Item 3 is a paper on cross-cutting expenditure reviews. It gives an overview of the cross-cutting work that has been done so far and highlights some of the experiences that have been gained and some of the difficulties that we have encountered as a result of the approach that we decided to take. The paper suggests possible alterations to that approach in the future, which is obviously merely advice for a future committee, which may or may not decide to adopt the proposed approach. Do members have any comments?
I would like to make a couple of points. Paragraph 5 says:
I support Alasdair Morgan's position. One of the things that has pushed the committee towards looking at cross-cutting expenditure is the fact that there has been a distinct lack of transparency on how some of the policy objectives and funding streams come together. We pick up on a topic for a cross-cutting review not because money is being spent on it but because the topic is important in policy terms. We therefore want to get a handle on the funding streams that are involved and, through those, on the accountability of the various Executive departments and the appropriate ministers.
There is probably general agreement on those points. One of the recommendations is that the committee should in future limit itself to one cross-cutting review at a time, which would mean that matters could be considered by the full committee rather than the committee's being split up.
Yes. I am not clear what is meant by the
I interpret it to mean that cross-cutting reviews should be concentrated on areas in which we have our hands on the levers and that they should not move off into areas of policy that are for the Westminster Parliament rather than for the Scottish Parliament.
Behind that recommendation was the fact that it struck us during the children in poverty review that, although the Executive has a clear objective on that issue, many of the methods of reaching that objective are contained within social security budgets, which are reserved to Westminster. It was therefore difficult to see how the committee could get involved in influencing such matters. That is why we thought that a sensible criterion for future cross-cutting reviews might be that the committee should get involved only in areas in which solutions are open to it.
The problem is that many other issues, such as employment and housing, clearly have an impact on children in poverty. In deciding that the drivers for a policy objective were not devolved to Scotland, one might be assuming the result of the inquiry before one had undertaken the investigation. An objective might at first sight seem to be something over which Westminster has all the power, but it might, once we examine the problem, turn out that that is not the case. I am not making a point about devolved powers versus reserved powers; rather, I wonder whether that criterion is really helpful.
I take the point, but the paper mentions that the area for consideration could be "mostly devolved" to Scotland. It is a good point that other problems that the Scottish Parliament can do something about may feed into the policy objective.
We could ask the clerks to revise the wording so that it better explains the meaning. I agree that the wording is perhaps not as clear as it could be.
I want to make a point about the final bullet point in paragraph 7, which mentions a matter of some importance to the Parliament, which is:
The paper recognises that although the informal meetings were well intentioned, the reality is that formal meetings would have been more useful. That is certainly the case for evidence taking.