Budget Process 2002-03
We have received a response to our stage 1 report from the minister, which was also circulated at our previous meeting as part of our consideration of the budget process. I welcome Professor Brian Ashcroft—our adviser for the budget process—to the committee. Do you have any initial comments on the minister's response to our stage 1 report?
Professor Brian Ashcroft (Adviser):
I have not looked at that report, to be honest. I was reading the draft budget.
Members of the committee have had an opportunity to consider the minister's response. Does any member wish to say something about it?
Underlying the response is the notion that members of the Scottish Parliament have unlimited access to civil servants in the departments that are responsible for the briefs with which members deal. Although I have had arrangements with the current and previous finance ministers in specific areas—as I have had with another minister—such arrangements were specific and agreed. Within the rules that govern civil service activity are certain procedures that allow for such exchange, but only in limited circumstances.
We should write to the Minister for Finance and Local Government about that, because he is virtually suggesting that each committee should deal directly with the department without going through him. That is novel, so it is important to clarify the situation. Paragraph 7 uses the phrase
"through engagement with their departments".
I do not think that the minister has grasped what we meant by asking for such detail. It is all very well for him to say that we divide funding into income and expenditure, but we must track from where funding and spending proposals have come. It might be that funding had been announced previously and is now in a reserve or part of end-year flexibility because it was not spent.
One of our complaints is that we have never known how the budgets have been rolled out and whether they have been spent. We just hear sudden announcements about flexibility, but we do know know whether the money is new or re-aligned money. Much of that confusion could be avoided if we received the details for which we asked. I accept that a work load is involved, but if we are to have transparent and open discussions with ministers and departments about the roll-out of the budget and how it is identified for the public's consumption, we must stand our ground while allowing compromise and realism to creep in.
In paragraph 9, the minister said that he did not want documents to
"become an encyclopaedia of everything that the Executive publishes."
However, we want to know whether some moneys have been re-announced or re-aligned, because not knowing that is a difficulty that we have experienced during the past two years. The process is growing and I am not arguing about that because improvements have been made, but knowing about such matters is a key point of the agenda that the committee must pursue. It is all very well saying that we are not the Audit Committee, but that committee concentrates on what happens after the event. We try to get in ahead of the event and approve and consider alternatives to budget proposals. That means that we must have complete transparency from the minister.
I have a similar point to make about paragraph 6. The minister is dismissive of identifying absolutely the source of finances. He is willing to go along with the idea of giving the net figure, but we want to know in detail the source of the finances. Last year, there were savings of £289 million, but it took some time and many questions to gain such knowledge. Such information should be given automatically. We should not have to dig for it. I am not too happy with the minister's response to item 6. My complaints are probably along the same lines as David Davidson's.
However, I have some sympathy for the minister, given the draft budget—big, fat document that it is—but it is important to know what changes have taken place, why they have taken place and what will be their likely impact on spending programmes. If we do not receive such information, we have to hand only gross figures, about which it is difficult to make meaningful and informed comment.
David Davidson made the point about the minister's suggestion that it is the job of subject committees to pick up most of the detail. That is fine and well, but having been a member of a subject committee, I can say that it is not necessarily obvious in the time that is available whether subject committees can go into such detail. They tend to focus on one or two areas within the department and take the rest as read in that specific year. It is incumbent on the Finance Committee to look at the whole picture, but we cannot do that unless we have the encyclopaedia in front of us—even although the minister is unwilling to make it available.
That point has been well made and the idea that subject committees could take on more detailed scrutiny than they do currently is fanciful at this stage. Matters might improve, however, if we can develop our support when examining the budget, and if our adviser is given more time from which other committees can benefit. We can feed such issues into our discussions with the minister, which I confirm will be on the afternoon of Tuesday 23 October. That meeting could not take place on 30 October.
By and large, I believe that the minister's responses are positive. He said that he would explore ways in which to deal with many of our suggestions. However, at point 2, he said:
"I would like to take that opportunity to make the first moves towards a budgeting system that gave more emphasis to outputs and the impact of expenditure."
What does the minister mean by that? How would such a system operate? He goes on to say:
"I believe it would be very difficult to set out a document with timescales at present."
I have written "Why?" beside that sentence. We must have an explanation for such a statement, because time scales are important.
As for the subject committees, mention is made at point 12 of putting forward the information that is sought
"in either the AER … or in a separate memorandum to the Committee."
I want clarification of whether that refers to this committee or a subject committee. I think that it probably means that the subject committee would have to ensure that the Finance Committee was given copies of complete documentation.
In the final sentence of his response, the minister says that he would be happy to discuss those points in more detail. We could take up that invitation either during our stage 2 consideration of the budget process or at our meeting on 23 October.
I return to the comment that you made about point 2 in the minister's letter. We had some informal discussion with Peter Peacock, if I remember rightly, about the move towards outcome budgeting. The committee felt that that was helpful to the subject committees, which might not be going through the pounds, shillings and pence, but are examining the delivery and design of services. When he appeared before the committee at its meeting in Perth, Peter Peacock agreed to that in the general discussion. Perhaps the clerks could have a look at the Official Report to check what he said, but that rings a bell for me.
It is an important step for the ministerial team to acknowledge that there is a requirement for outcome budgeting, because it would also be helpful to those who participate in public services, either as recipients or as workers. It would also help the public's general understanding. They do not understand how much it costs to run a policeman on the beat, but how often they see one. That is part of a conceptual approach to improving budgeting. I find that acknowledgment rewarding.
If members have no further points to make, we shall note the minister's response and the issues that have been raised, with a view to taking those issues up with the minister at a suitable opportunity. We shall return to Brian Ashcroft when we examine the draft budget itself.