Finance Committee, 01 Feb 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 1, 2000

Official Report 238KB pdf

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Scottish Executive Finance Functions

Members have in front of them the revised wording for the remit of our inquiry. You will note in lines 3 and 4 of the second paragraph the words

"how the finance function operates in policy areas which cut across Executive departments."

If I remember correctly, that was the main issue that members raised at our meeting a fortnight ago. It has now been included. I understand that no amendments to the remit have been submitted to the clerks. Do we agree the remit for the inquiry?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. The provisional programme for the inquiry, extending to the end of March, is also set out. It includes a logical and varied series of meetings. Next week we will have the benefit of having Graham Leicester with us, and we can expand on some of the items then. Do members have any comments?

I pointed out to the clerk that the programme would have us back here the morning after the mini recess. Many of us had already organised activities in advance, when we thought that we were going to be away for a week. If we are going to have a meeting on 15 February, is it possible to have it start a little later, because many people will be travelling back a fair distance from other parts of the country and from abroad.

We will come back to that in a moment.

I was thinking about who would be the best person to attend our evidence-taking session on 15 February and came up with the name of Peter Hennessy. His agenda is very tight, but he is the most published commentator on the civil service and would be able to provide an external perspective.

The programme mentions Sir Russell Hillhouse as a possible witness from within the civil service. Was anyone else considered?

His name appears at the moment because I understand that the current system was his brainchild. We had expected that, at the meeting of 14 March, current civil servants would give their views on the present structure from the post-devolution perspective.

I want to back up Andrew Wilson's point about Peter Hennessy. However, I think that he will be difficult to get at short notice.

To pick up on David Davidson's point, this programme allows for a certain amount of slippage before Easter, which is not until mid-April. It might be possible to push everything back and miss out the meeting of 15 February.

Even if we agreed to invite Peter Hennessy and he was available for 15 February, David Davidson has made the point that members from more distant constituencies could have difficulty attending.

When the recess dates were first announced through our business manager way before Christmas, the idea was that the Parliament would be closed for a week in February. As a result, many people booked holidays so that they could be away for that time. A couple of weeks back, it was announced that Parliament would be closed only on the Friday and the Monday, which still allows people a break. If the committee has to meet during that time, that is fine—if we have to do the business, we have to do the business. However, if people—of whom I will be one—have some distance to travel back, a slightly later start would enable us to get here. If there is slippage in the system and there is difficulty in giving a witness sufficient notice, perhaps we should be more flexible and organise our programme around what witnesses can manage.

Most members will know of Peter Hennessy. Is there general agreement that we should seek to have him give us the benefit of his experience and ideas at some stage? It remains to be seen whether that will be possible for 15 February.

Members indicated agreement.

We will ask the clerks to attempt to have Peter Hennessy come on that date. If that is too short notice, as there is probably no other business we could conduct on 15 February, we will have to leave a gap. I am not looking for extra work, but we have already missed two weeks since we returned from the Christmas recess and we do not want to leave too many gaps. However, if we must, we must.

David, you suggested a later starting time for the meeting of 15 February. What do you have in mind—10:30?

That would be fine.

I ask members to bear that in mind when making lunch time commitments on Tuesday 15 February, so that if Peter Hennessy does come, we do not have members leaving before he has finished giving evidence.