Members have the briefing note prepared by Sarah and her colleagues on the budget process, which leads us to consider our relationship with other committees in the budget process.
The fifth paragraph of the members' briefing note on the annual budget process says:
I do not know that it is public. It was information that came to me from the minister's office, when I checked and was trying to schedule meetings. I wrote "will" and ought more properly to have written "should". I was told by the Executive that that date was when it expected to have the next details ready.
I would just like to comment, Mike, that, if I recall correctly, the Minister for Finance, during his statement, said that the numbers would be available at the end of the month. It is no big deal, but it is a fortnight's slippage. This is the same issue that we have been harping on about.
The timing is extremely tight.
It is tight. We do not have a full year.
Even so, we have three weeks, basically.
But in terms of the consultation process with the other committees, would you accept that we do not have the opportunity or time to do that this year and that we should await the first full year to institute the process? I think that that is the commonsense approach.
What if some of the other committees wish to raise points about areas of expertise?
If they want to make representations to us, they can. We should not necessarily ask them to do that. They will do when the process runs in full.
What is the procedure for this? After we have come to an agreement on this matter, do you inform the conveners of the other subject committees of what we propose to them? I am talking in terms of there not being a consultation exercise this year, although we cannot dictate things.
I think that I would have to do that formally.
I suggest that a decision of this committee be reported to other subject committees in the context of considering how this year's and next year's budgets could best be approached, and stating how this committee thought that it would probably be unfeasible to include consultation fully this year. If any individual subject committee wishes to have a session on the budget, they are entirely within their locus to do so.
I welcome the invitation to Brian Ashcroft. I think that it is a good idea.
I was going to come on to that. Almost all of us were at the presentation in August. Professor Ashcroft was there, and gave useful input to it. If he could come again, there would be a general welcome for that.
I would also like to make the point that, of the presentations that we received, the two which related most to the budget were those of Stephen Boyle and Brian Ashcroft. They were the most focused on it.
Was Stephen Boyle from the Royal Bank of Scotland?
Yes. It might be worth while to ask him to do the same number-crunching that he did before.
I should stress that Professor Ashcroft has not yet been able to say whether he will be able to attend. We may be looking elsewhere anyway.
Is that in general, Sarah, or does it specifically concern 16 November?
That specific date.
If he cannot come on 16 November, do we have any flexibility as to other dates? I do not have a calendar in front of me at the moment.
We have some flexibility, but I expect that, having heard from an external expert, members will probably want to take evidence from the minister and will probably want a week between the two sessions. There is always the possibility of arranging a meeting of this committee at a time outwith our normal slot.
What is the ultimate deadline—30 November?
As I understand, the Parliamentary Bureau has yet to determine a date on which a plenary debate will happen, but the indications that I have had are that it will be in the first week of December. That is by no means set in stone.
We will await word from Sarah on whether Brian Ashcroft can come on the 16th. Are we also agreeing to have Stephen Boyle on the same day, if he is available?
If necessary, could we have that as a day session, as opposed to a three-hour slot? Would there be enough time for both of them to deal with what they want to deal with in three hours?
I do not think that anyone can know. Three hours ought to be long enough, surely. We will timetable it on the basis that it should be a full session, which we have never used hitherto. This is one of our longest meetings so far. We would have two and three quarter hours if we start at 9.45 am. That should be enough.
We are basically going through a routine, are we not? As you said earlier, we are limited in terms of time. We will have next to no influence on it. Well, that is the truth, is it not? Come on—three weeks.
Is that the Liberal view?
It is very unsatisfactory, but I suppose that there is no way round it.
If there are no other points on that issue, we should begin to look at the way in which the consultation process might be dealt with in future years. There are a number of suggestions in the briefing paper which raise some important questions. I open up the issue for general debate on those points and how we might proceed. It would be helpful if we had a clear idea to send out to other committees or that I can talk about to other conveners.
I understand the points made. They are good points, but the general issue that we have to wrestle with is that the overall budget is drawn up in a zero sum context. However, the principles of a budget debate are more about shifting between areas than spending priorities within areas. I am against requiring subject committees to come up with zero sums. It is for us to digest and come up with our views.
I agree with Andrew that it is far too restrictive for any committee to think only within its own budget. However, the duty should be on the committees at least to think about where the money is coming from—that is not up to us. Members should be able to express a view on other budgets. Subject committees should be required to recommend where any extra money that they want should come from; it does not have to come from within their own budgets. I do not know how much detail they are expected to deliver. That might be too much for them.
If you ask the Health and Community Care Committee, of which I am a member, to start saying where in home affairs it wishes to pinch money from, we will be there not for three weeks but for two years and we will never get anything done. The subject committee's job is to look at what needs to be spent and where. The job of the Executive, and of this committee, is to find the money to provide what is absolutely necessary.
I agree with Richard. Subject committees cannot be expected to look at the bigger picture and say that they will take money from another area to strengthen their own budgets. It will turn into a big wish list of extra money needed for every single area. Their remit should be clearly defined in terms of prioritisation within the budgets that they are allocated, although they may wish to prioritise specific areas where extra funds have to be found outwith their own budgets. Ultimately, the overall examination of the spending balance among all the different departments must be debated in this committee.
The problem there is that all the committees could make recommendations about extra areas of expenditure. It is up to this committee to decide where the money will be found, but each of the committees must recognise that it too has a duty to find money, not just to spend it. That is the key point.
I have some concerns about the bottom three bullet points. Reporters cannot go to a subject committee to police it or to guide it in its deliberations, so I am not quite sure what they are supposed to do. They almost certainly should not be members of that committee because they would be attending it with that hat on, and that hat alone.
I am not sure that a committee would want to spend a day with us. Fairly specific guidance should be given to each committee, or they will all work in different ways. It may be that it should be clearly stated in the guidance that if the committee is going to make significant changes to a certain percentage or sum within the budget, then it will automatically be asked to come and explain that. That may make committees more responsible about what they do. They must look for savings too.
In respect of the work that committees do on the budgets that are allocated to their areas of responsibility, each subject committee has a duty to look very carefully at what that money is spent on. They must not become part of the territorial debate that says that if we have £400 million to spend now, we will have it for ever—taking inflation into account. What they should be doing is asking whether that £400 million is being spent as effectively as it might be and delivering the greatest impact for the public purse.
Committees have to look at the previous expenditure and consider whether it has been well spent. We should then examine the areas in which there should be disinvestment. After that, we should ask in which areas people think that there should be additional investment, including replacement of the disinvestment that they have just recommended. That should be a priority.
It is important to encourage all the committees to get into those habits with each inquiry. For example, I am a member of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into drug misuse in deprived communities. We may come up with recommendations that will have cost implications. Committees must be aware of the cost implications of all the inquiries that they undertake throughout the year and of the total cost. That follows on from Richard's point. We must encourage them to be aware of the cost implications of their inquiries, unlike select committees in the House of Commons.
Have you had any discussions with other conveners about their expectations? Has any serious consideration been given to that?
The conveners committee is still developing and has not been discussing anything as specific as that. It has been talking about staffing matters and resourcing. We should try to get the conveners together to discuss the issue. We will not be making decisions about it today, but we may want to put some proposals to conveners that they could put to their committees before we finalise matters. We do not want to issue a diktat about how they will operate; we want to be as inclusive as possible.
There is also a role for the Audit Committee, which will have a greater input as things get going.
There are also a couple of proposals about the Finance Committee taking evidence from subject committees. There could be situations in which that might be appropriate. David made a good point about reporters. That would be a good way for this committee to keep in touch with others. Any of us can sit in on any committee at any time, but a more specific role involving attending and reporting back might be appropriate, depending on what the committee is considering. There are formal rules on reporting; there cannot be more than one reporter. We can do things as formally or as informally as we want, but the important thing is to make contact with committees so that we know what they are doing.
Andrew and I sat in on the European Committee meeting on structural funds last week. That is the kind of thing that we should be doing for committee matters that have financial implications.
We want a more formal system of reporting back to this committee about what other committees are saying.
If we are reporting back from committees, especially on prioritisation and bids for extra finance, we need some independent assessment to give us some background to the issue. We do not have that expertise in this committee. Various committees have their own priorities when it comes to the allocation of funds. If we are faced with decisions about that, we may need independent information to question the validity of the various claims. That is something that we must be aware of.
Sarah, have we had enough discussion to put together a draft proposal for the other conveners? I suspect that other conveners have probably not given the matter much thought. They have been busy getting involved in their own subject areas and developing their forward programmes and they may want time to consider this.
We have enough to put together a paper for conveners and also perhaps to adopt a pro forma for approaching an inquiry into budget proposals. It might also be fruitful to speak to either Professor Ashcroft or Stephen Boyle about how the Finance Committee is to exercise judgment when weighing up seemingly conflicting bids for money. That is something on which they would be well placed to advise us, and we might want to speak to them in the next couple of weeks.
Are there any other points? If not, I thank members for their attendance and close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 11:41.