The next item of business is a statement by Ivan McKee on a public service reform strategy for Scotland. The minister will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
14:31
Today, I am pleased to publish our public service reform strategy, which is rooted in realism, driven by urgency and focused on delivering for Scotland.
Public services are an asset and an investment in our collective future. Everyone in Scotland should have access to services that are efficient, of good quality and effective. Public services reflect the society that we are and who we aspire to be: enterprising, compassionate and forward looking. Well-functioning public services are the antidote to those who seek to divide our communities.
People in Scotland want a fairer future in which every individual and every community has the opportunity to thrive. The strategy that I am launching today is about delivering that future. It aims to unlock the full potential of Scotland’s public services, making them more efficient, more joined up and more preventative in approach. It is about doing things better, not delivering less. It is about Scotland leading our own agenda for reform, not following that of others.
Public services matter—deeply. They are the foundation of a fairer Scotland and are essential to our priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing a wellbeing economy and addressing the climate crisis. However, our system is under strain. Demographic shifts and rising demand are intensifying fiscal pressures. The fiscal context remains challenging—the United Kingdom Government’s spending review has short changed Scotland by more than £1 billion, energy costs for public services are among the highest in Europe and every public body in Scotland is now impacted by increased employer national insurance contributions. A change of UK Government has changed little.
Next week, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will publish the medium-term financial strategy and the fiscal sustainability delivery plan, which will set out the scale of the fiscal challenge that we face and how we will address it. Public service reform is an integral part of the Government’s response to that challenge—it is about how we optimise every pound of spend to deliver the services that the people of Scotland need and deserve.
The strategy builds on the work of the Christie commission, which called for public services that focus on prevention, place, partnership, people and performance. The Scottish Government has already delivered some successful reforms. Since 2008, smarter justice interventions have helped to deliver a 92 per cent reduction in the number of young people who are prosecuted in adult courts. The Scottish child payment alone is estimated to keep 40,000 children out of relative poverty this year. Between 2003 and 2020, our Childsmile programme has halved tooth decay among children and has generated significant cost savings for national health service boards. Our annual £1 billion investment that provides 1,140 hours of funded early learning and childcare has encouraged nearly three quarters of parents to say that it has helped them to find or look for work. The reorganisation of policing into a single body saves £200 million in back-office costs every year.
However, we clearly recognise that we have not delivered the Christie approach to its fullest potential. As a Government, we have listened to communities, to those who deliver services and to the people who rely on them. Despite increased investment, public satisfaction with services has fallen. We know that services can be hard to navigate for those who rely on them most, and front-line staff can feel constrained in their ability to help. That must change. We must rapidly increase the scale and pace of reform, building on the strong foundations that we have in Scotland—our shared vision and shared values.
We need to intervene earlier in order to prevent expensive crisis interventions later. The strategy sets out a bold, system-wide approach to changing how we think and behave across the public service system. It maximises impact across the whole system, not just in organisations. That whole-system approach will enable reform across all public services. That includes the changes that are set out in the population health framework and the service renewal framework, which were presented to the Parliament two days ago. We have taken the time to understand the barriers to systemic change—duplication, fragmentation, siloed working and outdated accountability structures—which, too often, make doing the right thing harder. We have identified the actions that are required to remove those barriers.
The strategy marshals together in one place everything that we need to do to reform our public services. It recognises that reform is a process, not an event, and that progress requires a range of interventions, all of which are necessary. Culture is the public sector’s biggest strength, but it can also be a barrier to reform. Leadership is key. We must allow leaders to lead and to take risks to improve outcomes, and we must hold them to account on that. Empowerment is vital, so we will involve staff, service users and communities in the design and delivery of services to make those services work better.
Prevention—investing earlier to avoid harm later—is easy to grasp but can be hard to deliver. Today, I am also publishing research that shows that Scottish public services have successfully introduced innovative and highly effective preventative interventions across a range of policy areas over a number of years. That research will inform our understanding of the technical and cultural barriers to building a preventative system, including those relating to how we enable the movement of money around the system to support investment in prevention and how we tackle the root causes of poor outcomes and improve lives.
It is key that we join up services and change how we do things to better integrate local services. We need to further develop local partnerships, empower staff and communities, remove duplication and break the cycle of people being passed from pillar to post in order to get help. We will simplify the policy landscape, strengthen community planning partnerships, unlock the potential of the third sector, tackle barriers to data sharing and maximise the use of digital technologies to make services fit for the future. That is exemplified in the whole-family support approach. The Scottish Government is working with local partners to enable greater local decision making and flexibility to support families at risk of poverty. That means that local partners can use resources in the way that they find most effective to support people.
Efficiency—ensuring that every pound of public money works as hard as it can—is no less than people and businesses have a right to expect. Across key efficiency programmes, we have already secured significant cash-avoiding and cash-releasing savings, which are expected to reach up to £280 million over the two-year period to the end of 2024-25.
However, there is much more that we can do. Through the tools at our disposal and the efficiency workstreams in our strategy, we will reduce identified costs on Scottish Government and public body spend on corporate functions by 20 per cent over the next five years. That equates to an approximate annual cost reduction of £1 billion by 2029-30. That will require every part of the public sector to reduce the cost of doing business and prioritise the front line.
All public bodies are already required to deliver best value, but this is about going further and faster. It is about taking all available opportunities to introduce and embed efficiency through automation, digitisation, estate rationalisation and changing the delivery landscape. That is about delivering significant change, including structural reform in the Government and public bodies when that is needed—not in a headline-grabbing way that simply throws out random targets based on no evidence, but by identifying and delivering the real opportunities for better, joined-up services that will improve lives and redirect resources.
We must be ready to reshape our workforce to enable that service reform. Everyone recognises that things must change, and that creates challenges as well as opportunities for employees. We will work with partners, staff and trade unions to ensure that we have the right number of people in the right roles to deliver real and meaningful change and that—importantly—staff are empowered to make services better.
The Scottish Government cannot deliver reform alone. We are part of a system with huge potential that already shares our vision and values. I have set out in the strategy how we will change our approach to partnership, because the full potential of reform can be delivered only in partnership with public bodies, trade unions and the third sector. Collaboration must be at the heart of our system. The Verity house agreement on collaboration with local government is central to that effort.
Employees are also key partners, because we will not deliver change without them. My message to our staff who deliver public services is this: you are at the heart of this change and are the system’s greatest asset, and the strategy is about trusting and empowering you to work across boundaries, to focus on what matters and to shape services with the people you serve.
The strategy is, at its heart, a programme of action. It will be backed by governance, performance monitoring and a clear commitment to transparency. Our public service reform board will drive and oversee that work and has members from public bodies, the third sector, local government and business with experience of delivering transformation programmes.
The strategy is a statement of belief that Scotland can lead and can change and that, together, we can build services that are modern, accessible, flexible, responsive and seamless and that are fit for Scotland’s future.
We must be bold and brave to deliver real, long-lasting and meaningful change. The strategy demonstrates that the Scottish Government is ready to go further and faster than ever to reform our public services. I invite the Parliament to support that shared endeavour and to work with us and our partners so that the people of Scotland get the public services that they need and deserve.
The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will move on to the next item of business. Members who wish to ask a question should press their request-to-speak buttons if they have not already done so.
I apologise for my late arrival and for missing the beginning of the minister’s statement.
This 49-page, 14,851-word wish list of word soup on the future of public services does not use the word “waste” once, but it does say that the Scottish National Party Government has
“the ability to deliver real change within the public services”.
I agree with that, because the Government has delivered real change for the worse in Scotland’s public services.
Despite that Government telling us, the Scottish Conservatives, that it would be reckless to advocate for tax reductions of £500 million, Ivan McKee says today that he can save £1 billion simply by cutting corporate functions by 20 per cent in the next five years. The Government says that that is neither an attempt to grab headlines nor a throwing out of targets, but we have been here many times before with the SNP.
I therefore have some questions for the Government. What is the breakdown of the £1 billion in savings? How will those be made, in which departments and agencies and in which specific corporate functions? If that is now so achievable, why has the SNP Government not done it before?
The strategy makes only passing reference to the workforce and the issue of severance, so what size, in full-time-equivalent terms, will the bloated civil service be by the end of this decade and in 2035? The strategy does not mention a single body, agency or quango that is to be cut, so are there any, other than those that were announced in the health service statement yesterday, or is this yet another work of fiction? Is it not time for this Government to stop talking and start swinging the axe?
I thank Craig Hoy for the question—I think. It is not unexpected.
I have delivered transformation programmes in the private sector and elsewhere. If we are serious about making real change, it is important to understand the drivers that create the barriers that prevent us from doing that. Just going in and swinging a big axe will not deliver services. We saw that across the Atlantic, where Elon Musk is no longer with the Trump Administration precisely because he went in with a big axe and started cutting stuff, but that backfired immediately because he did not know what he was doing.
The strategy is about understanding, in a serious way, what the barriers are in leadership, accountability, incentives and culture. It is about taking forward the efficiency programmes that we have already delivered on and that have, as I said in my statement, saved £280 million already. It is about building on the work in procurement, estates and intelligent automation—where we have done some fabulous work already—across the public sector and taking that work to the next level by building on the foundations that we have.
It is right to say that we have already announced one merger of public bodies this week and more of that will happen in due course, but the first step is not restructuring, no matter how attractive that might sound. The first step is to go in and understand where the duplication is and then to remove that and get bodies working together so that we can see the opportunities beyond that. That is where we will get the biggest value, rather than just grabbing headlines.
It is worth saying that civil service costs actually went down in real terms last year, that the head count is also going down and that that will continue as part of this work. The £1 billion savings target is 20 per cent of the corporate costs that we identified in a study that we did last year. We are putting in place budget processes to monitor and control that, and that will equate to a reduction of approximately 4 per cent in each of the next five years. The cabinet secretary will give more detail about that in the medium-term financial statement and the fiscal sustainability delivery plan that will be unveiled next week, and I know that Craig Hoy will wait with interest to see the further details that we will provide next week.
Presiding Officer, I, too, apologise to you and members for my late arrival. I thank the minister more emphatically than usual for advance sight of his statement.
The one thing that we could not accuse the Government of is rushing into this. It is only 14 years since the Christie commission published its results. Although I welcome the overall sentiment, I fear that this is just a plan for a plan and the creation of another board. The minister said that we need an analysis of the key levers, but can he specify what they are?
Secondly, reform is, to my mind, not about shrinking the state; it is about maximising its effectiveness. We must not ignore the fact that, over the past decade, the civil service has grown at three times the rate of the NHS, while police, fire and college head counts have all fallen. What will address that and make sure that we focus investment on the front line?
Thirdly, the minister again mentioned root causes. That is an acknowledgement that we have £1 billion-worth of waste. How did that happen and what will prevent it in the future?
I know that Daniel Johnson is earnest in his efforts to support reform and make sure that we do the right thing for the interests of everybody in Scotland.
The levers are laid out clearly in the statement. We have done the root cause analysis—and we have attempted to put it in an accessible format in the document—to understand why leaders optimise in their silos but not collaboratively across the system; how, in the way that we hold public bodies to account, we incentivise them to work within their silos and not integrate across the system; how budget processes also incentivise organisations and portfolios to optimise in their silos but not to invest across the system, including, importantly, in preventative measures; how the policy landscape has become too complicated, meaning that it requires to be simplified; and how we can look at structures to enable that to happen. Those levers are clearly set out, but we are always open to discussion on anything else that Daniel Johnson believes needs to be addressed as part of that activity.
On shrinking the state, he is absolutely right. We are not talking about saving £1 billion for the sake of it. It is £1 billion that we can then invest in front-line services. As I said, my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will give more information on the detail of that next week.
On waste, I think that Daniel Johnson will accept, given his business background, that this is absolutely a journey. We have delivered some significant savings, which I identified in my statement and in the strategy document. Police reorganisation continues to save us £200 million a year, and there are many other examples in the document. As I identified, in the past two years, we have saved another £280 million through the programmes that we have taken forward.
To unlock the £1 billion, we need to accelerate what we are doing on automation and we need process redesign, simplification and removal of duplication. That stuff does not happen overnight, but we are working through it as quickly as we can so that we deliver real lasting change that will continue to make services better, rather than just swinging the axe and cutting them or making them worse in the short term.
The minister said that a vital change will be to streamline and enhance front-line service provision by reducing levels of duplication and sharing where possible. I very much welcome the statement. The public sector landscape is cluttered. We have local authorities, health boards, city region deals, regional growth deals, community planning partnerships, integration joint boards and non-departmental public bodies. Will the minister speak to Scottish Government plans to declutter and, potentially, merge public sector bodies?
One of the workstreams in the strategy is on precisely that point—it is to look at the public sector landscape and at Government directorates in the round and understand where there is duplication so that we can take forward that work. As I said, the way that we do that is by understanding at a fairly deep level what is happening, doing the process mapping, and understanding the value stream mechanisms within that and how it interfaces with service users. That is where we identify the opportunities to remove duplication, automate back-office services and further implement the shared service platforms that we are already rolling out to public bodies.
Our first step is to work with public bodies in clusters, within and across portfolios, so that they can share information, data and process mapping and understand where there is duplication. In that way, the experts in the public bodies will lead that work. Public body leaders have been very clear that they are empowered to come forward with their proposals, both within public bodies and within Government, on how we can make the whole system more efficient and effective.
As we move forward, I have no doubt that there will be more proposals for the removal of public bodies but, as I said, the first step is to make what we have work more effectively. Anyone who has run a transformation knows that that is what should be done first, as it will highlight the opportunities for simplifying the landscape, as and when that is required.
We will need slightly briefer responses.
This is the sixth debate and statement that I have sat through on public sector reform, and it just shows that the finance committee has been calling for real action for a very long time now. What one structural change coming out of the statement will make a real difference to public sector reform?
There are many things, as there are 18 different workstreams, but I will highlight the two most important aspects. First, we need public body leaders to focus on being collaborative. As our statement indicates, that is all about how we recruit those leaders, how we hold them accountable and how we change the culture to ensure that they focus on making the whole system work, instead of focusing on how individual parts of the system function, which is suboptimal.
The second aspect is enabling a shift in resources to a preventative budget. Everyone is incentivised to maximise their budgets for their part of the silo in the here and now, and they are measured on how they do that. However, that means that we can lose perspective on ensuring that there is preventative spending. Indeed, that is what has stymied our efforts in that respect so far.
With the numbers that we have published today, our statement makes it clear that the biggest savings will come from ensuring that we get prevention right. There are some good examples of that, but there is an awful lot more that we can do. The way in which we currently structure preventative budgeting within the public sector largely blocks that work.
Modernisation and increased efficiency must be at the heart of our efforts to reform public services, and we must take advantage of the advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence in order to do that. Can the minister outline what steps the Scottish Government is taking to harness the potential of technology to future proof our services?
Digital underpins a lot of the work that we are doing and is very important. I do not think that it is the most important thing—culture, leadership and the way in which money flows are more important—but it is absolutely key. Our centre for intelligent automation in Government, which provides services across the public sector, has saved upwards of £10 million already; it has implemented dozens of projects, with several hundred more in the hopper. We are investing more in that service to enable that to happen.
The provision of digital services for service users is hugely important. The digital strategy, which will be published soon in collaboration with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, will identify how we are taking that work forward. Ensuring that we use digital resources across the piece is very important, as we must ensure that we do not duplicate digital skills in different parts of the public sector. It is critical that we ensure visibility of the digital skills and that we reuse code components to accelerate the deployment of digital solutions.
The local government workforce has reduced by 30,000 full-time-equivalent posts, while central Government payroll has increased by 73 per cent during the Government’s time in office. Does the minister feel that the balance of staffing levels between national and local government is appropriate? Does that lend itself to his ambition to having the right number of staff in the right places?
No. This is a journey and we need to make more progress—and fast. The data indicates that the civil service workforce in total, including contractors, has been coming down for the past three years in a row. That process will continue; indeed, it resulted in a real-terms reduction in the Scottish Government’s total operating cost last year.
I would characterise this not in terms of the workforce in central and local government, but in terms of corporate functions and the front-line workforce. The person-to-person, front-line workers who engage with service users are, of course, the most important. This is about shifting the £1 billion in resources from corporate functions to that front-line workforce, and we need to accelerate that work, while working with partners to make that happen in a way that does not cause problems for the system as we are doing it. We want to go as fast as we can, using the tools that I have outlined in the strategy.
First, Presiding Officer, I apologise for being a little late.
Can the minister help other political parties understand who is ultimately accountable for the head count of the civil service? At a recent meeting of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, the outgoing permanent secretary, John-Paul Marks, stated that his role included
“being steward of head counts”.—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 18 March 2025; c 17.]
To that end, will the minister confirm that his good efforts on reform, including having the right number of people in the right roles, will be fully supported by the new permanent secretary?
Michelle Thomson is absolutely right. Ministers have responsibility for certain budgets and policies, but operational aspects are controlled by those who lead those organisations, and the impartiality of the civil service means that ministers do not have a veto or control over how many are hired, what grades there are and what they are working on. Those matters are left to the civil service, due to the impartial nature of that organisation. The Scottish Government website makes it very clear that the civil service is not, in that sense, accountable operationally to ministers or to Parliament.
I have confidence that the new permanent secretary is in an effective place with regard to the measures that we are taking forward. That is witnessed by the reduction in head count that we have seen across the total civil service workforce and the reduction in the Scottish Government’s total operating costs—possibly for the first time, but certainly in a long time.
The Scottish Government is sticking to its budget in terms of the civil service, which it has not always done, and that is important. I know that the new permanent secretary is committed to working in partnership to deliver on the strategy.
When the Scottish Greens were in Government, we secured a pilot of the four-day working week. South of Scotland Enterprise confirmed to Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee that that has resulted in significant reductions in staff absences, which is good for productivity in the public sector.
I was therefore a bit surprised to see no mention of the four-day or reduced working week or of better work-life balance for public sector workers in the strategy document. Does the Government recognise that the four-day working week and a better work-life balance for public sector workers are powerful tools in our quest for a more productive and effective public sector?
The word “balance” is important. I recently met the chief executives of South of Scotland Enterprise and the Accountant in Bankruptcy to get feedback on the pilots that have been run in those organisations, and I learned that the approach has been well received. I have also met trade union colleagues to discuss how we move the approach forward, and I know that they are keen to do so.
There is absolutely a place for a four-day working week, but it is important to understand where it will be effective and its mechanisms for delivery. We are reviewing that at the moment to see where the approach works most effectively, but we will not lose sight of the big picture, which is how we make services more joined up, more integrated, more efficient and more focused on prevention and on empowerment, so that we deliver improved services for the people of Scotland.
There might well be a role for the approach in certain parts of the public sector, for the reasons that the member highlights, and we are reviewing that as part of the follow-up work on the pilots that were undertaken.
Yesterday, my colleague Willie Rennie told the chamber that public service reform should be boring. So far, the statement is doing a good job of keeping the promise of that directive.
The real path to reform must embrace the transformative technologies that are now at our fingertips. Our universities are packed with research projects on AI, but risk aversion in the national health service and a lack of dedicated funding mean that such projects are not making it to the front line, where they could bring down waiting times and improve patient outcomes. How does the Government plan to roll out the use of AI and other emerging technologies, where appropriate, to deliver faster, smarter public services?
That is the biggest compliment that I have had today, and Mr Cole-Hamilton can reflect to Mr Rennie that I have done my level best to make my statement this afternoon as boring as possible.
Of course, the important point is that our approach is about getting the detail and the fundamentals right—it is not about flashy headlines. Detailed work is what will deliver for the people of Scotland.
On the question of digitisation, I refer back to an earlier answer: quite a bit of work on that is happening already. We have CivTech Scotland, which is a world leader in Government technology solutions and is the vehicle for bringing in private sector initiatives to solve public sector problems. That approach has been copied by Governments all over the world.
The work on further digitisation mentioned in the strategy is already proceeding in relation to improving user interfaces and making the back-office functions of services more effective. There is more to be done on that, which the new digital strategy will identify.
I should sound one note of caution: we need to be careful about how we share data. We very much want to share data, but we must ensure that the appropriate safeguards are in place when we use AI in that regard, building on the intelligent automation work that we have already done. However, the member can rest assured that, working with our great universities, we are keen to move the agenda forward as fast as we can.
We all agree that councils have tough choices to make, but some of the cuts, in particular those from the Tory-led administration in Aberdeenshire, have hit vulnerable people the hardest. For example, elderly people in assisted-living complexes have been threatened with eviction. How will the reform strategy make sure that councils put people first and stop balancing their books on the backs of those who need the most help?
Ms Adam makes a hugely important point. If we get the preventative agenda right, we will identify where services should be invested in that will allow us to save significantly more later, elsewhere in the system.
Talk about budget processes might sound a bit dry for some people, but it is really important that we get them right so that the money moves to the right place, where it will have a preventative impact. That is not an easy challenge in any organisation and it is far less so across the public sector, which has around half a million people working in it. It is really important that leaders understand that, that they operate in a collaborative way to make that happen, and that there are processes in the background that allow them to do so.
We have come to the end of the 20 minutes that I had allocated, but we have a bit of time in hand this afternoon, and four colleagues still want to ask a question, so I will allow those questions to be taken. It would be great if we could have a little more brevity in the responses as well as in the questions.
In the statement, you indicated that the Scottish Government is ready to go further and faster, but how can that be achieved when you already know that workforce planning requires a massive reshaping to enable services to be reformed? That can be achieved only by reducing head count. When will we see the proposals that are to be set out in the Government’s fiscal sustainability delivery plan?
Always speak through the chair, Mr Stewart.
You will see them when you see the fiscal sustainability delivery plan that you mentioned, which will be next week.
Please speak through the chair, minister.
I apologise, Presiding Officer.
Mr Stewart will see the plan next week, when my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government presents it to Parliament.
The member makes a valid point that there will be changes in the workforce. The cabinet secretary and I have made no secret of the fact that it is necessary for the workforce to be reshaped, because of technology changes and the need to get the right people in the right places and in the right numbers. We have been very clear about that in the strategy, in my statement and in our conversations with trade union colleagues. It is important that those colleagues are part of this process, working with us to ensure that the workforce, which is our most valuable asset, is empowered to deliver the change that is required.
As the minister is aware, change on this scale must bring everyone with it, including island communities. Can he provide an update on the Scottish Government’s engagement with stakeholders—including those who are covered by the provisions of the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018—to ensure that, as the strategy is developed, islands remain at the heart of the nationwide transformation of services?
One of the great advantages of island communities is that they are self-contained. Because of their scale, there is scope to move reform faster than sometimes happens in other parts of the country.
The work that we are taking forward on the single-authority model with the island authorities and Argyll and Bute Council is very important in that regard. That is one of the reforms that we see great hope in, because it allows us, at local authority level, to bring health and local government services—and other services that are provided in the community—closer together structurally, remove duplication and make it easier to find resource to provide them in a more joined-up way. Islands have a really important role to play in that.
Workstream 7 is headed “Simplification”, which I very much agree with.
Can the minister absolutely rule out the idea of introducing mayors? They are the last thing that Scotland needs, because they would be a waste of money by taking money away from front-line services. [Applause.]
That is the first clap of the afternoon. The member has made a very important point: the strategy is about having fewer processes, not adding other layers of complexity.
The mechanism for that is the regional model, in which local authorities come together—either in city region deals or regional economic partnerships—and the work that we are doing in the health service to allow health boards to collaborate more closely across different parts of the country. That allows us to move faster and to use the experience and skills that are already there without everyone going through the pain of a big reorganisation. Adding another layer to that complexity would take us in the wrong direction.
I hate to disappoint the minister, but I do not think that he has been boring at all. As one of the very few SNP members, if not the only one, who has ever run an organisation or, indeed, a business, he would realise—[Interruption.] Members can correct me later.
The ambition of saving £200 million a year out of a current resource spending budget of £50.5 billion is not a very ambitious scale of ambition. In one of the paragraphs in his statement, the minister talked about culture change. He knows that we need to bring about a wholesale cultural transformation if we are to achieve the step change that he wants to achieve. How will he do that?
Secondly, will he publish baseline metrics to go with all the savings that he aspires to make in different areas of the operation of Government?
On the member’s point about savings, I am very clear that that is part of the work that is being taken forward to achieve fiscal sustainability. Next week, my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will outline some of the work that we are doing in other parts of the public sector. However, the strategy that we are discussing today is very focused on the almost £5 billion that we identified in last year’s exercise. In that regard, I think that a target of 20 per cent over that time period is a realistic and fairly significant target. We will provide full information as we continue to progress that work.
The member’s point about culture is absolutely right. We do not change the culture only by talking about it, although that is an important part of the process. We need to get the structure right and to get the leaders of the organisations, of which there are many, working together, feeling empowered and feeling that the Government has got their back, so that they can take risks and try out new things. It will not always work, but we need to work together as colleagues to learn from the process and take it forward. Without the appetite and ambition for innovation, we will not be able to make progress. That is the key to unlocking all of this.
That concludes that item of business. There will be a brief pause before we move to the next item of business.
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