Chamber and committees

Welcome to the 11th meeting in 2025 of the SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee. I have received no apologies for today’s meeting.

Today, the committee will continue taking evidence as part of its review, and I am pleased to welcome to the committee Ivan McKee, Minister for Public Finance, as well as Scottish Government officials Angus Macleod, head of the public bodies support unit, and Aileen Wright, deputy director of the risk control and assurance division. We are grateful to have you here for our evidence taking.

We move directly to questions, the first of which is from me and is probably one that you have been anticipating. We have been asked by the Parliament to look at Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body-supported bodies, which, of course, fit into a wider scenario of public bodies, some of which are funded by the SPCB and some of which are funded by the Scottish Government. Our questions will mostly be intended to gain further understanding of the way in which things are organised and the reasons for that.

Including the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland, who is yet to become operational, there are eight SPCB-supported bodies, the majority of which were proposed by the Scottish Government. The latest—a victims and witnesses commissioner—is proposed in the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which has passed through the Criminal Justice Committee and will now go to stage 3 in parliamentary plenary.

Could you explain under what circumstances the Government proposes an SPCB-supported body rather than a Government-sponsored body? How does the Government take into account capacity and funding issues for the SPCB in proposing the creation of an SPCB-supported body, and what consideration does the Scottish Government give to the overall coherence of the SPCB-supported body landscape when proposing new bodies such as a commissioner for one group in society? Does that lead to proliferation and a disjointed landscape? I appreciate that some of those decisions were made a decade ago or more, but has there been a strategic approach? I know that there is an ambition to have such an approach in the future, if you want to touch on that, too.

Can I first come in with an additional point? The subject that Lorna Slater has raised, and which Murdo Fraser also touched on, is important. I totally agree with you, minister, that there is a very clear rationale for some of the SPCB-supported bodies, such as the Scottish Information Commissioner, being funded by the SPCB. However, the independence of a number of other bodies, such as the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which we spoke to last week, is very clear, even though they are funded by the Government.

Although we do not know what our recommendations will be, if there were to be any suggestion that there should be amalgamation or reorganisation, that would have to be a joint exercise between the Government and the Parliament because of the situation that we are in, which is that there is no real consistency as to why bodies are funded by the Parliament or by the Government.

If Ash Regan wants to write to you with more detailed information, that would be a good way forward.

Yes.

It is really helpful that you have underlined that collaborative approach. I appreciate your point about the comparative ratio. The Scottish Government constantly thinks about efficiency and value for money, particularly at the moment, and rightly so, given the wider fiscal environment and pressures, but does it take into account the SPCB’s capacity when proposing a new body, such as a victims and witnesses commissioner?

Colleagues will ask about some of those areas later.

An issue that has been on our minds is that, at last week’s meeting, we heard from three public bodies that, although different types of arm’s-length Government bodies, are still very much seen, both in Parliament and in the public domain, as being independent of Government. For example, the Scottish Fiscal Commission stated that it does not think that if it were to be an SPCB-supported body it would mean that it would function any more independently than it does now, with funding from the Scottish Government. How does the Scottish Government determine the level of independence from Government that a new public body would require? Does your consideration of the creation of new public bodies fit with the Scottish Government’s wider public service reform programme? I am sorry—you have just answered that.

We are glad to hear that there is an openness about that.

As we form our conclusions about how we move forward collectively, that openness for rethinking some of the methodology will be useful for us all.

Future generations.

We appreciate that the public sector reform programme will take some time, and that it involves a large piece of evaluation, followed by consideration and then implementation. As part of our work, we want to see whether there are things that we can constructively recommend that dovetail into that. Whether that will require primary legislation or not is still to be determined. I do not think that the Scottish Parliament has done a consolidation act at all, but it does happen in the United Kingdom Parliament, and it might be interesting to consider that.