Chamber and committees

Thank you.

Yes—good morning and thanks for coming along, Jennifer. I want to explore a wee bit more about the IT contractors. Your annual accounts give the costs

“primarily to meet the digital requirements of updating legacy IT systems and evolving our IT estate onto a long-term sustainable basis”

as about £132,000 a year, which looks to me like folk working for 11 months a year on a day rate of £600, roughly.

How, specifically, do you plan to do what you have set out and get the crossover that you have alluded to—building the skills of the permanent staff while starting to move the fairly high numbers for contractors. Can you tell me a wee bit more about that?

Yes. I do not know whether I am right on the day rate, because it was just a quick calculation. I am asking about types of skills, because people who have skills such as Java will be picked up. Although your plan to get your staff up to speed on those skills addresses one problem, it also introduces a new organisational risk, because those staff will have skills that are sellable at a daily rate of £600, which most people would consider useful. Can I assume that the risk side, from an IT perspective, is also in your personnel planning?

Will the member give way?

I have not forgotten that it was an utterly disingenuous vote leave campaign led by Michael Gove and Boris Johnson that has led Scotland to this point. Although I await further developments with interest, as it stands, the UK structural funds are a mess.

As I see it, there are five summary issues. First, there has not been—and I still have limited confidence that there will be—any meaningful engagement with the democratically elected Scottish Government to ensure that the funds are compatible with Scotland’s economic policies. Secondly, there is no effective governance in place. For example, there is no sensible approach to a nationwide evaluation of impact. It would seem that, in place of robust governance, we are to have Mr Gove whispering “Trust me”.

Thirdly, the methodology that is in place for categorising areas of need is, at best, amateurish. Fourthly, the UK funds set up a competition in which our local authorities must compete with one another, rather than work in concert towards nationally agreed goals. Fifthly, the most sensible solution was readily available, but for political reasons it was rejected—to continue with the precedent that was already set by EU structural funds and allow our Scottish Government and those of us in this Parliament to shape the best use of funds for the people of Scotland.

When I challenged Mr Gove in the Finance and Public Administration Committee last week about the methodology for funding projects, which had placed Orkney, Shetland and the Highlands in the lowest category of need for transport infrastructure—along with the City of London—he obfuscated. He asked the Scottish Government to provide him with more information and transparency, while at the same time he sought to impose an approach that excludes that Government from control.

Let us consider Mr Grove’s track record on transparency. As reported in 2017 by Peter Geoghegan, writing for openDemocracy, Gove and others were closely tied to the Legatum Institute, a Mayfair-based think tank that is funded by a tycoon who made his money during the wild capitalism period in post-Soviet Russia. When asked about his connections to people at Legatum, Mr Gove’s belief in transparency led him to give this florid reply:

“The blessed sponge of amnesia wipes the memory slate clean.”

However bad his memory was, it did not stop the appointment of Legatum’s Matthew Elliott as chief executive of vote leave.

After the referendum, the infamous letter from Gove and Boris Johnson to the then Prime Minister, Theresa May, encouraging a hard Brexit, was widely reported as having been assisted by the involvement of Russian-funded Legatum personnel. Gove and Johnson’s hard Brexit is costing Scotland dear.

Furthermore, Gove advocated against and lobbied to avoid publishing prior to the 2019 election the Russia report on election meddling, money laundering, cyberattacks and the buying of influence with dirty Russian money. To this day, we have never seen the full report, thanks to Mr Gove.

Finally, I note that the tycoon who is behind Michael Gove’s favourite institute is reported to have been behind the board coup that saw an associate of Vladimir Putin become chair of Gazprom, the huge energy company that is fuelling Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Therefore, no amount of fawning by the Scottish Tories over Gove can hide the fact that he is a charlatan with a demonstrable lack of concern for the democratic will of the Scottish people—trust him, and his assurances on the UK structural funds, at your peril.

Can the cabinet secretary provide further information about the underpinning methodology and the analysis that was undertaken to inform the strategy and which, ultimately, led to the key themes that have been identified in order to deliver improvements?

I suppose that the framework is attempting to do that as we all move beyond a difficult financial time.

One of the committee’s other concerns is the general lack of understanding of how the budget process works for the Scottish Government and the impact that it has on everyone else’s budgets. You are clearly across that and you will understand that, for example, the final figures came in literally at the 11th hour—the night before stage 3. However, how clearly is that understood by your colleagues in CIPFA and the council? I think that it was the finance secretary who said that it is like trying to land a 747 on a postage stamp, which describes it well. What is your perception of how clearly the process is understood across the board among your colleagues in CIPFA and the council?

Yes, it does. Going to your accountancy background, I have asked on a number of different occasions whether data on how much time is spent on the process—you spoke earlier about opportunity cost—is collected when we go through that curmudgeonly process? Doing projections that are promptly zapped is often a waste of time. That is one area where I would be looking to note how many days are being used in order to illustrate inefficiencies, when it is all changed at the 11th hour. Does CIPFA or COSLA collect that data?

Do you know what the aggregated percentage is for the rest of the UK? I am just interested.

I knew that you would enjoy that opportunity. Thank you for that.

Would the other two witnesses like to add anything on that question with some thoughts that might have been triggered by today’s discussion?

I see that Paul Bradley is taking a deep breath.