Chamber and committees

I think that that is a given due to the nature of the third sector, but that should not prevent us from doing the right things, which are, as you identified, joining up the processes and the funding streams and providing certainty on funding.

It is a complex environment and, to be honest, the problem is possibly the opposite. We sometimes take too much of a belt-and-braces approach in seeking assurances rather than understanding that the work that the third sector does in providing local services is almost like providing essential infrastructure. We need to simplify the mechanisms whereby different parts of Government ask for different forms to be filled in or for different information and the process is not necessarily co-ordinated. It is important to reduce that burden on the third sector and streamline the processes whereby we provide funds so that that is done in a more integrated way.

You are absolutely correct. That is why the public service reform strategy has a workstream on grant funding that addresses those issues. It is why we have pulled together, for the first time within and across Government, a list of the grant funding that is delivered to the third sector. Such a list did not exist previously. Around 500 grant-funding relationships are on that database.

I will not put a number on it. Although poverty can be a driver—

It is not the only driver. Conversely, to say that everyone who is in poverty will be interacting with the justice system is not a fair representation. The First Minister’s top priority is to address child poverty, and considerable resources have been applied to that. The work that we are doing on preventative budget tagging in the budget process will help us to identify where money has been spent on prevention. As part of that, we will look to understand and quantify the links between interventions and how addressing poverty could have an impact elsewhere in the system, whether that is on the economy, housing, health or justice.

As you can imagine, that is a complicated piece of work; it is not just a question of putting £1 in somewhere and getting X out somewhere else. Understanding those relationships is difficult and complicated, but that should not prevent us from taking those measures and recognising that poverty interventions will positively impact other parts of the public sector.

I would not contradict that. Mr Gray has been forthcoming on that subject, because that is his job.

I have a couple of important points to make about your earlier question and to reinforce what Mr Gray said. It is clear that a lot of structural reform has taken place in this area and similar work has been done in other areas, such as colleges regionalisation. Mr Gray will also be familiar with work in other areas. For example, in the economy portfolio, the enterprise agencies have done significant work to reduce costs, share services and work together.

There are good examples and it is important to learn from what has been done as we take the work forward. I understand that some portfolios have moved forward faster than others, but it is important to say that more can be done. Members have given examples today of opportunities that still exist to make services more effective and efficient and of work that is still to be done. That is all part of public service reform.

I know that we are at the justice committee talking to the justice secretary about the justice budget. However, the final point that I will make goes back to the point that I made right at the start. If we cannot get ourselves into a place where we are able to join up budgets and get them to deliver more effectively, and where we stop looking at it through a siloed lens, we will not succeed in relation to the broader public service reform work.

We will come on to talk about that. You are right that it generates efficiencies, if you want to call it that, across other parts of the system.

Conceptually, I understand what you are saying. Clearly, the mechanics of that—who is funded to do what—is a separate bit of work that needs to be done within the budget constraints, but I understand your point. You need to recognise, though, that third sector organisations receive funding from a variety of sources and not just from Government. As you know, those will often be complementary arrangements, such as matched funding and other funding from the public sector that can give confidence to other providers to fund services.

However, you are right that, in general, that should be as simple as possible and organisations should not have to patch all those things together to continue operating.

Police will need to join up with other services so that the appropriate resource, from the appropriate service, is used to address the particular challenge.

All those areas need to be looked at to be able to address—

I do not recognise that figure. The spending review lays out the numbers that will be available. As we have indicated, those numbers will be subject to the reduction in funding from the UK Government.