Correspondence
Item 4 is consideration of Executive correspondence. In July, I wrote to the Minister for Finance and Public Services seeking information about the Executive's policy on the relocation of Executive units or agencies. The minister responded on 25 August and that response is before the committee. Obviously members will want to consider the issue, but I was going to suggest that we flag up the subject to the Minister for Finance and Public Services as something that we want to discuss with him at the next meeting, when he is before the committee.
I would be interested in the committee considering the matter more closely. The Executive's response is very worthy and, although I am speaking only from a selfish and parochial Dundee point of view, I do not believe that there is any evidence that the criteria to be considered as part of the decision-making process are necessarily adhered to. Dundee has a smaller percentage of civil service jobs than any other city and many other, smaller towns. When we consider the criteria used to arrive at final rankings in the minister's response, I suggest that Dundee meets 100 per cent of the weightings, yet there has been no significant location of civil service jobs to Dundee.
Before we speak to the minister, it would be worth while getting the Scottish Parliament information centre to do some research for us, to find out how many new or existing civil service jobs have been relocated and to where, and a more detailed analysis of whether the criteria that the Executive's response suggests it uses have been applied. I would be interested to see a more detailed analysis of the situation and we might want to question the minister about it.
I suppose that I am being self-indulgent in the way that I accused Fergus Ewing of being earlier, because the issue is of particular interest to Dundee. However, I suspect that it is not of interest just to me and Dundee, but to many other MSPs as well.
Although there is merit in reviewing the policy position and how that has been operationalised in the past four years, I would be unhappy if the committee got into reviewing individual cases. We could spend the next four years doing that; those are matters for subject committees.
It is appropriate to take an interest in whether the policy guidelines as set out in the Executive's response are right, and also in Kate Maclean's point about how those policy guidelines have been operationalised. However, we have to draw a clear distinction and say that it is not for the Finance Committee to review individual decisions taken under that general policy heading.
I would like to see the minister because the south of Scotland is fairly sore about not getting any of those civil service jobs either. I have a written question in to the Executive at the moment about the way in which jobs have been distributed through the various constituencies. The answer to that will be of interest to many of us.
Like Kate Maclean, I thought that the Executive response was very worthy but I also felt that it was rather woolly. I did not really know how it could be translated into practice. Although I do not want to review the decisions, I would like the Executive to give us some illustrative examples of how decisions that were made in the past have correlated with the criteria set out in its response. If we could ask the Executive before we speak to the minister we would have a bit more information as to how those criteria were used to inform past judgments.
I endorse that. It has been interesting to see the Executive's approach in black and white. However, on considering some recent decisions against the criteria set out in the Executive response—such as that on Scottish Natural Heritage and Inverness—I would say that some of those decisions are questionable.
I would depart slightly from what Wendy Alexander said. We have a duty to review how the Executive's policy is implemented. Substantial public money is spent on relocation, and if we now have published criteria for those decisions, it is right to ask strongly why the Executive has not implemented a policy based on those criteria, but has instead taken other decisions.
As the member for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber, I obviously supported and argued for the transfer of SNH's functions to Inverness. I also welcome the fact that Forest Enterprise's headquarters is coming to Inverness, and I supported that move and made representations in its favour.
I agree with what Dr Elaine Murray and Jeremy Purvis have said, but perhaps not so much with what Wendy Alexander said. If we are going to have the minister along to discuss relocation policy, it would be ridiculous if we could not ask him about SNH. The relocation of SNH is a controversial issue and, as has been said, it is hard to see how that decision can have been taken if the criteria set out in the paper, woolly as they may be, were actually applied. If we agree that it would be a good idea to have the minister along, we would look slightly absurd if we could not address the big picture. It would be a case of the emperor's new clothes if we were to skirt around what everyone knows to be true and avoid the main issue.
Taking forward Jeremy Purvis and Elaine Murray's excellent points, I suggest that we ask the Executive, prior to coming along to explain how the criteria were applied in relation to SNH, to provide us with documents showing the ranking and, in particular, the application of the weighted values of business efficiency, sustainable transport links, property suitability and availability, and socioeconomic factors. Availability of property is an important point. It is not clear to me exactly where the SNH headquarters is going to go in Inverness. There are possible candidates, but if that has not been sorted out in advance, it casts some doubt on how that criterion was applied in that case.
To sum up, my suggestion is that we should consider specific examples in a measured way, but to help us to do that in an analytic way we should have a full and frank disclosure of all the documents from the Executive. I know that many other members of the Executive parties have expressed widespread concern on those issues and would welcome an open and candid approach.
Looking at the process that triggers the relocation reviews, I note a sentence in the paper that states:
"Relocation reviews are initiated by a number of triggers."
However, a careful count tells me that there are just two. There might be a case for suggesting to the minister that other triggers could be included. Such triggers might include budget pressure within a department, recruitment problems, high staff turnover, material head count, increase in office congestion or new technology being installed and therefore creating a break point. That list could be expanded.
As Kate Maclean said, it could be helpful to look at some numbers for the period from 1999 to 2003, year by year, to see how many reviews were carried out each year, how many relocations resulted from that and how many people were relocated in the process. We could also move on to the issue of relocating sub-departments or components of departments, rather than the entire entity. New technology allows that, and having outreach into the Borders or into the Highlands would add to the relevance of the work that many departments carry out.
I support what Fergus Ewing and other members said, and especially what Kate Maclean said. However, although I am delighted that the new information commission for Scotland is to be sited in St Andrews, where I happen to live, I am not at all sure that any of those criteria work in terms of siting that commission there. St Andrews has very poor transport links, with no railway coming into the town, housing is extremely expensive and office accommodation is extremely short. If you went through the socioeconomic breakdown, you would start to question why the new commission, with its 30 or 40 valuable jobs, has gone to a place like that, which is patently not in a difficult situation in relation to jobs. Although I am delighted that it is there, siting it there does not seem to match up to any of the criteria.
I will try to summarise where we are going. There are two patterns of suggestion that we can combine.
If there is a finance risk, it would be inappropriate not to ask about SNH. However, there is a wider issue of the sponsorship of relocation policies. I want to avoid creating the impression that the Finance Committee is the only committee that examines relocation decisions. That is a point for clerking.
There are two issues. First, other committees must be able to examine the judgments that are made. Perhaps sponsor ministers, rather than the Minister for Finance and Public Services, should argue the case for relocation. There must be clarity about where ownership lies in the Executive and in committees. From members' comments, I understand that there is a widespread commitment to relocation on a continuing basis—and not just for new jobs. If those relocations are driven by the Finance and Central Services Department and are not sponsored by individual departments, there will be fewer of them and they will be more controversial. In any discussion that we conduct, we must make it clear that sponsor committees have the right to pursue these matters and that departmental ministers, rather than the Minister for Finance and Public Services, may have to answer for the decisions that are made.
Other committees will want to hold individual ministers to account for decisions that they make, which may include relocation decisions. The Finance Committee's interest is first in the substance of the policy—whether we believe it to be correct—and secondly in the correct application of the policy.
In that context, we should consider doing two things. First, Kate Maclean suggested that we ask the Scottish Parliament information centre to do some research into the previous application of the policy. That would provide us with a sketch of the relocations that have taken place and of how the process has been conducted. Secondly, Elaine Murray and Fergus Ewing suggested that we ask the Executive for exemplars of the application of the policy, illustrating the shortlisting process and how the criteria were used. Once we have that information, we will be in a good position to quiz the minister about the policy and implementation issues.
I suggest that we take the two preliminary steps that I have outlined. We should commission some Scottish Parliament information centre research and seek exemplar information from the Executive. Once we have that information, we should seek to shape the process by which we hold the Minister for Finance and Public Services to account for the overall thrust of the policy, which is his responsibility.
I agree entirely with everything that the convener said. Presumably, SNH will be one of the exemplars on which we ask the Executive to comment specifically.
The exemplars for which we will ask are all the major relocations.
That is fine.
Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
I do not know whether it is competent for the committee to consider this matter, but I raised it with the convener after last week's debate on the Scottish economy. I was irked, not so much by Fergus Ewing's claim that I opposed our holding an inquiry into the Scottish water industry, but by the fact that I was not able to respond to it in the debate. If Fergus Ewing examines the minutes for our meeting of 24 June, he will find that I did not oppose our holding an inquiry into Scottish Water. In fact, I opposed the time scale that he was advocating for that inquiry. I would have made that point if I had been allowed to speak in the debate. I was scheduled to speak, but because various members overran I did not have an opportunity to do so. I would like to make the point now. Along with five other members, I voted against the time scale of Fergus Ewing's proposed inquiry, not against holding an inquiry into the water industry per se.
Fergus Ewing may respond briefly, but I do not want members to squabble about this issue here.
I thought that Ted Brocklebank should have had the opportunity to make his comments last week. He has made them now and I hope to work with him. Is he now in favour of conducting an inquiry into the water industry?
Eventually, yes.
That is not an issue at this point. We must stick to the agenda.
Meeting closed at 11:54.