Chamber and committees

Thank you for your opening statement, cabinet secretary. I acknowledge that your official Simon Mair has also joined us to support our evidence session.

The last time you met us, we were trying to drill down on what workforce reduction numbers would look like. I suggested 20,000 people and asked whether you recognised that number. I will not go down that road today, but from the evidence that we have had, it is pretty clear that, in the short term, the reduction of the workforce is not a cost-free option. Significant up-front costs will be involved in ensuring that there are no compulsory redundancies and that voluntary severance packages are as they should be. How will that be reflected in the coming budget? How are the costs for voluntary severance schemes to be met across the public sector? What contribution can we expect from the Scottish Government to meet those costs in the short term?

Therefore, do you expect that this time next year—if we fast forward to that—each area of the public service where there is to be reform will have granular detail on where head-count reductions have been due to attrition, end of contractual arrangements, or voluntary severance?

In relation to the case of Colleges Scotland, of course I do not expect you to be over all of it, cabinet secretary, but it took some colleges up to two years to be back in credit financially after the packages that emerged. There are definitely short-term, up-front costs. This committee wants to make sure that there is transparency around that across all portfolios that are subject to public service reform, so that we can scrutinise it.

I am just thinking out loud: if 500 or 1,000 staff found themselves, over a gradual, iterative process, doing jobs that looked a fair bit different from the ones that they had been doing, and there were skills and training requirements for that, would the cost fall wholly on the public sector organisations and within their existing budgets, or would we expect the Scottish Government to make a contribution towards that?

Does that mean that we should not expect to see a budget line anywhere in the 2027-28 budget that takes into account the costs of restructuring and public service reform?

09:45

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the seventh meeting of the Public Service Reform Committee.

Our first agenda item is to decide whether to take item 3 in private. Do colleagues agree to take that item in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Can you say a bit more about how we should redesign services?

That is helpful. Your evidence gives quite clear and significant examples of cash savings that have been derived from reform, but witness after witness says to us that the cash savings should be not the starting point but the end point of successful reform in order to improve outcomes. Was that your experience with the reform of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service?

What role do you think that Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland and similar organisations could play as part of that service redesign? I understand that there are local authorities and health boards sitting at the top of the current structures, which have been set up in that way for a long time, and there are the service users on the ground, and then there are CHSS and other organisations having to navigate their way through a system in which the processes are complex. The processes are not about saying, “Tell me once what your issues are and the system will work to support you”—there are multiple referrals for one individual, for example.

Do you feel that the voices of organisation such as yours will be heard during the process of public service reform?

I thank Helen Malo and Hospice UK for their submission. I am not going to ask about preventative spend, because a large chunk of questioning later in the evidence session will look at that. I should put on the record that your evidence points to the fact that, in the last year of a person’s life, spend is five times greater if that person is approaching the end of their life in the acute sector—particularly in hospital—than if they are in the community, in primary healthcare or in a hospice. There is clearly a way of delivering outcomes-based efficiencies in the best interests of people who have to use services as they approach the end of life.

In your submission, you speak about the misalignment between the money in the acute sector—which, on the evidence submitted, does not deal with prevention—and the money that goes through IJBs for community care. I know you want to tell us all about Hospice UK and the hospice network, and I promise that there will be opportunities for that later in the evidence session, but, first, can you say more about the misalignment of the structures through which the money flows?

09:45

I am sorry to focus on processes, but the committee is going to have to scrutinise the budget and also the wider public service reform agenda. Do you see opportunities in moving away from 32 local authorities, which connect to 30 IJBs and 14 health boards? What are the opportunities or dangers in relation to that reform? I will give you the opportunity to put some of that on the record.