Item 8 relates to local government expenditure on education. The report before us follows on from the work that we did with the advisers. It makes a number of suggestions and reports back on the meeting that the clerks and I had with the minister a little while ago. Do members have any observations or points to make on the report?
I have a question on paragraph 6. Why was it not felt necessary to appoint any new advisers? We are still talking about a fairly complex financial analysis of local government expenditure. I would have thought that this is the time to have budget advisers to help us to analyse the material that is coming in.
The committee can recruit advisers if it wishes to do so. Colleagues in SPICe and clerking felt that there would be enough capacity between ourselves to report back to the committee on the information that is contained in the paper. We also felt that the advisers had provided a good service to the committee in going through the budgetary complications when they were first appointed. We did not plan to recommend that further advisers should be appointed. However, that is entirely a matter for the committee.
The issue is really whether value is added of a suitable kind at this stage—as opposed to before or after—to make doing that a worthwhile procedure. I do not have a strong view on the matter.
I have some concerns over paragraph 6. Now is the time when we will want to examine the budget lines of education spending by local authorities. The minister has announced that that is an area that he wants to examine and the committee has said previously that it finds it extremely helpful to be able to track how budget lines eventually reach front-line services. You may remember that we had an issue with children's services and child protection. I thought that we had agreed to examine that in conjunction with ministers, but I have not seen any progress. I would have thought that budget advisers would be heavily involved in that work, especially in the discussions with the minister and his officials that the minister has agreed to have. This is, therefore, a strange time not to have that support.
The point of the meeting that I had with the minister and officials was to see what could be done in that direction. We now have a formula for the way in which information should come before us for the budget process. There is lots of information hanging about, if I can put it that way, and we need to focus on bits and pieces that we want to take further.
We need to discuss the minute in appendix 1 at some stage. Paragraph 5 states:
Leaving aside the adviser issue, I do not think that the intention was to concentrate just on the Executive's bit of the education budget. First, the idea was that there would be a general remit for the budget, as usual—there will be no change in that. Secondly, however, because of the complication of where early years money goes and so on, the idea was that we would drill down not just on the Executive's bit, but on the council bit, to find out exactly what is happening in one of the areas and to try to make it manageable. That was the kind of discussion that we had previously; if I recall correctly, it was what we discussed with the minister, too. That is, in a sense, a different issue from that of the adviser, on which there is a reasonably clear view round the table.
I support Wendy Alexander's point about the benefit of having advisers. We had them in the past and they did a reasonable job. On the basis of consistency, that should be continued.
We are invited to agree to focus on early years issues and to seek comment or input from local authorities. I would agree with both those suggestions. I do not know whether this is too much to ask, but I would like to consider spending on additional needs as well.
We have done some work on that.
If we ask for that as well, would it broaden our work too much? I would like to find out what happens in different local authorities; I would like to ask each authority how it allocates money to additional needs, about the trends there and about how additional needs spending is broken down.
We could certainly carry out an exercise on that—it is within the capacity of SPICe and the clerks to do that and to agree on a questionnaire. We have some information relating to the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 about the moneys that are going into ASL at our level, which we have gone into in some depth.
There is the Audit Scotland report as well, which is very informative.
Yes. Absolutely.
To return to the question of how well we scrutinise the budget, I believe that the committee has raised its game over the past couple of years. If I recall, our report to the Finance Committee was one of the best of all the subject committees. I would be reluctant to come back from that. On the question of focusing on early years issues, we should be doing that anyway, and digging into the budget, in our inquiry into early years. We will be talking about an adviser for our inquiry later, but it would be helpful if there was some liaison between our existing advisers on the budget as well. I am very much in favour of maintaining the level of scrutiny that we have adopted to date.
I will try to summarise the position. First, there is agreement about the emphasis on early years, because it is an area that we will be considering anyway—this work will supplement what we do on early years. Secondly, given the groundwork that we have done, there is agreement that we can usefully do some further work on ASL—we can get some information from local government. Thirdly, the second bullet point in paragraph 9, about comment from local government on the February settlement, is worth pursuing anyway, regardless of any advice that we get in that regard. That would fit into the same context. Fourthly, there is a general view round the table that we should appoint or reappoint an adviser. What are we talking about in practical terms? Do we have to go through the process again to reappoint the existing people?
I am thinking about the best way of proceeding. The contract has ended, so Parliamentary Bureau approval would be needed regardless of whether the committee wished to reappoint the existing advisers or to consider new ones. The committee has made it clear that it wishes to appoint an adviser. What I am not quite sure about is the drafting of the detail of the paper that will have to go to the bureau; I am not sure whether I would need to bring a paper back to the committee again, which would take some time, or whether there might be a way of delegating authority to clear the detail, so that we can get a paper to the bureau fairly quickly.
If members want to take part in that process, we will have to put a draft round by e-mail.
I am happy with whichever way you want to expedite the matter, convener. I would add to your summing-up recommendations that, given that this is a quiet year in the Executive's budget, it would be helpful if we could schedule an advice session with the budget advisers in the autumn. We would brief them in advance that we would like a session about how we enhance transparency and scrutiny of the entirety of the spend that falls within the committee's remit. I do not know whether that needs to feature in the paper to the bureau. In fact, what is in the direct hand of the Executive is 10 per cent, not 20 per cent. It would be helpful if the budget advisers could inform us how we can get a perspective on what the other 90 per cent is delivering, so that we at least know that we have considered the issue.
There are other sources of information—for example, audit information and average spend figures on this, that and the other.
Meeting continued in private until 12:45.
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