Chamber and committees

That is very welcome.

I ask, therefore, that you have that conversation not only with Ms Constance but with all the other cabinet secretaries who have reform agendas in their remit, so that the committee does not necessarily go to each individual cabinet secretary and minister to ask for updates, but has a single point of contact—you, cabinet secretary—who stresses the importance of our seeing what the modelling looks like and what the initial iterations are.

I use the word “iterations” because things will change as you consult trade unions, bodies and everyone else, but we want to be clear about the direction of travel and the progress that is being made, and data is incredibly important in relation to that.

What is actually more important than any of the numbers that I have been trying to get from you is how we measure outcomes and progress.

A lot is made of the national performance framework, which I am very supportive of. I will stick with the NHS for the time being and note that the NPF does not monitor things such as waiting times, the number of operations that take place, what is happening with regard to social care, how quickly care packages are put in place or how many people can live independently in the community rather than presenting to the acute sector and staying there for a prolonged period of time. How can and how will we measure outcomes? Sticking with the NHS and social care, outcomes can involve things such as someone receiving more timely care, treatment and support so that they have a better quality experience, or someone not having to go to a service because of the use of preventative spend. Of course, it can also involve cash savings that can be reinvested elsewhere. This committee will want to track all of that in great detail over the next five years. How do we get that data in a meaningful and consistent fashion from you and the Government more generally?

Thanks for that. However, I still have concerns, based on my previous understanding of the NPF.

When public bodies design and develop policies, they must ensure that they “pay due regard to”—I think that that is the term that is used in legislation—their obligations and duties under the NPF. My understanding is that they do not have a statutory duty to comply with it, so things are monitored more generally. However, with regard to public service reform, this committee will want to consider data on the ground, rather than more general outcomes from the NPF. Can I get a reassurance that there will be a dashboard of indicators that will be meaningful to members of the public and this committee when we seek to monitor the situation?

If I look at the March 2026 figures for the NHS, I see that there are 29,826 whole-time equivalent staff in the administrative classification in the NHS. I should point out that they all do vital jobs. Restructuring might happen, and there might be fewer of them going forward as a result of health board measures, but I do not diminish the importance of the jobs that they currently do.

So, is that the baseline that we are working from for admin workers in the NHS—29,826?

Okay, and that figure went up by 0.6 per cent in the past year. How much do you expect it to fall by in the next three years?

Can you be brief, please?

I will follow up on the important issue that Michelle Campbell raised. My memory is now strained slightly, but, a few years ago, there was an NHS challenge or change fund that provided something like £10 million a year. The idea was that health boards and partnerships got that money for preventative spending on restructuring and new ways of working. The Parliament stopped looking at the fund back in the day, so it would be interesting to know how many of those projects were embedded in everyday revenue streams in the NHS. I do not expect you to know the answer to that, cabinet secretary, but is the assumption with the invest-to-save fund that public bodies must reorganise, restructure, release savings in a structured fashion and embed the new programmes for the longer term, so that they do not just draw the money for the short term and then go back to old ways of working, which might have happened in the past?

We will come back to that later.

I assume that the Government has a range in its modelling work. The Government cannot come to Parliament and say, “We don’t wish to put a number on it.” Actually, let me rephrase that: the Government can come to Parliament and say that it does not wish to do that because it does not want to make assumptions about the consultation on restructuring. However, that would involve numbers for specific sectors or areas. The Government must have modelling to show what the number looks like in terms of jobs, even if you are not apportioning that to individual sectors, be that local authorities, social care, the national health service or environmental agencies. There must be a range or a number. Is there a number that you can share with us?

I want to ensure that, when we talk about 0.5 per cent, we know what base we are starting from, so that we can model that going forward. It is important that the committee has a base for each area. It would be good to have a base for the NHS, social care, local authorities, the third sector, environmental agencies and any bodies that emerge to be considered. If we do not have a base, we cannot monitor progress.

In your cover letter for the public service reform update that you have provided, you indicate that a workforce management framework document will be published. Will that have any of those numbers in it?