Chamber and committees

The word “transparency” is key here. One of the themes that has come up in my meetings with victims, of which I have had a few ahead of this session, and in my conversations with Victim Support Scotland—I suspect that the cabinet secretary will have had similar conversations—is about having accountability and transparency in the system. They are big asks. However, those are just words; how you go about putting them in legislation can be difficult. My amendment, and a number of other amendments to which I have spoken already and which I will probably speak to when we come to the next couple of groups of amendments, do exactly that through practical means and measures.

This is stage 2, so I am looking for the Government to look on these amendments positively and favourably. They are signs that we are serious about changing specific pieces of legislation to improve communication, transparency and accountability. That is what people are asking for. We can go about that in different ways, but this is one practical way of doing so.

I support other amendments in the group, although I appreciate that they might well need some work ahead of stage 3. I am willing to do the same with mine ahead of stage 3, because I believe that this is a fundamental change that we could and should make, and I look forward to hearing what the Government has to say about it.

I will be brief as I am mindful of time. At our previous meeting, the cabinet secretary talked about the reform of the VNS, the integration of systems and what seems to be an enhanced role for the victim contact team. Perhaps it could be the responsibility of the latter to notify all parties involved about the decisions that the Crown makes. Clearly, the resource issue must be addressed, but a responsibility needs to be set in black and white, too, for someone to notify people about what is going on with their case—ultimately, if a plea deal is made or a decision is made not to prosecute, someone must notify the victims of that. That could be an area of enhancement as part of the reform that is happening anyway.

Excellent. I am glad that you accept the recommendations.

Let us look at the key messages in the Audit Scotland report, which sit in the opening pages—pages 3 and 4—and set out what I would say is quite stark criticism of the Scottish Government. I will use the language of the Auditor General’s report, which uses phrases such as

“The Scottish Government ... has not yet set out a clear vision of how it will change public service ... models ... It does not ... have a good ... understanding of its cost base or made progress against audit recommendations”,

it

“has not provided the necessary leadership to public ... bodies to ... deliver ... reform”

and it

“has not been sufficiently transparent with the Scottish Parliament or the public about the current fiscal situation.”

Are those assertions correct?

That sounds a bit like you are criticising the methodology behind the block grant adjustments. Is that correct?

You mentioned that the Government was, thankfully, able to draw down some of the money from ScotWind, but that was a one-off event. That is not a sustainable way to draw on public finances; it is a bit like dipping into your credit card rather than managing your finances properly. That point has been raised by other members.

The Auditor General makes that really clear in the opening pages of his report. The second line on page 8 says:

“The Scottish Government cannot afford its current spending choices”.

The report makes it clear, in black and white, that the spending choices that the Government is making are unsustainable and unaffordable. The report goes on in great detail to demonstrate why that conclusion has been reached. Is the reality not that ministers are simply spending more money than they have, and that the current levels of public spending are unsustainable in the medium to long term?

The public would probably have a fair amount of sympathy with what you have just said. However, at the same time, if, due to tax differentials, they are paying higher rates of tax than they would in other parts of the UK, they would expect to have better public services as a by-product of that extra investment. If the percentage of public money that is being spent on, for example, health and social care is going up and becoming an ever-increasing share of the pie, the public would again expect to see improved services.

You may have observed previous evidence sessions on other Audit Scotland reports about public services. Just a few weeks ago, I highlighted in one of those meetings that not a single NHS board in Scotland is meeting its current in-patient or out-patient targets. People are paying more and they are seeing cuts in public services to fund other bits of the public service, yet they receive poorer outcomes within those public services. There is a fundamental issue about the public’s perception of how the Government is spending its money.

Is there any concern in the civil service about the amount of public money that goes towards projects that end up costing vastly more than they were originally forecast to cost and that the Parliament has agreed to? There have been numerous examples of that over the past couple of years, and it will have had an impact on how much money is in the pot for public services.

I will throw some examples out there. The most recent example was the announcement that the cost of replacing HMP Barlinnie was going from £100 million to nearly £1 billion. This committee and others have looked at other examples of strategic national investment projects that have gone wildly over budget, such as the cost of the two CalMac ferries going from £97 million to nearly £400 million and the money that was loaned to Prestwick airport, which was, in effect, written off. There are also other strategic national investments that are not paying off financially by producing an economic upside. Is that a point of concern? Could the Government do better at reducing overspend on projects and avoiding making poor investment choices?

Yes, it was, but a billion pounds is a lot of money at a time when people are seeing local alcohol and drug partnership funding being slashed, so they are right to question such huge capital projects that are going massively over budget. That is before we even start talking about the overspend on information technology projects, which has been wildly out of control over the past decade.

My last question is about transparency, which is a massive theme in the report’s section B. The Auditor General said:

“The Scottish Government has not been sufficiently transparent with the Scottish Parliament or the public about the current fiscal situation.”

In fact, the last time the Scottish Human Rights Commission surveyed the Scottish Government’s budgeting process, it gave it a transparency score of 60 out of 100, which is pretty poor, and 43 out of 100 for public participation. What is being done to improve transparency on Scotland’s financial situation?

You are right that it comes down to ministerial choices, which I appreciate are not for the civil service to determine. Ultimately, however, it comes back to the opening line of the report, which says:

“The Scottish Government cannot afford its current spending choices”.

That may be true now, and it may also be true in the future, which the Government needs to be mindful of.

I will touch on the issue of Government tax policy, which you mentioned. There may be an opportunity for Ms Stafford to come in. The analysis that was done on that paints the picture that, on the face of it, the Government’s taking a different direction on tax policy in Scotland has raised £3.3 billion in additional taxation since 2017. However, as Audit Scotland has also reported, the Scottish Fiscal Commission says that that has resulted in a net benefit to the Scottish Government’s revenue of only £629 million. We discussed that issue at a previous committee session.

That does not sound to me like that tax differentiation policy is working to its maximum effect. Surely we would expect that £3.3 billion to be £3.3 billion that is available for the Government to spend on public services. It is not really working, is it?

You have balanced the budget now by making in-year cuts. I will come on to some of those cuts in a second. You have frequently mentioned that you have balanced the books. That is wonderful—and you have a legal obligation to do so—but the means of achieving that are to the detriment of public services. As the report says, ministers are spending more than they have to spend. The money has to come from somewhere.