Finance Committee, 30 Jan 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 30, 2001

Official Report 215KB pdf

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Future Inquiries

As members will know, we will take evidence for our resource accounting and budgeting inquiry until the middle of March. Thereafter, we will have a period of relative calm. The beginning of April is also the beginning of the new budget process, but we should have some time in April and May before we get into stage 2 of the budget process. We will not have as much to do at stage 1 as we will at stage 2. However, we might want to consider how we handle that.

We discussed the possibility of appointing reporters to various committees and having direct links with the committees at stage 1. We might want to give additional advice to the committees, even if we decide not to go so far as to appoint reporters. We need to give some consideration to how we will fill that gap. We do not need to reach definitive decisions today and time is a little tight, given that the previous item ran on 10 minutes longer than I had intended.

A possible inquiry that was raised at the very first meeting and that may be opportune, given the European funding inquiry and the RAB inquiry that we are currently pursuing, is one into the implications of the Barnett formula. I would like to suggest that as an option.

Okay. The European funding inquiry is another matter. We suspended that back in September for reasons that are well known and we are not yet in a position to reactivate it. The Barnett formula was one of the initial suggestions. When we discussed it about a year ago, we also talked about holding an inquiry on the tax-varying power and another on the use of public-private partnership schemes. Those were on our forward agenda about this time last year.

We mentioned taking a further look at the budget process. Is that already timetabled into our activities?

Our review of the first year?

Yes.

It is not part of the timetable. By the end of March, we will be in a position to begin to assess it.

It strikes me that that slot, before we get into next year's budget cycle, would be an appropriate time to pull together the various different strands.

If we decide to begin an inquiry into the Barnett formula, the tax-varying power or PPPs, that will demand a substantial amount of time. Time will always be a factor, but it will be particularly relevant in April and May because in June we begin our review of stage 1 of the budget process and we must sift the comments of all the committees. We do not have a clear view of when we intend to start the budget review. As far as possible, we would like it to inform the process for the second full year, although that might be rather optimistic. It is more likely to be of real value for the third year of the process—the one beginning in 2002. We have a relatively short time; April encompasses the Easter recess, so that removes two weeks.

I cannot see why it would take more than another meeting to knock out a paper on the budget review, given the substantial work that we have done over the past few months. It simply needs to be drawn together. I agree with Elaine Thomson that it would be wise to do that in advance of the next stage 1 budget process.

We were in a similar position this time last year when we were considering future inquiries. Irrespective of which inquiry we choose to pursue, we want to undertake substantial inquiries outside the budget process, and should commence as soon as possible on a timetable that can be accommodated. We do not have to report on that inquiry before the summer. However, if we choose a substantial matter, we should commence the process as soon as possible, because it will take some time to gather the evidence. The committee should show that it is undertaking substantial pieces of work outside the budget process.

I accept that.

We have scope to probe the mysteries of joined-up government, which everyone talks about but does not practice. Obviously, we do not want to duplicate what any other committee is doing or might do, but it would be fruitful for us to take a specific issue and follow it through the various Government departments that should be dealing with it. We might find no joined-up government and we might find out how to do things better. For example, to get people healthy and to ensure that they do not get ill, cash could be shifted from the health account to the sport account. That kind of budget activity does not seem to happen. This may be a longer-term project of the sort that Andrew Wilson mentioned, but we could track specific aspects of government to see whether they are joined up.

That is an interesting concept. Before we could proceed with such an inquiry, we would need to pin down its remit. However, I can certainly see the merit in having it. We will note Donald Gorrie's idea as something that we can come to later; such an inquiry could be valuable.

Is Donald Gorrie's proposal not something that should be done by the subject committees, which are cross-cutting by their very nature? The committees cross between departments, so perhaps we should let them look into the matter before we review it.

On Elaine Thomson's point, we need to have another short, sharp bite at tidying up what we have learned from the budget process this year. That would clear the decks. Perhaps the clerks could take the list of proposed subjects for inquiries, consider the time and resource implications, determine what sources of information we would require and produce a short paper for the next meeting or the one after that. That would allow us to review what is achievable and reasonable, so that—as Andrew Wilson suggests—we can come to some conclusions by the summer.

The clerks will note those points. We will return to this matter either next week or the week after, because we need to have a clear idea of what the committee will be doing.