Chamber and committees

Thank you for that deeper explanation. The issue comes down to the fundamental way in which we budget and how we categorise things. Today, we have very vertical silos in terms of health, education, transport and the economy—you have been provided with the figures. However, life is a bit more complex than that. As customers, citizens and human beings, we experience life from a more horizontal perspective as we are impacted on by issues relating to health, education and housing, for example. Especially in an island context, transport issues are absolutely linked to health, because we have to travel off an island to access many health provisions. That reflects the reason why that £100 million is allocated to public service reform as a block. We need to get away from that siloed approach and start to see that, for example, the work on whole-family support goes across many of those vertical portfolios.

That is a big shift in how we are set up at a portfolio level, how we budget and how public services are delivered. Today, everything is very much in silos, and that will not be changed overnight or within a 12-month period. I hope that that gives some clarity about why the deliberate choice to allocate that sum in a block has been taken.

I thank the committee for the continued and sustained questions and the pressure that you have put on the Government with regard to baselining. As a result of the committee’s work, there has, over the past couple of years, been a £1.5 billion increase in baselining when it comes to allocating to the delivery unit, as opposed to policy.

It comes down to a political choice about how much we baseline as we go further. It also relates to public service reform and local government reform. Various ministers and cabinet secretaries around the table will have different approaches to that. My personal view is that, as we bring in that different, more regional layer of Government and create 120 to 160 municipalities, it comes down to trusting the delivery unit to understand what is required and what is best at the initial point of indicating where the 12-month funding package will go.

It is not a no or a yes; I am giving you my personal opinion as to where I would like to see further baselining. Again, however, that comes down to negotiations and how far I can push my colleagues in that direction.

I will hand over to Scott Mackay to supplement my answer but, in relation to the drawdown of the £500 million for the transition to net zero, if we were to continue to use ScotWind funds for that purpose and not supplement them through the economy portfolio, we would lose the flexibility of having ScotWind funds as a credible backstop in the budget. As I reiterated to Mr Kerr, I do not want to be in a position in which we have to use ScotWind funds as a backstop. However, ultimately, if we do not have that as a backstop, actively consider other backstops and use the SEND consequentials in full, we will not balance our budget this year. I wish it were not so, but that is the financial reality in which we find ourselves.

The Whitehall transfers, which you will see in several different portfolios, are quite a technical piece. They are coming in at a UK level, and we see that year on year they come in and then go out, because they are allocated in the round. When it comes to the infected blood support scheme payments in the health portfolio, those Whitehall transfers have accrued year on year.

I will pass over to Scott Mackay on the capital investment, because it is quite technical.

It is both, as you would expect. Over the summer, I had several meetings with various planning authorities. There is definitely a lack of planners coming through the system, which is affecting the capacity that we have available to us. There are challenges as a result of the fact that the private sector is taking good planners who have been developed, coached and nurtured at a local level and offering them different conditions. In other words, planners are being poached by the private sector.

In addition, there is the sand in the wheels that I mentioned—the amount of bureaucracy and paperwork that exists in the planning system. As I said to Mr Bouse, we want to look at the capability function so that we can enable planners to go back to being planners. In the AI space, there are some AI and digital tools the use of which I would like to explore to enable planners to do the creative town centre planning and place planning that would allow us to get the best out of the community build-up process. I would like us to be able to use digitisation to address the workload and free up planners to be planners.

As with the timeframe on AI data centres, it would be remiss of me to stand here and make a rod for my own back by giving a date. However, I met some of those people over the summer. It is important to note that 99 per cent of applications that go through the system get approved at the local level. As I said to the convener, I really want the discrepancy to be reduced, with a more standardised time for small house builders and large house builders in the industry, because time is money. You are right: if people are sitting on projects that are being delayed for taking months if not quarters, builders will see the impact of that on their bottom line.

I want to see change, and I am making sure that my team and my officials are engaging with the sector to understand the solutions that it wants to see so that we can bring in the changes and reforms that are needed—not to overturn the whole system, but to make improvements so that there is proportionality in all cases. However, you will understand that I am not going to make a rod for my own back by giving dates today.

I have always said that value is numbers but also narrative. There are parts of Government where we can place numbers on things, and there are other things that are harder to quantify, because this is not a business, as we all know.

I will mention three things that I would like to change. First, in May, I would like the turnout in local elections to increase—it was at 44 per cent in 2021, so there is room for improvement. If we get this right, as Ms Gilruth said, it is about democratising our country. People and constituents should feel empowered to get out to vote in local elections. I would like to see the reforms and the local democracy agenda that we take forward encouraging folk to get out and vote for the people who will represent their local area, because they will have more local decision making.

The second thing, which comes into public sector reform—Ms Gilruth touched on it—is planning. There are a variety of timescales across the planning system, whether we are talking about major housing development, other housing development or industry and business. I would like to see more standardisation and faster timeframes. The timeframes across the three buckets that I have just mentioned are different, so more standardisation across the system would be very welcome. That is a stretch target to see within a year’s time, and there is work for us all to do together to achieve that.

The third item that I would like, which Ms Gilruth talked about, is local decision making, which is harder to quantify. What powers exist that we could see more of at local level so that people feel empowered on matters that affect their communities? That is now work in progress with local government for the next three months. What are the requirements across the country? We have different local authorities across the country. The islands are very different from the Highlands, and the Highlands are very different from the central belt. What powers would folk like in their local area, and how do we increase that local democracy?

The three things that I would like to see are increased turnout, more standardised wait times in planning and more decision making locally.

I will meet the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing on that issue next week or the week after, and I will be happy to write to you to share with you what I can from that meeting. It is important that we do that cross-portfolio work. You will understand that, having been appointed to this brief only three months ago, I have not managed to have that meeting yet, but that will happen towards the end of September.

I will add to that. You will be aware, deputy convener, that there is a vast array of diversity across our country in our geography, industries and businesses and in what local councils require. It looks different from the north to the west and to the south, which is why we are embarking on a three-month programme of intense dialogue and collaboration. Three months is a quarter of a year, which is ample time to come together to find a solution if all sides come to the table and really focus on what matters.

I refer you to a scholar, Simon Sinek. Some of the stuff that he does on leadership and culture is wonderful. He has a golden circle, with three words in the circle. You start off with the why, you move into how and then you decide what. We are starting with why this needs to change in terms of democracy and making people more accountable in their communities. As the three months go on, we will get into the how and the what, but it would be remiss of us to start from the opposite direction and work back, because people do not care what you do; they care why you do it.