Finance Committee, 13 Mar 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 13, 2001

Official Report 125KB pdf

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Budget Process 2002-03

We move swiftly on to item 6. The letter from the Minister for Finance and Local Government, in response to my letter on improving the annual expenditure report, relates to this item. The letter looks rather like a company's profits warning—not because it warns about profits, but because it suggests how the new annual expenditure report will look. I am not entirely happy with it.

I think that the convener, on behalf of the committee, should ask the minister to detail how he deals with performance monitoring and how that is reviewed—even though he is building in a new system. The Executive makes decisions now. I presume that it uses some measures, otherwise it would blindly agree to votes in the budget. It would help if the minister explained what he does while we consider what he should do in the longer term.

That is a fair point.

I realise that it will not be possible to achieve all that we have asked for in the coming year. However, I am interested in whether members share my concern that the linkage between expenditure and aims will take a few years to develop fully. That is not quite what the committee had in mind when we drew the issue to the minister's attention.

I agree. The link should be made as soon as humanly possible. I thought that it was part of the Government's programme. It would be fine if we made that point as strongly as possible through you, convener.

Secondary to that are the other issues that we have raised consistently in the past two years. I guess from the letter that we can assume that those requests will all be accommodated, which would be a huge step in the right direction.

We can assume that in as much as the issues are not mentioned as exceptions.

Exactly. We can recognise that as a step forward, which is at least progress. I guess that we can keep up the pressure.

We accept that considerable progress will take place. However, I will write on behalf of the committee to say that we need further clarification at the least about the import of some of the issues that are mentioned in the letter.

May I seek clarification from Callum Thomson on another question? The letter says that the annual expenditure report is due to be published on 30 March. What are the committee's or the chamber's activities around that date likely to be?

The committee meets on 27 March. I do not think that we are scheduled to meet in the following week.

We are now. In addition, I hope that Scottish Executive officials will give a briefing on the AER. That will be not a formal committee meeting, but an informal chance for members to tease out some of the issues.

So we will meet in April and there will be no plenary debate on the AER until we report on it.

Exactly. That will not happen until just before the summer recess starts.

The debate raises the issue of the written agreement between us and the previous Minister for Finance. I presume that we ought to clarify that by mutually agreeing a time scale with the minister on the implementation of what we seek.

I agree. However, we must not forget that our written agreements are not with the minister, but with the Scottish Executive—the correct way of describing it is with ministers as a whole. The agreements should not change or be open to a differing interpretation just because a new minister is in place.

I accept that, but in light of the letter, the Parliament is entitled to ask for a time scale to debate with the minister acting on behalf of the Executive.

Would that be a time scale for the full implementation of our recommendations?

Yes.

We will take up that point in the letter. When we receive a response, we will revisit the issue.

We move on to agenda item 7, which we have agreed to take in private.

Meeting continued in private until 12:15.