Chamber and committees

I would like to go back to Michael Marra’s question about in-year budget savings and the path to balance. The permanent secretary mentioned the 2024-25 budget-setting process as being painful, which is certainly my recollection of it from the position that we were in at that point. What we ended up with was a prudent budget but, inevitably, it still carries pressure. That is inevitable every year, particularly given that public sector pay negotiations are not in sequence with the budget, so there is always a level of uncertainty. The Government will have to go through a similar process this year with the path to balance. The amount varies each year, but there is a path-to-balance process every year.

Part of my frustration with the path-to-balance processes that I was involved in was the length of time that it often took to make decisions that everybody seemed to agree were inevitable—either decisions that something would have to be cut or decisions that something was of such high priority, because of the impact that a cut would have on the public or because it was a political priority or whatever, that it definitely was not going to be cut. However, the length of time that it took created poor value for money.

In 2023-24, the delays to the flexible workforce development fund would be one example of that, but there were lots of others. Is the way we do in-year balancing not quite a poor-value process? There is a whole series of decisions that get dragged out beyond the first, second and even third quarters. Financial decisions are being made in the fourth quarter and money is being released that, inevitably, will not have the same value as if it had been released in the first or second quarter or if it had not been released at all and had just been carried over.

I am all good, convener. There is no point in repeating what Michael Marra asked; I had the same line of questioning.

Taking on board what Jackie McAllister has just said about the significant range of external factors that affect us as well, you both agreed that there is some frustration with the delays in making these decisions. What are the internal factors within the organisation that are causing these delays? Ultimately, these are decisions for ministers to make. To what extent are the delays the result of decisions that could be made sitting with ministers perhaps for some time because, for quite understandable reasons, they hope that, if they wait long enough the situation will improve and they will not have to make an unpleasant decision, and to what extent are they delays that are happening elsewhere in the organisation and not at ministerial level?

Finally, I am interested in how you manage portfolio reallocation as part of that in-year process. If we look across the past three years, which is probably the best period to look over, we see that there are certain portfolios where it is easier to make savings in-year than it is in others. It is easier to make in-year savings in education and health than it is in justice. So much of the justice portfolio is very fixed from the start of the year. However, when we have year-on-year compounding uncertainties, particularly over the past three years because of things such as double-digit inflation, that means that we end up with disproportionate in-year savings in certain portfolios happening year after year. The compounding effect of that is quite significant. How does the Government control for that? My worry at the moment is that that is not being sufficiently controlled for and that portfolios such as education in particular have lost out over the past couple of years. When we get to halfway through the year and so much spending is locked up, understandably the only place we can go is areas where there is flexibility, but those are the same areas as in the previous year and the year before.

Before Jackie McAllister answers, could I press on that a bit? Is the disproportionate impact on certain portfolios being discussed in the Cabinet? I assume that that gets discussed in the Cabinet because cabinet secretaries, particularly those who are losing out, will want to represent their own portfolios. At your level in the civil service, is that specific point about the compounding effect of certain portfolios having to bear the brunt of it being raised discussed and assessed ?

Good morning. James Wylie, I want to pursue with you the issue that Michelle Thomson raised about how to measure success, and what success looks like.

Do you take into account the outcomes in the national performance framework when you are measuring success locally in this regard, or are there not really relevant indicators for your local context, particularly in relation to success around language in an Orcadian context?

Yes, I will bring James and Joanna in in a second, but I have a final question for Donald on that.

One of the challenges for us—across a range of legislation—relates to the balance between what we put in primary legislation to give definitive clarity versus what we want to put in secondary legislation and statutory guidance to allow for flexibility of approach and, in particular, localised approaches. Is there anything that could be included in the bill to provide more clarity or, ultimately, is it the case, as you have just indicated, that that should be left to the more flexible approach that secondary legislation gives us?

One of the challenges that we have had historically, and have at the moment, is the lack of a national framework for measuring success in relation to Gaelic. We have the Government’s Gaelic language plan, and the plans and strategies that the bòrd has produced. However, beyond plans, we do not have clear national agreement on a framework for measuring success. The Government’s Gaelic language plan references the national performance framework not because there are clear indicators in it but to show the interaction between Gaelic and a range of other indicators, such as housing, communities and so on. What has been the barrier? Why are we not sitting here with a clear, nationally agreed framework for how we measure success in relation to Gaelic language?

You make an important point about ownership, and a clear sense of ownership and accountability being a way to improve outcomes.

My next question is about whether the bill makes it clear how we measure that. It is going to give the Government much more accountability, and it will, we hope, put more scrutiny on the Government. However, from our perspective, and from a wider societal perspective, the question is, what are we scrutinising the Government for? How do we collectively as a society judge whether we have been successful, and how does the Government itself do that?

I am looking for your perspective on whether the bill itself makes that clear. Do you look at the bill and think, “It will be clear to me, five or 10 years from now, how we measure success based on what is in here”? Alternatively, could there be something else, either in the bill or external to it, to make it much clearer how we are going to measure success?

Does anyone else have a perspective on what a framework for success looks like?