Audit Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Official Report 227KB pdf

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Debate in Parliament

Item 2 is consideration of a paper on the possibility of holding a debate in the Parliament on Audit Committee business. Members have had the opportunity to read the paper and will recall that it was inspired by our visit to Westminster, where we learned that debates on Public Accounts Committee business take place, in which all members of the Westminster Parliament have the opportunity to take part. The paper explores possible approaches to seeking an Audit Committee debate to enable members of the Scottish Parliament who are not members of this committee to discuss our work and reports.

The paper lays out a number of options. I will go over them for the benefit of those who are listening to or watching the meeting. Option 1 is to debate a single report, which would allow members to debate an issue, after which the appropriate minister could respond. Option 2 is a general debate on the Audit Committee's work, perhaps based on our annual report, which would allow a number of issues to be explored that pertained to the reports that we have done in the year and the issues that we have considered. The obvious difficulty with that approach—although I do not say that it is insurmountable—is that of finding a minister to respond, given that they would have to cover a variety of issues. That route would require further work by the clerks to explore how such a debate might be achieved.

Option 3 is a thematic debate, not on a particular report by the committee, but on a general theme that covers a body of work that we have completed by issuing a number of reports. For instance, we have produced a number of reports on health matters. Another example would be further education, on which, over several years, the Audit Committee has produced a number of reports. There are a variety of opportunities. Option 3 would at least allow a minister to respond to the debate. I will flag up another option that might be possible, but which would have difficulties. We could debate Audit Scotland's annual report, but the difficulty of debating the work of Audit Scotland, which is accountable to the Parliament, is that there would be no minister to respond to the debate.

Certain issues arise from the options. We would have to ask the clerks to explore the procedural matters further and to get the Executive's views. It is not necessary for us to decide today what we want to do, but if members share their views or give a steer to the clerks, we could put together a new paper for our away day—which will probably be in September—when we can work through the issue more carefully. The issue has been on the table for a good number of months now and, as the summer recess is approaching, if we are to discuss the issue at the away day, it would be useful if members expressed their views now.

Your introduction has explained the difficulties, convener. Because of the range of reports and their in-depth nature, it is difficult to discern what constitutes a typical report of the committee. Therefore, a debate on a single report would have too narrow a focus and would simply duplicate work that we have already done. Equally, a general debate might be too diffuse and unfocused. That would not reflect our work, which is usually focused and highly specific and which usually leads to specific recommendations for practical action. Therefore, I tend towards a thematic debate on a wider set of issues. A debate on a general theme would be useful and could lead to general conclusions that apply to the range of Government services or to a specific Government department.

I take a slightly different view. It would be much better for us to have as our first debate a subject that is clearly focused and makes parliamentary and external perception of what we are doing easier. Things change all the time, and I see no harm in revisiting one of the big areas—we cover a lot of different health issues, for instance. Having the Minister for Health and Community Care respond to a debate on the work of the Audit Committee could be extremely productive and could excite a great deal of interest. We want people to know what we are doing and to be interested in it. Surely that is part of what we are about.

A further possibility is that of not treating the options as mutually exclusive. If we were to say that we wanted a general theme for a debate to be health, for example, or a particular aspect of health, we might frame the motion around the fact that we are about to publish a report into the overview of finance in the health service. Any such debate in the chamber would not happen until October or perhaps November at the earliest, depending on the availability of time. We have to seek agreement from the Conveners Group if we are to make a bid for available committee time in the chamber.

I use the context of an individual report—although it is difficult to know at this stage which report might be chosen—to give the committee an idea of where the suggested thematic approach comes from. However, the options might work together.

We should definitely have a parliamentary debate, not just because it is only fair that we give our 122 colleagues an opportunity to share in the delights of the analysis that we have been engaged in for the past couple of years, but because a lot of the work that we have been doing complements many of the policy debates that have taken place elsewhere, both in other committees and in the chamber. I was interested to listen to the comments of Andrew Walker, the health economist, on the Kerr report last week. He spoke about how the report had set out—as he put it—a structure for the way forward in the health service but had not yet set out what the engine was going to be. Much of our discussion has been around the question of the engine, not just in the health service but in public services more generally, and about how we make improvements when shortcomings are identified. How is action taken on that? How is learning shared, not just within but between public services, on a whole host of areas, such as information technology development or management skills, that have a wider resonance beyond an individual report that we have been considering?

All that leads me to suggest that we should have a debate with a thematic approach that focuses on monitoring and improving public services, or some such title. A significant element of such a debate would relate to the health service because we have considered health; however, it would be wrong just to focus on the health service. We have considered the prison sector, aspects of education and issues such as potholes in the roads. All those are important as regards the how-to questions—how to make those things happen, rather than just what should be done, which is more to do with what other committees consider. We have a real opportunity to take the work of the Parliament into the wider domain. It is important to give people a sense of all the work that has been going on. However, a crucial point is that I would hope that such a debate would inform the Parliament's wider deliberations about public service development.

The committee's key role is to consider the economy, effectiveness and efficiency of public sector spend. It is not about policy, but about how policy is delivered and whether that is done effectively and efficiently. Ultimately, the committee is about ensuring value for money. We do not hear much about that in debates in the Parliament, as we tend to focus on the policy issues rather than on whether, once the policy is decided, we get value for money in what is delivered.

The conclusion to be drawn from that is that our debate has to be a thematic debate based on the key principle of value for the public purse. That takes us into the range of the different reports that we have done. The health service is the subject that a lot of us would tend to major on, given the fact that it receives the biggest spend and, over the past three or four years, has undergone some of the biggest changes that we have seen in many a long year. The key themes would be value for money, the work that we have done to examine whether the public purse has been well spent and some of the lessons we have learned.

One of the key issues is how we trace how the public's money is spent through councils, given the fact that a lot of our initiatives and policies are delivered by local government, which is not accountable to the Parliament. There is a strong theme about the problems that the committee has experienced in trying to drill down to ensure that the money has been well spent. If the theme is value for money, that will allow us to speak on a range of different subjects that we have examined, and the key issue will be how well the taxpayer's pound is being spent.

When I read the options in the report, my feeling was that we should have a thematic debate. I am sorry to say that what Robin Harper has just said has convinced me that that is the right thing to do. I do not want us to get into yet another health debate, as I have great concerns that we would become the Health Committee mark 2.

I agree with various aspects of what the other three members have said. This is about taking a more general view of how we spend public money and how we bring about some of the changes. It is also about examining how things can improve. George Lyon has said that we might major on health because that is the area in which there is the biggest spend, but we might focus on some of the other areas, such as recycling, in which we have seen vast changes with the investment of only a little bit of extra money. Using such examples might help to inform our debate and highlight where other areas could make similar improvements in the changing circumstances in which they find themselves.

I am not going to repeat what everybody else has said, but I think that a thematic debate is the way to go. However, we would need to be clear about what the themes would be.

What has been said this morning confirms my view that, if we are to have a debate, it must be a thematic one. Issues have cropped up since 1999 that recur in our recommendations, and that is something that I want to debate in the Parliament. It is tiresome that we keep having to make the same recommendations. Irrespective of which department is involved, there is a theme running right through. We have the opportunity to engage with colleagues who have not been on the Audit Committee and who think that our work is all about figures and can be quite dry. In fact, the opposite is true.

I seem to have been reduced to a minority of one; however, I am quite used to that. As long as the themed debate is based on the reports that we have made and holds the Executive to account on the things that we have asked for in those reports, I am happy to have such a debate. However, I would not be happy with a general discussion around a series of themes, as that sounds a bit vague. That is why I thought that we should address one minister and one report. For example, the committee's debate could be held six months to a year after the production of a report, so that we could ask the Executive what movement there has been on the report's recommendations.

I invite the Auditor General for Scotland to comment or to make observations.

Some weeks ago, the committee gave its blessing to my forward work programme, which will take us into 2006. I shared with the committee the intention to produce as part of that work a series of integrated overview reports on major areas of public spend in Scotland as a rolling programme. It strikes me that themes that will emerge from the integrated reports might merit being the basis for the committee progressing issues, perhaps ultimately to a debate in the Parliament.

The first report that we will attempt to produce is a pilot that will consider transport investments and the financing system in the round. It will be out towards the back of the end of the year. That is one example.

The committee will recall that one or two major projects in the programme will consider the implementation of major public policies. The McCrone settlement for teachers, in which there has been significant investment, is an example. To use Susan Deacon's appropriate phrase, we will consider the engine for delivery of the McCrone deal. That is clearly a major area of policy implementation and there will be wide interest in the Parliament in the matter.

In our programme of studies, it will certainly be possible to produce significant pieces of work that the committee can use as the basis for progressing matters if it wishes to do so. That means that I will be keen to ensure that future dialogue with the committee on the forward programme takes into account the committee‘s concerns about major areas of public policy implementation whose delivery systems might merit examination.

As no member wants to make any further comments, I will conclude the discussion. Given what the Auditor General and committee members have said, I suggest that we invite the clerk to prepare a paper for our away day that develops paper AU/S2/05/11/1 and focuses on option 3, what the construct and parameters of such a debate might be and what the Executive's input to it might be. We can then have a further discussion. Do members agree to that suggestion?

Members indicated agreement.