Accountability and Governance
Good afternoon. The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-5320, in the name of Wendy Alexander, on behalf of the Finance Committee, on its seventh report in 2006, "Inquiry into Accountability and Governance".
I thank the people who participated in the Finance Committee's inquiry into accountability and governance, including those who supplied written and oral evidence. I also thank the committee clerks for their support during what was a complex and interesting inquiry.
I will move the motion on the committee's report mainly because the new convener of the Finance Committee, Wendy Alexander, was on maternity leave during the course of the inquiry and she thinks that it would be appropriate for one of the members who sat through the evidence to open the debate. I am delighted to do that.
The inquiry arose principally through the work of the committee's former convener, Des McNulty, who took a great interest in the role and work of ombudsmen and contributed enormously to the committee. He saw the inquiry through to its conclusion and oversaw the report's contents. Mr McNulty has been elevated to the Government's front bench, and we would have been offered a fascinating example of parliamentary scrutiny had he come to the chamber to make pronouncements from the front bench on issues that he enthusiastically pursued during the inquiry. We wish Mr McNulty well in his ministerial post.
The report came about primarily as a result of the Finance Committee's scrutiny of the Scottish Parliament's budget, which includes provision for financial support to the ombudsmen whose costs are financed through the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. It is the committee's duty annually to scrutinise the SPCB's budget bid. During the course of its scrutiny, the committee became increasingly concerned about the financing of ombudsmen and thought that further inquiry was required. The committee also thought that the view that the SPCB perhaps was not sufficiently empowered to exercise the necessary degree of financial scrutiny needed to be explored in greater detail. I will say more about the outcome of the deliberations on those matters.
The report is comprehensive. The committee reached clear and well-articulated conclusions that were informed by evidence, like most of the committee's work. Unusually for the committee, we divided on three aspects of the report's contents. In all three cases, six members supported the approach in the report and one member, Mark Ballard, dissented. I am sure that Mr Ballard will talk about his concerns about the direction that the committee took in the report.
I am glad that Mr McNulty has arrived. He missed my warm tribute, but I am sure that the Deputy Minister for Finance, Public Service Reform and Parliamentary Business will convey it to him during the debate.
The committee came to robust conclusions by clear majority on all issues, but some issues troubled us. The first was the substantial question whether the exercising of financial scrutiny of and financial control over the ombudsmen's work by the committee or the SPCB compromised the ombudsmen's independence. The committee's report makes it crystal clear that in no way does anybody on the committee have any desire in any respect to question or constrain the operational or functional independence of any of the ombudsmen whom Parliament has so far appointed. However, we do not believe that our duty to carry out legitimate financial scrutiny across all aspects of public policy—a duty that members of the public believe to be ours as members of the Scottish Parliament—would be properly fulfilled unless we exercised a degree of financial control over and financial scrutiny of the ombudsmen and commissioners.
The reticence that the corporate body expressed to us when we reviewed the budget in 2005 was one of the major contributors to encouraging the committee to undertake the inquiry. We felt that the corporate body held the view that, if there was much scrutiny of the budget, and if changes were made to it, there would be a danger that the effective independence of the ombudsmen and the commissioners would be compromised. The committee debated that issue at length and our conclusions were crystal clear: Parliament has a responsibility to scrutinise every aspect of public finance and, as a consequence, the corporate body should be entitled to exercise effective constraints on the budgets of the ombudsmen and commissioners.
I am pleased to say that when the corporate body came to the committee this year to recommend the budget for the forthcoming financial year 2007-08, it had a much stronger and more robust position on the financial scrutiny of the ombudsmen and commissioners. However, in no way has the operational independence of those office-holders been compromised by the corporate body's actions. The Finance Committee welcomes the steps that the corporate body has taken.
The second major issue that the committee wrestled with was the congestion that has emerged because of the different and distinct decisions that Parliament has taken to establish commissioners and ombudsmen over the past few years. There is now a pretty wide range of commissioners and ombudsmen. In our report, we caution that the Government should carefully consider amalgamating functions rather than forming more stand-alone organisations. When there is a demand to establish a commissioner of some sort, the Government should consider whether the functions could be subsumed by an existing one.
In its discussions on the Scottish Commissioner for Human Rights Bill, the committee felt that there was an opportunity to bring the functions of the human rights commissioner closer to those of the Scottish public services ombudsman. However, I regret that Parliament decided not to accept our view.
In our report, we say that no new office-holder should be proposed unless it can be clearly demonstrated that the function cannot be carried out by an existing body. We go further and make recommendations on the need for co-location and the need to encourage the SPCB to acquire more powers to enforce issues regarding co-location, to ensure better synergy in the performance of the commissioners and ombudsmen. We also argue in our report for a moratorium on the establishment of any more commissioners or ombudsmen until such time as the report that the Executive has commissioned from Professor Crerar is published and we can reflect on its conclusions.
We believe in the need to review the whole architecture and infrastructure of the ombudsmen—to review their legal status, the choice of people to whom they report and how their work fits in with the work of the Parliament. I do not want to prejudge the legacy paper of the Finance Committee, but I would be very surprised if such issues were not handed on to our successors in the next session of Parliament.
The third major issue that we should reflect on is the role of Parliament in relation to the ombudsmen—and here we have to be a bit critical of ourselves. In effect, some of the ombudsmen said to us that they would love to be called before a parliamentary committee to explain what they had been doing and to have their decisions and recommendations scrutinised to a greater extent. It should not just be a case of the Finance Committee holding a one-off evidence session on commissioners' budgets once a year. For example, the Education Committee and the Health Committee should test some of the decisions that the Scottish public services ombudsman takes.
I hope that all committees will carefully note the Finance Committee's recommendation that there should be more thorough scrutiny of the ombudsmen and commissioners as part of the rolling programme of committee scrutiny that is a continuing part of the Parliament's agenda. From that, we would learn a great deal more about the issues that the ombudsmen wrestle with and their judgments. This morning's newspapers contain a major announcement by the Scottish public services ombudsman about care homes and their associated costs. As we all know from our case loads, the ombudsman deals with issues that have a material effect on the lives of individuals and the delivery of our public services. I encourage parliamentary committees to reflect on the suggestion as they consider their work programmes.
I conclude by making a personal observation on the work of the ombudsmen; I do not make it on behalf of the committee. My experience of the ombudsman sector has led me to be concerned about the fact that the ombudsmen and commissioners do not seem to be willing to assume the position that I would like them to assume, which is to test much more rigorously and robustly than they do the statements and explanations that public authorities give to them. The ombudsmen and commissioners are the last stop—they are the people to whom others go when every other avenue has been exhausted. The public must leave with a sense that their complaint has been investigated thoroughly, that the organisation concerned has been taken to task and that the assumption of the ombudsman has been that the member of the public is correct to think that they have been short-changed by the public authority. If the public authority has nothing to be frightened of, it will be able to marshal evidence that refutes the claims and propositions of the member of the public.
Personally, I think that the ombudsman sector would be strengthened if members of the public could see that the ombudsmen examined their cases in detail, thoroughly and comprehensively, and tested to a significant degree public authorities' performance. If the ombudsmen did that, we would have a sector that served the interests of the Scottish public, which is what we created the sector to do and what we as parliamentarians have every right to expect will be done on their behalf.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations of the 7th Report, 2006 (Session 2) of the Finance Committee, Inquiry into Accountability and Governance (SP Paper 631).
As Mr Swinney rightly pointed out when he paid tribute to the former convener of the Finance Committee, Mr McNulty, it would have been interesting if his promotion to higher places had given him the opportunity to respond to the debate. He would certainly have been well placed and well informed to undertake that important role. I am glad that Mr McNulty has decided to join us for the debate and I am sure that he will not have been disappointed with how Mr Swinney set out the committee's recommendations and concerns.
I begin by putting on the record the fact that the Executive welcomes the report and the work that the committee has undertaken in the important area of accountability and governance. The Executive's formal response, which was issued by the Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform on 9 November, provides detailed responses to the recommendations that are directed at the Executive and a commitment to work with the SPCB to progress some of the recommendations.
It is helpful to state at the outset that the report is timely, in that it reflects and captures the changed mood in the Parliament on the approach that should be adopted to accountability and governance and, in particular, to the role of independent commissioners and ombudsmen. From that perspective, I think that the report has cross-party support. The report also reflects the need to ensure that the commissioners and ombudsmen are effective and accountable to the Parliament. That is a shared goal throughout the Parliament.
Operational independence and robust parliamentary and public accountability should be seen not as conflicting concepts but as key parts of the overall performance management framework within which sponsored bodies operate, whether they are commissioners, ombudsmen or other bodies that are sponsored by the Executive. From that perspective, the committee's report provides the Executive and the SPCB with a strong steer on both the direction in which the Parliament wants us to move and how we can ensure that the commissioners and ombudsmen are properly held to account while maintaining their operational independence. That is the key priority in the report.
The SPCB plays a vital role, because it represents the Parliament in ensuring that there is effective challenging and scrutiny of the office-holders who are accountable to the Parliament. It is not my place to speak on the SPCB's behalf. I am not sure whether any member of the SPCB will speak in the debate, but it will be interesting to hear the SPCB's response to the report.
Does the minister acknowledge that there is a difference between accountability and direction when it comes to the powers of the commissioners and ombudsmen?
It is clear that their operational independence and their decision making on the matters that they deal with should not be compromised. Nevertheless, there is an accountability issue in relation to how public money is spent and how well managed the process is. That is where the line falls. The Parliament has an important role in holding the commissioners and ombudsmen to account and in ensuring that the money is spent effectively and the organisations are well managed. That should not compromise their operational independence, which we all agree is paramount.
The Executive is committed to working with the SPCB to ensure that there is clarity about respective roles and responsibilities and, if appropriate, to formalise our pre-legislative consultation. Officials have already held preliminary discussions with the SPCB and work will progress in the coming months.
Public bodies that report to the Scottish ministers are subject to financial monitoring and control through the application of the "Scottish Public Finance Manual" and key corporate documentation such as management statements, corporate plans, and annual reports and accounts. As well as providing strategic policy direction to sponsored bodies, we are committed to continually reviewing the classification and total number of public bodies. Since devolution, the number of Executive-sponsored bodies has reduced from 186 to 141. Where necessary, we have taken appropriate action to revise, amalgamate or abolish the functions of public bodies and to ensure that there are effective governance, accountability and delivery arrangements that best meet the needs of the people of Scotland. The abolition of national health service trusts is a classic example of that.
Our commitment is reflected in the launch earlier this year of Professor Lorne Crerar's review of the arrangements for the inspection, regulation, audit and complaints handling of public services. Proposals for new public bodies and functions are made only if there is a compelling justification for them. The current framework requires such proposals to be subject to wide consultation with key stakeholders, thorough appraisal of alternative delivery mechanisms and a robust value-for-money assessment.
The committee recommends in its report that the proposals for five new bodies should be deferred until the scrutiny review is completed.
Will Professor Crerar's review consider the number of inspections of local authorities that are required by the Scottish Executive? Highland Council recently counted the number of inspections and audits that are required of it in a year and the total was 659.
Professor Crerar's investigation and report will consider the whole gamut of scrutiny and regulation throughout the sector. It will not look specifically at the structures behind that inspection and scrutiny but at delivery. We want to ensure that the situation that Mr Neil describes is tackled and that proper scrutiny and investigation take place and deliver the information that we need to make judgments about whether public bodies are delivering, while not crippling those bodies with the amount of scrutiny.
The starting point is to work out what we need to ensure that we get the right quality of information, then consider the structures that sit behind it. It may be that that leads us to conclude that there should be rationalisation and reduction. The important point is first to consider the output, to ensure that proper scrutiny and investigation take place and that the right information comes back to ministers and to Parliament to reassure them. However, at the same time, we should recognise that that must be done efficiently, that it must provide value for money and that it must allow organisations to operate properly. That will be the focus of Professor Crerar's work, which I am sure will be informative and will enable Parliament to come to a view on the structures that lie behind the delivery of inspection and scrutiny.
Of the five proposed bodies, the arrangements for three were under way when the Finance Committee conducted its investigation. Preparations for the Scottish commissioner for human rights, the Scottish civil enforcement commission and the Scottish legal complaints commission were already at an advanced stage and had been subject to extensive consultation and consideration by Parliament. Legislative provisions for the appointment of the remaining two commissioners—the police complaints commissioner for Scotland and the roadworks commissioner—had already been passed by Parliament. In all cases, it had already been established that the functions of the proposed bodies would not overlap with those of any existing bodies.
"Transforming Public Services: The Next Phase of Reform" sets out our vision for the future delivery of public services in Scotland and makes it clear that our expectation is that new and existing public bodies should continue to seek opportunities to work together at national and local level. There are already excellent examples of closer working between public bodies, and it is clear that sustained partnerships of that kind are key to delivering more user-focused services to the public and better value for money. If structures get in the way of better service delivery, they will need to change. However, there is no single, central blueprint, setting out the right number of public bodies and the boundaries between them. The key issue is to consider how we deliver the services to the end user and the customer, then to work back from that proposition.
Our drivers for reform are the needs of individuals, the quality of services and the effectiveness of the outcomes that public services deliver. While it is important to secure the operational independence of public bodies, commissioners and ombudsmen, the Executive's view is that different classifications should not stand in the way of shared services where there is clear benefit to be gained for the people whom we serve and represent. It should be possible for all such bodies to consider ways in which they might share back-office functions and services.
The Executive is committed to working with the SPCB to ensure that there is robust parliamentary and public accountability of commissioners and ombudsmen, while ensuring that their operational independence is not compromised. We are committed to ensuring that proposals for new public bodies or functions are challenged to determine whether there are other options before we agree to set them up, and to carrying out robust value-for-money assessments.
Finally, I congratulate the Finance Committee on its report, which reflects the mood of Parliament on the issue. I am sure that the committee's recommendations and conclusions will be foremost in member's minds when political parties set out their plans for the future.
As John Swinney so elegantly summarised, it would be reasonable to see the Finance Committee report as a retrospective fix to formalise and bolster the role of the SPCB in relation to commissioners. The report specifically recommends moves that would facilitate the sharing of services and improve the control of costs—given the comments from the minister about best value, that seems to have been accepted. It properly recommends that potential accountability gaps be controlled—I recognise that that has also been accepted—and that steps be taken to strengthen the SPCB's powers to address the gap in legislation with regard to budgetary control of commissioners. All that is to be welcomed.
However, the process has also identified many ways in which the commissioners seem to be the same as the Executive. Admittedly, there is one key difference: the commissioners can make a case for an increased budget while the Executive gets what it is given and has limited direct means of increasing its revenue. However, there are strong common denominators. Both commissioners and the Executive need checks and balances to ensure that they are having a positive effect, rather than a neutral or negative effect—the jury is out in both cases. Equally, they both need to prove that they are making best use of the money that they have at their disposal. The commissioners and the Executive have difficulty proving that. In addition, both need a narrow range of important objectives that are monitored and reported on to prove their effectiveness; both seem to have difficulty establishing such measures.
I am not sure what the member means by "effectiveness" in relation to commissioners and ombudsmen. How would he judge whether they were effective? Is he talking about how they spend their budget or the decisions that they make? That would take him across the line, about which concerns have been raised.
I am talking about reducing the risk of cost and complaint escalation and seeing an improvement in the performance of the entities that regulate, monitor and handle the public's complaints, which is fundamental.
We should go beyond what we have now and consider whether there are better ways of improving the public and media perception of our commissioners, which might trigger greater effectiveness in other bodies downstream. For instance—I throw in this idea to be kicked around and debated—if the commissioners sought over time to reduce their workload and budgets and to cross-charge some of their costs against the entities against which they find in any given case, they would have a better chance of making good use of resources and handling client-based dissatisfaction better. I do not claim that that idea is perfect, or even fully formed at the moment, but it is likely that it would create more good will and more of a sense that the commissioners were working for the common good and in the public interest. Other organisations, such as Scottish ombudsman watch, will be able to adjudicate and make their own positive suggestions.
I am convinced that if we had a more unifying aim—if we carved out a set of motivating aims for commissioners that supported national aims—we would move to a better place. It would not be beyond the wit of the Parliament or the imagination of the Executive to come up with means to achieve that, which would unify the Government, the commissioners, agencies and other entities—even care homes—in the process of achieving better outcomes in the long term. That could be legitimised if we had cross-billing, so that bodies that were culpable and which were causing delays and generating more complaints from the general public were made to pay the cost of complaint processing. The commissioners would therefore avoid becoming an unpaid customer complaints service with the function of identifying—for free—improvements that might be facilitated, or becoming an unpaid customer and public placator.
The question remains: will the commissioners be an overhead, or will they genuinely play a part in improving accountability in governance in Scotland? I certainly hope that they will play a part and that the report makes that happen.
I join other members in thanking the clerks and witnesses who gave evidence in what seemed a very long inquiry. John Swinney has referred to most of the committee's substantive recommendations, so I will not dwell too much on them.
We should not kid ourselves: the report falls firmly into the dull-but-worthy category. That in itself does not make the report less valuable, but it is worth acknowledging it up front. Some of the lessons that we might draw from the report are of more value than we might think, although it may be a struggle to get everyone to accept the importance of the recommendations. I say that despite what seems to be an outbreak of cross-party consensus in the chamber. I found much to agree with in what the minister said. That is a novel concept that might not be replicated often.
Much of the groundswell of feeling that led to the committee's inquiry was based on a series of negative press articles about commissioners and ombudsmen, particularly in relation to their budgets. It is worth both capturing the fact that there was significant public concern and realising the seriousness of the issue not just for the Parliament but for the commissioners and ombudsmen themselves. Unless we get the issues of their financial accountability and the resources to which they are entitled sorted out up front, there is a danger that their work will be masked by other stories that might fly around, which helps no one.
Two broader issues have been lost in the debate. The first is what we as a Parliament did when we created some of the institutions—in particular, I think of the vagueness of the operating rules that we gave them, which we expect them to abide by. Secondly, and more fundamentally, much of the criticism that has been directed against individual ombudsmen or commissioners about finance has often concerned the underlying policy of having them in the first place. I sense that some members feel that some of the decisions that were taken earlier on in the life of the Parliament were not the right ones.
On the vagueness of the statute, I remember the exchange that I had in committee with the commissioner for children and young people in Scotland, who has an advocacy role. I do not have the Official Report for that meeting in front of me, so I will paraphrase rather than quote. I think that the commissioner's argument was that she felt that she could not carry out the role given to her by statute without the funding that she sought, which is a perfectly legitimate argument for her to advance.
However, I took a more difficult approach and looked back at the statute that created the commissioner for children and young people's role. It seemed to me that a range of options were available. One was a cheap and basic option that would have allowed her to fulfil a simple advocacy role. That may or may not have been what Parliament intended, but it was certainly permissible under the terms of the statute. At the other end of the scale, the commissioner could have had an expansive role, with significantly more resources being deployed to her office than she has ever sought.
In many respects, the commissioner for children and young people in Scotland has done a good job. However, does the member agree that having both a commissioner and a chief executive in a small office with a budget of just over £1 million seems, to say the least, to be overegging the bureaucratic pudding?
At first glance, that may seem excessive—perhaps it comes down to the vagueness of the commissioner's role. If her role as she interprets it is expansive, there may be a case for her having support in her endeavours. My problem is that the statute gives such a wide range of options that it is difficult to see where the appropriate balance lies. Let us be honest: that is a difficult matter for her as well as for the Parliament.
I will continue with the same example. Many of the people who have been critical of the spending of the commissioner for children and young people have actually been criticising the underlying policy. There are those who now doubt whether an advocacy role is appropriate for a commissioner—personally, I have grave doubts as to whether there is a proper advocacy role for such a commissioner in Scotland today. I do not wish to disappoint Mr Neil in that respect, but I think that that applies to other proposals, not just those that have already been implemented.
The minister's words were helpful in some respects, but the Executive has not been terribly helpful in relation to the moratorium that has been discussed. I see the distinction that the Executive is trying to draw between a moratorium on new proposals that are made after the moratorium has been announced and a moratorium on proposals that have already been considered but which have not yet been enacted. To be frank, that distinction is a little disingenuous. Most of the public concern has been about the commissioners offering value for money, and the Executive would have sent a helpful signal if it had said that the moratorium would apply until Professor Crerar reported—even to plans that had been taken some way down the line.
Jim Mather suggested that the budgetary slack could be picked up by allowing commissioners to impose charges on bodies that have been found wanting. That is an interesting proposal, but it is the flip side of the independence and accountability issue. If by constraining a commissioner's budget, we can influence what they do, the flip side is that there must be a risk of institutional failure in the commissioner generating income by imposing such charges. I acknowledge that other bodies have dealt with and found a way round that problem, but I have reservations about giving such powers to public bodies, particularly when we know that there will be a squeeze on national budgets.
Although I said that the debate fell into the dull-but-worthy category, a number of constituents have e-mailed me and written to me about it. That does not normally happen with Finance Committee debates, and I do not expect it to continue. Many of those constituents raised a valid point about to whom the Scottish public services ombudsman should be accountable. The focus of the debate has been on financial accountability, but there are broader issues with accountability in general.
We should be wary of giving away too much of the Parliament's power. It seems rather odd to go to all the effort of creating a Parliament and then to start giving away power left, right and centre. The argument has been advanced that, if we control budgets, we are impeding independence. That is nonsense and we should be robust about opposing it. It is entirely right that we are careful with public money—in fact, the Parliament and Government have a duty to be careful with it—and, if we set a budget, it is for individuals to operate within that budget as they see fit. It is not for the Government or Parliament to direct how money is spent, but it is perfectly in order for us to say what the priorities are and how much the budgets should be.
Of course, the Scottish information commissioner's increasing budget might be reduced if the Government was rather more open and responded more positively to some of my letters.
Not just Derek Brownlee's letters.
Perhaps Mr Swinney's letters are also affected.
I was intrigued by the minister's comments about public sector reform, and I am grateful that he is moving towards viewing the user of public services as the key driver of those services. That development is positive—I hope that we witness more such developments. He issued a challenge about manifestos, and I am sure that the Conservatives will rise to it. I look forward to reading his party's manifesto to see whether he also rises to that challenge.
The Finance Committee inquiry into accountability and governance is the starting point for me: it examines inputs, but does not look back at what has been delivered. The current system for funding commissioners and ombudsmen does not provide the level of openness, transparency and accountability that the Parliament and the people of Scotland expect, and I do not believe that financial accountability can be considered in isolation. An examination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness also needs to be undertaken to inform the accountability of any organisation. The report does not address that, although it is the most important aspect of accountability.
As convener of the Scottish Commission for Public Audit, I was asked to give evidence to the Finance Committee inquiry. During that evidence, I demonstrated the lengths to which the SCPA has gone to ensure openness, transparency and accountability. In this parliamentary session, the SCPA has held meetings in public and appended near-verbatim transcripts of meetings to its reports to demonstrate the accountability and governance arrangements of Audit Scotland and the Auditor General. It would be unacceptable if Audit Scotland and the Auditor General were not held to account in the same way as they hold others in the public sector to account.
Sadly, the current system of accountability of commissioners and ombudsmen lacks the examination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body holds its meetings in private and issues brief minutes, so how can it be seen to be holding any organisation to account? The system is not challenging enough, and I do not accept that hiding behind the current interpretation of legislation is acceptable or that the system is a quirk of the way in which the Parliament was set up. It is incumbent on the SPCB to ensure that the moneys expended by commissioners and ombudsmen deliver for the public and demonstrate best value. We do not have sufficient opportunities to hold the SPCB to account.
Does Margaret Jamieson accept that parliamentary committees also have a role to play in the scrutiny of office-holders?
John Scott's point is different from mine, which is that the overall function of a commissioner is to demonstrate that the funding that has been approved by the corporate body is actually delivering what the commissioner set out to deliver. That is an audit-based trail. I am sure that the minister and Mr Swinney will appreciate—the minister as a previous member of the Audit Committee and the SCPA and Mr Swinney from the Finance Committee viewpoint—that such scrutiny is fine for subject committees when examining specific policy areas, but there is a world of difference between that and accountability.
Will the member give way?
I would like to move on a wee bit.
There is an opportunity for us to drill down into the work of commissioners, and I agree with the Scottish parliamentary standards commissioner, who said to the Finance Committee that the SCPA could be charged with undertaking that work on behalf of the corporate body. We could further define that role by stating that the corporate body would continue to deal with the budget process while the SCPA looked backwards to ensure that we got best value. The evidence given by the corporate body supports such a change. In John Scott's evidence, the corporate body indicated that it does not have the resources to ensure best value, never mind to conduct a three Es examination.
Why has the corporate body not required compliance with the Scottish Executive's efficient government and/or best-value regimes? Why should commissioners and ombudsmen be any different from the rest of the public sector? The legislation governing the setting up of such offices cannot be used as a device to circumvent accountability, openness, transparency, economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The members of the SCPA have the experience to undertake the work and—I hope that Mr Swinney is listening—have demonstrated that they do not have a cosy relationship with the Auditor General or Audit Scotland.
The report gives us the opportunity to develop further some of the issues that have been raised. It would be wrong just to accept it and then leave it on a shelf to gather dust. Some of the recommendations will rightly be pursued by committees of the Parliament; others will be addressed by the corporate body and the business managers. However, as MSPs, we need to be assured that the Finance Committee will continue to oversee the direction of travel laid out in the report. We must have an impact on holding to account those who expend significant sums of public money on behalf of the Parliament.
I am delighted to support motion S2M-5320 in the name of Wendy Alexander.
I am pleased to have been a member of the Finance Committee while it undertook the inquiry. Like other committee members, I thank the clerks and the witnesses.
I have no doubt that the establishment of the Scottish public services ombudsman and of commissioners who are responsible for information, for parliamentary standards, for public appointments and for children has been a good thing for the country. With their establishment, advocacy, fairness, openness and support are being directed into parts of our society that were previously ignored or dealt with undemocratically.
As the committee highlighted in its report, concern is felt about control of the organisations' budgets. That might be an inevitable consequence of setting up those organisations without a common or standard template. Most of the bodies have made inflation-beating budget demands, so it is essential that the Parliament recognises the current disparities in financial management controls. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body picked up the committee's concerns in its response earlier this year and concurred that a common understanding is needed of such bodies' accountability mechanisms.
As John Swinney, the committee's deputy convener, said, the tricky problem lies in ensuring that the independence of those public bodies is not compromised by the need to operate within financial constraints; he stressed that real scrutiny of expenditure must take place. One part of the answer lies in the Justice 1 Committee's suggestion that all commissioners should provide a rolling three-year strategic plan. For that to succeed in achieving transparent monitoring, the Finance Committee believes that the corporate body will require to bare its teeth in scrutinising commissioners. The SPCB can do that with the knowledge that it has budget-setting powers.
One eye-opener of the scrutiny process was the admission that commissioners were often left with the final decision on their location, so the opportunity to share accommodation costs was lost. Similarly, little thought appeared to have been given to sharing back-up and administrative costs. The committee was correct to highlight those issues, especially if, as predicted, we are entering a period of greater financial austerity. The Executive should consider the opportunity to reduce expenditure through sharing. I am pleased that the deputy minister has said that the Executive is moving in that direction.
In addition to direct financial accountability, the Finance Committee concurred with the Procedures Committee's view that an independent assessor should be appointed to advise the corporate body on commissioners' performance. That would aid the corporate body with information on commissioners' financial accountability.
I fully support the recommendation that the Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform and the permanent secretary should review the guidance that is given to departments on the financial controls for non-departmental public bodies. To learn that one such body had received no audit for five years and that limited budget monitoring had occurred does not reflect well on the Government.
The Finance Committee was right to highlight the curious case of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, which seems not to require any financial scrutiny from the Executive or the Parliament.
Given the surge of new bodies, I support the committee's view that business managers should explore all new proposals and check whether we can adapt or adjust present systems to cope with new responsibilities, rather than establish new bodies.
Unlike Derek Brownlee, I accept the deputy minister's view that the latest commissioners were already in process. I was pleased to hear from the deputy minister that the Executive supports the corporate body taking a more rigorous approach to commissioners' budget needs.
I hope that the committee's work on the issue will bring greater transparency to the work of existing commissioners without compromising their independence.
I want to make two general points that are relevant to the debate. First, I think that all members agree that if we were to start again things would be different and that we would adopt a slightly different approach to appointing commissioners, who are commonly referred to as tsars. However, we are where we are and we must consider where to go from here.
The Finance Committee's report rightly sets out several questions that should be asked before the Parliament decides to appoint another commissioner. When I was preparing a bill that would have established a commissioner for older people, I considered the possibility of adding that commissioner's remit to the remit of an existing commissioner, but that proved to be extremely difficult in legislative terms. The legal advice that I received from the Parliament was that that could not be done without introducing a fairly substantive bill, which would probably require to be sponsored by the Executive. As well as considering the criteria that the Finance Committee has set out, we must consider the factors that can influence whether new remits can be added to existing remits.
I come to my second general point. Because of the remit of its inquiry, the Finance Committee inevitably focused on the commissioners who have been appointed by the Parliament. However, compared with the Scottish Executive, those commissioners pale into insignificance in financial terms and in terms of the resources that they use. There is inconsistency right across the board, not only in the operating frameworks—the minister referred to those—of the recent appointments and the new bodies that the Executive has set up, but in relation to the basic principles that are involved. For example, appointments to the boards of regional transport partnerships, which the Executive has recently set up through Executive-sponsored legislation, fall outwith the public appointments code and the remit of the public appointments commissioner. It seems to me that that flies in the face of the Parliament's intention when it passed the Public Appointments and Public Bodies etc (Scotland) Act 2003. The latest appointment—of the police complaints commissioner—also falls outwith the remit of the public appointments code and the public appointments commissioner. I say to the Executive that nothing more than statutory instruments are required to bring such people into line and make them properly accountable under the act and under freedom of information legislation, for example.
A number of issues relating to the five parliamentary commissioners must be addressed. First, my experience of the public services ombudsman's office is that the time that it takes to reach a decision on whether an investigation should be conducted—never mind the time that it takes to conduct an investigation—is totally unacceptable. I have been waiting for 12 months for a decision from that ombudsman on whether there is a prima facie case to answer—that is before an investigation can take place. In almost every case, the turnaround time from referral to a final report is well over a year. That defeats the purpose of the act. I am not sure whether there is a lack of resources for dealing with the ombudsman's workload or whether there are inefficiencies in the ombudsman's office, but the corporate body must urgently and openly address that matter. It must talk to all members of the Parliament and not deal with the matter in secrecy, which it has typically done in the past seven years—Margaret Jamieson was right about that. How can we ask the corporate body to monitor the accountability of such bodies when it is not sufficiently accountable to the Parliament as a whole?
Does Mr Neil accept that, until very recently, the corporate body has not had what it at any rate believed to be the powers to monitor those people? There was no element of secrecy.
That is a separate issue. The corporate body operates like a secret society and there is a wider concern about that among members of all parties. That is not the main focus of the debate, but it is relevant.
Secondly, there is no systematic way to hold the commissioners to account in the Parliament, not only on the financial side, for which the corporate body is responsible, but on the more general policy side. I again give the example of the Scottish public services ombudsman. The ombudsman is not being properly or systematically held accountable to the Parliament. A lead committee needs to be designated so that each commissioner reports to a specific committee. We know that the standards commissioner reports to the Standards and Public Appointments Committee, but the information commissioner does not report to a specific committee and neither does the ombudsman. The same is true of the other commissioners. We must ensure that there is greater accountability, not only to ensure that the commissioners do what the Parliament willed, but to address some of the policy issues that arise out of their work.
I will give one example. It is clear to me—and having had a discussion with Professor Alice Brown, I know that it is also clear to her—that a major problem in Scotland is the lack of adequate complaints procedures within public bodies, including local authorities. That genuine policy issue must be addressed. Many of the public agencies with inadequate complaints procedures are agencies of the Executive, yet there is no way in which the ombudsman can get a committee to address the issue and have the necessary follow-up work done on policy development.
Thirdly, we should take a leaf out of the book of the United States Congress. When it sets up a body that it is not clear is required in the long term, it puts a brake on the length of time for which the body is set up. If we set up a new body—as I hope that we will after the election, Mr Brownlee—it would be a sensible innovation to set it up for five years and build into the bill a statutory requirement for a review of whether the body needs to continue at all, or in its present form. There would be a built-in procedure to ensure that, as Margaret Jamieson said, we get the valuable outputs in relation to the inputs and achieve not only value for money, but the original principled objectives in respect of either access to information or redress for maladministration or the failure to deliver a service.
Finally, we need to consider inspections and audits across the public sector. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee was told three or four years ago, when we reviewed lifelong learning, that the Scottish Executive Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Department and its agencies required every college in Scotland to be reviewed 28 times a year for different aspects of their work. Sometimes the same work was reviewed more than once. For example, the Scottish Enterprise local enterprise company for area A required a review for its contract and an almost identical contract with area B required someone else—usually a consultant—to undertake an inspection. I hope that Professor Crerar's report will address that, so that some common sense and streamlining can be brought into the system, along with more effectiveness and more accountability in respect of both the Executive and the Parliament.
I hope that when the time comes members will support my bill to establish a commissioner for older people.
I join other Finance Committee members in thanking the clerks and the witnesses for a long, complex and, ultimately, useful exploration of accountability issues. I say that it is a long exploration because today we are discussing the funding of the commissioners and ombudsmen, which comes to around £6 million per annum. Tomorrow we will discuss the Scottish Executive budget, which is 5,000 times larger at £30 billion. A roughly equal amount of time has been set aside for the discussion of each of those sums of money.
I wonder why there is so much scrutiny of the commissioners and ombudsmen. Part of the reason is that they are a relatively easy target because, unlike other public bodies, they are not part of the Executive and have no Executive ministers to defend them. Their independence is guaranteed by the legislation that set them up, which states very clearly:
"in the exercise of that officer's functions",
the officer
"is not subject to the direction or control of—
(a) any member of the Parliament,
(b) any member of the Scottish Executive,"
or even any member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.
That clear definition of independence is in line with the international position. Section B2 of the United Nations-endorsed Paris principles for human rights bodies provides that
"The national institution"
of the human rights body
"shall have an infrastructure which is suited to the smooth conduct of its activities, in particular adequate funding. The purpose of this funding should be to enable it to have its own staff and premises, in order to be independent of the Government and not be subject to financial control which might affect its independence."
That is the framework within which the commissioners and ombudsmen were created.
As John Swinney said, the committee's report is about balancing the need for independence with the right and proper need to ensure that money that comes out of the public purse to support these functions is well spent.
Mr Ballard raises the issue of adequate funding. Will he explain to us who should decide what is adequate?
That is the subject of my entire speech.
There is much in the report with which I agree. It is clear that when the bodies were established there was not enough clarity about who determines the adequacy of funding, about accountability and about scrutiny. We are trying retrospectively to come up with an adequate system for that. However, the system must involve a balance; my speech is about where we strike that balance. I objected to parts of the report on the basis of differences that I have with other members. Some of those arise from the difference between my postbag and that of Derek Brownlee. The letters that I receive are not about the £6 million expenditure of the ombudsmen and commissioners, but about the need for proper advocacy of the rights of children—people who do not have a vote—the need for independent scrutiny of information and the need for proper parliamentary standards and redress with public bodies. Those are the issues that concern people and that led to the establishment of the ombudsmen and commissioners.
Andrew Arbuckle said that he had an eye-opening experience when he discovered that the commissioners decided where their offices should be located. I quote to him comments made by Jim Wallace during the debate that established the Scottish information commissioner:
"It was the wish of this Parliament … that we should have a fully independent commissioner. That commissioner will be appointed on the nomination of the Parliament, which naturally means that his or her office will not be established as swiftly as it might have been had ministers selected the commissioner and told him or her where to site the office. That is a small price to pay for ensuring independence".—[Official Report, 24 April 2002; c 11197.]
The view of the Liberal Democrat Minister for Justice back in 2002 was that a delay in the establishment of the commissioner's office was a small price to pay for their independence. The Parliament must ask itself whether it is prepared to pay that price.
The minister spoke about a changed mood and I am sorry if that has happened. The price of independence is that commissioners and ombudsmen will say things that we parliamentarians do not like. They will campaign for things and spend money in ways that we do not like, but giving them independence means that they can do things as they like and not as we like. If they did not have that ability, they would not be independent.
We did not hear anything about commissioners and ombudsmen misspending money. On the other hand, we heard that there has been a 49 per cent increase in complaints to the Scottish public services ombudsman, 725 new cases for the Scottish information commissioner—more than double the upper estimate—and that there are serious concerns that the commissioners and ombudsmen might not be able to clear their backlog, as Alex Neil mentioned.
Does the member agree that the number of cases referred to the information commissioner and the cost of running his office would be a lot lower if the agencies of the Scottish Executive, such as Communities Scotland, gave us the information that we requested instead of continuously and almost without exception refusing to do so, thus requiring us to go through a whole procedure to get the information to which we are entitled?
I agree. I hope that in future the budget of the information commissioner will go down, along with the number of cases, because he will have succeeded in achieving a culture of openness in the kind of bodies that Alex Neil described. If the commissioner achieves that culture change, his function will be complete and money will have been well spent. Without that culture change, however, we need the commissioner so that people have recourse when they are blocked by the kind of bodies that Alex Neil mentioned.
No one would argue that we do not need more clarity of budget setting to ensure that such bodies have the finances that they need. The suggestion by the Scottish commissioner for children and young people that there be an annual budget and that any additional funding should be discussed in detail is sensible. That takes us to the nub of the problem—the difference between accountability and direction.
We received a good briefing from the Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland in which is highlighted the obligation to be accountable. In schedule 2 to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, it is stated that
"the accountable officer is answerable to the Parliament for"
the accounts and for
"ensuring the propriety and regularity of the finances of the Commissioner; and … ensuring that the resources of the Commissioner are used economically, efficiently and effectively."
That was Margaret Jamieson's point.
Does the member agree that there is no process for that to happen within the Parliament, other than if the corporate body can fit it in?
I agree that that is the major concern. It is important that accountability comes after the money has been spent. We need to check that the money is spent effectively and check regularly the accounts. There is a world of difference between doing that and using a power of direction before the money is spent.
If such direction were used in the way that Derek Brownlee described—"Here's your budget; you choose how to spend it"—it might not create problems for the independence of commissioners and ombudsmen. However, if the power goes further and the corporate body or another says, "Spend money on this budget line, but not on that," the power of direction would completely undermine independence. Margaret Jamieson is right that we need much more scrutiny of the money after it has been spent and more scrutiny of the accounts and reports of such bodies. We must be careful if we opt to have a power of direction over budgets—I fear that we could cross the line and conflict with the desire for independence.
We need clarity about financial support and accountability to ensure that we get the best possible service from the commissioners. If we undermine their independence, we will not get value for money. What use is an independent commissioner who is not independent because his or her budget is directed by the Parliament according to its wishes and not theirs?
On behalf of the SPCB, I begin by paying tribute to the Finance Committee and its staff for preparing such a comprehensive report. I welcome John Swinney's remarks and I endorse all that he said, particularly with reference to Des McNulty's commitment to the report. I also welcome the report's recommendations, which will greatly assist the corporate body in its governance arrangements with the office-holders. We welcome today's debate, as it gives us an opportunity to inform the Parliament of what we are doing and thinking in respect of the report. The SPCB will deal in an open and transparent way with office-holders in future.
First, I take the opportunity to assure Parliament that the SPCB is committed to working effectively with office-holders to ensure that they provide a quality, functionally independent service to the public, underpinned by value-for-money principles, which are of prime concern to the public and to Parliament, as the minister and Mark Ballard said.
We will also work to ensure that the office-holders, working with parliamentary committees, have the opportunity to input into the development of legislation and, where appropriate, the improvement of legislation, based on the work that they do. I will explain that a little further. Hand in hand with that, and based on the recommendations of the Procedures Committee, which have been endorsed by the Finance Committee report that we are discussing today, we are also introducing an independent annual appraisal mechanism for office-holders. Those appraisals will not only feed into the reappointment process, but will also provide a further opportunity for discussions between the SPCB and the office-holders on any issues arising from the appraiser's report. We consider that such scrutiny will add value to the governance of office-holders and will give reassurance, particularly to Andrew Arbuckle, who raised that point.
The Finance Committee has recommended scrutiny of office-holders from the various parliamentary committees, and we whole-heartedly endorse that proposal. I am aware that many committees already discuss with office-holders various issues within their subject remit. Indeed, the Education Committee took evidence from Kathleen Marshall only last week, and the ombudsman has also given evidence to committees. The scrutiny of office-holders' annual reports can bring into a debating forum various trends that the office-holders may consider to be of concern and which committees may wish to examine. Ultimately, that has the potential to inform proposals for legislative change—again, adding value to the process. That is something that John Swinney referred to.
Having established the offices, the Parliament has a duty to the public to ensure not only that they provide a good service to the public, but that they add value by suggesting improvements to how the public sector operates. That was, in my view, John Swinney's key point.
I take John Scott's point about the ombudsman giving evidence to various committees, but the policy lessons coming out of her work go into the ether unless she is reporting on her own remit to a particular committee on a regular basis. The lack of that may be one of the reasons why there are currently so many problems and delays in the ombudsman's office.
Mr Neil has raised two separate issues. To address his first point, it is important that commissioners and ombudsmen give evidence to committees to inform what may become a legislative process. That is fundamental to the point that I am trying to make, and I hope that he will take that on board.
Many private businesses use a constructive complaints system as a means of improving their services, and there are arguments that we should encourage that culture more. We should see it as an opportunity to learn and to improve the quality of services or processes available. Where trends are identified, they should be fed into committees, with a view to developing a legislative process.
The report makes a number of recommendations, and I am sure that members will be pleased to hear that I do not propose to address each one in turn. However, discussions about financial memoranda have already been held between SPCB and Executive officials to prepare—
Was that at a public meeting?
I will treat that remark with the contempt that it deserves.
Discussions have been held on the preparation of a memorandum of understanding, whereby we will share information during the development of financial memoranda attached to bills that would establish new offices. The approach could apply to non-Executive as well as Executive bills and the SPCB is more than willing to share its experience with members who prepare financial memoranda. Perhaps Mr Neil will take advantage of that offer.
The SPCB welcomes the proposed legislative changes to enhance its scrutiny role, although we already have voluntary arrangements with office-holders. The office-holders fully accept the need for appropriate scrutiny and have been willing to work with us on budgets, for example. We have received business plans from the office-holders, which not only give us greater insight into their forward work plans but enable us to consider the targets and outcomes that are envisaged. We can monitor and discuss such matters more regularly with office-holders.
We have made considerable progress on a number of governance issues. For some time, we have encouraged office-holders to establish audit committees to assist and advise them on governance and budgetary issues and we have made available to office-holders access to the independent members of the SPCB's audit advisory board. We also agreed with each office-holder a memorandum of understanding on access to the central contingency fund, which is held by the SPCB and can meet exceptional expenditure. The fund was put in place to obviate the need for office-holders to hold a separate contingency in their budgets, thus reducing the overall SPCB budget.
We acknowledged that there might be scope for improving our approach to governance and we commissioned Audit Scotland to prepare a report on our governance arrangements with office-holders. I hope that Margaret Jamieson and Alex Neil will be reassured to hear that almost all the recommendations of that report have been endorsed by the Finance Committee.
We will discuss with the office-holders the processes that are in place, so that they can gain a better understanding of the issues that they face daily. We will expect them to provide us with more statistical information on their work and the targets that they set themselves.
We accept that we need to explore the potential for sharing services beyond ombudsmen, commissioners and the SPCB, because there might be a business advantage to be had by working with other organisations. SPCB and Executive officials have met to discuss the wider sharing of services.
I put on record that we will provide whatever support the Finance Committee requires in the preparation of the legislative changes that it recommended in its report.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I do not want to be churlish, particularly at this time of year, but Margaret Jamieson asked the member who represents the SPCB a fair question and did not deserve to be told that it would be treated with contempt. We are all interested in the answer to her question.
I do not think that Mr Scott intended any discourtesy. Therefore the matter is not one on which I must rule.
I hope that my speech will be brief.
When I read the report, I asked myself whether it is about accountability in relation to operational costs or commissioners' work, because the report mixes the two issues.
I attended the informal meeting of the Finance Committee at which the committee heard from an expert panel that had conducted research and advised other Governments on establishing external commissioners to scrutinise public bodies, including parliaments. The discussion at that meeting was much more transparent than the report or this debate because consideration was given to how we might ensure the independence of commissioners who must occasionally scrutinise politicians' work but whose purse strings are held by politicians. We discussed the evident areas of contention—although not the ones that we have debated today—and conflicts of interest, if I may put it that way. We considered how commissioners are funded and we put the spotlight on the accountability of their funders.
The Scottish information commissioner has been mentioned. I could not agree more with Alex Neil: if government bodies and local authorities gave us the information that we seek on national health service contracts and private finance initiatives, for example, the information commissioner's work would be massively reduced. We also have a commissioner for children and young people who speaks out on issues such as dawn raids, making the Executive very uncomfortable on occasions.
A large number of quangos and public bodies have been created, but people feel that there is no accountability. Complaints have soared since we set up the commissioners, which reflects how people feel about the lack of accountability in public bodies. People feel powerless. There is no question but that the ombudsmen are overburdened with work, but lots of campaigns go to the ombudsmen because they get stonewalled at local authority level. Resolution of that problem will be an issue, but scrutiny of the ombudsmen is not the right direction in which to go.
We must consider the money that is given to quangos and their complete lack of accountability and direction. For example, trying to get information on college boards and what they spend money on is an absolute nightmare. Furthermore, where is the accountability of the Scottish Arts Council? For Scottish Enterprise, it was only when things went wrong that Parliament applied the type of scrutiny that we are discussing in respect of the £6 million cost of commissioners.
I am interested in the emphasis that we are placing on certain details in our discussions of accountability. There have not been any big complaints and there have not been any big crises. People are not knocking down my door to complain about the role of the commissioner for children and young people, or the information commissioner, or the—I was going to say the human rights commissioner, but that post has not been set up yet—so why the urgency? Why are we putting so much time and energy into this? What is the political agenda?
At an informal meeting, the New Zealand approach, our approach and the Westminster approach were discussed. In other places, there are individual commissioners, or commissioners have particular areas of expertise. The Finance Committee's report supports the New Zealand approach. It states:
"The Committee endorses the approach taken in New Zealand and recommends that future proposals for representatives of specific interest groups within society should not be designated as Parliamentary commissioners."
So—Alex Neil's member's bill has had it.
I do not have a problem with the idea of having one or two commissioners who have everything in their remit and who represent all citizens in a very general way, but there is a political debate to be had about who the commissioners should be and why they should be there. Commissioners exist because we are not all equal. Some sections of the population are not "interest groups"—they are oppressed and marginalised people. Commissioners—such as a commissioner for older people—are intended to advocate people's rights. They have prosecutory and statutory powers, which I am in favour of. There are good reasons for having the Disability Rights Commission, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality because some sections of the population need representation in public bodies. The Finance Committee should not be commenting on that because to do so is not within its remit and it is not the committee's decision.
Is the debate about finances or operational costs, or is it about pulling the purse strings? The committee cannot openly come out and say that it wants to clip the wings of the commissioners, or that it is concerned about what will happen in the future and so wants to influence oh so subtly the direction the commissioners take by pulling the purse strings and using arguments about accountability and transparency, but I am afraid that that is very much what is behind the report.
Why reclassify the commissioner for children and young people? If it is to give her statutory powers, guess what? I would vote for that—that would be fine. Why cannot there be annual budgets that are increased by Parliament by a percentage, as local authority budgets are increased? As Mark Ballard suggested, the case would have to be made for any additional money that was required.
The danger is that a long-term compromise for the independence of the commissioners is on the cards. Simply on the basis of his being against individual commissioners, I hope that Alex Neil will vote against the motion.
I would first like to apologise for my late arrival; I missed the opening speech from John Swinney and most of what George Lyon said. I thought that it was a 2.30 kick-off.
How was the pie?
Comparison of my physique with the member's makes me sure that he is eating much more than I am at the moment.
The debate has been constructive. The fact that there is a debate about the direction of travel on accountability and governance was reflected in the speeches of Frances Curran and others. Regardless of where people stand in that debate, it is legitimate for parliamentarians to express their views. I hope that members will not, 10 or 15 years into Parliament's life, be inhibited from saying whether they think that the role of commissioners is appropriate. Members should still be able to address and scrutinise the issue—it would be perverse to arrive at a position in which they could not, regardless of whether they believed that the establishment of any commissioner over the past six years was appropriate at the time, or of whether they believe that the establishment of any of the bodies that are in the pipeline is appropriate.
Much of what the Finance Committee said in its report is just practical good sense. Fundamentally, it is asking where we are now in 2006, as we approach 2007 and Parliament's third session, which will begin after the election in May 2007. The report invites us to consider how we view the role of governance in Scotland. Many of us will have been in different directions of travel politically before we arrived at a devolved Parliament. Many of us from different parties have different perspectives on whether Scotland should have a devolved Parliament or even autonomy. We might have changed our positions quite dramatically. I remember Frances Curran speaking powerfully about such matters in the early 1980s. The fundamental question is what we want to do about the role of commissioners.
The Finance Committee said three important things. First, it said that when the establishment of any new commission is proposed—regardless of whether the proposal has been made by the Executive or by a member—the parliamentary committees should have a rigorous debate about it. We should ask the crucial question whether the new body would fit in with what the existing commissioners and ombudspersons do. It is legitimate for the Finance Committee to ask that.
Secondly, the committee examined the cost implications of the commissioners. The reality is that, in the rush to establish new bodies to achieve better governance, questions about whether they could share services or premises that are being asked now were not necessarily paramount in our concerns. All the Finance Committee is saying is that we should reflect on that.
The committee heard worrying evidence about to whom particular commissioners are accountable. I make no apology for saying that we cannot have it both ways: we cannot say that parliamentarians are held accountable, only to be told, when we transfer responsibility to other bodies, that we have no right to ask questions about those bodies. In the film "City Hall", Al Pacino's character lectures a younger man about the role of governance in politics; he says that the world is not black and white, but grey. That is the reality of governance and, perhaps, of the potential dullness of today's debate.
Members are being asked those questions, sometimes verbally and sometimes in letters. In my constituency, I do not get long letters from people who have long lists of letters after their names that show that they have three or four degrees to support what they say. People buttonhole us about the role that some bodies play. In particular, I have been asked about the role of the commissioner for children and young people. People have asked whether some of the issues that she has focused on—which Frances Curran might feel more sympathetic towards—are priorities for young people in Scotland and whether she should be engaged in such activities. Those are legitimate questions.
Mr McAveety might not get many letters from people who have many letters after their names, but regardless of the number of letters that someone has after their name or of their background, if they have been on the receiving end of rough treatment from a public authority, surely they want an ombudsman who will take up their case and test it to the limit in order to guarantee that they get the satisfaction to which they are entitled.
I do not disagree. The ombudsmen should deal with such matters with rigour. However, parliamentarians have an interrogative role to play, which has sometimes been displaced because of an understandable desire to give other bodies the independence and autonomy to handle such issues.
Our experience of the past six or seven years tells us that although there is heady excitement in setting up such bodies, it is almost as if we have been mugged by the reality of how some of them conduct their business. It strikes me that the Finance Committee is perfectly entitled to explore that. How Parliament should deal with that is something that parliamentarians in the current Parliament and those who are elected in May 2007 will need to reflect and direct on.
I acknowledge Mark Ballard's concern—to be fair, he has been consistent on the issue—about the power of direction and the independence of the organisations. However, we cannot have it both ways and we need to reflect on that. Without asking the questions, we would not have been able to revisit commissioners' budgets so vigorously. By raising the debate to that level, people realised that there is a balancing act between what we want in life—
Will the member take an intervention?
Sorry, Mark.
We are getting close to Christmas. I know exactly what my two kids want for Christmas, but I tell them that they are not going to get everything they asked for. However, there is an expectation that I will deliver on some of what they want, just for some peace of mind.
Will the member take an intervention?
No. I am sorry about that. Obviously, if I were to have a Trotskyist Christmas I would give them a present every week, but there we go. Somebody else would need to pay for them, incidentally.
The real debate is about striking a balance. I hope that the commissioners and ombudspersons will not be told exactly what to do and what to prioritise, but I expect them at least to be accountable earlier to parliamentary committees, as John Swinney said in his opening remarks. How do we strike the right balance in direction? That is the key question. The Executive, members of the Parliament and advocacy bodies all come up with ideas, but we have to say, "Hold on a minute. How will we put that into the broad agenda of governance in Scotland?" The Finance Committee has tried to make a reasonable contribution to that debate. I pay tribute to the former convener, who was like a dog with a bone on the issue. He was asking the big questions. Even if they are not articulated in written form or whatever, people reflect on the issues quite powerfully and we need to provide some answers. The Finance Committee's report at least points us in the right direction and we have some better answers than we had when we started the journey more than a year ago.
I congratulate the Finance Committee on its report. Unlike other members, I did not find it dull. I do not know what that says about me.
Members from a number of parties have made good and sensible contributions to the debate. I take off my hat to Des McNulty, who has been described as "a dog with a bone" by his Labour colleagues. He made a start on something that many members have an appetite for. It is not just about the money: it is about considering what the commissioners and ombudsmen are supposed to do, to whom they are accountable and what we know about what is going on.
John Swinney gave a good outline of the report at the beginning of the debate. He made the important point that the committee does not seek to compromise the independence of any commissioner or ombudsperson—I think that that is the modern term. He shares that view with Frances Curran.
It is adventurous for the Finance Committee to suggest that the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body should exercise restraints because, as many members have said, we do not know what goes on inside the corporate body. I whole-heartedly support the committee's view that functions should be amalgamated and that we should not set up a new framework and regime to do just slightly different tasks. Government should learn some lessons from that, too, given the number of quangos. I agree with the notion—I think that the minister accepted it as well—that no new organisations should be set up unless there is proven need for them.
I note that, in 1997, the Tory Government left behind 241 quangos, whereas today there are only 141. Mr Davidson should be careful before he throws stones.
I wonder whether Mr Lyon also has the statistics on how many people work in quangos now compared with 1997, and also what the relative costs are. I will move on.
The minister mentioned the Crerar investigation. I have always held the view that, when an independent investigation is carried out, everything sits on the back burner and no progress is made in case it does not match the results of the investigation. The minister talked about value for money, but the trouble that we have, which several members mentioned, is in how we evaluate what is value for money.
Jim Mather suggested that those who are investigated should pay a levy—a system such as will be introduced under the Legal Profession and Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 2006, which was passed last week. Lawyers will pay for the new Scottish legal complaints commission. Perhaps such a system would have merit. No doubt, it will be a key part of the Scottish National Party's proposal to balance the books at some stage.
Derek Brownlee and Frank McAveety mentioned the vagueness of the rules when some of the bodies were set up, which is because we did not really know what we were doing. Frank McAveety made a pertinent point about that.
Derek Brownlee was right that the commissioners must work within their budgets. John Scott, on behalf of the corporate body, talked about the contingency funding system for commissioners in emergencies, which is sensible.
Margaret Jamieson made an excellent speech. She was absolutely right that we are all busy worrying about inputs and are not looking at outcomes, although outcomes should be used to measure public bodies. The issue is not just about cost; it is about what and how many benefits are provided and whether the work is pertinent. That may mean, as Alex Neil suggested, that there should be a review of the rules. Some commissioners might say that they cannot take certain actions that they were set up to take because they do not have the appropriate powers. That should be for Parliament to decide on; such issues should not be decided through memoranda of understanding that are developed behind the scenes somewhere. Margaret Jamieson also talked about the economy, efficiency and effectiveness—or three Es—test and the fact that the corporate body is not transparent. I suppose that not many members who are present would dispute that, although my colleague John Scott might.
Andrew Arbuckle gave the Justice 1 Committee's view. He talked about three-year rolling budgets and ministerial advice on monitoring. Alex Neil began rather well with a point about how we started off in 1999—Frank McAveety agreed with him on that. However, the number of tsars that Parliament has set up is small in comparison to the number of bodies that the Executive has set up. The minister should respond to that point in greater detail. Alex Neil mentioned delays with the SPSO. I have not experienced many such delays of late, although the SPSO went through a pretty rough patch when it was being set up. That is possibly because the SPSO is getting more efficient, despite the huge increase in the number of requests. I find the SPSO fairly easy to work with, as long as I do the preliminary work, which is the MSP's role, as other members have said. However, Alex Neil made a good point about performance versus policy issues.
John Scott reported the corporate body's view on the commissioners' independence and value for money. I agree with other members that we need more openness from the corporate body. If Parliament agrees that a body will be set up, surely Parliament must be kept informed about the performance and the justification for the role. I was pleased that John Scott talked about consideration of outcomes.
Far too many bodies do not have correct or transparent complaints procedures and many bodies simply do not respond to requests. Hence, the Scottish information commissioner's office is one of the offices that was created partly as a result of the Government's failure to be transparent. I do not suppose that that is a new thing and I do not suppose that it will change much in the future.
The debate has raised some interesting issues. I hope that the minister and the corporate body will get back to the Finance Committee and give Parliament fuller answers to the questions that have been raised.
When Alex Neil said that we should follow the example of the US Congress, I thought that he was going to say that we should have elections every two years. Fortunately, he did not go down that route.
The Finance Committee was right to undertake its inquiry. I know from having served on that committee that issues had arisen about its role in scrutinising budgets and the power of the corporate body in setting them. As other members have said, the budgets of the commissioners are small in comparison with the overall Executive budget, but we should not ignore the fact that the amount that they spend is large in absolute terms, so it is not unimportant. I hope that I will be able to return to that point.
The issue of accountability as against operational responsibility was raised. The minister said that the two are clearly separate and that we do not want to interfere with the latter. That sounds great and we have all signed up to it, but is it true? It depends on how we define operational responsibility. It is not a particularly new conundrum: the police are operationally independent—we have often heard that—but only within the budget that the Executive sets, which is passed on by local councils. The position is similar for all the commissioners that we have set up. There is no point in pretending that drawing a line between setting a sensible budget on the one hand and interfering with operational capability on the other is always easy, or that agreement on it will always be possible.
If we have good communication between the budget givers and the budget holders—the commissioners—that will allow the business of the commissioners to move ahead successfully without any complaints. However, let us be frank: that will not always be the case. The situation is also complicated by the differences between the commissioners that have been appointed. Some budgets are clearly demand led—the Scottish information commissioner is an example of that and its budget could be compared with the criminal legal aid budget. However, others are much more optionally constructed. As Derek Brownlee said, the commissioner for children and young people sees her role as being advocacy, so her budget is not demand led in that sense.
As the committee said in paragraph 49 of its report:
"no public body can be exempt from the requirement to demonstrate value for money."
The next question is this: to whom are they required to demonstrate that? In evidence to the Finance Committee, the commissioner for children and young people said:
"I would say that I am accountable to children and young people in Scotland".—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 6 June 2006; c3694.]
The Scottish parliamentary standards commissioner said that accountability is to the public. What on earth does that mean? Perhaps we have a problem with the definition of "accountable", but I cannot see how the commissioners can be accountable in the ways they said they are.
Does the member acknowledge that if he had read out the full quotation from the Finance Committee's report, it would make it clear that that commissioner for children and young people acknowledged that she is accountable to Parliament for her responsibility to young people, which is a fairer formulation than that in the partial quotation that he read out?
I was not trying to exclude that bit; I was just trying to save time. However, I will read out another quotation, in which she says:
"I am accountable to the Parliament for being accountable to children and young people".—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 6 June 2006; c3694.]
I do not know whether that clarifies the matter. It seems very convenient for someone to be accountable to a group of people who cannot dismiss them or subject them to question. I agree with what Derek Brownlee said about accountability. At the moment, only we here in Parliament are accountable; we will be held accountable in five months' time. We are a young Parliament—we are only in our second session—so we should not seek too easily to shed accountability and rely on others to take ultimate responsibility for what should be our job.
I will address an argument on the other side of the fence, which Mark Ballard and Frances Curran mentioned. Why was the Finance Committee examining these particular budgets? There was clearly an issue about them, as I have set out, but another reason for choosing to do so was that it was easy. The hard fact is that the large block budgets of the quangos—as Frances Curran said—and the health boards are difficult to scrutinise and drill down into. To be fair to the Finance Committee, that difficulty with getting down into the big budgets of the Executive and some of the quangos has been a recurring theme in many of its meetings. I therefore do not think that we should criticise the Finance Committee on that score.
I wish to consider one or two other recommendations from the Finance Committee. First, there is the recommendation that
"no new bodies should be established"
unless it can be clearly demonstrated that their proposed functions could not be carried out within existing structures. We owe it to the taxpayers and to ourselves to stick to that recommendation.
Secondly, there is the recommendation that committees need to scrutinise the ombudsmen much more closely. The current relationship with them seems to be too remote, especially for people who are called parliamentary commissioners.
We should tread very carefully when creating new bodies, be they commissioners or quangos. Once they are there, they are very difficult to disestablish. Once a commissioner has been established for group A, it is very difficult—I point out to Mr Neil—to resist the argument for establishing a commissioner for group B. If there is a case for establishing a commissioner for a particular group, we should consider how that reflects on how we have been discharging our responsibilities towards that group of people if we have reached the stage when they also need a commissioner to look after them. We should be wary of the tendency for Parliament and, more important, the Executive to have everything at arm's length, which is a very good way of shying clear of one's ultimate responsibilities. We should not be afraid to take the difficult decisions ourselves and to carry the responsibility at the ballot box.
This has been a good debate. It might be on a dull but worthy subject, but there have been a lot of good contributions from across the chamber. As Mr Swinney clearly outlined at the start of the debate, the issues are quite difficult. The committee wrestled with the apparent contradiction between the independence of commissioners and the need for them to be accountable for how they spend money and deliver value for money.
I believe that the Finance Committee got it right: operational independence and robust parliamentary and public accountability should be seen not as conflicting concepts, but as key parts of the overall performance management framework to which all sponsored bodies should operate. With one or two exceptions, that is the view that has been expressed during the debate and it should give the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, who are the representatives of the Parliament, comfort in being robust in delivering those functions.
Mr Swinney outlined two other particular areas. One was the role of parliamentary committees and how they contribute to the exercise. When we look below the surface to determine whether finance or commissioners' budgets are the reason for the delays that various members have mentioned, or whether it is more to do with the management of budgets and how the processes work, committees have a role to play to bottom that out so that decisions can be reached. Ultimately, as Alasdair Morgan rightly pointed out to Mark Ballard, someone has to make the decision to set the appropriate budget for the coming year. A budget cannot effectively be a blank cheque, with the commissioners making the final decision. A proper view must be taken.
I agree with what the minister has just said, but does he take the point that if organisations such as Communities Scotland adapted to the new situation and gave information without people having to approach the information commissioner to force it out of them, that would have a beneficial knock-on effect on the money that we need for that commissioner? There is an onus on the Executive.
There is an onus on everyone to comply with legislation that the Parliament has passed, but there will always be matters on which individuals or organisations feel that they have legislative cover for withholding information, and it is up to the Scottish information commissioner to come to a view on those.
Concerns have been raised about the length of time it takes the Scottish public services ombudsman to arrive at a decision—indeed, Mr Neil raised such concerns. Similar concerns have been raised about the information commissioner. I think that there is a general view in the Parliament that it would be useful if committees did some work to get to the bottom of whether the problem is financial constraint or management of the process.
Mr Neil started his speech by going back to 1999 and saying that if we were starting again we might take a different approach and not be where we are today. He cannot always be charged with being out of step with the mood of the Parliament, but I suggest that in introducing his Commissioner for Older People (Scotland) Bill, he is slightly out of step with it. The debate has reflected that. I am concerned that his appeal for support for his bill may be misjudged and that he has missed his time in that the mood of the Parliament is no longer supportive.
Mr Salmond has promised it.
In that case, Mr Neil might wait a long time.
Mark Ballard legitimately argued his concern that, by scrutinising a commissioner's budget, we could stray into compromising their operational independence. The point is valid and worth making, but someone must make a decision about what the budget is. That requires judgment, and committees of the Parliament have a good role to play in that determination.
The Executive is keen to work with the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Ultimately, on commissioners, the buck stops at the SPCB's door. The Executive will work closely with the SPCB to ensure that it makes the right decisions on those matters.
I thank the Parliament for allowing us to have the debate. It was an important debate and it included many good speeches.
My closing the debate on behalf of the Finance Committee is not an indication of any sort of seniority within it; it is just that I got stuck in traffic and, by the time I arrived, everybody else had refused the honour of summing up.
The debate has been remarkably lively—probably livelier than many of us expected a debate on a Finance Committee report to be. Frances Curran asked what our agenda was, as if we had sinister reasons for wanting to undertake the inquiry, so I will say a few words about why we wanted to do it. We were aware that an increasing number of investigatory, regulatory and independent—by which we mean independent of the Executive—bodies were being set up by a variety of different means. Having scrutinised the SPCB's budget, we were also aware that there were issues with its ability—and hence ours—to scrutinise some of those bodies.
There were also issues with lines of accountability. Alasdair Morgan was right to point out that although the commissioner for children and young people feels she is responsible to children and young people, they do not elect her and cannot scrutinise her budget, which somebody has to do. Such bodies spend public money, not their own, so there must be a mechanism by which we can scrutinise their expenditure. We were also concerned that, as we were setting up a number of such bodies, there was potential for overlap in their remits, which is not the most efficient way of doing things.
Frances Curran and Mark Ballard said that, at almost £6 million, the total budget of existing independent commissioners and ombudsmen was rather small beer compared with the Scottish Executive budget, but I have another comparison for members. I hope that I have got my information right, but from memory the budget for MSPs' offices, salaries and expenses is in the region of £9 million.
Hardly a week goes past without a freedom of information request about whether we are buying iPods from our allowances—I would like to know how anybody could do that—and a website has been set up so that journalists and other sad folk can check how much each MSP has spent on photocopying in a particular quarter of the year. I am not suggesting that we would expect the commissioners and ombudsmen to be subject to such scrutiny but, as I said, they are spending public money.
We are the elected representatives of the public, and there should be some mechanism by which we can ask questions to ensure that the money is being spent effectively and efficiently. That is not because we are trying to pull strings or do not like what they are saying, but because they are spending public money and it is our duty to ensure that it is being spent efficiently.
I agree with Dr Murray that powers exist in statute to examine, for example, economy, efficiency and effectiveness measures, and that there is an issue about how that is done most effectively. However, the report proposes a power of direction over the budget, which goes beyond asking questions and moves into telling people how they should spend money.
I totally disagree with Mark Ballard's interpretation of the report. We are proposing not a power of direction but a strengthening of the mechanisms to interrogate the budgets and ensure that efficient measures are being taken.
Reference has been made to NDPBs and other budgets that are accountable to the Executive and the Scottish ministers. Those budgets are within departmental portfolios. If civil servants and ministers are doing their jobs properly, they will be examining and interrogating those budgets, and if we on the Finance Committee think ministers are not doing that, we should be asking them about the details of those budgets. There are mechanisms to deal with those budgets, but not with the independent budgets.
We were aware of the anomalies in the legislation that established the posts. The commissioner for children and young people was set up by the Parliament following a proposal from the former Education, Culture and Sport Committee. Many members of different parties are concerned about how the post is operating, but many asked for it. The Executive did not ask for the commissioner—in fact, it resisted it for a while. Parliament asked for it, and the legislation came from the Parliament.
OSCR was set up because of a disastrous collapse in public confidence in charities in Scotland, after a particular scandal. It was necessary to take action to restore public confidence and to ensure that people continued to donate to charities. There was a different reason for that body. We have a slightly messy jigsaw: posts have been set up as a reaction to different circumstances.
The committee looked at other ways for bodies to report to Parliament. We came down in favour of enhancing the SPCB's ability to scrutinise the budgets and, as Andrew Arbuckle said, the suggestion that three-year strategic plans be submitted. We briefly contemplated a new committee or commission to investigate the others—a sort of tsars tsar—but, unsurprisingly, backed away from that fairly quickly. We also considered transferring responsibility to the Scottish Commission for Public Audit, because we were impressed with its audit work. Our session with Margaret Jamieson threw up a number of anomalies in how the SCPA is treated compared with committees of the Parliament. Those issues need to be addressed when the new session starts in May.
We felt that there was no clear rationale behind why some organisations are NDPBs and some are non-ministerial bodies. We were unclear about how non-ministerial departments such as OSCR are monitored financially, because neither the Executive nor the Parliament have the designated lead.
We made a number of recommendations for the Executive and the Parliament when they consider setting up bodies. When a new body or commission is proposed, the possibility of incorporating it into existing bodies must first be investigated. We must consider whether we can make use of existing resources to support the new office-holders. Indeed, we should avoid creating new bodies whenever possible. We suggested that we should integrate the human rights commission into the SPSO. In a sense, we were too late, as the Justice 1 Committee had done a lot of work on that and it was difficult for another committee to charge in at the end and suggest a different way of proceeding.
When new commissioners or ombudsmen are proposed, detailed discussion should take place with the SPCB before bills are introduced. The SPCB must be involved at the beginning.
The SPCB should approve the locations of all commissioners and ombudsmen. The committee was pleased that the SPCB will have the power to approve the location of the most recent body—the Scottish commission for human rights.
We were attracted by the New Zealand approach that specific interest groups should not be represented by parliamentary commissioners. An issue with the commissioner for children and young people is that children who are under 18 cannot vote and therefore cannot voice their view in Parliament. However, I agree with Frank McAveety and Alasdair Morgan that we are responsible for representing all such groups. If we went down the route of representing specific interest groups, we could have commissioners for older people, for disabled people and for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people—we could keep on expanding that. Representing such people is what we do. We are elected to represent not only people like us, but all our constituents. That is ultimately a job for us in Parliament.
The committee suggested that the Executive should consider delaying the implementation and creation of new bodies until Professor Crerar had reported.
For the future, we suggest that bodies with similar roles and responsibilities should be amalgamated. The pooling of existing resources should be encouraged. When the remits of bodies or commissioners overlap directly, the responsibility should be removed from one body and transferred to another and the budgets should be altered accordingly to reflect the differences in responsibilities. When remits do not overlap directly but roles interrelate, the two bodies should have a memorandum of understanding. We suggested that the Executive should review the existing classifications of bodies with a view to simplification. The minister was right to say that classification should not in itself stand in the way of shared services, but we need to make some progress in that direction.
I, too, thank the clerks; the Scottish Parliament information centre, which has always supported us well; all the witnesses who appeared before us, some of whom possibly had a hard time and felt that they were under a fair amount of scrutiny; and, of course, other committee members and our former convener, Des McNulty, who, as others have said, was extremely diligent in pursuing the subject.