Chamber and committees

John Mason and I were members of the Finance Committee between 2011 and 2016, and we did a lot of work on prevention. There were a number of frustrations at that time. First, we can all identify good approaches to preventative spending, but it is extremely difficult to get the resources to disengage from delivery models that are not working particularly effectively. Secondly, everything that we do is, of course, within the hothouse of the chamber and the media. Everything is measured by the number of nurses, the number of police officers and so on rather than necessarily by outcomes at the end, although there are attempts across the board to have more focus on those outcomes.

We understand that there is no perfect delivery system. In your introduction, you say that Governments can aspire to do wonderful things but that there are innate contradictions. For example, involving a number of partners in the decision-making process can conflict with strong central decision making and a decisive ethos so that people outside can see where their Government is heading and what it plans to do.

I suppose that it is about trying to look at the least imperfect system. In the report, you look at New Zealand in some detail including, for example, how New Zealand might own some of its failures of policy—although I think that the Opposition will do its best to point that out without any Scottish Government involvement being necessary. You also point to some of the successes in Wales and what is being done there.

Although they are in the report, would you talk to a couple of those examples for the record? Also, can you go beyond New Zealand and Wales to talk about where else we could look at. There are international models of delivery. Are there other areas that you think the Scottish Government—and, indeed, this committee—could look at?

“I have given up” is not a good start.

Yes—I, too, am restraining myself from coming in on the back of that.

It looks like a Cy Twombly drawing—if it was, it would be worth around $70 million.

I wonder how that would work here, in reality. It depends on who is doing the scoring.

I mentioned the BBC to colleagues before the public session started. It is quite easy for reputations to disappear or be damaged almost overnight, to a degree.

I am jumping about a bit here, because the report is so interesting—I could spend the whole time asking loads of questions, but colleagues will want to come in, and they always get narky if I take too long at the start—I think that John Mason may agree.

You say in the report that the new public management approach did not succeed even according to the objectives that it set for itself, which is an interesting point.

I will highlight one of the issues. We can have all the great theories that we like and all the structures that we want to implement, but the important thing is to have capacity. You ask,

“Does the Scottish Government have sufficient policy capacity?”,

and you look at generalist civil servants versus specialisms. You talk about leadership training and how much capacity exists even outside the civil service for Government to tap into. You also mention

“the risk of ineffective government when policy capacity and training does not live up to the Scottish Government’s ... expectations”

and the expectations of the people whom it represents. Where are we at with capacity, and what could we do to improve and enhance it?

Ferries are boats that carry people.

To wind up the session, I have three further questions to ask.

One of the things that I really like about your report is the wee take-home messages, which I think are quite helpful. In one of those, on page 16, you said:

“new ideas are applied patchily to established practices.”

How could that be improved?

To follow up on that, you refer on more than one occasion to the need to trust public service professionals, which is obviously fundamental.

On the other side, I know that, when the Scottish National Party Government came in in 2007, there was concern that there was not any buy-in from the civil servants who were there, who did not think that the SNP was gonnae win and that, if it did, it was gonnae last six weeks and that Tavish Scott, as was famously said, was gonnae come in. Of course, that did not happen.

Civil servants are appointed to ministers. That is not how we, as MSPs, recruit our own staff in our own constituency offices, many of whom we have known for years; sometimes we have not known them that long, but they tend to be much more open about their political views with us.

How can we build that trust in such circumstances? Personal relationships are obviously key, but how can we do so on a broader basis?

I think that, from a politician’s point of view, there are some ministers who fear that they will be perceived as having a “Yes Minister” kind of relationship and that they will not be the ones who are running the show in their own departments, or that that is how it will sometimes be perceived. That can perhaps make relationships a wee bit difficult.

I will end on the “policy cycle” and “policy spirograph” images on page 17. Will you talk us through that a wee bit?