of investing in housing, and the need to invest; it is less for us to tell politicians and the Government where to take that investment from.

To be honest, that is something of a cop-out. Housing is going up £158.4 million and if people are not happy with the Scottish Government’s choices, they should say what the different choices are. One of the things that impressed me so much about Kim Atkinson’s submission is that it said, “You should reduce money in that area in order to spend it in this one.”

Last year, Age Scotland came to us and said, “We want more money for adaptations.” When we asked how that should be funded, it said that we should change the age at which concessionary fares are awarded from 60 to 65, which is a pretty controversial thing for an age charity to say. The cabinet secretary did not make that change, but he increased the adaptations budget by 25 per cent.

People have to come here with the courage of their convictions and tell us where, in a fixed or declining budget, money should come from in order to fund what they wish to see funded. Otherwise, we end up with a situation in which every organisation that comes to us believes that their sector should have additional funding and we are not really any further forward.

We appreciate that the budget has been increased, but it is important to remember that that follows on from the 29 per cent cut in the capital budget for social housing that took place between 2008-09 and 2011-12. I appreciate that we are in constrained financial times and it is great that that good increase has come in, but to an extent it is more of a restoration to close to where we were five or so years ago.

On where the money should come from, this is not part of the Scottish budget per se, but the SFHA and others have been campaigning for European structural funds to be ring fenced and used for investment in energy efficiency and social housing. An excellent programme in Wales that is run by our sister federation has used European structural funds to invest in energy efficiency and renewables and it has done a lot to create jobs and apprenticeships, cut carbon emissions and help to lift some of the poorest people out of fuel poverty. We continue to recommend that as a source of funding.

I think that we all appreciate that there has been a reduction in housing funding, but there was a 26.9 per cent cut in the Scottish Parliament’s capital budget, so it was inevitable that reductions would happen somewhere.

I call Gavin Brown, to be followed by Jamie Hepburn.

Am I allowed to return to sport, convener?

Of course you can.

Thank you. I was just checking.

I direct my remarks partly in Kim Atkinson’s direction, but I do not expect—nor will I be very impressed if I get—immediate answers. My question is just something to reflect upon. Clearly, this debate is not all about funding, but funding is fundamental and we cannot get away from it. As a member of the committee and a finance spokesperson, I find it difficult to work out the total funding from government in Scotland—I mean central Government, local authorities and so on. How much do we invest in sport, as a country?

It is easy to look at the budget line for sport in the budget document and think, “Great—that’s the line for sport,” but there are contributions from local authorities, from the health budget and, as you pointed out, from the justice budget via cashback for communities. I find it difficult to get a handle on the baseline sport budget, how it compares with those of other countries and what the direction of travel is. We can look at one line and get an impression of where we are, but because of the way in which the budget is packaged, I find it difficult to find out what the total sport budget is. I do not know whether you have considered that or done any work on it.

That is a fair point. As you will have seen, the sport budget for this year is £36.5 million in real terms. If we package all the funding together it looks pretty big, but £161.2 million is for the Commonwealth games. When we read the line for sport and add all the figures together, it looks like there has been a significant increase in investment in the past 10 years, but we need to recognise that a huge amount of that has been for the Commonwealth games. Do not get me wrong—that is welcome, but the Commonwealth games are also bringing a host of other benefits that relate to housing and a number of other important areas.

In broad terms, the sport budget has remained fairly static. The £36.5 million of Scottish Government investment is primarily into sportscotland, as I understand it. The 90 per cent that is spent through local authorities comes via a different budget line and, as you say, there is money from health and other budgets.

That poses a fascinating question. We have made some statements about working more closely with health, but I want to be clear that we have no intention of trying to raid health budgets; it is about working in partnership. There are some challenges in that.

There are successful partnerships out there that have been demonstrated as pilots—the jogscotland programme is a good example of which I hope most colleagues have heard. It has been going for 10 years through our partners at Scottish Athletics, and it is a programme to try to get people running. It starts with getting people walking, so it is a good example of the continuum that I mentioned earlier between physical activity and sport. The programme is done in groups and it is run by voluntary leaders, so there are a lot of different aspects around some of the social capital that I know Sir Harry Burns would talk about. Despite the fact that that programme has been running for 10 years, it is still funded on an annual basis, and we are not seeing the shift to prevention. We have a pilot that works, so we should be asking how we can change that situation. Our proposal is that we look at who benefits.

Most of the benefits that are quoted to us are health benefits. I completely understand and support them, and let us not forget the significant mental health benefits—I know that our partners at SAMH would agree about those. However, there are other benefits to consider. Gavin Brown mentioned cashback models—we cited as an example in our submission the work that has been done with the cashback for communities investment in rugby. There are incredibly strong results from that rugby programme through work in schools around behaviour, attainment and increased attendance. Justice money is being invested and it is providing results in education. In the case studies in our submission, there are demonstrations of benefits in health, but there are also demonstrations of benefits in education and in justice; the sports pot is funding quite a lot of that.

Do not get me wrong: those are small examples of justice money from cashback and small examples of health money, but ultimately the argument is that the key people who will benefit if more people take part in sport are not sport people. Yes, we will benefit; we will be delighted that more people are involved in sport and, I hope, having fun. Let us not lose sight of the essence of people’s participation in sport, which is—we hope——that it is fun. Ultimately, however, if the key beneficiaries are not just health, but justice and education, a £36.5 million budget is trying to fund much bigger budgets to provide support. We pose a fundamental question on that point in our submission. Ultimately, it is about having the courage and the conviction that the convener mentioned earlier, and it is about saying that that is how we see it.

Yes, we could get benefits tomorrow—fingers crossed, we will—in relation to mental health, and I know that some of our colleagues at SAMH are working on that. However, the big gains in health are longer term, so it is about looking beyond one parliamentary and governmental cycle. It is about the longer-term benefits. If we want people to be living healthier and longer lives, that is not going to happen tomorrow—it is a culture change that we must consider while having conviction.

As David Stewart said, it is not necessarily always about the money. It also about prioritisation of where that money goes. Part of our reflection on the Scottish Government’s national performance framework is on prioritisation of budgets. Has the national indicator for physical activity been prioritised as we want it to be? No. We think that there is an argument for that indicator to be more highly prioritised within the NPF. In relation to Gavin Brown’s budget question, if the national indicator for physical activity were to be prioritised more highly by the Scottish Government in the NPF, that could impact on local authorities, which spend 90 per cent of the sport budget. I hope that local authorities would say, “If physical activity is a key indicator, perhaps we can do something that adds value.” It could create a different kind of opportunity.

Obviously, local authorities are the big pot holders in relation to the budget pot. Do not get me wrong—I am not saying that local authorities do not have pressures on their budgets, but there are partnerships to be gained by looking at a more sustainable approach in the longer term.

I have a couple of questions about the national performance framework, for the local authorities. Scottish Borders Council says in its submission:

“Where possible, it would be helpful if the data used to measure national performance was consistent with the data that we can use at a local authority level.”

It gives the example of

“differences in the way that we are asked to look at the life circumstances of children”.

Are there other examples and what are the practical effects of those differences?

West Dunbartonshire Council suggests in its submission:

“Given the focus nationally on prevention and early intervention at all levels”—

which is obviously something that we are very keen to see happening—

“it may be helpful and set a more positive tone if the national framework reflected this focus.”

Could Shona Smith and Amanda Coulthard comment on those points, from their respective submissions?

First, Scottish Borders Council has been very supportive of the national performance framework and has used it extensively in this past year in developing our single outcome agreement, along with a local strategic assessment. However, we found that some of the Scotland performs indicators and some of the SOA indicators were giving us different values.

For example, on child deprivation, the Scotland performs figure comes out at about 8.2 per cent for Scottish Borders Council whereas the local one from the SOA menu comes out at 17 per cent. There are differences in how child deprivation is measured. It is an issue; when we are developing the SOA and considering which figure to use, we are going to use the local data. However, we also look at the correlation—the trends. We are looking for consistency across the indicators so that we are talking about the same figures.

The other point that we would pick up on is child healthy weight: there is a clinical measure and there is a population percentile figure. One is on a three-year rolling average and the other is on a two-year rolling average so, again, when we talk with our health colleagues—because one of our main outcomes is to reduce inequalities—we find that we are talking about different indicators, different figures and different targets.

We are very supportive of the framework, but we are looking for some refinements and tweaks and alignment of the SOA development to the NPF.

How do you propose that that be undertaken?

At local level, we have a joint delivery team and a strategic board that all community planning partners sit on, so we will sit down with health representatives and decide at that point which set of figures we will use for community planning purposes.

10:30

In the example that you gave, there was a wide disparity between the two measures of child deprivation. There should be consistency of assessment in the figures, so how do you achieve that? I thought that that was your fundamental point.

We will use the local figure of 17 per cent—

Where does the local figure come from?

The local figure comes from Scottish national statistics, which come through the Department for Work and Pensions. That provides another indicator or measurement at local level.

The first child deprivation figure that you gave was 8 per cent. Does that apply across the country or to your area?

That figure is for our area.

You have said that you will use a particular figure. Would it be better if there was just one figure?

It would, but that is not what we are working with this year, so we have taken the local figure.

Your suggestion is that it would be better if there was one figure.

Yes.

How would we achieve that?

You need to decide whether the local outcome under the SOA is the measurement that we should use at local authority level.

My concern is that it will be difficult for the national performance indicators to provide any kind of meaningful assessment if the 32 local authorities—and potentially the health boards, as well—all use different measures. Surely it would be better if everyone worked to the same all-Scotland figures.

Yes. I would question how we developed the SOA figure.

Amanda Coulthard’s submission also commented that it would be good if the focus on early intervention was better reflected in the national performance framework. Why would that be a good thing?

As has been pointed out already this morning, often there are so many different indicators and priorities that it can be difficult for everyone around the table to agree on what we are trying to achieve and how we work collaboratively towards that. It would be better if the national performance framework were to focus on the key deliverable outcomes for the entire area across all the partners in delivery.

We all agree that we need to focus on prevention and early intervention if we are to change the poor outcomes that affect the majority of the population, particularly in West Dunbartonshire. If we are all to understand what we are trying to achieve, we need some space around the focus on prevention and early intervention to encourage people to look at what we do just now and at what we need to do differently to achieve the desired outcomes.

Another issue is how we show that we are making a difference and how we assign budgets based on the things that we want to do differently. What happens just now is very much about what each agency brings to the table and how that relates to their own priorities, rather than what we all do collectively and how we develop a new focus. As our submission points out, the change funds for older people and for early years focus on doing things differently. We are asking that the national performance framework also focus on doing things differently across all the priorities, rather than just for the outcomes for older people and early years.

To pick up on Shona Smith’s point about how we use data, for me one of the biggest challenges in pulling together performance information and profiles is that we can use a number of different indicators depending on what story we want to tell. If we want to create a positive picture, we use the national figure for child deprivation, because that makes things look better than they are. If we want everyone to focus on the issue and think about how we spend money and gain more investment, we would use the 17 per cent figure, because that focuses the mind on what we need to do.

For me, the issue is more about how the different data sets are pulled together. The menu of local outcome indicators that is used for the single outcome agreement is pulled together by the Government’s community planning team, which does not use the indicators in the national performance framework. It would make much more sense if everything flowed from the framework and just became more localised as we went down to what is being delivered. Having the option of pulling from different sources makes it easy either to pay too much attention to an indicator or to mask just how bad performance is.

That is very helpful.

Kim Atkinson talked about enjoyment of sport through participation. After last night’s Celtic match, I am sure that Michael McMahon would agree that participating in sport is probably more pleasurable than watching it.

I enjoyed a very good football match last night, convener. Obviously, you were not there; if you had been, you would have said that it was a very exciting game. That is what it is about, and that is why we love the sport.

Indeed. Who cares about the result?

Fortunately, my question is on the same issue, but I will use Aberdeenshire Council’s submission as my reference point. We posed questions about the progress that the Scottish Government is making in meeting the national outcomes and whether the national indicators are effective as a means of measuring the performance of the Government. Aberdeenshire Council pointed out that the

“key national indicators supporting economic growth, sustainability and health ... are demonstrating maintained rather than improving performance”

and that the indicators and targets that are currently in place

“do not adequately demonstrate the public sector reform agenda.”

It also said:

“It is not evident the priorities set out as part of the Ministerial Review of Community Planning are reflected in the NPF”.

I want to test that a bit.

It is clear that, when we look at the budget and whether it will meet what is in the NPF, we need to know that what is being measured and the outcomes that are being pursued will be reflected in the budget. It would be useful to know where the budget sits in relation to that, from your perspective.

I cannot speak about financial matters and budgetary discussions because I am a performance person, so I will speak about the performance framework. I will start with the last question.

We reflected that the ministerial review of community planning partnerships and the priorities that came out of that do not appear to be explicitly reflected in the national performance framework. That is not to say that the outcomes that are stated in the review of community planning partnerships are not within the national performance framework, but if we go in via the national performance framework, it is not clear that the single outcome agreement on community planning partnerships underpins delivery of those outcomes. That is clear if we go in through community planning, but not if we go in from any other direction. I do not think that the residents and communities out there will appreciate that a lot of the work that the partners in community planning partnerships do is to deliver what the Scottish Government has said are the national outcomes that we want for Scotland.

As in the discussions that Amanda Coulthard and Shona Smith mentioned, we seek more consistency between the national performance framework and the indicators that we use in other places. For example, there are the statutory performance indicators that are used in Audit Scotland and the local indicators menu set that came out of, I think, the Improvement Service. We would like to see them being more tied together in the national performance framework, because that would allow community planning partnerships and the 32 local authorities to evidence more clearly how they are supporting delivery of the national outcomes while meeting local priority outcomes.

On the national outcomes on which we in Aberdeenshire Council have suggested that performance is perhaps being just maintained or even declining, the indicators and their direction of travel were looked at and an assumption was made, because I could not find evidence anywhere of what weightings are put on the different indicators. Every indicator in the national performance framework appears to have equal weighting. That might be correct and a good thing, but it means that it is very difficult to show that certain key priorities and outcomes that are being delivered are driving the outcomes further forward. It also makes it difficult to show that our not meeting, to the same extent, other indicators that are still important would not cool performance down, which would suggest to communities that we are not delivering on some key outcomes. On that basis, our saying that each indicator has equal weighting makes it look like performance is stalling. Sometimes we need to get into the narrative more in order to discover that performance is not, perhaps, what is suggested by the framework.

Paragraph 7 of West Dunbartonshire Council’s submission says:

“There appears, at times, to be some inconsistent messages from different divisions within Government”.

Paragraph 12 of that submission brings up the issue of preventative spend, in which we are very interested. Is there, or can there be, broad agreement on what preventative spending is? Can it be measured, or is that simply impossible? In the end, is all spending preventative spending?

My experience to date suggests that there cannot be agreement on what preventative spending is. It has been very difficult to get, around partnership tables, a common understanding of what prevention is. Everyone approaches the idea differently, depending on the service that they are delivering and how close to sharp-end service they are.

With a bit of work nationally and locally, we could come up with a strong definition of preventative activity, although I think that everything we do across all public sector agencies, voluntary organisations and the private sector can be preventative. We have many opportunities to interact with individuals and to change the direction of the services that they receive and the potential outcomes from their experiences.

It is about making sure that we take every opportunity and use every point of contact to give a preventative message. That could be when someone comes along for a general practitioner appointment; there might be a list of areas for discussion that the GP can use to start a conversation about what the person might do differently and the outcomes that they want to achieve for themselves. It could be about very basic things, such as interaction with universal services and how people feel about the contact that they have with people who are emptying the bins through the day, whether they have a relationship with and understand the valuable service that is delivered through our environmental services in local government, how that relates to the environment in which they live and how they feel about it.

There are therefore lots of opportunities for us to focus more on prevention than we do at the moment. The biggest challenge that we face, particularly in local government, is how to free up the resources that would allow us to have those conversations. Everyone is feeling the pressure of reduced budgets nationally, but if we want to focus on prevention, we need to rethink how we align our budgets so that we can do that at national and local levels. We are all having that discussion just now, but I do not think that anyone has found the answer yet.

Your answer to that question was good because it was frank, but there is no way that we could control whether a visit to a GP, which lasts only 10 minutes, is split between reactive and preventative discussion. Are we talking more about changing attitudes rather than measuring everything?

Absolutely. We need a complete culture change in how we interact with services, individuals and one another. That is very much about the focus on how we change people’s lives and about professionals from across the spectrum thinking differently about how they use the time that they have with individuals and what they want to focus on. I do not think that we can capture everything, but we can set a general direction for all services to work towards, which would be helpful.

Do the representatives from the other two councils agree?

One exercise that we did when developing our SOA this year was to develop a prevention plan. The guidance on that is quite loose, and Scottish Borders Council struggled to pull the prevention plan together. However, we submitted it with our SOA and received feedback from the quality assurance team, and it has given us a much sharper focus.

We will discuss between now and Christmas what prevention means for our community planning partnership, because we had very different ideas about that when we brought the prevention plan together. If anything, the exercise gave us a much sharper focus on the questions that we need to discuss among ourselves, so it was very useful.

We agree that we are talking about a mindset change. That is difficult to measure, but it will mean a culture change. In the discussions in our community planning partnership and our council, we say that prevention must be at the heart of everything that we do. It is not separate and we cannot talk about some bits being prevention and some being everything else that we do. We have to move towards saying that the starting point for everything that we do should be how it can be about prevention and how delivering something can prevent something from happening in the future.

How would you change the national performance framework to better reflect a preventative approach?

I certainly do not think that that can be done just by having an indicator. It is probably more like the approaches that we have taken to the improvement statements that councils are asked to produce on efficiency and public service improvement and some of the work that we have to do on climate change declarations and mainstreaming equalities reports.

The NPF needs more of a narrative, which we have to build in through our community planning partnerships, because that is where it sits. The fact that we now have to include prevention in our single outcome agreements is the right starting point, but perhaps we need some way of explicitly linking the national performance framework to the single outcome agreement on that.

10:45

Scottish Borders Council’s next prevention plan will have a much sharper focus, and we will start to think about the indicators that reflect the prevention spend. As this is the first time that we have included a prevention plan, it is at a certain level of maturity, and it is probably still too early to say how it can link up. However, we will certainly look at the issue over the next five years.

A focus on the outcomes that we want to deliver collaboratively under the strategic priorities in the NPF would help the focus on prevention. There should also be a tiered approach to our indicators. The NPF contains some strong high-level indicators about the direction of travel that we all want to keep and focus on, but it would be helpful if, underneath that, there were a level of indicators for what individual agencies can bring to the table and how we can work differently. That does not need to sit in the NPF, but we all need to know what those measures are and we have to work consistently across the 32 community planning partnerships and 32 local authorities to deliver them.

The NPF’s current structure means that everything sits on one level and is equally weighted. If there were more of a focus on absolutely key measures and their importance and if there were another level of indicators that allowed us to flex slightly without having to change direction completely, we might be in a better position to focus on prevention and show what we are bringing to the table collectively to deliver a prevention agenda.

The convener asked how we might change the national performance framework. I think that the overarching purpose could be tweaked. We understand why sustainable economic growth is a priority, but we have also suggested including terms such as “healthier”, “life choices” and “reducing inequalities”. We have discussed some of those issues this morning but, if we are trying to create a successful nation, they should be not only a fundamental focus but key aspects of fairness, equality and prevention. My high-level suggestion is that the terms that I have mentioned might, along with what our local authority colleagues have mentioned, add further weight to the purpose.

We have to strike a balance between prevention and spend. Some preventative spend models are based on the idea that, if we spend a bit of money here, we will save a bit of money there. I cannot argue with the view that we need to save money but, as I have said, we also have to prevent ill health and other such matters.

People cannot argue with the need to save lives. We can save a little money if we do this rather than that but, if we do this, that and the other, we can save not only an awful lot of money but people’s lives, and we can make their lives better and make them healthier and happier. Call me an idealist, but I think that there are a number of principles on which the prevention agenda can be built. Much as we need to make tweaks and savings here and there, if we are looking for a genuinely radical approach, a couple of pennies here or there simply will not cut it. There is more that we can do.

In our submission, we make a number of suggestions about the change funds. I have to say that I do not know a huge amount about them—the feedback that we have had is that sport has not been hugely involved in the process—and I have heard colleagues mention the early years, which are another priority that we cannot argue with. However, on the 14 indicators to which we think that sport can contribute—particularly the indicators on educational attainment and a healthy weight—we argue that, if people are physically active from a young age, they will have the opportunity to be physically active for life. As that could be a tool for any number of prevention arguments, we have proposed the creation of a change fund for sport that, through some of that different work, could take a radical approach.

For example, one in two women and one in five men will suffer a hip fracture after the age of 50, and the financial burden of that is an annual £1.7 billion across the UK. All that we need to do is add up the figures. Do not get me wrong—this is a train of thought rather than evidence based on research—but people who participate in sport or are physically active often have better balance and are therefore probably less likely to fracture their hips. Moreover, someone who fractures their hip is more likely to spend time in hospital and might even require social care.

In considering the regeneration of social care, are we looking at some of its foundations or taking a longer-term view of prevention? I do not know what the research says—I am sure that some must exist—but the fingers of someone who bowls twice a week might be that bit more dexterous to allow them to do up their buttons or brush their teeth that little bit longer. Even if the longer-term impact is on social care, I hope that there will also be an impact on health. A change fund for sport could provide a really strong approach that would save not only lives but the money that our key partners are working towards trying to save.

Another issue is how we can be smarter in community planning, which has been touched on. I realise that that is an enormous challenge, but we are thinking about how we might put together slightly different partnerships. As I said, there are 13,000 voluntary sports clubs in Scotland, but I do not think that there is huge interaction between sport and community planning. We would certainly welcome a smarter approach to that. How can we work more closely together? What contribution can our members—the governing bodies—make through their clubs?

We understand that high-level participation in sport is fairly static, but do not get me wrong—there have been changes in that. For example, Scottish Cycling has reported a 160 per cent increase in its membership since 2008. The increase has had nothing to do with the Olympics and the Paralympics—at least not in the first couple of years—but I am sure that they and the Commonwealth games will come through at some point. Legacy is what such groups do day in, day out in their attempts to get people more active, more often. We make a key link in that regard.

This is all about considering community sports clubs as an asset; the physical activity opportunities that they provide in communities impact on the targets, which are part of the local authority targets and are included in the national performance framework. We do not necessarily always see clubs in that way. If that huge community of interest—one fifth of our population—had such a voice and the opportunity to take a slightly different approach and engage more with community planning, we might be able to prioritise budgets slightly differently. Different opportunities emerge through engaging with partners in local authorities or in health services, but all that can be brought together in one package.

As ever, convener, I am an optimist, but I think that there are some opportunities.

Indeed.

I am quite interested in the localism aspect and particularly in how local authorities use the Scotland performs website, which I know covers everything that we have discussed. In relation to Kim Atkinson’s comments, I have to say that I represent the Highlands and Islands and, as far as sports facilities are concerned, it is possible to have a bike, but it is quite difficult to get from A to B on it, because B is probably 80 miles away.

The Office for National Statistics produces fairly localised information about aspects of the issues that we are discussing—it goes down to the detail of hip replacements and so on. How much of that rather than the information on Scotland performs becomes the centre of local authority activity and work? Scotland performs has its critics—it is based on Virginia performs, which I believe is a super and informative site. How do you use it?

I will tie my response to Kim Atkinson’s point about change funds and give you a simple example of how we are using change fund money directly to tackle hip fractures. The fund is financing the reshaping care for older people policy in the Borders, and one of our projects under that is a fall prevention scheme. We and colleagues from fire and rescue, the health service and Police Scotland, registered social landlords and our sports facility managers have been meeting for the past six or seven months—in fact, we met only yesterday—to discuss how Borders residents can have a more active lifestyle. We tie that back to Scotland performs by stating the activity level of people in the Scottish Borders.

I will let Amanda Coulthard respond to Jean Urquhart’s question before I ask her my question, because I am going to change tack slightly.

Of the different data sources that are available to us, we tend to use Scottish neighbourhood statistics and Scottish index of multiple deprivation publications to take our information to neighbourhood level. Although we produce a lot of information to build a profile of the local authority as a whole, we are recognising more and more that people want to talk about the picture of their neighbourhood and not the local authority picture.

As a result, we tend to use more comprehensive data sources that go down to ward—or, in the case of the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, data zone—level to build a profile of a small community that we can start to have conversations about. For example, we ask people, “Does this look like the area you live in? Do you recognise it?” and, if people feel that the information is accurate, we can begin to prioritise on that basis. We link all that back to the higher-level national performance framework, but we use a number of data sources to have the conversations first.

How much of the change funds is new money for the council?

Sadly, I am not the manager of the change funds, so I cannot give a lot of detail. From the discussions that we have had, I know that the investment in change fund activity is not new money; it is the same money spent differently.

We mention bridging finance in our submission. We view the change funds as providing bridging finance so that we can move from the way in which we work now to the way in which we have to work in the future. Our plans focus on how the funds can allow us to free up resources in the longer term to continue to fund the new activity that we have designed through both change funds. The money is not new, but it gives us an opportunity to take a step back and think differently about how we spend the resource that we already have.

To respond to Jean Urquhart’s query about how local authorities use Scotland performs, I think that most local authorities have a version of Scotland performs. We have Aberdeenshire performs and there is West Lothian performs.

Most local authorities have placed Scotland performs as one of the drivers in our strategic planning frameworks. We identify our priorities through our community planning partnerships and our single outcome agreements and we tie them back to the national outcomes. We add our localised element through things such as strategic assessments that use more localised data.

Whether in our council plan or our business plans—which are on a service level, so there are plans for infrastructure services, housing and social work, for example—we always try to have a line of sight back up that demonstrates that, by doing something locally and making it a local priority outcome for us, we are contributing to the delivery of a national outcome for Scotland.

I will let Jean Urquhart in briefly, because I want to change tack.

I just want to make the point, in the light of Kim Atkinson’s enthusiasm for sport, which I do not share at all—

Yet.

No one has it to the extent that Kim does.

I guess that this comes back to local authorities, but it is important to recognise that there are lots of routes to the outcomes that Kim Atkinson says that sports can deliver. On another day, we might have people before us from the creative arts, other community activities or social enterprises, and we know that people who volunteer actively in their community—not necessarily in the sports sector but in other aspects of community life—achieve the results that we are talking about: leading healthy lives, living longer, being more active and not being a drain on social services. It is important to record and recognise that. It is difficult to put a label on everything that is done, which can be very local. There are regional differences and different possibilities just because of where we live.

I make that point when I try to persuade people to deliver more leaflets.

I will move on to the linkage between the performance information and spending priorities and any evidence of the impact of the NPF on spending decisions. I come back to Amanda Coulthard. Paragraph 14 of West Dunbartonshire Council’s submission states:

“Within the national framework it is difficult to evidence the link between the outcomes / objectives and the spending review / resource allocation decisions.”

That is a key point for us and I want to take some time to discuss it. I hope that colleagues will come in on the back of that.

It is recognised that, in the public sector, we still budget in the way that we have budgeted for a number of years. We could not start with a blank sheet of paper and work out what we want to do and how best to spend the resource available to us to deliver that, so we work round the edges and make small incremental changes.

The point in our submission is more about how we step up the pace of change and make more significant changes in how we align our budgets. We are all keen to move to outcome-based budgeting, which is reflected in a lot of the discussion that we have had this morning about what we want to achieve and how we deliver that.

In West Dunbartonshire, we do not have outcome-based budgets at the moment. I do not think that any local authority has. We want to take the opportunity to have a discussion across Scotland about how we would best inform an outcome-based budget and what we would have to do to get there. We are keen to move in that direction and we make a plea for support to do that. We would be up for giving it a go, but we would need a lot of help to get us there.

11:00

What help would you need?

There is work to do to understand how we align budgets now and what the musts are. What services do we in local government absolutely have to deliver, how do we deliver them in the most appropriate way and what resource is required to do that? After that, what is left and how do we assign that differently? Do we want to focus on a single priority?

It is recognised that, if we increase employment opportunities, that will have a knock-on effect on a number of health and wellbeing outcomes. Could we focus some of the money on addressing employment opportunities and a wide spectrum of related services in the knowledge that that would deliver the outcomes that we want in a number of service areas, instead of focusing on how we align a budget to each service area individually?

I wanted to come back to the point that I made earlier. As far as the investment in housing is concerned, there are only two national indicators, and what they really measure is progress and success in helping homeless people to access services and housing, and the production of housing. A recent Audit Scotland report on housing suggested that there is a need to improve the reliability of information on the impacts of investment in housing, and to produce better-quality information.

We suggested in our submission that it would be possible to build on the work of the housing policy advisory group. That is a group led by senior civil servants with responsibility for housing and regeneration in the Scottish Government, who work with the chief executives and directors of housing bodies such as ours, the Chartered Institute of Housing and Homes for Scotland. The group has suggested four key areas that need to be measured to look at the impact of investment in housing:

“a well functioning housing system ... high quality sustainable homes ... homes that meet people’s needs”

and

“sustainable communities”.

We think that if the housing policy advisory group worked to develop those areas further, that could feed into the national performance framework, which would allow the Government to measure the impact of investment in housing better and to make decisions on how it wants to pursue its priorities.

In paragraph 26 of your submission, you say:

“There is agreement on what housing providers need to make progress on, but a wide gulf between the perceived benefits of housing investment in achieving the national targets and outcomes and actually measuring progress.”

In the previous paragraph, you talk about the impact on the NPF as being hard to measure.

As I think I said in my earlier comments, because the 16 national outcomes are quite broad one could, in a way, take any one of them and say that investment in social housing contributes to meeting those needs. For example, for the objective that

“we realise our full economic potential with more and better employment opportunities”,

one could say that investing either in building new houses or in improving energy efficiency has a very high multiplier effect and produces jobs and training opportunities. On the other hand, I am not sure how easy it is to measure for each of those objectives what, let us say, a £5 million investment in this area achieved. That is why we suggested further development of the work by the housing policy advisory group.

We responded to this question on the basis of whether we could see at a national level how the performance framework impacted on spending. I am sure that if we dug deep enough into www.scotland.gov.uk, we could find that information, but the site is not that explicit.

Given that community planning partners are being asked to align their resources with the national community planning partnership outcomes and our local priority outcomes, it would be helpful, on going into the national performance framework, to get an indication of how it is impacting on the Government’s spending decisions through that approach. I am by no means suggesting that we would want to go back to ring-fenced funding or anything like that, but it would be useful, when something is a spending priority, to get an indication of where it fits in with the national performance framework.

The area that Jean Urquhart represents provides some of the best outdoor adventure activity opportunities in the world—sport is really big up there, which is great.

The point that Amanda Coulthard made, which David Stewart has also made strongly, is to do with the fact that investment in one area provides outcomes across a range of the performance indicators, which means that we face a challenge in how we measure some of that. Jean Urquhart made a strong point about the activities of some of our colleagues in the voluntary sector, which we whole-heartedly support. It was about those volunteering activities that are a vehicle, for want of a better term. Some people participate in sport because they want to have fun and because they enjoy it but, for other people, it provides diversionary activities, educational outcomes and other things through being a vehicle. I would whole-heartedly argue that aspects of volunteering activity in culture, heritage and the environment do exactly that. The issue is how we measure and monitor some of that.

In our submission, we mentioned some of the other outcomes. There is only one outcome for sport and physical activity—that of increasing physical activity—but if we start to think about skill profiles, educational attainment, the proportion of young people in learning, training or work, graduates with positive life choices, mental health improvements, addressing premature mortality and promoting active travel, we realise that the link with many voluntary activities is very strong. I guess that it is in the physical activity aspect of health that we would argue that sport is strongest, but I whole-heartedly recognise Jean Urquhart’s point. There is a huge case to be made for the benefits for mental health and skills development that activity across the voluntary sector has, which I whole-heartedly support.

That gives rise to a question about cross-departmental working, cross-agency working, budgeting and partnerships. Investing in area A might have an impact not just on indicator B but on the next 12 indicators. How are we actively measuring the contribution that those vehicles make? From a sports point of view, I do not think that we have cracked that nut at all. As the figures that have been referred to indicate, I do not think that we have yet fully understood from research the contribution that that makes, and I echo the point that our colleagues in other areas of the voluntary sector have made. The contribution that is being made is not recognised across all the various indicators, as David Stewart said.

I have one other quick point, if that is okay. At the beginning of the session, the convener made a strong point about how things are funded. There is a question to which I do not know the answer. As I mentioned earlier, £161.2 million is being spent on delivering the Commonwealth games in 2014. That budget line will cease following the games. Therefore, there is an opportunity to look at sport being the recipient of some of that funding as we go on. Unfortunately, we were not successful with the bid for the 2018 youth Olympic games. There have been pots of funding that have been ring fenced for sport for opportunities to do with elite events. I absolutely want to keep going with elite events, given the positive impact that we can demonstrate they have on participation in certain areas, but I think that opportunities exist to look at some of that budget and to consider a different focus in sport. We could look at prevention and identify where opportunities exist to work in partnership and make some savings. An overarching theme is that there will be freer lines in budgets, which we think will provide an opportunity for sport to do a little bit more.

The theme of much of the discussion is how we can be more joined up. I think that I am hearing from the local authorities—and, probably, from sport—that they want to be joined up with what the Government is trying to do, and that everyone will try to work together better. In contrast, it sounds from the SFHA submission—especially what it says about procurement—as if the housing associations do not want to be part of a bigger model. I invite Mr Stewart to explain why the SFHA does not want to be part of that.

I should preface my comments by saying that I am not an expert on procurement; it is not an area that I deal with.

The concern—if there is one; I hope that it does not come across as any more than what is in our submission—is that, although we are keen to achieve better value and work together with local authorities and other bodies to achieve good value for money, procurement might become a huge issue, and following procurement guidelines, whether they are European ones or Scottish Government ones, might limit activity on the ground. For example, with regard to the home energy efficiency programme for Scotland, which the SFHA campaigned for—we welcome the Scottish Government’s investment in it—I know that local authorities are experiencing delays in the process around getting investment in place to improve the energy efficiency of their homes and homes in the private sector. That is purely down to the time that it sometimes takes local authorities and others to go through the procurement process.

The second concern that our members sometimes have around procurement, which often comes up in discussions on the energy company obligation funding that comes from utility companies, is that, during large-scale procurement exercises that are undertaken in order to get best value for money, the approach means that small companies that work in local communities and provide jobs in those communities do not get the opportunity to take part in the schemes, or can do so only as a subcontractor to a much larger organisation.

If there are any concerns from our organisation and our members, they are in that area. That is not to say that we are not absolutely keen to procure well and to save money. For example, some of our members were involved in an energy-switching pilot that was run by Changeworks, which operates around eastern and southern Scotland. That allowed a lot of tenants of housing associations and local authorities to gain access to better energy deals. I do not want to come across as sounding as if we are against working on procurement; I just want the approach to be proportionate and allow the chance for localism, and for local firms to benefit.

I follow what you are saying. I know that there are a lot of things that are hoped for from the procurement bill that might not actually happen, but are you saying that housing associations are already signed up to issues such as rolling out the living wage, which would be of benefit to people’s health because, for example, they could afford to join a sports club?

I know that many of our members are signed up to the living wage. That is something that we generally promote. Many of our member organisations came into being through a desire to address poorer housing conditions that had come about under private landlords or, in the past, local authorities. However, they do not only do work in relation to housing; they exist to help some of the poorest communities and people in society. We would want to support the sort of initiative that you mention in order to gain those sorts of benefits.

I hope that, when we meet Government representatives, we get across the idea that housing associations are about more than housing and are about activities that benefit the local community.

No one else has indicated that they want to speak. In our remaining 10 minutes, our witnesses can raise any issues that they feel have not come up in the discussions.

I would like to properly support what has been said today with regard to collaboration and the need for the private sector and the public sector to work closely together. From our perspective, there needs to be more collaboration and openness on both sides. We struggle at times to understand and appreciate the pipeline—the forward focus by the Government and local authorities on what their priorities are. Far more appreciation is needed—certainly on our side—of what those priorities are and how we can support them.

11:15

In delivering localism, we must, as David Stewart said, focus on supporting local communities. Our industry has been decimated, and a lot of the local elements have gone. There are now wider links across the country to deliver construction, especially through the hub initiative, in which fairly major players are taking control of five of the eight regions of Scotland. We need to focus on being able to deliver at a local level. Local authorities and the Government are driving more of that localism into the procurement routes, but there is still a long way to go to ensure that we support people at the grass roots by supporting a living wage and growing the networks. In order to do that, we need far more transparency and an appreciation of the challenges that both sides face. We are proposing that we work as a team to try to deliver a more cohesive approach to supporting communities at a very local level.

You state at paragraph 34 of your submission—and you have mentioned today—that

“New indicators should ... provide a mechanism to assess the time taken to deliver Scotland’s planned pipeline of publicly funded major construction projects against a defined baseline.”

However, you also make a point about measuring performance that has not come up from anyone else. You state:

“In order for the NPF to be a truly effective tool, we would recommend a future requirement for performance against the national indicators to be independently assessed via the auspices of an organisation separate from the Scottish Government such as Audit Scotland.”

In listening to the evidence today, we can hear the discrepancies at the public sector level in how people view and measure themselves against the indicators. That suggests that there is something amiss with the way in which we are recording and reporting performance at a local authority and a national level. It would be good to get a second opinion from someone who can review the way in which we are recording performance against those key indicators. That is essential to demonstrate how we are moving forward. We are moving forward, but we need commonality and support across organisations. Everyone round the table is suggesting the same thing; it is just coming across in a slightly different format and with a different appreciation of what we are aiming to achieve.

As a community planning manager, I am keen to get across two key messages, which come from a West Dunbartonshire perspective but probably apply across all the community planning partnerships. First, we need to rationalise the data sources and the indicators that we use to make the framework as accessible as possible and to ensure that we give a comprehensive picture. That will allow us to look across Scotland and start to learn lessons about what is working well in certain areas, and to share best practice.

The second message, which is a hearts-and-minds one, concerns the contribution that everyone round the table can make and the way in which we can analyse and map that to show the valuable input of many of our voluntary sector organisations in producing the outcomes that would traditionally be assigned to public sector organisations.

Given my community engagement remit, I often hear from local residents who are involved with all our different structures that they find it difficult to access information. The information is there and is available to them, but it is not particularly transparent or easy to digest. The more we rationalise it and make it accessible for people, the better a position we will be in as local government organisations and as partnerships.

To pick up on the points that Derek Shewan and Amanda Coulthard raised, we need closer alignment between the data sets, and we must ensure that the single outcome agreements are able to support the national performance framework more effectively, but we already have existing routes by which an independent body looks at that information. For example, our local area network and our annual assurance statements already look at how we are performing in that regard, so that could provide an assurance that there is consistency across the different agencies.

Aberdeenshire Council wants the Scotland performs agenda and the national performance framework to be continued, and we would like to use that as a driver within our own strategic planning framework so that we can demonstrate how we are supporting delivery of the outcomes. However, we want to continue to set our own local priority outcomes based on the needs that are picked up through our community planning partnership.

Scottish Borders Council supports the national performance framework and the Scotland performs initiative. However, one of the most useful exercises that we have been through was our involvement in one of the three pilots of community planning audits by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission last year. The action plan that derived from that work will be helpful for us in how we take community planning forward and how we measure outcomes, because performance monitoring is part of our action plan. It also means that we will not take our eye off the ball and forget that community planning is about outcomes for our residents in the Scottish Borders.

Our submission mentioned the need to recognise the wider contribution from people being more physically active. There is obviously a great contribution to the economy, which I appreciate is a priority for everybody. However, a couple of figures that we quoted show that work performance increases by 5 per cent when people are more physically active; that staff take 27 per cent fewer sick days if they are physically active; and that staff turnover is reduced by 15 per cent by on-site fitness programmes. That is an aspect of the economy that we do not think about so much. I know that there is a space for a gym in this building somewhere, although I am not sure if it has been filled with one. There are different opportunities that we perhaps do not view in the same way as others, and we have not touched on those aspects as much as we could have.

I welcome the recognition that addressing preventative spend goes beyond looking at procurement. I know that procurement is important for a lot of people, and I have no issue with that. However, with regard to the contribution from great chunks of the voluntary sector, we, along with our colleagues in culture, environment and heritage, would say that we bring different aspects to the prevention agenda that are not simply about procurement. That is an important point that we should not forget.

When we consider—with our sports hats on—how we produce a culture change towards prevention, the biggest area of impact will involve getting people who are inactive to become active. There is a 20 per cent difference in activity between people who are inactive and people who are active, and that is a big gap to bridge. We need to target investment in those programmes that are already demonstrating measurable and sustainable impacts.

There are programmes out there, but they are running on piecemeal bits of funding—a little bit here and a little bit there. Research has shown that such contributions can make a difference, but that requires investment in specific targeted programmes, so there is a different type of opportunity in that respect.

We have touched on early intervention, and it will not surprise anyone to hear me say that that is a massive issue. Our aspiration is for young people to have an entitlement to physical activity and to what we would call physical literacy. If every young person can run, jump, throw, catch and swim from a very early age—those sound like the basics because they are—they can build on that foundation and enjoy lifelong participation in physical activity of whatever kind they like. If people do not have those fundamentals at an early age in their school life, they may never achieve those opportunities for fun—we would hope—and for life saving and cost saving in later years.

The early intervention aspect is fundamental and it involves giving people access to a wide range of opportunities to be active. I believe that there is a sport for everybody—I will find Jean Urquhart’s—and different people will want to participate in different activities. That diversity and breadth is incredibly important, and should be celebrated in the light of the number of different sports clubs that we have in this country.

Legacy is important, and our submission mentions the need for a sustainable infrastructure that provides accessible opportunities for all people to get involved in sport, focusing in particular on inactive people. The framework that we frequently propose—I apologise to those who have heard about it before—is a four-strand approach that involves focusing on physical education, people, places and performance.

Young people become physically active at school through attaining physical literacy. As people become more physically active, that becomes the cultural norm and they believe that it is right. We need to provide more support for our coaches and volunteers: the 195,000 people who volunteer week in, week out and month in, month out to make sport happen in this country. Half of all young people who want to volunteer want to do so in sport, and when we talk about skills and life chances, sport is an enormous factor.

The places element is about providing accessible opportunities. We have talked a great deal about the school estate—that is unashamedly a plug for the next meeting of the cross-party group on sport, at which we will discuss access to the school estate and what that looks like. Some of our partners from local authorities will be part of that discussion.

We hear from clubs that the cost of access to facilities is a barrier to people becoming more active. I know that that is a massive challenge and puts pressure on local authority budgets, but it would be a great aspiration to make a facility that has received public funding free for community clubs. That goes beyond sports clubs, which are my interest; it would be great if we could throw open the doors for the voluntary sector in all its different guises and say, “Let’s get more people involved,” because we recognise the prevention opportunity that that would provide.

Performance is the final element. The successes that we saw throughout 2012 in the Olympics and the Paralympics—and those that we are bound to see when we look towards 2014 and at a number of events beyond—contribute enormously to people being active and to the success and reputation of this country.

Those are our four pitches for where we would invest money. Fundamentally, as I mentioned, we need to match the health objective with what the chief medical officer says. To my mind and, I hope, to your minds too, there is an obvious mismatch at present.

We need to think about the courage that the convener mentioned earlier. Who is recognising the benefits? We need to have the courage to look beyond the normal parliamentary and governmental cycles, and say, “We can make this country a better place”, and there are different aspects that can help with that.

The final word is with David Stewart.

In common with what others have said, we would emphasise the importance of preventative spend. We feel that housing has an important role to play in that regard, and I will give a couple of brief examples. Investing in the energy efficiency of housing can improve educational attainment, and it has knock-on benefits for physical and mental health. It is also a great boost to the economy. A recent report from Consumer Futures that was prepared by Cambridge Econometrics noted that investing in energy efficiency in housing is the most effective way of stimulating the economy. That report was a UK exercise, but there will be a similar exercise that will focus specifically on Scotland.

The second example relates to older people. Like all western countries, we are facing issues from the growth of an ageing population, as a lot of people will be living longer and living on their own. We feel that housing has a greater role to play, whether that is through quality adaptations or by providing social and health support in partnership with others to ensure that people have a good quality of life. That would bring benefits by saving spend on acute services.

Thank you, David—I appreciate that. I thank all our witnesses for their strong contributions this morning.

11:27 Meeting suspended.













11:35 On resuming—