Chamber and committees

On the national performance framework as a proposition, I would say—to be frank—that the more you delve into it, the more you discover. It is all there. In the detailed documents, we set out the rationale for why we have arrived at a particular selection of data sets or information to determine progress. That approach can stand up to scrutiny. Nonetheless, people are free to say that they do not think that we have arrived at the right half a dozen indicators to support a proposition on tackling poverty, for example, and that we are not looking at the right things.

Of course, there is scope for that debate to be had, but the rationale for how we have arrived at the selection of information is all there. It is subject to challenge and debate, and the review that we will undertake in 2023 will give us the opportunity to have that discussion.

I would differentiate between some of the issues that you suggest would drive changes in the national performance framework. For example, I do not think that Covid should be a particular driver of change in the composition of the NPF. Covid has happened, and it challenges us, but it is just another issue for us to wrestle with in addressing the agenda of what the NPF seeks to encourage the Government and other bodies to do.

However, the requirement to achieve net zero might force the substantive reconsideration of the national performance framework because it is a strategic policy imperative that, to go back to the points that Daniel Johnson raised with me, might require us to reshape the balance of the NPF for the policy to be realisable. There is scope to do that—that is what the five-year review is designed to do—but it is more about the aspirational elements of policy direction than addressing the consequences of issues such as those that Covid or Brexit has forced on us.

Yes. I was at the heart of the creation of the national performance framework back in 2007, and I convened discussions with representatives of all parties to consider how best we should develop some of the thinking. Responsibility then passed to my successors.

At different times, we considered whether there was a need for an annual statement to Parliament on progress on the NPF. That point must have been considered along with some of the issues around statute, but we do not need statute to require us to provide a statement—we could choose to do so any day of the week. If there was an aspiration for an annual statement, and the committee, in reflecting on these issues, felt that that would be beneficial, the Government would be happy to consider it.

Your opening words were welcome, convener, when you referred to the fact that I have been a regular attender at this committee over many years and have great familiarity with the budget process. In any budgeting process, there is always a challenge in ensuring that budget priorities can be realigned to meet changing trends and demands in society, particularly to achieve different outcomes.

An important point of consideration that has gone into budgeting since—in my view—2007, and which is reflected in the national performance framework, helps us in that respect: that is, undertaking budgeting decisions that help us to align more closely with the achievement of national outcomes.

One example in that respect is investment in early learning and childcare. Clearly, a new amount of money has to be found to ensure 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare for three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. That supports national outcomes whereby we are trying to intervene at the earliest stage to provide the strongest foundations for children to achieve their potential, as is referenced in the national outcome:

“We grow up loved, safe and respected so that we can realise our full potential”.

However, there are financial decisions involved to ensure that we support such objectives, which have to be taken at an operational budget level. The national performance framework provides us with a sense of long-term policy direction and outcomes that we are aiming to achieve. In many respects, those outcomes cannot be achieved without the willing and active participation of local government, which we have been able to rely on in taking forward the example of the early learning and childcare policy objective.

The national performance framework also enables us to take short-term decisions that support the achievement of a long-term outcome, which is its purpose and influence.

The work to enable that to happen is an early priority. As I said to Tess White, a lot of stuff has been interrupted as a consequence of Covid. Although the Government has a lot of data, the data sets to enable us to have a complete picture are not all available, so we have to construct new data sets. Obviously, that takes time. Some of the work has been interrupted by Covid, but I am happy to write to the committee about particular points of achievement in relation to data collection.

That is due to many of the reasons that I have just given. We have had the interruption of Covid.

That is a fascinating and significant question. There are different factors at play. The national performance framework is one example of accountability in our country, but not the only one—there are loads of others. I mentioned audit and parliamentary accountability, but there is also statutory reporting and a whole variety of ways that we can see directly the consequences of an intervention or an item of expenditure on a particular outcome. That will be demonstrable in some aspects of the national performance framework and various other settings in which the issue is tested.

There must be an acknowledgement and acceptance that the national performance framework will tell us a certain amount about the development of policy in Scotland, but there will be a variety of other areas in which to consider that. For example, we could look at the Audit Scotland annual review of the national health service. That is a sharp piece of accountability in relation to several policy areas.

In contrast, the national performance framework tries to structure the way in which we take forward what will inevitably be a long-term journey. We are tackling poverty, but we will not do that in a year—it will take a longer period to tackle poverty. We are trying to encourage a focus on long-term coherent areas of policy, without losing the sharpness of our day-to-day interventions that may or may not contribute to that journey.

I go back to the example of care-experienced young people that I gave to Michelle Thomson. We have research that tells us that the current method of expenditure is not supporting good outcomes for those young people. Given that we want to support better outcomes for care-experienced young people, the Government has arrived at the conclusion that we had better change how we spend the money. That is a concrete example of how we change course if we are not delivering a satisfactory outcome. That is an example of effective accountability.

The example that Tess White cites is vivid. We have a continuous data set on exam results up to 2019 and then we have two data sets for 2020 and 2021 that are constructed in a fundamentally different fashion. It is a challenge to reconcile one methodology that was used for umpteen years with a different methodology that is used for two years. There will need to be open dialogue on the analysis of the information to ensure that we have a proper understanding of whether we are making progress towards the long-term objectives or whether there has been a setback as a consequence of Covid.

One data set will not achieve that. It will take a rounded piece of work. The education recovery group looks at what all the information in the round tells us about where young people are and their achievements, given that the data sets that we would normally rely on have been interrupted by Covid. There is no easy answer, but some considered research that we can discuss and debate and that the Parliament’s committees can analyse and air would be an effective way to do that.

The short answer is yes. This is one attempt to show how we assess performance. If we were to look at that in rather a glib way, I could see how we could arrive at the challenge that Mr Greer poses. I remember that back in 2007, as an alternative, we had a variety of coloured arrows that were designed to help, but probably fell victim to exactly the same challenge that Ross Greer has put to me.

The key point is that a whole range of different actions have to be taken to try to improve performance in a particular area. It would be wrong to conclude that an “improving” performance on active travel journeys should determine our next steps on active travel overall. We have to take a whole range of other interventions to improve that performance.

That is correct.