Chamber and committees

We would have to start again and reinvent the wheel.

That would be very helpful. Does anyone else have anything that they want to say? As would be said at an auction, going, going, gone.

I thank everyone for their contributions, which will be extremely helpful to our future deliberations. Once we have completed our evidence taking, we will work to put together a report, which you will all be able to access.

Our business planning day has been confirmed for 1 September. We have completed all our work for today, so no one has to stay behind. I thank everyone very much.

Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2022 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Before we start, I put on record the committee’s thanks to members of the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, who visited us here at Holyrood yesterday. We had a very productive discussion on the work and approaches of our respective committees in relation to public administration, and it was fascinating for those of us who were here to see how in parallel we are with that committee with regard to our experiences and the challenges ahead of us.

Today, we continue our evidence gathering for our national performance framework: ambitions into action inquiry. I welcome to the meeting our first panel of witnesses: Mirren Kelly, chief officer, local government finance, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; and Tim Kendrick, community manager, development, Fife Council. First of all, I would like to thank you for your excellent written submissions. Both were interesting and have certainly given the committee food for thought.

I will go straight to questions. Mirren, the first paragraph of your submission says:

“COSLA would further welcome a future opportunity ... to provide oral evidence to the Committee on some of the wider aspects concerning the Ambitions into Action Inquiry and expand on experience to date.”

Let us kick off with that, then.

Indeed, but I am not saying that you should go over the whole paper.

You have suggested that the outcomes are perhaps not as prescriptive as they should be. Do you think that they should be tightened up? After all, many others who have made submissions have talked about the need for enhanced flexibility in the approach to the outcomes. Where exactly does COSLA sit on that issue?

I understand that, but it is difficult for ministers to do that if they are always getting a kicking in the press for a decline in police or teacher numbers, not putting enough nurses in place or whatever. For example, my health board thinks that we have 85 beds too many, but it knows that if it cuts them, there will be an immediate outcry, even though those resources will be devoted to delivering services elsewhere. That money will not vanish; it will be spent where the health board thinks that it will deliver better health outcomes. However, we continue to face that kind of difficulty. Every politician here is probably guilty of pressing that button when it suits them, too, because you have to get re-elected, apart from anything else. In my view, that is probably the most fundamental barrier to the national performance framework delivering on its outcomes.

In your submission, Mirren, you say:

“the route toward achieving National Outcomes is not prescribed. This leaves the potential for, and advantage of, a wide range of different and often innovative paths to be developed through which better outcomes can be achieved. At the local level this can translate into tailoring specific services to address unique local issues or targeting local groups or communities.”

I wonder whether you can give me a couple of examples of that—and not from Fife, as I will be asking Tim Kendrick for some examples from his neck of the woods.

If you had additional resources in Fife, would you allocate them to increasing the amount of money for preventative spend on, say, poverty? You mentioned your 70:30 split in funding, but if you had a significant increase in the resources available for that, would you continue with that proportion of spend or would you say, “Well, we’ve got this additional money—let’s try to make a real difference in prevention”? How would that work?

We will continue evidence taking for our national performance framework inquiry with a round-table discussion. I welcome to the meeting Amy Woodhouse, head of policy, projects and participation at Children in Scotland; Keith Robson, senior public affairs manager at the Open University in Scotland; Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland; Vicki Bibby, director of strategic planning and performance at Public Health Scotland; Neil Ferguson, head of corporate functions at Revenue Scotland; Elle Adams, programme manager at Scotland CAN B; and Paul Bradley, policy and public affairs manager at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.

I thank you for your detailed written submissions. We have around 90 minutes for this session, which is intended to generate a discussion rather than be a straightforward question-and-answer session. If you want to make any points in the discussion, let Joanne McNaughton, our clerk, know and I will take you in.

This is not going to be Buggins’s turn—I am not going to take you in sequence. People will just put their hands up when they want to come in, and it may be that we bounce back and forward, and the same people may get in more than others. I do not intend to do a lot of talking, which colleagues on the committee will be pleased to hear. I have specific questions about each of your seven submissions that I will ask if I need to, but if we get a free-flowing discussion and we touch on the areas that we want to cover, that will not be necessary. I do not want to be in a situation where I am just going through the questions that you have already answered in your submissions, so if I ask questions, it will be to expand on some of the comments that you have already made.

Without further ado, Vicki Bibby already knows that I am going to go to her first, because forewarned is forearmed. In the written submission from Public Health Scotland, Vicki has said:

“In summary, we believe the national performance framework is fundamentally important as a statement of the shared national priorities and a clear expression of what wellbeing means for the people of Scotland today.”

That concludes questions from committee members, but I still have a couple of questions that touch on areas that we have not covered yet.

The first is for Mirren Kelly. The submission from COSLA talks about the impact of the national outcomes on the economy as one example of collaborative working. It says that

“the Business Gateway National Unit in COSLA ... works extensively and in collaboration with the Scottish Government, the three enterprise agencies, Skills Development Scotland, Visit Scotland and Creative Scotland as well as all 32 Councils.”

It goes on to talk about community planning partnerships and other structures, such as integration joint boards. One area that is not covered, but I am sure that it is also in your mind, is city and regional deals.

Do you feel that delivery of the national outcomes would benefit from a decluttering of the public sector landscape?

You have talked about sharing internally, but what about either learning from or sharing with other local authorities?