Chamber and committees

That is helpful.

I have quick questions for Elaine Morrison and Lesley Jackson, both of which are on the theme of how to get best value for public money.

Elaine, if I recall correctly, it was four years ago this month that Scottish Enterprise added conditionality on a real living wage to grants that it issued. I would be interested in your reflections on the impact of that. Has it just resulted in more money going to businesses that were already paying the real living wage, or has it resulted in some businesses that you are working with deciding to sign up and become real living wage employers? Has it tangibly boosted wages in the way that it was intended to do?

Lesley, I absolutely sympathise with the financial situation of the universities sector, which I recognise is not sustainable. Part of the challenge for me is that universities are not frank enough in understanding the political difficulties. Quite understandably, they come to the Government and the Parliament to ask for more funding, but they very often bristle at the suggestion that there should be any conditions attached to that funding. Are there any conversations taking place in the sector about being more open to the fact that, if you come to ask for more money from the Government—quite justifiably, given the state of the sector—it is pretty hard to do so when you have bloated, extremely highly paid senior management teams at one end and, at the other end, graduate teaching assistants who are being paid less than the real living wage and are on zero-hours contracts and so on? Realistically, if the sector is to expect more public funding, it perhaps needs to concede that there will be more conditions attached to that funding.

I have quick questions for Elaine Morrison and Lesley Jackson, both of which are on the theme of how to get best value for public money.

Elaine, if I recall correctly, it was four years ago this month that Scottish Enterprise added conditionality on a real living wage to grants that it issued. I would be interested in your reflections on the impact of that. Has it just resulted in more money going to businesses that were already paying the real living wage, or has it resulted in some businesses that you are working with deciding to sign up and become real living wage employers? Has it tangibly boosted wages in the way that it was intended to do?

Lesley, I absolutely sympathise with the financial situation of the universities sector, which I recognise is not sustainable. Part of the challenge for me is that universities are not frank enough in understanding the political difficulties. Quite understandably, they come to the Government and the Parliament to ask for more funding, but they very often bristle at the suggestion that there should be any conditions attached to that funding. Are there any conversations taking place in the sector about being more open to the fact that, if you come to ask for more money from the Government—quite justifiably, given the state of the sector—it is pretty hard to do so when you have bloated, extremely highly paid senior management teams at one end and, at the other end, graduate teaching assistants who are being paid less than the real living wage and are on zero-hours contracts and so on? Realistically, if the sector is to expect more public funding, it perhaps needs to concede that there will be more conditions attached to that funding.

Just to check, are the payments covered by the debt write-off rules? Forgive me, I cannot remember the underpinning legislation. Council tax debt in Scotland has a 20-year limit. Lots of other forms of debt and public sector repayments have a five or six-year cut-off point. Are social security payments covered by any of that? Is there a point at which they time out—after five or six years, for example—regardless of the circumstances under which they have been accrued, even if those circumstances involve fraud? Such a principle operates on the basis that, even in situations where there has been fraud, if it is not paid off within six years, it is very often because the individual is in circumstances where, realistically, they are never going to pay it off and trying to recover it will cost the state more than the figure to be recovered.

Thanks very much. I am uncomfortable even using the language of value for money when we are talking about giving people basic dignity in their lives. They are often very vulnerable people who are really struggling. However, to take a wider view here, we can all recognise that poverty costs a huge amount of money—to the individuals who are in poverty, to the state and to the wider economy. It has an impact on the health service and on criminal justice, and it leads to loss of productivity and so on.

Cabinet secretary, you mentioned Professor Linda Bauld’s report in your opening remarks. I am interested in whether you are using that report or other sources for your part of the spending review. How do you strike the balance in deciding what is an appropriate amount of money to invest in social security from a limited public sector pot, given that, if that money was invested elsewhere, there might be an immediate saving—for example, if you take billions and put them into colleges, as we were discussing earlier—but there could be more long-term, significant costs? How does all that factor into the exercise that you are undertaking with the spending review? Is Professor Bauld’s work the north star that is guiding you, or are you using other sources to make those value for money calculations?

I am not one to suggest reviews for the sake of reviews but, given that this is such a significant area of expenditure—with the expected growth in it that the convener mentioned—and given the wider UK political context, it would be valuable to discussions to have a robust evidence base that demonstrates that it is not a disincentive to work and that it is potentially supporting economic activity. I expect that that will not be realistic in the timeframe for spending review decisions before the end of the year, but it is something that I would encourage the Government to look at in the not-much-longer term.

I was about to say good morning, but it is no longer the morning. Good afternoon, cabinet secretary. I will go back to the question about the recovery of incorrect payments. You and I have had discussions about the Housing (Scotland) Bill and council tax arrears—a different area but with similar principles. We talked about the tipping point: that is, the point at which it is not viable or good value for money to try to recover money. That can be due to the immediate cost of recovery but also to situations where recovering money would push an individual or a family further into crisis, which is morally wrong but also brings further cost to the state due to its consequences. I would be interested to hear you briefly expand on how that is taken into consideration in the recovery of incorrect social security payments. What is the tipping point at which it is no longer value for money to try to recover those incorrect payments?

A moment ago, you mentioned the review work that found that the Scottish child payment is not acting as a disincentive for parents and carers to enter employment. I might not be aware of it, but is any equivalent work being done on the adult and child disability payments? They are not connected to employment. There is a cost to being disabled whether someone is in work or not, and that is an important principle for those payments, but I am interested to know whether any work is being done on that, particularly because of the committee’s interest in getting more economically inactive people who are able to work and want to work into work. Has any analysis been done of whether those two payments have had an impact on family employment prospects?

Good afternoon. John Mason’s last question was one that I was going to ask. Part of our responsibility here is making sure that we are guarding against groupthink. You mentioned the importance of the SFC being independent. That sometimes requires being pretty robust with the Government. You can take it either way when considering appointing someone who has extensive experience from within Government—you might consider that there is a danger of groupthink if you appoint them, or you might consider that they know where all the bodies are buried and they have all those years of experiencing frustration inside the system. If we assume that it is the latter, do you have any examples of processes that the Government undertakes, particularly in relation to the budget and its fiscal forecasting, about which, after leaving Government, you thought, “My God, why did we do it that way?”, or of processes that you are now excited to have the opportunity to put pressure on the Government to take a different approach on?

I am good, convener. My questions were about the Office of Tax Simplification and the principles of simple systems, which have been well covered.