Chamber and committees

I will pick up on the points that were raised by John Mason and Liz Smith around parliamentary process. I take on board what Mairi Spowage said about not wanting to get too far into the wider discussion about parliamentary reform.

David Bell, your submission made quite an interesting and important point on capacity. The number of MSPs is the same as it was in 1999. The Parliament has far more responsibility and, as you hinted at in your submission, a higher proportion of members are ministers. Fewer members are, therefore, available for scrutiny. At the same time as we are talking about improving the budget process, other discussions are under way around the fact that we do next to no post-legislative scrutiny. That is a significant problem. We clearly need more time to debate some of the portfolio-specific issues around the budget. Liz Smith highlighted that the way that we do that at the moment does not work. There are ways to improve, tweak and reform the processes. If you want to address whether we have the right number of MSPs, feel free to do so, but, without getting into that directly, is there a fundamental capacity issue here? Does the Parliament have the capacity to do the kind of effective budget scrutiny that we are all discussing?

Mairi, I am interested in your thoughts on this. Last year, the Fraser of Allander Institute was commissioned by Alcohol Focus Scotland, I think, to work up proposals for a public health levy. Was that indicative of the wider engagement of advocacy groups, NGOs and so on with some of the knottier issues around tax and where resource comes from? Have you noticed more engagement?

I absolutely agree with that. There is a wider challenge on the legislative side as well, particularly during the second half of the parliamentary session, when lots of bills are coming through. We have had a challenge with capacity, as the Parliament’s legislation team has been supporting a number of amendments that members want to lodge. A wider conversation needs to be had, and a quarter of a century into devolution is probably the right time to have it.

David, I will pick up on another point in your paper on which, unusually, I am more optimistic than you are about the effects of recent changes to the process and the culture around it. The committee’s challenge to organisations that submit written or oral evidence to us is that, if they want more spending, they need to identify where it will come from. You suggest—not unfairly—that that has a dampening effect and potentially mutes non-governmental organisations and other organisations that would struggle to be able to do that.

On the other side of that, it is in part because of the pressure from this committee that we have seen a higher quality of work on tax policy from those organisations that have the capacity. The Scottish Trades Union Congress started off publishing papers that were optimistic in their assumptions about revenue yield, but they have improved over the years.

If we put the important challenge to those organisations—that, if they are quite legitimately saying that we need to increase the Scottish child payment, for example, we also expect them to say where the money should come from—is it inevitable that they should do that work, or is there a role for organisations such as the OBR, the SFC, SPICe and so on? Earlier, we talked about the OBR’s public information work. Is there a role for organisations in and around the Parliament to support those who would want to take part in that conversation but do not necessarily have the expertise, the knowledge or the capacity?

I point out that, although the Scottish Government operates an open government licence, almost none of its non-departmental public bodies or executive agencies do so. There is an immediate copyright blockage, even if you just want to scrape public data off their websites.

I agree with that, absolutely. One of the best—if not the best—quality budget debates that we have had in this Parliament was in either 2017 or 2018, in the year in which the Scottish Government asked all the parties to put forward tax proposals. It then gave those to the SFC to come back with projections on them. That is the only year in which Opposition parties were invited to do that, and it improved the quality of the debate significantly. It is a shame that that did not then become a regular part of the budget process.

I have one final question about data and its availability. It is an issue that this committee keeps coming back to, it is in your report and every other committee touches on it. We produce and collect a vast amount of data, yet we consistently come up against the problem that it is not the right kind of data, that it is not what we actually wanted or that the data may well exist but it is not accessible to those who need it.

David Bell, in your paper you point to the national performance framework review as being a space in which that can be addressed. Is the NPF the right space for the Government to try to marshal the data that is available in the public sector in, or does something separate need to exist? Does there need to be clear overall ministerial responsibility for public data? I will not suggest a commissioner or anything like that; we already have a Scottish Information Commissioner, and this committee has strong views on having more commissioners. Is there a space or a point person or something that is needed to address that issue?

I am not convinced that just allowing the NPF review to take its course will necessarily address the issue. We will be back in the same place of collecting a vast amount of data, most of which we do not use and is not particularly usable, and we will either not collect or not be able to access the data that we really need.

I understand that the agency will be a couple of steps removed, but it is important to ensure that all key stakeholders are able to contribute.

Given that it was originally linked to the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill and that the bill has changed quite significantly, do you expect there to be any need for legislative change in relation to the set-up of the social work agency and how it interacts with care-experienced young people? Is there any prospect of anything related to the social work agency coming into the scope of the Promise bill?

I might circle back to the legislation issue.

I note that the Government is taking forward its intention to set up a national social care agency. Can you clarify your involvement in that as the minister with responsibility for the Promise? I know that it is primarily being taken forward in another portfolio, but what involvement and engagement do you have in that process?

Do you know whether the key stakeholders in this area—primarily care-experienced young people—have been involved in the discussions that the Government has led so far on setting up the social care agency? I know that the proposal is relatively advanced—the expectation is that the agency will be set up in spring next year—but I presume that discussions will be under way on the policy development work ahead of that. Have care-experienced young people and other stakeholders in the Promise space been involved in that?

Good morning, minister. I want to stick briefly with the bill in the first instance. Can you confirm whether anything in relation to the bill has gone to the Cabinet sub-committee on legislation yet? Or is the sub-committee still awaiting a paper on it before it goes to the Cabinet?