Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Official Report 746KB pdf

---

Public Services Reform (Developing New Ways of Delivering Services)

The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-05612, in the name of Kevin Stewart, on the inquiry into public services reform.

I remind members that we are extraordinarily tight for time and ask that you speak within your time limits, please.

15:32

It is a pleasure to open the debate on behalf of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, and I thank the Parliament for allowing the debate to take place. I also thank all members of the committee, past and present, the committee clerks, the advisers and those who gave evidence in the various strands of the inquiry.

We looked at partnerships and outcomes in strand 1, and we focused on benchmarking and performance measurement in strand 2. We are now looking at progress in the development of shared services, innovative ways of achieving economies of scale, and how to harness the strengths and skills of all relevant public sector partners, led by councils, to deliver the best possible quality services. Strand 3 will build on our earlier inquiry reports.

The committee is keen to hear the views of a wide cross-section of members during the inquiry, rather than after the work has concluded. That debate will inform the committee consideration and give members a chance to hear emerging views and set out key issues.

We have a background of budget reductions, an economic downturn and growing demands and expectations from the public on public services. We have looked at the Finance Committee inquiry into preventative spend, and the shared services agenda, including the Arbuthnott inquiry in Clyde valley; we have taken cognisance of the Christie commission and the Scottish Government’s response to it; we have looked assiduously at the statement of ambition and its focus on partners acting collectively to deliver outcomes for the community; and we have studied the community planning review and the development of single outcome agreements.

Strand 1 of the inquiry focused on community planning partnerships. In our strand 1 report, we noted that they are expected

“to promote a strong focus on outcomes, on partnership working, on the use of total resources and on the co-ordination of other activity.”

At the tail end of strand 1, the committee’s then convener, Joe FitzPatrick MSP, said:

“Community planning partnerships can effect genuine change in our communities. Our committee experienced first-hand the positive impact that effective community planning partnerships can play in delivering public services in Scotland. Community planning partnerships can only do so, however, when all those involved in the partnership are prepared to work together and are working to shared goals. To do this there needs to be a cultural change within parts of the public sector and a recognition of the benefits true partnership working can bring.”

When the committee asked whether that ambition had been met, it found that it had not been fully met and that barriers still existed. We stated that CPPs had been “a qualified success”, but further evidence that we have taken in strands 2 and 3, as well as evidence from other inquiries, suggests that we would not now support even that limited endorsement. I will return to that issue later.

In strand 1, we found that cultural and behavioural challenges existed, and that bodies had a silo mentality and an inability to work collaboratively to deliver shared outcomes through the sharing of resources and information. Our strand 1 report highlighted that leadership and vision were critical to effective partnership working, that a shared vision with all partners was required and that there should be shared accountability and responsibility. We said that budget sharing would go a long way to assist with that.

In Aberdeen City Council, Kevin Stewart and I had experience of a move to priority-based budgeting. Would he recommend that approach as one that public authorities should look at as part of the on-going process of public sector reform?

The committee has not looked at that in any depth, but Mr McDonald will know that I favour priority-based budgeting. It has been successful in Aberdeen, and I am sure that it could be successful elsewhere.

The committee stated that third sector involvement was crucial and that community engagement was essential. In the briefing that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has sent us for the debate, it says:

“community engagement and empowerment is at the heart of the community planning process. Recognising that the third sector is particularly close to communities, that is also one of the reasons we are working to realign our relationship with them.”

However, on our recent visits to Cumbernauld, Aberdeen and Glasgow, the committee found that communities are not being engaged with to the level that I think that they should be. In a number of places, the third sector feels that it has been pushed out of the process. I think that we need to delve further into that issue in strand 3 of our inquiry. I agree with COSLA that such engagement is vital. That is the view that the committee took in strand 1.

Last week, when I visited Glasgow as part of the inquiry, a key point that was raised time and again was that folk felt that there was a top-down rather than a bottom-up approach to consultation. Does Kevin Stewart agree that, as we move forward with our inquiry, we need to probe that issue a lot further?

I agree with Mr McMillan. Exactly the same message came across in Aberdeen as did in Glasgow. Folk were keen to talk about the proposed community empowerment bill. Perhaps ministers could give us an indication of how that will help to allow bottom-up consultation to take place, instead of folk receiving the top-down diktats that were mentioned in both cities the other week.

We should be moving towards the outcome-based approach, but it seems to be extremely challenging. There seemed to be more of a focus on inputs and outputs than on outcomes. Again, engagement with partners and local communities is required to ensure that we can measure outcomes properly. Such engagement is central to the future development of single outcome agreements.

Strand 2 of the inquiry looked at benchmarking, which was a bit of a dream for an anorak like me. It may have been hard going for some committee members, but they considered assiduously the benchmarking work that was going on. We had a lot of engagement with people on the issue and held a seminar on benchmarking that I think was extremely useful for all those who attended. It was a short, sharp inquiry, which considered the work on benchmarking that local government officials who are members of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers in Scotland carried out for almost three years. Progress was slow, but eventually all 32 councils bought into the work.

It is critical that the Parliament recognises the significance of that benchmarking project, because it represents the first time that all 32 local authorities in Scotland have co-operated to produce consistent data on key indicators for benchmarking. It is equally critical to recognise that the data will still be influenced by local circumstances and priorities and that that context remains important. The Parliament should welcome that benchmarking initiative and encourage councils and community planning partnership partners to use it to drive forward public sector reform.

Benchmarking allows organisations to compare their services, costs and outcomes against those of others who are undertaking similar activities and to do so over a period of time. All local authorities can therefore compare their results and costs against one another’s; in each case, it will be possible to identify which is the cheapest and which has the highest outcomes. The comparison also allows local factors to be taken into account and, crucially, it can reflect local priorities. That means that instead of the previous situation in which authorities often compared apples with pears, they will now compare apples with apples.

The committee was told that it was critical for SOLACE that benchmarking

“should drive improvement in council service delivery.”

We also took evidence from Scottish Water, which has been doing benchmarking for a number of years and which told the committee that it had contributed to annual cost efficiency savings of £100 million between 2002 and 2006. Scottish Water sees absolutely no downside to the benchmarking process. COSLA has bought into benchmarking completely and utterly, and it agreed that it was desirable to collect indicators on a comparative basis across all councils and that comparative analysis seems to be the key management tool of the approach for the future.

That of course links into the Christie commission, which recognised that

“well designed external challenge can be ‘a catalyst for improvement where it influences behaviour and culture of providers, leading to improvements in the way that services are delivered.’”

The committee will continue to monitor the benchmarking indicators as they are brought into play. I think that some are very surprised at how much interest the committee took in that matter.

I move on to strand 3 and what still needs to be done. We will continue to look at our findings from strands 1 and 2, and we will involve communities and third sector providers. It was therefore a little galling to see from the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations today a little briefing that is critical of strand 3. SCVO seems to think that we will not involve communities and third sector partners, which could not be further from the truth. The committee has already committed to go on further outings throughout the country to take evidence.

So, is PSR happening in Scotland? We think that, yes, the green shoots are there, but it is not happening as fast as is needed or desired. It can be haphazard in certain places and is a bit pick and mix. It can often be driven by external rather than internal factors. There are many reasons, we are told, for the slow pace of change: legal constraints, political will, finance, different rates of development across public sector bodies, data, partnerships, CPPs, outcomes, attitudes, and long lead-in times.

And time.

Presiding Officer, I move,

That the Parliament recognises the importance of the work of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee in its inquiry into public services reform; welcomes its examination, at strand 3 of the inquiry, of progress being made in relation to the development of shared services, other innovative ways of achieving economies of scale and harnessing the strengths and skills of key public sector partners to deliver the best possible quality services in local areas, and notes that the committee’s work is designed to build on its earlier inquiry reports, at strand 1, into partnerships and outcomes and, at strand 2, into progress on benchmarking and performance measurement.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

15:45

I welcome this opportunity to consider the early conclusions of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee on the issue of public service reform, which directly relate to issues that ministers take forward in pursuing this agenda. I assure the committee that the Government attaches the highest priority to the issues around public service reform. We think that some of the points that the committee has raised in its written output to date are fair and considered observations about the issues with which we wrestle.

In his remarks on behalf of the committee, Kevin Stewart said that he could see the “green shoots” of public service reform. I encourage Mr Stewart and the committee to look openly and comprehensively across Scotland’s public services and be open in their view as to what constitutes public service reform. I do not want us to fall into the trap of believing that we can measure public service reform only by the degree and nature of structural change that we undertake in the organisation of public bodies around the country. Much more significant is our focus on the achievement of outcomes, the necessity of encouraging public bodies to work together and ensuring that we have a vigorous agenda of reforming public services in every part of the country.

Mr Stewart raised legal, political and financial impediments, and impediments concerning data, partnership working, the role of CPPs and the focus on outcomes. I say clearly to Parliament that the Government does not consider any of those issues to be in any way an impediment to the realisation of our objectives, nor will we tolerate their being perceived as obstacles and obstructions to the way in which we pursue this agenda.

Sometimes the impediments seem to be perceptions rather than realities. How will the cabinet secretary inform various bodies that what they see often as a legal constraint actually does not exist?

The Government makes available information and guidance to support partners in this process. It also gives very clear political leadership for the process. For example, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing and I jointly attended a meeting last Monday with the chairs of all health boards in Scotland—territorial and specialist—to reinforce the work that Derek Mackay has presided over on the review of CPPs. We made sure that it was known in that forum that the Government views every single element of the public sector as having a role in undertaking the process of reform. I reiterate those messages when I attend the national public bodies conference, which I will do later this year, and when I discuss these issues with local government. None of the issues that Mr Stewart raised in his speech is a credible or reasonable obstacle to undertaking much of that activity.

To be frank, people who want to find obstacles often talk endlessly about governance and the need for more guidance. If anyone ever again asks me for more guidance on the subject in the public sector, they will get the shortest answer possible, because the guidance is very clear as a consequence of the community planning review that Mr Mackay took forward with COSLA in support of the work of Pat Watters, who took forward that area of activity.

The Government’s public service reform agenda is structured around the four pillars of our response to the Christie commission, which were: a decisive shift towards preventative interventions; partnership between public services at the local level; investment in the skills capacity and knowledge of our staff; and a sharp focus on performance. That in-principle approach has been reflected through all our public service reform agenda. In my dialogue with the various partners—I have referred to the comprehensive nature of that dialogue—I have concentrated on the importance of intensifying the pace of the delivery of change over the past nine months. I am becoming more confident that the pace of change is beginning to reach the level that I would consider to be appropriate in facing up to the financial and demand challenges that we face as a country.

A whole range of different approaches is being taken across the spectrum of policy interventions to deliver the public service reform agenda. One of the best examples—it sums up most effectively the way in which we have brought together all the relevant partners in a collaborative space—has been the early years collaborative. That is the world’s first national multi-agency quality improvement collaborative, which now works across Scotland under the direction of the early years task force to give our children the best start in life. Its objective is to accelerate the conversion of the high-level principles that are set out in the getting it right for every child strategy and the early years framework into practical and sustained action that will deliver a transformation in the quality of life of our youngest citizens in Scotland. We have also seen that approach being taken forward in specific areas of public service policy relating to the health service, through the patient safety programme, and the drive to increase quality in public services.

The integration of adult health and social care is another much-needed reform. That integration will improve care for older people by placing the individual at the centre of services, extending democratic accountability and reducing bureaucracy.

There are, of course, some structural changes that we will take forward. We have legislated for police and fire service reform, and the new police force and fire service will be in place for operation on 1 April 2013.

On the community planning agenda, we have laid heavy emphasis on the necessity of all partners in the public sector and the third sector working in effective community planning partnerships at the local level. We have put in place guidance that supports those individuals, and they are now focused on the formulation of single outcome agreements that will capture the focus of activity on reform. One of the essential elements of each of those single outcome agreements will be the requirement for the formulation of a prevention plan.

It is important that that collaborative activity at the local level, which must be genuinely based on the involvement of all partners across the public sector and must involve the third sector, is tested with full and effective scrutiny. That is why I welcome the progress that the Accounts Commission has made in developing an audit model that supports community planning partnerships in improving their effectiveness. The Accounts Commission has collaborated with other scrutiny bodies and undertaken three early audits, in Aberdeen city, the Scottish Borders and North Ayrshire. The reports will be published next month, and I expect that the commission will also report on the key national messages that emerge from that work.

The Government is absolutely determined, for the reason of addressing the demand and financial challenges that we face, that a vigorous process of public service reform be undertaken. It has been undertaken through our approach in responding to the Christie commission, with a heavy emphasis on prevention and the importance of partnership at the local level, through investing in our workforce, and through ensuring that we have a strong focus on the improvement of performance in every part of the country. That is the focus of the Government’s agenda, and we will be delighted to engage with the committee on that subject.

15:49

I thank the committee for the work that it has done so far and, in particular, I thank the witnesses who have given evidence. It is particularly interesting and extremely useful to read some of the analysis that has been produced by people from the academic community and from those who are involved on the front line in delivering services. In my opening remarks, I want to concentrate on the context in which this whole debate takes place, highlight some of the partnerships that exist and perhaps talk a bit about some of the challenges. In my closing remarks, I will focus on how the benchmarking strand leads into strand 3, which is on service delivery and reorganisation.

It is important to understand what is currently happening to service delivery in our communities and how things might be delivered in future. From reading the report, it seems to me that we need to test the ambition against the reality, which means testing the ambition of changing the way in which public services are delivered with the actual experience on the ground. That feeds into the issue of outcomes. It is absolutely crucial to think about what the actual outcomes are for individuals and communities from the changes that are taking place through public sector reform.

I very much agree with Kevin Stewart’s opening comment that the context is that we have less resource available, both financially and in terms of staff, at a time when we face ever-greater challenges on a scale that we perhaps cannot really imagine. If we stand back and think about the timing, we can see that public expenditure pretty much doubled during the first eight years of the Scottish Parliament, whereas over the next six years there will be significant reductions in expenditure at the same time as huge increases in demand. Therefore, there is no question about the need to think about how our public services are delivered. However, that pressure on public services will itself bring challenges, because delivering the same outcomes or greater while putting less into the system will be a huge challenge.

I may comment further in my closing remarks on what John Swinney said, but his comment that the obstacles are neither credible nor real needs to be challenged. Some of the obstacles that public sector organisations face are incredibly real and they are credible. For example, given the budget settlement for local government over the past couple of years, it is true that local authorities are now getting less money, while the operation of the council tax freeze acts to ratchet down the amount of funding available. Local authorities have been put in a straitjacket, because any agreement to protect certain services within the budget will always mean that there is a disproportionate impact on other services—

Will the member take an intervention?

No, I must get on. I will take comments later, but I have only six minutes.

That reduced level of resources is compounded by the impact of United Kingdom Government cuts. As the SCVO commented—I can see why the Local Government and Regeneration Committee members might be sensitive about this, but the SCVO made an essential point—the combination of less resources going into local authorities with the impact of welfare reform could prove to be a tipping point for local government services.

The Local Government and Regeneration Committee is well aware of the impact of welfare reform. That is one reason why we have chosen to go round the country and why we are ensuring that third sector partners are extremely well represented in our evidence-taking sessions. In our Aberdeen and Glasgow sessions, I ensured that we had representatives of the citizens advice bureau because I thought that their input was vital.

I very much welcome that. I have read through all the paperwork that has come into the committee.

I think that the SCVO is flagging up the need for a reality check. At one level, people are happy to see the third sector involved in delivery, but on the other hand the third sector is not included at the table when services are being designed or commissioned. That is a key issue for strand 3, so I very much hope that the committee will be able to explore that in depth.

The issue is that services will have less, not just in terms of cash resources but in terms of staff resources. There were 14,000 fewer local authority staff last year and there will be another 14,000 fewer this year. It is crucial for local authorities to balance their books, but that reduction in staff numbers matters because it will mean that local authorities cannot simply deal with business as usual.

When local authorities are changing services, renegotiating and staffing community planning partnerships, the same people are not necessarily involved from year to year. One key point that comes through in the committee’s report on partnerships is about strategic leadership being provided by people in all organisations. The issue applies not just to local government, because people are being lost from the public sector generally. The people who set up partnerships need to be able to follow them through in the long run. That needs to be thought through.

Will Ms Boyack give way?

No. I took an intervention a moment ago, and I have only 40 seconds left.

Building relationships is crucial. As Robert Black has pointed out, the issue is about not just the current pressures that our public sector is under, but the future demands. The Christie commission majored on that. To give an example, last week I had a visit from a group of people from a third sector organisation that looks after older ethnic minority people. Their question to me was, “Where are the public sector organisations to look after and support our parents?” At present, that organisation provides day-care services, but there is no capacity locally for long-term care to be delivered specifically for ethnic minority communities.

I regret to say that you must close, please.

I want to finish on that point, because it is about the new challenges that are coming on top of the challenges that we already have. That must define the debate for the future.

16:01

I apologise for not being here at the very beginning of the debate, Presiding Officer.

I welcome this debate on public sector reform. It is hard to believe that it has been more than a year since the Local Government and Regeneration Committee began its inquiry into public sector reform in Scotland, or that, despite that, there is still a lot more to do.

As the committee convener said, the committee has focused on three separate strands of inquiry: partnerships and outcomes, with a focus on single outcome agreements and community planning partnerships; benchmarking and performance measurement in the public sector; and the contentious issue of developing new ways of delivering public services.

The committee’s reports on the first two strands have been completed. I thank the committee clerks for their sage advice and assistance with those reports. I also thank the approximately 100 individuals and organisations that, to date, have given oral or written evidence to assist the committee in its endeavours.

To put the inquiry in context, it is important to stress that, from the outset, it was evident that, given the cost pressures and budget reductions, coupled with increasing demands on public services, public sector reform is necessary and inevitable.

From the evidence that was presented during strand 1 of the inquiry and the subsequent report, it was clear that community planning partnerships have been at best a “qualified success” and that their

“ambitions … have not been fully realised”,

despite the fact that they have been on a statutory footing for almost 10 years.

For instance, the committee heard from SOLACE that partners in the process are not sufficiently integrated and that community planning and actual policy making are being carried out separately, rather than collectively. Local authorities such as Falkirk Council were adamant that integrated community planning should not be seen as an end in itself or merely another box to be ticked.

The committee heard repeatedly that the greatest barrier to successful partnership working is cultural and that, as has been referred to, local government departments, organisations and individuals are unwilling to break out of their silo mentality to work together to deliver outcomes through the sharing of information, resources and ideas. Having listened to the cabinet secretary, I merely say to him that he should not underestimate the challenge that is involved in trying to address that issue.

I largely accept Margaret Mitchell’s point that the challenges are mostly cultural and that we need to get people to work together effectively. However, I can assure her that the Government invests a tremendous amount of time, and has done so for a considerable time, in motivating and encouraging all public sector partners to live up to that way of working.

I am encouraged by that, but I must say that our experience to date is that the approach is not working.

The compelling evidence that community planning partnerships are not working came during three committee fact-finding visits—to Cumbernauld, Aberdeen and Govan—as part of the on-going third strand. During those visits, committee members heard from individuals in the community, some of whom are involved in the voluntary sector, that, despite the overwhelming evidence that it makes sense for those individuals and organisations to have a significant role in community planning and service delivery, they are more often than not dismissed from the process as merely “well-meaning amateurs”.

Will Margaret Mitchell give way?

No. I am sorry, but I say to the committee convener that I really must make some progress.

The reality is that the voluntary and third sectors have a wealth of skills and experience that they have gained from work in local communities and which would assist in improving service planning and delivery.

It was also pointed out that, unless their representatives learned the jargon when submitting applications for funding for tried and tested projects, voluntary and third sector organisations would have no prospect of being successful with their bids.

That brings me to the Auditor General for Scotland’s comment to the effect that financial pressures, demographic changes and increased demand on public services mean that

“there is a growing consensus that significant change is needed in the design and delivery of public services”.

Benchmarking, which the public sector must fully embrace for its benefits to be realised, is key to achieving the change and reform that are required. It is essential that not only sufficient but appropriate data be collected and compiled to allow for meaningful analysis and like-for-like comparisons.

The inquiry is important. It already recognises the relevance of the warning from Graeme Downie of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts that we

“should beware of thinking that passing a bit of legislation that requires everyone to do community planning would be a magic bullet.”—[Official Report, Local Government and Regeneration Committee, 28 March 2012; c 811.]

Instead, from the evidence gathered so far, it is evident that any future focus for service and policy designers must be on challenging and changing the culture that surrounds partnership working and, crucially, on seeking to introduce a bottom-up, as opposed to top-down, approach to community empowerment and service delivery.

16:06

The Scottish Government opened its submission to the Christie commission by stating:

“Effective and efficient public services are essential to our economic development and to our continuing prosperity.”

Against a backdrop of Westminster cuts to Scotland’s budget, public sector reform is critical, particularly where it applies to the vulnerable, the young, the elderly and the sick.

The moves towards reform are made against a backdrop of the austerity policies of the Westminster coalition Government. Those policies have been condemned from all angles and, most recently, have earned the first downgrade of the UK’s credit rating since the 1970s. That might mean higher borrowing costs for the UK public service, which would have yet another impact on local government finance through external material funding and service procurement.

We are talking of all parts of the public service. One of the key objectives for which the Christie commission called was the establishment of better local delivery of public services and consultation on preventative spend—getting the biggest bang for our buck. However, there appear to be worrying examples of that not occurring.

South Ayrshire Council recently rejected a motion to discuss the huge cost implications of welfare reform in favour of laudable reviews of, for example, music tuition fees and the cost of libraries. In addition, last year, the council had an underspend of £3.5 million after provisions had been made, and it has been projected that, this year, it will have an underspend of £4 million in the revenue budget and £3 million in the capital budget.

When budgets are already under so much pressure, it is essential that available moneys be used effectively and efficiently. When so many people face draconian welfare cuts through the Westminster Government’s policies, Scottish councils should be marshalling their resources and doing all that they can to abate the effects of those cuts.

In the face of squeezed budgets, the Scottish Government continues to introduce a more efficient public service across the service spectrum. Reducing duplication through effective shared services is a critical means of achieving that. Examples include the single police force, the single fire service and reviews of information and communication technology systems capabilities.

The integration of health and social care is designed to continue to improve care services, making them much more customer sensitive and efficient and, thereby, challenging the cost base.

East Ayrshire Council, in its submission to the third strand of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee’s inquiry, highlighted the need for

“a partnership approach to outcomes based planning and a move from reactive to preventative services.”

Central to achieving a partnership approach will be effective links with training agencies, cohesive development of performance management systems and, above all, increased involvement of the innovative third sector, which is critical to the delivery of many preventative spend measures.

Local development plans should be part of a joined-up effort across the public sector to deliver local economic planning in terms of not just geography but best practice and efficiency. One way in which we can make a fundamental change is to ensure that there is consistency in the agreed targets and outcomes for not just local authority chief executives and senior officers but those in similar positions in the health service, the police, the fire service and so on. We need to move towards a system in which senior management pay is much more closely linked to responsibility and performance and the outcomes that are used to measure performance are much more transparent.

In a new Scotland, we should consider the continuation of reform. Change is a constant and we will need to continue to look at reforms. In Ayrshire, the three councils already co-operate on tourism, for example, and other sectors might benefit from a much more joined-up approach. To ensure that we deliver public services as efficiently as possible, we must not be afraid to look constructively at the service provision and structure of our local authorities and other sectors, and to consider further community empowerment. We should identify where changes can be made to ensure optimisation of economies of scale.

By reducing duplication across sectors and between the Scottish Government, non-governmental bodies, local authorities and communities, we can, notwithstanding budget constraints, continue to improve public services and protect the sick, the elderly, the young and the vulnerable. South Ayrshire Council’s motto is “Ne’er forget the people.” Presiding Officer, we will not.

16:12

As a member of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, I have been involved in discussions about both the pace and the quality of public service reform in local authorities for some time. Our discussions and evidence-taking sessions illustrated some of the key issues that local authorities, stakeholders and communities face in seeking to achieve reform that makes way for a cost-efficient and, crucially, more effective way of providing key public services.

Now more than ever, it is clear that the reform and evolution of our public services are high on the political agenda as a means of achieving budget reductions and ensuring that efficiency savings are made. Although that may be an unavoidable reality for local authorities across Scotland, pursuing reform on the basis of cost savings alone is not a route to the delivery of high-quality services and will only lead to compromised decision making that fails to put communities and service users at the heart of the process.

Community involvement in the delivery of communities’ own public services is vital, and I believe that it represents a co-operative model of decision making that should be replicated across Scotland’s 32 local authorities. Those who are most affected by changes to service delivery should be at the heart of discussions about reform. That approach will lead to a better informed model of decision making that has the priorities of service users at its heart.

Community planning partnerships can prove to be an invaluable resource for local authorities in the development of public services and they often highlight the key challenges that are likely to be faced in periods of restructuring and re-evaluation of working practices. However, we learned from the evidence that the committee took and the communities that we visited that, too often, representatives on community planning partnerships illustrate only the perspective of the service that they represent. It is crucial that we open up the policy-making process to include a broader representation of our communities—particularly those that rely on services.

Of course, reform to achieve savings and reform to increase the quality of service are not always mutually exclusive. Evidence gathered from a number of local authorities, including North Lanarkshire Council and Orkney Islands Council, cites the emerging emphasis on partnership and shared working practices. In many cases, partnership working enables local authorities to provide services more efficiently while increasing collaboration and the avoidance of duplication. However, we must ensure that partnership working does not erode the rights of communities to hold local authorities to account in relation to the services that they provide

One of the early visits that the committee undertook was to West Lothian, where there was a huge amount of partnership between the council and other public bodies, including co-location and teams from various sectors working together. It seemed that the community was well represented in that partnership. Does Anne McTaggart agree that, although there are bad examples, there are also some extremely good examples?

The example that Mr Stewart mentions was excellent.

The recent report by the Finance Committee on Scotland’s changing demographics, which showed an increase in the number of people of pensionable age, illustrates the challenges that we face and highlights our responsibility to evolve our public services in a way that provides high-quality and efficient resourcing into the future.

The population of those aged 75 and over is projected to increase by 82 per cent between 2010 and 2035. That represents a set of obstacles that will demand new ways of working and a renewed commitment to engaging with service users in the development of local resources.

We know that local authorities have been hit hard by the Scottish Government, absorbing 50 per cent of all cuts in the recent budget. If we are to address the growing challenges that our population will face in the future, it is time to invest in local government and acknowledge the vital role that each of our 32 authorities plays in delivering services, protecting resources and ensuring a higher standard of living for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

16:17

I want to focus on achieving efficiency in local government. For me, efficiency means delivering the best, most wide-reaching outcomes for the least use of available resources of all kinds. It is not simply a financial measure; it is about what the customers—the people in the area concerned—get from their council. Of course, efficiency has to be qualified by circumstance. Each council has a different circumstance. For example, the fact that school transport costs more per pupil in the Highlands than in Glasgow is not a measure of the relative efficiencies of the respective councils; clearly, it is an indication of the very different circumstances in which those councils find themselves.

During the committee’s inquiry—I joined the committee, with others, in September—it has been clear that councils are picking up on the greater freedom that they have been given since the Government, in 2007, removed almost all the ring fencing from the finance that they get. Previously, around 25 per cent of their finance was in nearly 200 separate streams of spending, in relation to which they had almost no discretion. The situation is quite different now, and different councils have responded in different ways. Councils also welcome the fact that their share of the overall budget that we in this Parliament get has risen under this Government. It is not as much money as we would wish to provide—there are ways in which we could provide more by changing the environment in which this Parliament operates, but that is not the core of today’s debate.

One key point is that the committee has engaged with communities across Scotland, which I found interesting and challenging. We have had excellent examples of what councils could be doing and excellent examples of what they are doing. There are plenty of good ideas out there. However, there is perhaps one area—service sharing—in which we have seen less movement than we might like.

I will illustrate that deficit with reference to one of the two councils in my constituency. I represent part of Moray Council’s area. Over a number of years, that Independent and Tory-led council has resisted the demands of SNP councillors to look at service sharing. The result is that the Independents and Tories are closing seven out of eight libraries in Moray, which is quite astonishing; they are removing all the arts funding, which is absolutely flabbergasting; and they are looking to remove headteachers from a significant number of posts, which really is avoidable. Let us cut overheads by looking at sharing; let us not cut front-line services that are valued by the people in Moray.

I have no particular evidence that there is such an egregious example anywhere else—there may or may not be. However, that leads me neatly to benchmarking, which gives us an opportunity to identify areas for improvement by looking at the achievements of others. I am delighted that COSLA has taken the initiative and established a cross-cutting benchmarking framework for our councils.

The evidence that the committee has received has highlighted to me and to others a degree of confusion and a number of fears about what that benchmarking might mean. Some elected members appear to see benchmarking simply as another way for external commentators and councillors to knock lumps out of councils. That is not an unreasonable fear for people to have. However, if that proves to be the key focus of benchmarking and the use of the data that are made available as a result of its introduction, it will be a failed initiative.

Good benchmarking starts with normalisation—basically, standardising how the data come into the models—so that we can start to make valid comparisons between quite different circumstances. A council that feels that it has an opportunity for improvement in one policy area can then use the benchmarking model to find out which council it should be copying, and it will probably be copied in turn in some other policy area in which it is doing well.

We do not need to have all the data about every council’s every bit of activity. In the benchmarking model, we need information about the best examples and we need to have enough information to be confident that they really are the best so that copying them is relevant and of value.

By the way, benchmarking is not just about comparing the councils in Scotland. We should be comparing ourselves with anywhere in the world—let us benchmark and see if we can copy good examples, because that is one key way to make progress. We can deliver a great deal to the public sector by benchmarking; business can learn from the public sector, but the public sector can also learn from business. We should make the approach as broad as possible.

16:24

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. Like Kevin Stewart, I quite enjoy getting into the guts of public service reform and how the systems work. Often in politics we deal with the top level and do not consider in detail how things work in practice, so I share his enthusiasm—my wife does not, but I certainly do.

Sarah Boyack made a very pertinent point at the beginning of the debate about the huge demographic and financial pressures that we face, all at the same time. Even if the spending levels that her party secured in its time in government were to be maintained, there would still be a massive gap between demand and the available finance. I know that many members in the chamber oppose the cuts at Westminster, but even if those cuts had not happened, there would still be an enormous challenge to overcome. If we want to maintain the standards of services to which we have become accustomed, we are going to have to change the way that we supply those services.

That is why the Carnegie Trust’s report “The Enabling State” was welcome. It looked at a different way for the state to conduct itself, by not always looking just to provide services but enabling others to provide services too, so that we can build community capacity for the future and maintain high standards.

One of the biggest critics of the current Government’s approach—and of previous Governments’ approaches, too—is Vanguard Consulting. John Seddon—quite a controversial character whom I am sure many members have met—is very critical of the top-down approach of guidance, command and control, targets and the auditing regime, which stifles local innovation. I would like the committee to look at some of the work that Vanguard has done, because I would like to see it tested with some of the practitioners on the ground.

I have seen some of the evidence from Vanguard’s videos and from the people who have followed its advice. There is quite compelling evidence on removing barriers between the back office and the front office; making sure that we have experts, no matter where the public come into contact with them; and driving out inefficiencies not on the basis of unit cost or a belief that only scale provides efficiency but by ensuring that the structure of the service is based on the user’s needs. I have been quite attracted to some of Vanguard’s work, so I would like the committee to look at it. If members can put up with John Seddon’s criticisms, it is worth listening to what he has to say.

I am concerned about how far we are going to go with shared services. I accept that we need to deal with bed blocking and the integration of social care services and health services. However, how far do we go with dealing with the problems at the interface? Bed blocking is the issue just now, but if we get problems in community transport or housing in the future, will the answer be simply to enlarge the organisation to include them? We need to be careful about how much we believe that straightforward structural reorganisation to create bigger structures will necessarily deal with the problems. At some point, somebody from outside the organisation will have to interface with it.

There are many models. I just want to make the point that I do not see reform as being about creating bigger organisations; I see it as being about taking services from an outside organisation. If we do that, we are in with a chance.

With police and fire service reform, we have seen the belief that bigger organisations are somehow the way to get efficiency. To a certain extent, college regionalisation is part of that. Scale is not necessarily the answer. I think that Stewart Stevenson is making the point that we do not necessarily have to create bigger organisations in order to secure efficiency.

Simply focusing on unit cost, rather than the whole service, does not necessarily deliver the efficiencies and the improvements to service that we are trying to achieve.

I return to the central point that I made at the beginning of my speech. If community planning partnerships are the way to make sure that parts of the public sector or the voluntary sector exchange information, there have to be proper and equal partnerships between all the organisations involved. Voluntary organisations need to play a full part in CPPs. There will be good evidence of that in some parts of the country. Sometimes we have an obsession with how organisations should be structured, but a lot of this comes down to good local management and leadership. We should cherish and encourage such leadership, spread best practice and foster that approach to make sure that we value the quality of the training and the personnel involved in the delivery of services.

My plea is that we should look again at what Vanguard Consulting says and look again to ensure that we are not adopting a top-down, heavy approach and that we have a bottom-up, engaging approach that uses the talents of front-line staff. In that way, we can achieve efficiencies in services.

16:30

As I joined the Local Government and Regeneration Committee last September, when strand 2—on benchmarking and performance management—started, I will focus on benchmarking. I will then look at how we should keep an open mind on developing new ways of delivering public services. Finally, I will look at actions that the Scottish Government has taken. If I have time, I will touch on a couple of points that were raised last week, when the committee went to Glasgow.

I thank past and present committee members and the clerks, who have helped me—as a new committee member and one of the few not to have a background in local government—to understand a bit more the processes that go on in local government.

All parliamentarians and all politicians need to remember the purpose of public service delivery. The issue is not the structure but what our constituents require. Structures have been discussed today, but our constituents do not really care where services come from—they just want to know that the services will be delivered.

The inquiry highlighted the fact that benchmarking has many definitions. We need a standard definition on which everyone can agree and buy-in from the organisations—and their staff—that provide public services. If we do not have that, no one will agree on what is to be measured or on what the measures mean, and the value of the process will be lost.

We have heard about the buy-in from COSLA, which is welcome. Like my committee colleagues, I look forward to the publication of the benchmarking report in the next few weeks.

The use of benchmarking should not result in identikit services; there should still be room for legitimate variations between councils that are based on their needs and preferences—Councillor Cook touched on that point in his evidence to the committee. We must balance the fear of the postcode lottery of services with the need to allow local democracy still to develop.

We must remember that benchmarking is not by itself the sole solution to improving public services, as Dr Grace pointed out in relation to strand 2. He said:

“Benchmarking is an arrow in the quiver of public services improvement”.

It is a tool among others to help to identify and improve public services.

We must keep an open mind in reforming public services. I was pleased that some initial responses for strand 3 came up with alternatives. It is too easy to develop a top-down model—I hope to touch on that later—that outlines key performance indicators, targets and even benchmarks, with the result that politicians, managers and organisations are chasing targets rather than meeting our service users’ needs.

One respondent to strand 3 highlighted the approach of systems thinking—of putting service users’ needs at the centre of any reform—which has appeared to succeed in a variety of Scottish organisations, including the City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow Housing Association. That might be something that we should investigate further.

Reform should focus on delivering better public services for all and not simply on attempting to impose a one-size-fits-all approach. However, I do not suggest that benchmarking will impose such an approach; I do not believe that it will. I think that benchmarking will provide the opportunity for councils of similar sizes and with similar backgrounds to examine what is going on across the country and—I hope—to implement best practice.

The SNP Scottish Government has already taken significant steps in the reform of Scottish public services. Following the Christie commission, the Scottish Government moved towards a decisive shift to prevention; greater integration of public services locally, driven by better partnership, collaboration and effective local delivery; greater investment in the people who deliver services, through enhanced workforce development and effective leadership; and a sharp focus on improving performance.

The Scottish Government is also committed to preventative spending in early years and for the elderly. Although a difficult choice, it represents a new approach to the delivery of some services. It is not only a better approach for Government that ensures that more people living in Scotland can achieve their full potential in life; it also offers better value for money for the taxpayer in the long term.

The use of change funds has supported public services in their decisive shift towards prevention. For instance, the short-term savings from investing in early years services and support from pre-birth to age five could be up to £37,400 a year per child in the most severe cases.

You are in your last minute, Mr McMillan.

We must judge the importance of services by the difference that they make to people’s lives. In delivering public service reform, we should be bold enough to allow room for innovation but have processes in place to clearly indicate successes or, at least, the direction of travel.

Kevin Stewart mentioned the SCVO submission that we received today, and I certainly agree with his comments on what the committee has heard about community engagement both in the past and going forward. I can assure the chamber that such engagement was one of the main issues that arose during last week’s Glasgow visit. Many community representatives felt that they are not listened to and that they are wasting their time. Our committee will continue to focus on that key issue in the strand 3 inquiry.

The Parliament and all public services must focus on the wider issue of public service reform. I believe that that is happening and I look forward to the continuation of the strand 3 inquiry.

16:36

Although the Scottish Labour Party has always been committed to ensuring that we have

“the best obtainable system of popular administration and control”,

we do not back reform for the sake of it. Reform should be systematic, strategic and proactive; however, it seems that what we have is haphazard, strategy-light and reactive. I have noticed that people with local government backgrounds often have bright ideas about making things better but, unfortunately, they are generally off the payroll before their ideas emerge.

Two years ago, the spending review outlined the public sector reform themes of partnership, prevention and performance that the Local Government and Regeneration Committee is now looking at. Although the cabinet secretary—who, unfortunately, is not in the chamber at the moment—gave a robust defence of the progress being made, the evidence that we have heard suggests that progress is slow. Is that because of the difficulties of maintaining tried and tested services in an era of austerity? If so, what capacity does that leave for improving accountability and participation, fulfilling social and environmental goals, and switching the emphasis of service provision to prevention?

The committee also heard about numerous problems. Initiatives are isolated and often occur as a reaction to events and circumstances such as budgetary pressures or legislative changes. Although in some cases the spur is better value, the pressure on budgets is clearly an obstacle to progress. Because the transition to preventative spending often requires short and medium-term funding and resources in order to make long-term gains, change is happening slowly and lacks consistency and coherence.

That is not entirely the fault of public sector bodies. The Scottish Government seems to prefer arm’s-length arrangements, but that should not free it of responsibility when things are not happening or when cuts are making it hard for reforms to happen. If we are serious about promoting reform, it must be properly supported by a framework of resources, transitional funding and guidance.

I am keen to hear Mr Pentland’s proposals for the right model to take forward. Does he propose a top-down approach from the Scottish Government or does he advocate the current arrangements, in which local authorities, not the Scottish Government, have the power to decide on the issues of importance to them?

Reform should be collective. I will probably touch on that later.

We also need to address the long list of obstacles. For example, in benchmarking and monitoring, consistency is difficult, outcomes are hard to define and indicators can become objectives.

Reform is a long-term project, which needs a long lead-in time and long-term commitments, for example on workforce planning. It takes time to get partnership buy-in and build trust among central Government, local government and stakeholders. Because the timescale extends beyond the electoral cycle, effective reform needs political consensus if it is to be implemented and embedded.

That is all the more reason for having a well-thought-out strategy that has been developed in partnership with and applied consistently throughout the public sector, by which I mean not just local government but the national health service and other public bodies. The strategy must work across the Scottish Government, too.

Community planning partnerships should be part of the solution but they appear to be part of the problem. We heard that there is a lack of clarity about the roles, responsibilities and accountability of the people who are involved. There have been complaints about top-down, tokenistic and tick-box approaches, a lack of transparency and a silo mentality.

Mr Pentland is being a bit inconsistent. He said that he wanted systematic change, which I think would stymie the innovation that Mr Rennie talked about. A key point is that there must be freedom to allow best practice to be developed. Will Mr Pentland go into more depth about what he means by a systematic approach?

You are in your last minute, Mr Pentland.

I am in my last minute, but I will say that best practice must be shared among everyone and not just the people who are in a position to take a top-down approach.

Few examples and little data were provided to the committee. What was provided contained only limited reference to the Christie commission. It is difficult to say whether that was because the examples are not there or because examples are not being reported.

Good examples included community-based housing associations, the West Lothian CPP hub and projects in which £1 spent through a CPP could save a community £14 down the line. We heard about a community organisation that received £1,000 to create an allotment, which provided a year-long supply of vegetables for the community. We heard about a craft cafe, for which the social return was £8 for every £1 of investment.

It was suggested that empty public properties should be made available to community groups. As one of my committee colleagues asked, what contribution to regeneration is made by building new offices that lie empty?

Since I started writing this speech I have received an interesting document from COSLA that promotes its route map to reform, which is based on statutory duties, accountability, national co-ordination and locally-integrated services. COSLA talks about using

“all the levers of reform—from public policy to legislation, from public finance to governance, in order to optimise the benefits that can be felt by our communities.”

Mr Pentland, you need to finish.

If COSLA thinks that Government needs statutory duties and legislation, to strengthen the approach, who are we to argue?

You must close.

The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government must deliver that, through a properly-resourced strategic approach.

16:43

It is a well-known fact that 74 per cent of statistics are made up on the spot. Anne McTaggart said that 50 per cent of the Scottish Government’s cuts are impacting on local authorities, which I am sure was news to her front-bench colleague Sarah Boyack, who has been telling us that the proportion is 83 per cent. That is perhaps proof positive that Labour’s figures on local government funding are a wee bit madey up.

I congratulate the committee on the work that it has done on the area, which is a key challenge for us. Public sector reform should be regarded as not just a challenge but an opportunity to revitalise the delivery of our public services.

On community engagement, I was struck that Graeme Downie from NESTA said:

“Communities can be seen simply as those to whom services are done. Ironically, if you engage them at the earliest possible stage of policy development, you always end up with the best outcome.”—[Official Report, Local Government and Regeneration Committee, 28 March 2012; c 814.]

That is certainly something that my colleague Kevin Stewart and I learned when we became part of the Aberdeen City Council administration. The way in which the council carried out its budget process did not take that engagement into account. In essence, figures were publicly available for two to three weeks in which there was a rush to find savings in order to make the budgets balance.

Kevin Stewart, who was the finance convener at the time, took the decision to move back the process and engage with communities at a much earlier stage. As such, communities felt that they were involved in the budget process rather than it simply being something that happened to them. The resulting benefits were not only that communities felt more involved but that their suggestions often found their way into the council’s budgets.

Community engagement is laudable, but it must also be tinged with realism. Communities will obviously want to have certain things, but those things cannot always be delivered. There must be a realism that communities cannot always get everything that they want out of a process. Most communities are realistic about that and they genuinely appreciate being consulted and having their views taken on board. Often, those views shape the policies and approaches that are taken.

Partnership working and the shared service agenda are not only about spending less money. A lot of the work has been driven by the financial constraints that are being felt across the public sector, but the agenda is pushing something that could realise greater opportunities for much more efficient working and better outcomes for communities. A reluctance—a silo or protectionist mentality—exists in some services that is acting as a barrier; there is also a lack of genuine discussion on some of the approaches that are being taken.

We have seen that happen in advance of the forthcoming health and social care agenda in Aberdeen. The local council proceeded with a local authority trading company for the provision of social care services. NHS Grampian has raised concerns about that and the impact that it could have on extracting the best possible outcome from the health and social care partnerships. The response from Labour Councillor Willie Young, Aberdeen City Council’s finance chair, to NHS Grampian to “Get off our lawn” does not strike me as the most mature way to carry out discussions between public bodies about how they realise the best possible outcome for public sector reform.

I note that the committee unanimously supported the shift towards a preventative spending approach. Preventative spending, by definition, is about a transfer of resource. However, the transfer of resource in and of itself is not enough; we need a change of mindset and culture in our local authorities and public services about how they translate the shift in budget to a difference in how they deliver services on the front line.

It is depressing when we see local councils turning down opportunities. For example, the administration in Aberdeen rejected the opportunity offered by the SNP group as part of the budget process to invest significant sums in education and early intervention within regeneration communities in favour of proceeding with the pedestrianisation of Union Street, which is something that, frankly, nobody in Aberdeen has been calling for.

A lot of good work is being done. The committee certainly cannot be accused of not going out and looking for best practice and, when it finds it, reporting on it. We should build on that work where we can, but we also need to look at areas where there are blockages and work out what those blockages are. Far too often those blockages are about the mentality of the individuals involved, whether they are at the elected member or the senior officer level. Something needs to be done to instigate a culture shift in organisations to ensure that the people who need to take the decisions to move towards a much more cohesive agenda on public service integration are able to do so.

Money is often the driver for decisions but the fact that finances are tight and we are moving towards a preventative spend approach does not mean that that is a bad thing. There is a lot of opportunity as a result of the public sector reform agenda, and we must ensure that we capture it all.

16:49

The purpose of public services might be self-evident but, in case it is not, I note that their purpose is to serve the public, to discharge the statutory obligations of the local authority, and not to generate profit. Any reform should follow those principles.

I have seen at first hand the development of shared services in the Highlands, where Highland Council and NHS Highland have been involved in the integration of adult health and social care services and children’s services. The benefits are clear. Willie Rennie mentioned delayed discharge, in which there has been a significant turnaround as a result of the development of shared services.

Some simple measures can help with that. Co-location is one of them. Golspie police station is a fine example—just about every badge is on the front door, and why not? We do not need to replicate support services. What people want are the services.

The cabinet secretary talked about the GIRFEC approach, which has certainly helped. More and more elements of the public sector are working together, although there is some way to go. We lose sight of the needs of citizens at our peril. An outcomes-based approach is a good way of addressing things.

Seeking economies of scale must not mean disregard for public sector workers’ terms and conditions. It is important that we have a level playing field, whereby training, quality of work and sustainability are valued. Of course, best value does not mean the cheapest tender or the highest bid. I would be grateful if the minister could confirm that in his summing up, not least for the benefit of the crofters of Raasay.

Many politicians in local government have welcomed job evaluation, equal pay and the living wage. Therefore, I consider it rank hypocrisy for the same politicians to outsource public sector work to people on the minimum wage and poor terms and conditions. We know that, when the profits in the care sector went, some care sector providers went, too. What did not go was the statutory obligation of local authorities, along with the NHS, to meet the assessed needs of the people concerned.

Benchmarking has been touched on. There are complications with benchmarking when it comes to some of the work that is undertaken by the private sector, particularly in rural areas.

There is a procurement bill coming. I hope that due regard will be paid to the work that is undertaken on behalf of the public, particularly in the context of things such as equality policies, health and safety policies, and apprenticeships, which others have mentioned.

When it comes to the delivery of public services, I am unequivocal. I like them to be delivered first and foremost by public servants and secondly by the voluntary sector or social enterprises. They come well ahead of the private sector, because of their link to democratic accountability.

We must learn from elsewhere—I am thinking, in particular, of the NHS in England. With the previous UK Government’s foundation hospitals and the big spread of privatisation that is taking place at the moment, issues are arising to do with democratic accountability and freedom of information. Access to health board minutes is limited as they are being described as commercially confidential.

I suggest that we have a similar issue in Scotland with the arm’s-length organisations. I am sorry that the recent Freedom of Information (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill did not go far enough. If ALEOs are about rates savings, where does the wider public sector financial perspective come in? How does that relate to the “benchmarking and performance measurement” that the motion refers to?

There has not been much discussion of funding. A number of people feel that the council tax should be reviewed. I favour a local income tax; I do not favour the corporation tax approach. There needs to be continuing discussion between local government and the Scottish Government. The concordat has given us the framework for that to happen.

I mention funding against the background of growing demands and demographic change, to which a number of members have referred. If we want the same level of service from a reducing pot, that suggests that the revenue will have to come from somewhere.

Does Mr Finnie agree that the change funds that have been put in place have often helped with the sharing of services, which reduces costs but maintains quality of service?

I think that they provide an opportunity for that. Today, I heard about the £10 million reducing reoffending fund. That offers an opportunity for the public sector to get things right—local authorities with housing, the UK Government with employment issues, and the health service with addiction issues. If I noted what Kevin Stewart said earlier correctly, the use of total resources and co-ordination are key to that.

Not all communities are the same, even if they have similar needs. As I understand it, the evidence that the committee received from three councils in my area highlighted the significant impact that cuts to public service can have on rural communities. That does not mean that there are not innovative ways of addressing that.

I ask that rurality and supersparsity constantly be taken account of. The Scottish Government and NHS Highland are doing important work with the community in West Ardnamurchan, looking at ways of delivering healthcare in remote and rural communities. Supersparsity is a challenging issue in the delivery of social care in north-west Sutherland, which cannot be done on the same per capita basis.

I commend shared services and the involvement of trade unions and staff associations in discussing them, because it is important that we take people with us along the way. I think that the public value public service and public servants, and we should reflect that in all decisions that we take on public service reform.

16:55

I welcome the debate and say at the outset that I agree with John Pentland that we should not have reform for reform’s sake. However, ensuring that public services work effectively and achieve their purpose for the people that they serve will always be important. Mark McDonald’s point that public services reform can be seen as an opportunity was well made. When the public purse is being tightened, as the UK Government is doing now, it is even more important to ensure that services work effectively. In that regard, it is essential to consider how public services can be reformed.

I congratulate the Local Government and Regeneration Committee on its work on public services reform. I confess that I have not been following it intimately, but I was delighted that the committee visited Cumbernauld, which is always to be encouraged—everyone should come to Cumbernauld. The visit was more about regeneration than public services reform per se, but I was at the event that the committee held in Cumbernauld. The local organisations that attended gave good feedback on it and I believe that some of what was said can inform the committee’s work on public services reform.

The committee has been working on public services reform on a comprehensive basis over a significant period of time, which means that it has considered the issue in depth, which is welcome. It is also welcome to hear the convener say that communities and the third sector will be involved in the committee’s on-going work on the issue, which is as it should be, because they are of course the people who use public services. Indeed, third-sector organisations sometimes deliver public services.

We should reflect that work to reform public services is already under way. The Christie commission, which was established by the Government in 2010, has been referred to in that regard, and its report had a number of key objectives for public sector reform. It will be interesting to see how the Local Government and Regeneration Committee can play a role in assessing how those priorities are taken forward. However, as the cabinet secretary said, the Scottish Government has responded to the Christie commission recommendations. It is therefore clear that public services reform is being looked at across the board, which is the way to do it.

We have also seen some focus on preventative spend, an important aspect of public service reform as set out by the Christie commission. As a member of the Finance Committee, I think that that is an important area to focus on, given that the Christie commission recommended a shift to preventative spend. We have seen the Scottish Government do that to a degree. It is important to move towards preventative spend for two reasons: first, as was said earlier, we are in straitened financial times; and, secondly, it is far better for any individual who has a public service delivered to them to have an earlier intervention, which might lead to a better outcome for them and allow them to lead a happier and more productive life without needing a more serious intervention further down the line that might cost the public purse rather more.

We have seen the creation of the three change funds, which have been referred to. I very much welcome the establishment of those important steps towards preventative spend. The Finance Committee will continue to scrutinise preventative spend, as it did in the recent budget scrutiny, reflecting the importance being placed on the matter. The Finance Committee’s inquiry into demographic change and the ageing population also placed a priority on preventative spend.

The public sector has to face up to the challenge of preventative spend; it is a social and fiscal priority. Indeed, we are seeing the Scottish Government respond to that challenge. It will be interesting to see how the Local Government and Regeneration Committee continues to look at that area. Mark McDonald referred to the committee’s acceptance of the need for preventative spend.

The public sector set out the challenge of the cut to the Scottish block grant, but that is not the only challenge that is out there. I am the deputy convener of the Parliament’s Welfare Reform Committee, on which I serve with Kevin Stewart. We regularly see evidence of the effect of welfare changes on not only the individual, but public services. It is little wonder that SCVO said:

“Welfare changes and reform may well prove to be a tipping point for current public services.”

The bedroom tax and the change to the payment of benefits to individuals rather than landlords pose a huge challenge to registered social landlords. The duress that work capability assessments cause individuals can add to the pressure on our NHS. The confusion that has been caused by the litany of changes to the welfare system will inevitably lead to increased demand for local advice services.

Welfare reform is making a huge impact on the public sector. It will be interesting to see how public services reform can step up to that challenge, which I am sure is not beyond it. I look forward to the committee reflecting on that as it takes its work forward.

We now turn to closing speeches. I am afraid that we are tight for time.

17:01

The Local Government and Regeneration Committee should be given credit for launching this necessary inquiry. It is necessary for the reasons that the cabinet secretary outlined in his speech. We face financial challenges, particularly in the short to medium term and, far bigger than that, we have demand challenges currently and demand challenges that, due to demographics, will last for decades.

It is worth pointing out that the committee has taken the correct approach thus far—I think so, anyway. It has taken its time to examine the issues deeply. For the first time, I have seen a committee, over the course of what will ultimately be a year and a half, examine three specific strands to try to reach conclusions that might be long lasting.

It is also worth mentioning that the committee’s approach of trying to look at communities’ experience on the ground is wise. Sarah Boyack said that the experience on the ground matters most and my colleague Margaret Mitchell spoke about visits to Cumbernauld, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The committee has taken the correct approach and no doubt there will be other meetings as strand 3 continues.

I have looked through the summary of written submissions to strand 3 and it is worth teasing out a number of them. The first question, which appeared to get the greatest number of responses, was on alternative delivery methods. In the summary of submissions there appears to be something of a shopping list of examples where “it worked” and a list of examples where “it did not work”.

With that information and the evidence from future meetings, the committee must look at what the precise outcomes were in each of those cases. What were the identifiable savings if, indeed, there were any? Can those outcomes and savings clearly be linked to the new delivery method that was implemented?

Will the member take a short intervention?

In a moment.

It is what Willie Rennie described as “getting into the guts of public service reform.”

Does Gavin Brown agree that we should be bold enough to try some things that ultimately do not work and be prepared to learn from them, and not be afraid of that?

I agree with Stewart Stevenson.

A similar comment was well made by Robert Black when he gave evidence to the committee a few weeks ago. He said that we must pilot more frequently and look at the evidence that comes from those pilots, even if it takes time before we gather any evidence. There is, of course, always pressure on all parties and Governments to get results quickly—to get them yesterday—but, particularly in some of the areas that we are looking at, results simply do not come quickly. Mr Black made that point far more eloquently than I just did. I concur with Stewart Stevenson in that regard.

As I was saying, the committee must get to the guts of the issue. Having worked out whether or not there were savings, it must try to ascertain why some initiatives worked as planned and others did not, and whether there are lessons of wider value that we can get from the committee’s analysis, as opposed to merely a commentary on the position on the ground.

The second question that is covered in the summary of written submissions is:

“How are opportunities for sharing services being identified?”

The analysis was that there were “limited” responses to that question, which tells its own story. I was taken by a quote in that section from Scott-Moncrieff, which stated:

“Opportunities for sharing services are being identified on an ad-hoc basis. A co-ordinated approach is not always taking place within a local authority or health board.”

An ad hoc approach is not likely to get the results that we all want. Once it has looked through all the evidence, the committee must draw conclusions on how we can improve on that. It is far better to consider the sharing of services and rule it out than simply to say, “We haven’t looked at it at all.”

You are in your final minute.

The third sector probably merits a mention. I read the SCVO’s response, and I probably would not be as harsh on it as Mr Stewart was. It raised important points about single-year funding—that issue comes up regularly—and about looking at organisations as partners in the design and commissioning of services instead of being merely a part of the supply chain.

Will the member give way?

I have only 28 seconds, so I am afraid that I am unable to do so on this occasion.

I would like to see bold recommendations from the committee. From listening to the opening salvos this afternoon, I think that, as members of all parties have said, the situation on the ground is not quite as rosy as the Government might think it is. Looking at that might be a good starting point.

I remind members that there are strict guidelines on the use of electronic equipment in the chamber.

17:08

In evidence to the committee it was said that the key things that are needed to help to deliver change, given the huge obstacles that we have all talked about and danced around—the figures that I have used are from the Scottish Parliament information centre and the Scottish Government—are shared vision, strategic leadership and sharing best practice and expertise in a transparent way. Those things probably strike a chord with us all, across the parties, but the issue is delivering on those things. They sound self-evident, but different parts of the public sector will have different priorities and may not share a vision. Local authorities will have not just different political leaderships, but different types of areas to serve, and that will of necessity give a different flavour.

Stewart Stevenson and John Finnie made points about extreme rurality. It must be acknowledged at the outset that the perspective in such areas is very different from an inner-city perspective. That does not mean that we cannot have shared overall ambitions, but it will obviously lead to different types of service delivery.

Strategic leadership is key. John Pentland used a striking phrase. He talked about haphazard strategy that is light and reactive. I can think of quite a few circumstances in different organisations in which that would be true. How can strategic leadership be built when there are reasonably regular changes in political leadership and also different leaderships as a result of senior members of staff moving on? There has been quite a significant churn in leadership. Building a shared vision and strategic leadership that is not short term is therefore not as straightforward as we might think.

Sharing best practice and expertise is an issue that the committee could usefully look at in strand 3, given that quite a few of the witnesses highlighted the need to ensure that benchmarking compares similar circumstances or like with like. That does not mean that there might not be wider lessons from different circumstances that might also be worth exploring.

One reason why the shared services agenda is so difficult when it comes to doing things in a transparent way is that there are different reporting mechanisms, political demands and desires about timetabling. That point needs to be factored in. The perspective of local government is different from—

Will Ms Boyack give way?

No, let me develop this point.

The perspective of local government is bound to be different from that of central Government agencies, but it is also different from that of the third sector. Different agendas are brought to the table, and that just needs to be factored in when thinking about transparency.

As a few members have mentioned, the key issue is what our services are for, so a focus on why we have collective service provision must be what drives change. The Christie commission principles are extremely useful in identifying the pursuit of social justice as a key goal of government, regardless of which party is in charge or what level of government we are talking about. Preventative spend is justified where it challenges deep-rooted inequalities and poverty and the crushing of ambition that scars far too many of our communities.

We also need to focus on the long-term intergenerational challenges. To address those, many of the policy solutions need to be in place now—tackling the long-term intergenerational stuff is about the decisions that we make now. To draw an analogy with tackling climate change, we could focus on 2020, but it is what we do now that will help us to deliver in 2020.

Willie Rennie chastised me for focusing on cuts, although they are the reality. However, the point that I was making is that the cuts make things harder. When I talk to local government staff members who are not at the top level, they tell me that the reality is one of chasing the agendas in a context of transitional funding in which they are trying to deal with things from year to year. There are real challenges in terms of getting the right outcomes. We need service delivery that not only provides the service now but is potentially transformational in the process of providing that service. That needs people to buy in at different levels.

A key point that I want to emphasise for strand 3 is the need to think about how we build social capacity in communities, whether that is through training, economic activity or using the debate around community planning partnerships to deliver wider community benefits from the investment that goes into services. That is a really important area.

We need to take a really hard look at the different options for new ways to deliver services, including the whole issue of putting services out to tender. We need to compare that with co-ops, with service-level agreements and with the commissioning of services. That is the issue that I think the SCVO was trying to tease out, but it is as big an issue for local authorities and other public sector organisations as it is for the third sector. We need to try to pin down the mix of benefits to individuals and community benefit—those two things need to be discussed in parallel.

Finally, I think that North Lanarkshire Council made a really good statement of principle:

“Services should be built around people and not the agencies responsible for delivering them. A thorough understanding of residents and service users, needs and expectations is essential in designing cost-effective services.”

That is a very good starting point for strand 3—

Sorry, I must ask you to finish.

That would let the committee pick up issues to do with co-location, the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness and the use of different service providers. That would be a good point to look at in strand 3.

17:14

This has been a very helpful debate on public sector reform. Of course, the debate is characterised by the Government’s response to the Christie commission, which was very informative and has led to the four pillars of reform—prevention, integration, workforce or people and improved performance—in the challenging environment that many members have mentioned.

I will focus immediately on community planning partnerships. The theory is that they bring together all the public sector partners and in some cases the private sector. I believe that the third sector is involved in every community planning partnership, and it certainly should be at every one. The partners should focus jointly on the needs of a community, with a focus on place. They should look at the data, build the evidence, consider which joint approaches will work in the community, listen to local aspirations and then deliver jointly on the ground. That is the way that it works in theory. Our guidance, which was issued as recently as last December, makes abundantly clear that that is what community planning partnerships should do. It is based on a statement of ambition about how public sector partners will bring their resources and input to the table.

I will not deal with the issue just as a paper exercise. The cabinet secretary has tasked me with ensuring that things are happening on the ground. Since my appointment, I have been visiting local community planning partnerships across the country. Kevin Stewart is right that there is a range of performance in the partnerships and that the situation is variable, but a great deal of good work is going on, and I could list many examples.

For a number of reasons, I am convinced that further progress will be made on public sector reform and community planning partnerships. The Government has succeeded in decluttering the public sector by way of streamlining and simplification. We have reduced the number of public bodies from 199 to 144, with a trajectory that will take us to 112. However, the issue is not just about structures.

I absolutely share the aspirations and I hear what the minister says about community planning partnerships. The committee’s difficulty is that we meet community activists who are on the front line and few of them even know of the existence of the partnerships. I am sure that the partnerships are doing good work, but there are opportunities for further connections that would be of mutual benefit.

I agree with the member, but that point was adequately answered by Stuart McMillan, who said that what matters is that the outcomes are robust and that people receive quality services. I do not want to be patronising, but the public do not necessarily need to understand the wiring board of public services—that is our job—as long as they get the outcomes that they deserve, resources are used efficiently and effectively and the decisions that community planning partnerships make involve proper engagement.

Will the minister give way?

I will continue, because I am halfway through my time and I have not made nearly enough progress.

There is an expectation that local communities will be part of the community planning process. We were asked what the proposed community empowerment and renewal bill will bring to the table. That bill will be an exciting, radical and bold opportunity to ensure that communities can take ownership of local facilities and assets and have greater participation in and engagement with decisions. Of course, we do not need a bill for public authorities to act in that spirit right now and to harness the untapped potential.

The SOA guidance has been issued. The cabinet secretary is right that any barriers that have been identified might be a figment of some people’s imagination. People assume that there are bureaucratic barriers to joint working but, when exposed, they are not barriers at all. We have provided clarity to our key agencies on working together through community planning partnerships.

There are three reasons why I think that we will make further progress. First, the duty on community planning partnerships will be extended beyond local government to all public sector partners. Secondly, the national group will deliver much of the evidence on what we know works and share that knowledge between and within community planning partnerships. We will not take a complacent approach to community planning partnerships, which is why the Accounts Commission for Scotland has been charged with inspecting them. That raises the bar and the expectations of what they can deliver.

Structural change is on-going through health and social care partnerships to ensure that the resources follow the person in need. Police and fire restructuring will ensure that the resources stay at the front line. Personalised care will give more control to individuals. Digital services will ensure that our public service is responsive to need.

The Auditor General has made it clear that public sector partners can work across boundaries to meet the aspirations. It is easy, I suppose, to provide a critique of some of the less well performing community planning partnerships and I am interested in the committee’s deliberations on the measures that the Government can continue to take to support the partnerships. However, there is some excellent work, such as the early years collaborative, which focuses on preventative spend. For the first time, we will ask—demand, if you will—of community planning partnerships what the local challenges and solutions for prevention plans are and what public sector partners are doing locally to tackle demand pressures on the system.

That, of course, is helped by the change funds, which have delivered more than £500 million over the spending review period to ensure that they act as a catalyst for integration, joint working and prevention.

Sarah Boyack’s and John Pentland’s speeches exhibited a lack of understanding of outcome-focused public services, because they immediately focused on the inputs and had the audacity to criticise the Government’s budget settlement, which has protected health proportionately, protected local government and delivered £500 million towards preventative spending, which will ensure change throughout the country. If the Labour Party had had its way, there would not even have been new money from the public health supplement.

Across a range of areas, those interventions will make a difference. There are many great examples that we will want to mainstream: for example, integrated services in Highland, diversionary youth schemes in Renfrewshire and homelessness projects in North Ayrshire. I could go on with the great examples.

But your time is up.

We will mainstream that good work and build it into community planning throughout the country.

I call John Wilson to wind up the debate. Mr Wilson, it would be helpful if you could go till 5.30.

17:21

I thank all the members who contributed to the debate. For the committee, it is useful to hear from others who are not engaged in its week-to-week discussion or the investigations that it carries out.

The committee is in a fortunate position in that, as was mentioned earlier, five of its seven members have served as local councillors and so bring collective experience not only of how local government works but of how community planning partnerships work at a local level. We have heard examples of that from members who have participated in the debate.

We must ensure that the committee brings to the inquiry the experiences not only of people who have sat on local authorities but of the others who have contributed to the debate either through the committee’s fact-finding visits or the submissions that a number of people have made as we have considered the issues through all three strands of the inquiry.

Unfortunately, like two other members of the committee, I joined the committee only last September, so I missed the strand 1 deliberations, but I am sure that I have helped by contributing to the strand 3 discussions.

In his opening speech, the convener tried to set out what strands 1 and 2 tried to achieve. In strand 2, we considered benchmarking and related issues.

Benchmarking is clearly important. A number of members mentioned it in their speeches. Local authorities have accepted that it is needed. The committee has heard evidence that local authorities will set out 48 strands and that—by the end of next month, we hope—they will report on the reporting mechanisms that they have worked out for them.

We hope that, for the first time, that will give us a consistent approach to the gathering and delivery of information. Too often in the past, local authorities delivered figures that did not compare with those of other local authorities. This time, we will have a set of figures and data that we will be able to compare across local authorities.

That data will also take on board the issues that John Swinney and others mentioned about the delivery of services in rural authorities versus in urban authorities. COSLA and others are considering how we set the families of local authorities so that we can measure performance accurately across the services that each local authority provides.

The committee was also fortunate to take evidence from Sir John Arbuthnott and Robert Black. That was quite enlightening, because we heard Sir John Arbuthnott’s deliberations on the Clyde valley review that he carried out. We saw the local authorities in that area being brought together to try to get some joint service delivery. However, we have heard—I have made this point in committee—that the eight local authorities have developed a pick-and-mix approach to joint service delivery, with some authorities taking issues on board and others leaving them to one side.

North Lanarkshire Council’s submission mentions social care services, social transport and other initiatives that it is looking at with other local authorities in the Clyde valley. It also mentions national schemes such as Scotland Excel and myjobscotland. Those initiatives are taking place across the board and they are part of the public sector reform that is taking place.

Given that John Pentland knows North Lanarkshire quite well, I was surprised by his comments about the Scottish Government setting up all these arm’s-length external organisations. We know that North Lanarkshire Council is about to set up another ALEO and transfer out services against the wishes of the public in many respects. As politicians, we have to be wary about what we pick on, because there are areas in which local elected members are involved in transferring services because they see that as the best way forward.

The feedback from communities on community planning partnerships has not always been good. Agencies and local authorities say that the process is working, but to many people it is a tick-box exercise, or a rubber-stamping exercise. We have heard about that from communities. I am talking about people at the grass roots, not the third sector or what are in many respects the senior voluntary sector organisations. We have had views fed to us from local community activists who are delivering services on the ground, such as the tea in the pot project in Govan, which we heard from when we visited Glasgow last week. For a small amount—less than £10,000—it is delivering key services to women in the Govan area. We need to consider how local voluntary organisations that deliver key services to local communities are being treated within the community planning process and how they engage in the delivery of services.

The minister is right. The issue is about engaging with communities and about communities understanding the budgetary constraints, but the reality is that many of the community activists who are delivering key services are excluded from the discussions and the debate about how the bigger budget is divided up. I am sure that the committee will welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to ensure that the public sector agencies work more closely together to ensure that delivery is consistent across the board.

As I said, the committee heard Sir John Arbuthnott and Robert Black set the scene in the lead-up to strand 3 of the inquiry. However, we must remember that public sector reform is not only being discussed in the Parliament. We read various academics’ views on public sector reform in the Sunday newspapers, and that adds to the debate on where as a country we are going on the delivery of services by local government and on tying in all the other agencies that are out there. We heard examples today of joint healthcare projects and joint procurement by local authorities and health boards. We need to examine such services and consider whether they are delivering on behalf of communities, as they claim to be.

As I said earlier, it is unfortunate that although some of the agencies and senior staff who are involved think that they are delivering the best possible service, the reality is different. As many MSPs will know from their surgeries, questions are being asked about how such services are delivered on the ground and how communities can engage in delivering better services.

The committee heard a lot of evidence from organisations about where they are going. There is still a lot of work to be done by the committee, but I hope that it will report before the end of June. We will bring that report to the chamber and I hope that the Parliament will accept the work that has been done by the committee and the clerks and the people who have provided written and oral evidence. I hope that we will pull together something that the Scottish Government can take on board and that will address the concerns and issues that have been raised by the general public. I look forward to the Scottish Government engaging openly with the committee to ensure that we get it right for everybody in Scotland.