Finance Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 16, 2000

Official Report 206KB pdf

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Education and Training (Scotland) Bill

The second bill before us today is the Education and Training (Scotland) Bill; there is a financial memorandum on page 4 of the explanatory notes. Some considerable costs are outlined for the Scottish Administration—£16.5 million in the first two years of the operation. Paragraph 17 states that the total cost of paying grants in the first two years would be in the region of £23 million. I do not think that the figures seem out of line with reasonable expectations.

If I have understood paragraph 15 correctly, the cost of running the service is £4 million.

Yes, the running costs of the customer services provider could be £4 million over the first two years of the operation.

All the figures relate to the first two years. So, out of a total spend of £23 million, the administrative costs will be around 18 per cent or 20 per cent. On top of that, advertising costs will amount to £2.5 million. Therefore, the amount of money that will go to the consumer will be £16.5 million, and the costs of administering, advertising and promoting will be £6.5 million.

How much of that will be start-up costs and how much will be permanent administration costs? In the long term, if the administrative system—without the marketing and promotion—continues to cost 25 per cent of the value of the service, I would have some serious questions to ask.

What Richard has said strikes me as perfectly sensible and germane. We should find out more before we proceed with this, because the figures suggest that there is a problem with this policy area. There is a reason for not accepting the memorandum at this stage.

We can defer consideration until our next meeting and ask for someone from the enterprise and lifelong learning department to give evidence and to answer specific points.

The only point about which I am concerned is paragraph 16. It seems fair enough that

"Costs related to marketing will be dependent on levels of take-up".

However, in view of the level of Government expenditure on marketing and advertising, I would like some more detail on those costs. I have no concern about research and evaluation as that seems sensible. I would like to know how long the Executive waits before it undertakes an extra marketing programme, what happens if the money is not used, and so on. It is sensible for the Executive to say that those costs will be dependent on take-up, but how long does it wait? I would like to have a background note on that because such a large amount of money is involved.

Would we be content to receive a background note on the points that Keith Raffan and Richard Simpson have raised, rather than asking for an official to appear before us?

I support Richard Simpson's position on this. It would be helpful if the Executive gave us comparators with other schemes and administrative exercises that are conducted on behalf of the Executive to find out whether the figures in the memorandum are the norm. If they are, that may lead us to other questions. If they are not, why not? The amount seems tremendously high. Presumably an unknown risk factor must be built in, about which we ought to know.

I am not sure that there are any obvious comparators. The question is whether we want to speak to an official next week—we have other business next week—or whether we want something in writing, which we can consider before we return to the matter.

I suggest that we seek background notes initially.

Callum Thomson is reminding me that the stage 1 debate is on 25 May, so we will have to take a decision next week.

We cannot be bounced by the Executive's timetable. If the Executive fails to give us information in advance of sufficient depth and quality, it is not our problem. That has happened time and again. My concern about next week is that we have an inquiry under way and we do not want to take away too much time away from it, as we have done today.

That is also my concern.

We have timetabling problems, as every committee seems to have. However, the issues that have been raised, especially on comparators, seem to be wider and more significant. It might be useful to schedule a guillotine session with an official on this—we should try to restrict the item on the agenda to five or 10 minutes.

The points that have been raised will be in the Official Report and anyone appearing before us will know exactly what we want to ask. We would have to exercise discipline and not go into other areas relating to the bill. If we restrict ourselves to the points that have been raised, we can ask officials to attend for a 15-minute slot next week. Do not forget that this is a responsibility that we are trying to offload, so we should not make too much of it at this stage.

Perhaps we could start 15 minutes earlier next week.

That gives Elaine Thomson difficulties, as she travels down from Aberdeen in the morning. However, I have just been reminded that next week is not a normal week, as we are meeting at 1 o'clock. We will meet at 12.45 pm, subject to the availability of the room—there are three sets of committee meetings next Tuesday. We will leave that in the hands of the clerks; members will be advised in due course. We will defer our decision on the financial memorandum of the Education and Training (Scotland) Bill.

As we agreed at the start of the meeting, item 4 will be taken in private.

Meeting continued in private.