Finance Committee, 19 Dec 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 19, 2000

Official Report 143KB pdf

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External Research

The deputy convener had a meeting with Professor Arthur Midwinter last week and will give us an update.

Last week, Anne Peat—the senior assistant clerk—and I, with Murray McVicar and Connie Smith from the Scottish Parliament information centre, met Arthur Midwinter, who advised us of his progress. He is doing research on the creation of a mechanism for gauging the real inflation across expenditure programmes and on what scope there is for shifting expenditure between the budget headings.

He advised us that the research is going well and that the field work and data analysis for part 1, which is to find out whether it is feasible to establish a mechanism for gauging real inflation, is complete. He said that there was much interest in his work from various people in various areas. He thinks that he will have finished the final draft report of part 1 by Friday 22 December, although he had hoped to have it with us for today. His work has been slightly delayed due to the illness of one of the researchers. We will get copies of the final draft report of part 1 in the first week of January. I believe that the report will be around 5,000 words but will contain an executive summary. Professor Midwinter will be able to attend the committee in January to present his key findings, which we will all find extremely interesting. I believe that that has been provisionally scheduled for 16 January.

Only one interview remains to be done in relation to part 2 of the research, which concerns the scope for shifting expenditure between budget headings. The second part of the research should be completed by the end of February.

We will have the report in advance of our meeting. If it is 5,000 words long, it is important that we have a chance to read it so that we can ask meaningful questions. We look forward to receiving it.

Are there any findings yet?

I would rather not go into that today. The report will be interesting and we would be better to leave discussion of the matters that it deals with until January.

Will there be a further report back on the progress that has been made?

Professor Midwinter's findings will interest us when we read them but, in some areas, they are not quite what we expected them to be. We should wait until we have the final draft report so that we can read it at our leisure and discuss it at length.

That is fair enough. We have asked Professor Midwinter to prepare a report, not an interim report. It is reasonable for us to wait until the report is completed. The matter will be on the agenda of our first meeting after the recess, which is on 16 January.