Chamber and committees

What about Scotland? What kind of lessons can we learn for our budget from what the UK has done? We have had six weeks to reflect on what has happened, and the Scottish ministers will be setting out their proposals from Thursday. What pitfalls should they avoid and what kinds of things can they do in a positive sense, given the policy restrictions, of course?

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has said that policies have been led by the OBR. We will ask it about that.

I have a final question on taxation before I turn to colleagues. You state in your submission that the amount of gross domestic product that is raised in tax will be 36.2 per cent by 2026-27, which will be its highest since the early 1950s. You also state that taking his past two budgets together, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has

“raised taxes by more this year than in any single year since Norman Lamont and Ken Clarke’s two 1993 Budgets in the aftermath of Black Wednesday.”

You wrote the submission on 27 October. What impact do you think that will have on future growth projections, given that you have had six weeks in which to analyse the situation further?

I do not doubt for one minute that there have been remarkable successes, which you have detailed, but what about areas in which cultural change does not seem to be happening to the same extent? How uniform is the cultural change?

I will give one example. A decade or more ago, there was concern about the high proportion of national health service spend that was going on older people who were being treated in hospital but who did not need to be there. We are talking about around £1.5 billion at that time. Obviously, we have had a pandemic and things have changed, but where are we in trying to change the cultural approach in areas such as the NHS? You may recall that there was resistance from health boards in that area. They said that, unless they got more money, they could not change the way in which they did things with the resources that they had. I am aware that you allocated £500 million over three years specifically to preventative spend at the time. How can we ensure that some of the remarkably successful examples that you have given can permeate the entire public sector in Scotland?

I have one last question before I open up the session to colleagues around the table. Three weeks ago, our witnesses said that there is an opportunity in the wake of Covid-19 to empower and better resource communities. What does empowering communities mean to the Scottish Government? Does it mean empowering, within communities, small groups of those who tend to be active in community councils and elsewhere? How do we involve people more widely? Participatory budgeting has been a step forward, but what does community empowerment mean to the Scottish ministers?

If the John Swinney of 2021 went back to 2007, he would tell his predecessor that he was yet to reach his prime—he says sookily.

Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2021 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from the Deputy First Minister on public service reform and the Christie commission. Members have received a background paper from the clerks. Mr Swinney is joined today by Scottish Government officials Laura Turney and David Milne. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite the Deputy First Minister to make a short opening statement.

Absolutely. Demand is clearly increasing much faster than our ability to provide services. Apart from anything else, people have to be trained. We cannot just magic professional caring staff out of nowhere.

Does that not make it even more important that we have the right conditions to support change, meaningful collaboration and innovation? How do we incentivise that in the public sector? I know fine well how it was incentivised in the private sector, as I worked in it for many years, but how can we make it happen? You touched on early learning, but it is supported by additional funding from the Scottish Government in resource and in capital, which makes change much easier. However, in areas where we are in difficulty such as this, with the perfect storm and exhausted staff—and it does not help with recruitment when the media continually focus on how exhausted and worn out NHS staff are; I do not know how that encourages people to go into that service—how do we make the change that we need if we are not to be in the same situation next year and in subsequent years?

How frustrating is it that best practice is not shared as much as it could be? For example, the previous parliamentary session’s Local Government and Communities Committee found that the level of sickness in the best local authority was only one quarter that of the worst. They were both Scottish National Party-controlled councils, by the way, so we cannot make a political argument about that. Given the size and scale of Scotland, is it frustrating that strong methodologies that are in place are not being looked at, copied and implemented elsewhere so that we can take things forward in a much more positive way with the limited resources that we have?

Thank you very much for that opening statement. You have actually covered many of the areas on which I was going to ask questions, so I will just ask about a number of issues that follow on from them.

The Christie commission followed soon after the passing of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, which means that a decade has elapsed since both. You said in your opening statement that there are many examples of reform that have made a tangible difference to people’s lives, but can you touch on one or two of the most significant examples in that respect?