Chamber and committees

Before I ask my question, I should put on the record that I have previously contracted Professor Priestley to do various pieces of work in education policy, mostly literature reviews and the like. That was not directly on the bill, but I wanted to put that on the record.

I will direct my first question to Professor Donaldson in the first instance, but others should feel free to come in. The question is about process—a really exciting place to start—and sequencing. A huge amount of reform work is going on, and the bill is only one part of it. Arguably, most of the reform work that the Government is committed to sits outside the legislative space. Do we have the right sequence of events? Should we start with the bill and then move on to the non-legislative reform work, or would you rather have seen a different sequence of events for the reform programme?

Good morning. You have said already that a lot of the changes that are required do not need legislation. The challenge for the committee is that although we have a role in scrutinising the whole reform process, the bill is the one bit that we have a vote on and that we can potentially amend if we think that it is necessary. A lot of the criticism that has been made of the bill so far comes from a place of frustration at not knowing what the wider reforms will look like and not knowing, for example, what the detailed organisational structure of the proposed new qualifications body will be. However, it is not possible to legislate to that level of detail without massively restricting the organisation’s ability to adapt in the future.

Do you have any thoughts beyond those that you have already articulated about the accreditation function? Is there anything that should be included in legislation that is not in the bill?

Thank you very much—that was useful.

You will have heard one of the questions that I posed to Professor Muir earlier. In my view, some of the criticism that has been made of the bill is more about the frustration of those who are looking for changes that really could not ever be legislated for around leadership at qualifications Scotland, cultural change and so on. There is a question for us in Parliament about what we can do with the bill—what amendments to it are necessary—versus the wider scrutiny role that we play in relation to the non-legislative parts of the reform agenda.

What are your views on that? Specifically, are there areas of reform that would require legislation that you are surprised are not in the bill? Vice versa, are there areas of the bill that are not required for legislative change or, on Professor Donaldson’s point, would provide too much restriction in the future and result in a lack of the flexibility that you are talking about?

I am particularly keen to hear more of Professor Donaldson’s thoughts on the inspectorate, but I realise that other colleagues will be going into that in more detail.

Barry or Mark, do you have any thoughts on that point?

I want to pick up the point about the danger of a tick-box exercise. I think that Sarah Davidson mentioned it most recently, but everybody has mentioned it at some point. I wonder whether a tick-box exercise would at least be better than where we are now. At the start of the evidence session, Max French listed various Government strategies and policy documents that have been published recently without so much as even a tick-box reference to the NPF. As much as I accept that the ideal situation would be something more like what happens in Wales, where such an approach is deeply culturally embedded in Government, if we at least took some mechanistic approaches, it would move us a little further on.

The Scottish Government has handbooks and protocols when it comes to the drafting of bills. I find it hard to see how it would not be possible to say that, if, for example, a strategy document is significant enough that it needs ministerial sign-off, the protocol for that would include a requirement that the relevant NPF outcomes are referenced. Yes, that would be a mechanistic exercise, but, given where we are now and the fact that we are not even doing that, would a mechanistic approach not at least represent progress?

Thank you very much.

Alison Hosie, on the comment that you made about the lack of appetite, or the idea that the Government is rolling back a bit on the principles around the wellbeing economy, was that a reflection on the Government right now—as in the Administration over the past six months—or is that a wider reflection?

David Melhuish’s point about planning led me to think of a question. I am interested in folk’s thoughts about reform of the level at which Government power is set. Planning is a good example. Planning fees are not set by councils; they are set nationally, and many councils make a loss, which does not incentivise them to resource their planning departments properly. That has a knock-on effect of significant delays for developments. The issue has been consulted on recently, so we might well see progress on that.

There is perhaps a wider question, however. If we are talking about public sector reform and efficiency, do you have any examples around tax spend, a final levy or a charge such as planning fees and whether those powers are at the right level of government to get the most efficient return?