Chamber and committees

That is a legitimate question. Both Sara Glass, who has been with us but has not been able to contribute, and Michelle Hegarty might be able to come in on that. Sara can talk about the numbers. Michelle can talk about how we are trying to use the parliamentary estate in different ways, which might address the latter part of your question.

As Michelle Hegarty said, we are moving at pace. We will receive recommendations and requests will follow on from that. We are looking, for example, at whether there should be any national procurement to make it easier to deal with the issues—that might or might not be the route to go. There are a series of questions that we are currently exploring and investigating. We are taking advice from others who are going through a similar exercise, whether at Westminster or in Northern Ireland or Wales.

Clearly, there is a sense of urgency in relation to all of this, in terms of the reassurance that we want members to have. As and when we are able to make early progress, you can be assured that that is what we will be doing.

Thank you for the invitation to attend the committee. As you said, I am joined by David McGill, Michelle Hegarty and Sara Glass.

In this first budget of the new session, the corporate body is following up the commitment, given in February 2021 to the then convener of the Finance and Constitution Committee, that we would undertake a review of staffing resources to ensure a more robust and sustainable baseline for session 6. That request was echoed in legacy reports from other committees, as well as by a large number of members from all the parties in the Parliament during a debate around this time last year. It follows on from the review of members’ staff costs as well.

Accordingly, our budget bid, which is based on robust analysis and planning, addresses our capability and capacity to support the work of members of the Parliament across the session. Following that proposed investment, we intend to steward our resources to manage pressures and uncertainties for the duration of the session.

Unfortunately, many uncertainties persist, most notably the continuing pandemic, which has placed significant challenges on how we operate and on our financial resources. However, the committee can be assured that the SPCB will continue to responsibly flex our resources to meet the demands that are placed on us, as it has done throughout the past 20 months. That remains our Covid assumption for the upcoming budget.

Excluding capital charges and non-cash items, the proposed budget for 2022-23 represents a net 1.4 per cent increase on the current financial year’s budget, which was a higher budget largely because of the Scottish elections, for which the Parliament is responsible. For the committee’s purposes, it is a 3.8 per cent increase on the previously presented indicative budget for 2022-23.

That is primarily attributable to three factors: first, the strategic review of SPCB staffing baseline for session 6, to which I have just referred; secondly, anticipated requirements for members’ personal security; and thirdly, inflationary increases in the Parliament’s running costs. Following the death of Sir David Amess, the corporate body has been reviewing the personal security support provided to members, and it is currently progressing a number of initiatives. However, it is our view that, until the requirements of and projected uptake from members are clearer, a prudent approach would be to create provision in contingency for this year, with actual financial amounts being baselined the following year.

The committee will be aware that inflation—the third area to which I referred—is now highly volatile, with forecasters predicting continued high levels in the medium term. Inflation impacts on all aspects of the corporate body cost base, and the current levels are driving cost increases ahead of the forecasts used in preparing the previous indicative budget. That additional pressure is captured in our budget bid for operational costs.

With regard to MSP and ministerial salaries, I can confirm that following the zero per cent increase in 2021-2022, the SPCB’s budget bid reflects a 3.4 per cent uplift consistent with the application of the annual survey of hours and earnings index as laid out in the members’ salary scheme. The staff cost provision uplift, using agreed indices, will be 4.5 per cent, which is in effect a provision of £139,200 per member for employed staff.

On running costs, the corporate body proposes to maintain a broadly similar level of investment, including projects to sustain our building facilities infrastructure and services. The pace of change in our operations is faster than it has ever been, as has been illustrated in the past 18 months by the addition of two new technology-dependent services—the hybrid parliamentary business platform and remote voting—about which members might wish to ask questions. We will continue to develop and support services to provide a secure and effective working environment online, at Holyrood and in local offices.

Convener, if you agree, I would like David McGill, the chief executive and clerk of the Parliament, to conclude the opening remarks with a brief overview of the staffing baseline bid, which you might want to ask about.

There are two important areas there. It is difficult to be certain about the long-term requirement for the scrutiny of issues arising from Brexit. We have modelled that as best we can. David McGill will touch on that. Net zero is similar. We have a sustained action plan for that. I am not sure whether you are talking about scrutiny in relation to net zero or about our scrutiny of ourselves and what we are doing to achieve net zero. Michelle Hegarty will be able to expand on that in detail. David McGill can comment on the Brexit aspect.

Thank you, convener. Any time that I have presented before, that is what we have done and it is helpful to set out the main themes of the budget.

Mr Johnson, the radical shopkeeper in you is advocating the privatisation of our parliamentary estate.

That is a difficult question to answer at this stage, because in the first year of a new parliamentary session, it takes considerable time to engage staff, particularly for the new members. There will be some members of this committee who are new and who have not yet fulfilled their staff commitment or have taken several months to do so. It is probable that there will be an underspend in the first year because members will have been recruiting staff, some of whose start dates will not have been until the autumn. We will probably not get the full answer on that until the next year.

Michelle Hegarty is monitoring such things and will be able to give the committee an indication of our utilisation. We are probably sitting at about four fifths in relation to the typical capacity in other sessions.

As you say, I have been both a regional and a constituency member. I noticed a considerable change in the nature of my workload when I changed function. However, I also acknowledge that, with the additional fiscal powers of the Scottish Government, the overall responsibilities of the Parliament have changed significantly since I was a regional member and I am now less convinced of the variance in workload between regional and constituency members.

There is a difference in the nature of the workload. However, from the work that the corporate body did when liaising with members across the Parliament during the whole Covid period, I know that the increase in members’ workloads and the demands on them as a result of the pandemic has been considerable. As people have discovered Zoom and the whole nature of online inquiry, there has been a considerable increase in the ways in which people approach us and in the volume of those approaches.

There is also an obligation in that, at the heart of the entire scheme under which we operate, there is the principle of equality between all members of the Parliament. It is fundamentally important, notwithstanding how workloads have evolved, that all members of the Scottish Parliament are equal and are treated as such.

We are undertaking an initial survey of members, which is out just now, to help to quantify that. When we get to a certain stage in the roll-out, members may well take advantage of the opportunity to have an appropriate survey of domestic premises or whatever, with recommendations—as was the case with office security assessments—that they may or may not wish to take up.

There are a number of technical challenges and fiscal challenges, such as taxation challenges, on which we are having to liaise with representatives of other Parliaments, but we are investigating a number of different streams in relation to members’ security. I think that the best that we can do is come up with the contingency that we have. Obviously, we will have a far better understanding of that over the next 12 months, when we will be able to quantify the costs.

I am not sure whether Michelle Hegarty can add anything further to that. I think that I have pretty much summed up the position.

I will come to colleagues in a moment, but I fully understand and appreciate the question. It is difficult to be certain about that. Clearly, there has been a requirement for people to work at home for a large part of the pandemic, and as we move forward, that may vary in a number of ways.

We are acutely conscious not just of keeping people safe but of people’s mental health and wellbeing, and we are aware that although some staff will continue to work remotely, they may choose to work remotely from constituency offices so that they are in a smaller community but are engaging with others. That in itself might change the nature of the parliamentary function of constituency offices and require them to be a more obvious extension of the parliamentary process, in terms of the ability to engage reliably.

A considerable number of members prefer to be at Parliament if they can be. As we saw in an excellent debate in Parliament last week ahead of a committee inquiry into future working practices off the back of the hybrid arrangements that we have experienced, some members may go forward on a variable basis. They might work remotely when they do not need to be in Parliament and be in Parliament more regularly when they have a particular physical need to be present.

We will monitor all that as we go along. Obviously, we applaud the work that the Parliament has done on the hybrid working that we have, but that is not to say that I do not understand members’ frustrations. I can see my own party’s WhatsApp chat line as we navigate our way through the hybrid working process. The Parliament is looking at ways in which we can make that more robust and extend the functionality of hybrid working. One of the big frustrations is our inability at present to intervene during hybrid contributions.

Michelle Hegarty could probably provide more detail on process that officials are monitoring in relation to the themes that I have just discussed.