Finance and Public Administration Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Official Report 729KB pdf

---

Effective Scottish Government Decision Making

Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is an evidence session on our inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making. Before I welcome our witnesses, I thank the civil servants who met us last Tuesday and shared with us their experiences of decision making in the Government. We will publish a summary of the discussions on our website in due course.

I welcome to the meeting Mark Taylor, audit director, Audit Scotland; Ben Thurman, senior policy and development officer, Carnegie UK; and James Black, fellow, Fraser of Allander Institute. Good morning, gentlemen. I will move straight to questions. I want this morning’s meeting to be free flowing. We have already taken huge amounts of evidence from former ministers and civil servants and from our adviser, Professor Cairney, so I will ask some opening questions and I want you to feel able to contribute as much or as little as you wish in response to them.

In the meeting with civil servants, there was an emphasis on key areas, such as the need for strong ministerial leadership; clarity of purpose; the capacity and capability of departments to deliver; civil servants not being micromanaged and having space to work; and clear lines of accountability. All those areas might seem pretty obvious, but do you feel that those aims are delivered in practice—in part or, perhaps, fully? Who would like to kick off?

I am happy to get us going, convener. Good morning, everybody.

From engaging with the Scottish Government over a long period, I certainly recognise that list of areas and the thinking behind it, and I would not contest any of those things being important to the mix. I will pick out two or three areas from the list and offer some comments.

In our paper, you will see the points that we make about accountability, which is a strong feature of how Government works. It is in the legislation and all the guidance, and it is also very apparent when we engage with Government. Accountability—and the importance that the Government attaches to it—brings strengths around manageability and clarity about who is het to appear in front of you and other committees. However, it also brings challenges for ways of working, and that is illustrated by some of the challenges that we have in our work. Often, when we go to speak about a thing that does not land neatly in somebody’s area of accountability, we need to speak to several different people in order to piece together the pattern. That provides challenges for us, as I am sure that it also does for colleagues, but it also illustrates the challenge that the Government has in trying, with such a strong sense of accountability, to deal with some of the cross-cutting issues, such as equalities and climate change. Our experience was dealing with how money was directed during the pandemic. Again, we engaged with lots of different parts of the Government to uncover that, because nobody had an overall sense of how that matters. Of course, the important thing in there is that, for a Government that aspires to deliver outcomes, there also need to be mechanisms for that accountability to be shared, so that there is joint accountability for delivering on cross-cutting issues. Perhaps we will delve into that a wee bit more.

I am happy to comment on all the areas, but I will pick up on one other area now. As we mention in our submission, there is a real sense of the importance of clarity of purpose—not only at the high level but in relation to the kind of impact that policies are intended to have. How will we know what is going to change, beyond money being spent on a thing in order to change the inputs? How will we measure that change? An important theme of our submission—and of the audits that we have worked on over the years—is that Government does less well in having clarity about what is to be achieved and how we will know when we have achieved it. That is important not just in order to assess the individual policy but in order to learn from it and to think, “Well, actually, these things work and those things do not work, so we need to continue to do more of these things, and we need to dial those things back a wee bit.” Those are two areas that I have picked out, just to get us going.

My comments would be quite similar to those that Mark Taylor has made. In our submission, we focus on the ambition to shift towards an outcomes-based approach. That picks up on the question of what we are being accountable for.

I will also pick up on some of the things that Mark mentioned regarding horizontal integration across policy areas and working in a collaborative, joined-up way across Government, as well as about the shift towards a longer-term, prevention-based approach to decision making. In our submission, we pick up the point that we are very good at being accountable to particular targets and outcomes but perhaps less so on the process of getting there.

What are our ways of working, and how do we hold ourselves accountable to the principles that underpin the way we make decisions? As we also mentioned in our submission, other Governments have been able to do that. In Wales, under the five ways of working, the Government is held accountable for the way it makes decisions as well as for the outcomes that flow from them. That feels like an important thing in the conversation about accountability.

Good morning. As part of the research into the joint budget review and climate change, I spoke to a number of civil servants in different areas across the Scottish Government. Much of that research was not particularly climate focused at the start; it tried to establish what processes occur, where rules and responsibility lie and so on, so as to understand the policy-making process across those different parts of Government.

One of the key words that I would bring up is “challenge”, which speaks to a number of the items that were listed earlier—both internal challenge and external challenge, and both informal challenge and more formal challenge. That speaks to much of the above, as leadership sets the tone of challenge. There needs to be clarity around what sorts of challenge should be expected—formally within policy-making processes, but with an informal tone, too. There needs to be capacity in order for civil servants to ensure that anything that they do will stand up to the scrutiny of challenge. There needs to be accountability for who is actually undertaking the challenge. For me, “challenge” is the key word. It speaks to many of the factors that we are discussing.

Thanks very much for that. I certainly feel that the committee has a role to challenge, certainly in our scrutiny function, so that is very much something that I would agree with.

I do not know how in-depth your individual experiences are but, in your experience of the civil service, do civil servants feel that they can challenge ministers? Clearly, individual relationships make a huge difference, and there will be different personalities and leadership styles. We are not trying to say that people should be in a certain box. Do you think that there is an ability to talk truth to power? Do you think that it is limited? Do you think that there should be more of that? What is the relationship of civil servants with that?

From my experience, relationships are generally pretty positive. Usually, the difficulty or the challenge comes from what challenge is made to the civil servants in appraising different project options. It is also a matter of ensuring a culture where things can be said and got wrong, and where it is accepted as part of the process that not everything will be correct.

From the perspective of internal challenge, to what degree are processes actually being followed, and to what degree are they being followed well? In my view, that is part of the gap where challenge is not always being undertaken to the intended level.

Mark Taylor, you talked about what goes well and what does not go so well. Do you think that it is because of politics that the emphasis is on what goes wrong, rather than on trying to bolster what is, perhaps, going well and working fairly smoothly in the Government? I am talking not necessarily about the party-political aspect but about what happens in departments and the Government as a coherent unit.

Government works over different timeframes. Of course, there is always firefighting to be done and, at the same time, Government looks to the future, to make innovation and longer-term change and transformation. Capacity was on your list of key areas, and part of the issue is prioritisation. Rather than being a choice between those different considerations, it is about how the right balance is reached between each aspect. Often, the balance is against the here and now, which speaks to the root of your question about whether, because of internal politics, departments need to be seen to be doing well and making a difference—in some cases, immediately and quickly. Often, the balance tips towards that area. When there is more investment in innovation and transformation, in particular, our experience has had two aspects. One aspect has been that the investment has not been thought through or articulated as well as it might have been, not just in relation to the impact on people, equalities and different groups, but in relation to what we are trying to achieve and what the impact will be, beyond the headline of the change that is being looked for.

Also, as I said before, it is about how we will know what we want to happen at the front end, how we will measure the impact at the back end and what data we will collect around that. The Auditor General has spoken about the implementation gap. Our experience is that the lack of clarity of thinking at the front end, the lack of data collection, the lack of understanding of how things will be measured and the lack of priority being given to that all contribute towards the gap. The Government is dealing with a complex set of issues. My overall reflection is that, often, the here and now trumps the longer-term innovation and change.

One of the things that the civil servants said often frustrated them about their departmental remit was the lack of capacity—in terms of expertise and numbers of people—to deliver some of the things that the Government wants and, indeed, the public and other bodies demand.

You also touched on prevention, and Ben Thurman talked about horizontal working. This committee and the Scottish Government have wrestled with that for well over a decade. As Mark Taylor said, because people are looking for instant results, it is very difficult for Government to persuade organisations to disinvest in one area in order to invest in another that might have more effective results in the long term. How do we square that circle in a situation where resources are not increasing?

That is a really good question and, as you said, we have been grappling with that at least since the Christie commission. Part of the answer is around scrutiny and how we scrutinise decisions. We did a lot of work off the back of the Sturrock inquiry into bullying and harassment in NHS Highland, which looked at values in the healthcare system and documented a link between the quite narrow performance targets that are published on a weekly basis with quite a high level of public and media scrutiny around them and the impact that that can have on decision making in a service delivery context, the pressure that it can create within a service and the values and behaviours that it can encourage in certain situations. There is a question about the way we scrutinise performance in different contexts, and also a question about values, which was one of the questions in the committee’s call for evidence.

On the flip side of that, it was quite positive to read in Audit Scotland’s report about how values have been effectively embedded into Social Security Scotland and across everything that it does. There might therefore be a question about how we can more consistently integrate values across the piece and how we could use that approach in the way we scrutinise decisions so that we do not create perverse incentives that can skew us towards instant results instead of longer-term goals.

09:45  

Another argument between siloed and horizontal working is accountability, which Mark Taylor talked about. Who ultimately is accountable when people are working across departments?

It is collective accountability, which is a much more complex thing to achieve across a big Government. The point that we tried to make in our submission is that we are getting diminishing returns from an approach that tries to treat complex social issues such as health, poverty and education in silos. A lot of the key indicators that we are trying to shift are flatlining, and the way to improve people’s lives is through finding points of connection across different policy areas.

There is definitely a question about how we achieve accountability in that context. We would argue that it is about shared accountability for outcomes and also for principles or the way in which we deliver those outcomes. How can different parts of Government be held to account on the things that they are doing to collaborate with other departments, to integrate policy areas and to embed long-termism and prevention into the decisions that they are making. It is about accountability for our shared outcomes and the processes through which we get there.

James Black, the Scottish Government interacts with a lot of organisations outside the Scottish Parliament. From speaking to a former minister, I understand that there is a sense of great weariness among some of those organisations that they are consulted almost to death but do not necessarily see the Government taking forward what they want within the timeframe they are asking for. That weariness perhaps comes from feeling a lack of real participation. Is that something that you have found? How can it be improved?

I can understand that feeling. Part of that weariness arises not from being approached, which is always very welcome, but because there is sometimes a lack of feedback about how anything has actually changed or, if something did not change, why it did not. Because of that, it can sometimes feel as though we are being consulted to tick a box rather than as a serious form of consultation. Of course, when an organisation has limited capacity, it can start to question the public value of some of these consultations. Perhaps the weariness is unwarranted because the interventions are useful, but perhaps some feedback from the Government about when and how those interventions actually help would help to address that weariness.

Do you think that, when the Scottish Government communicates with organisations that are looking for funding, it does so in as straightforward manner as it should? For example, one of my constituency organisations had a significant funding bid turned down and, when it asked why, it was told that the fund was heavily oversubscribed. That might have been true, but does that mean that the application was excellent but others were better? Was it just a poor application, or would it not have been an effective use of resources? It seems that organisations are not really told that. They might be told it on some occasions, but certainly on that occasion the organisation was not really told why it did not get the funding other than the fact that that was the size of the pot, this was the number of bids, and it was just not among the lucky ones that were selected. Do you think that such feedback could be improved?

I cannot speak directly to that situation, but I would say that sometimes there is no clarity over feedback. We have seen that not just in the Scottish Government but in the UK Government’s levelling up funding, for instance. There is not always clarity as to what would help an applicant to achieve that funding. There is also a bit of an industry around how you prepare applications for funding, so the question is how we can ensure that such funding is allocated fairly rather than purely on the basis of who is most up to speed on making applications.

When I was in Glasgow City Council, if people wanted to apply for a grant, they were much more likely to get it if they put the word “workshop” somewhere in their application. Communication is key.

If you could implement one improvement to Government decision making, what would it be?

Unsurprisingly, I go back to the work on climate change. Part of the interest in that was to do with the fact that it affected the whole of Government but it was a challenge, given the siloed nature of Government. Therefore, how we introduce change across Government was the question.

We kept coming up against the question of whether a given issue was a challenge. It appeared at times that no one was responsible for some aspects, such as querying value for money in terms of socioeconomic impacts or climate impacts. If no one queried that situation, under time pressure, the matter was often not addressed in the first place. That led us to realise that the different parts of Government are at different stages of their journey in policy development. Some areas are a lot further ahead than others. Sometimes that is due to the nature of what they do, whereas, at other times, it feels as though other areas simply do not realise that they are far behind in the progress of their policy development.

One issue that I saw was that there seems to be no centralised view of which areas’ processes are performing better than others. I am thinking not about policies that they are producing, but simply about process efficiency. When such different areas in Government are working to their own standards, there is continuous divergence across time. The question is how that can be brought together not so that everything has to be done the same way, but so that a certain standard is expected.

Do you not think that the national performance framework has a role to play in that?

The question is about how that drives through into individual policies so that standards for assessing socioeconomic impacts make sure that the policies are acceptable, that the money that is spent has clear objectives tied to it and that those objectives are not simply to spend money. The national performance framework sets out a useful way of viewing outcomes that are intended to be achieved, but it does not address how policy is made in the first place.

Thanks for teeing up the national performance framework, because that was my response.

One of the more consistent themes through all the written submissions was the need for a kind of overarching decision-making tool for coherent decision making across Government. Carnegie UK thinks that the national performance framework is that tool and that the outcomes-based approach is a way to manage Government resources effectively and efficiently.

Our observation, which we have talked about in other settings, is that we have done the outcomes bit fairly well but not really thought about what sits underneath that. That is the guidance. How do we support decision makers to shift towards an outcomes-based approach and the skills and capabilities that are needed to do that? As we said, other Governments have done that, so there is international learning on what it would take to make that shift.

If we were to make one recommendation for change to embed effective decision making, it would be to introduce guidance telling people how to make the shift towards an outcomes-based approach to decision making.

You asked for one improvement, convener. I am tempted to go with prioritisation, which is important.

A broader question, which stitches together the themes that we have talked about so far, is how does the Government—and how do we, as the scrutineers—measure and identify success, and how do the accountability arrangements, including the scrutiny that we all do and the accountability arrangements within Government, support that? It almost speaks to incentives in the system—what people respond to in the system—and how we can shift those so that the responses help to deliver the changes and improvement that Christie set out and that we would all want to see in how Government works. Right at the heart of that is radically rethinking how we measure success and making sure that we hold to account those who are spending money and making those decisions for their performance in the wider sense.

There is a lot behind that, and the national performance framework plays a part. From our perspective, it is about dropping down a level from that and saying, “Put your money where your mouth is.” It is about where money is going, what you are looking to achieve with that money and how those things have contributed to the overall outcomes and measures. It is about shifting the way in which we all look at that and what we value in the system. That speaks to the short to longer-term tension and balance.

Thank you. I will open up the session. The first colleague to ask questions will be Daniel Johnson, to be followed by Michelle Thomson.

I think that my line of questioning will touch on some of the issues that the convener has already mentioned. Broadly, based on the conversation that we have been having to date, I have questions around how people in Government understand the categories of decisions, how consistently those are approached and whether there are consistent methodologies.

On that first point, it struck me that, when we are asking people in Government—be they former ministers or officials—about how they understand decisions, they almost automatically and exclusively talk about policy. If pushed, they might start talking about financial decision making, and, if really pushed, they will start talking about delivery. I think that the focus is very much in that order, and what they are not volunteering at all, which is quite striking given recent events, is anything around commercial decision making.

Does that chime with your understanding of the focus, and do you think that there needs to be a recalibration of the different types? Are they the right categories, or are there others that we should be asking about? I ask Mark Taylor to respond first, because the question feels quite Audit Scotland-y.

I will start by agreeing with your analysis that, alongside the big, high-level ministerial policy decisions—it is clear that, within Government, ministers decide policy, which is a mantra and a practical way of operating in Government—there are lots of decisions around delivery and the implementation of policy, which often condition how the policy happens in practice, which makes a big difference.

Government has different ways of dealing with that. Where it recognises something as a programme or project of significance, formal governance arrangements will be set up and challenge processes built in. For things that are seen as much more operational, an individual person will take decisions. That all matters to how policy lands and how financial decisions land with regard to the allocation of resources.

A lot of the impact of those policy decisions comes from the way in which that functions, and there is a real variety in how it functions. I think that we said in our submission—it has certainly been our experience—that, when we look at the rules and guidance, we see all the right stuff; where things fall down is the way in which the rules and guidance have been applied in practice throughout the process.

On your second point, which we will, no doubt, come back to, there has to be flexibility in the system. I would not deny that you cannot have the same level of investment in decision making for every level but, equally, a clearer expectation, incentive and signal in Government that it really matters that you do those things well more consistently across Government would help a wee bit.

I will briefly pick up on one of the earlier questions around challenge and scrutiny, which features here as well. I have no aspirations to be a minister—I will never be one—but, if I were a minister or a director general, I would want to know that there had been a challenge process as part of decision making at the lower level. When I got advice, I would want people to tell me that that had happened, whether there were any gaps and how issues had been resolved. As well as that needing to happen, it needs to be packaged in a way that supports decision making at the top table.

10:00  

I will come back to that issue, but I am interested in hearing from James Black. Does the Government have sufficient clarity on its categories of decision making?

That should be a joined-up process, too. There should be an understanding that policy should, of course, lead to delivery, and there needs to be the ability to see that through.

I do not know the degree to which there is clarity in relation to having clear separation. From what I have seen, the processes sometimes feel quite policy led. We should understand that it is about not just doing these things but doing them well. Some aspects of the processes involving policy making, financial decisions and delivery might turn into tick-box exercises if they are not treated seriously. At that point, they might not be achieving what was intended. Of course, if they become tick-box exercises, things will become rather bureaucratic, which would not be the original intention.

If people focus overly on policy, they might not consider at the forefront of their minds that policies might not go as intended and that they might have to monitor and evaluate them. We see fairly consistently that, when Scottish Government policy gets to the evaluation stage, the data that would enable proper evaluation of the policy does not exist. That comes down to preparing in advance. At the business case stage, there is a need to set out how the policy will be monitored and evaluated. Without that foresight, you will be left in a difficult situation in relation to understanding what works.

The point about business cases is exactly what I want to come to next. In its report highlighting the issues relating to Ferguson Marine, Audit Scotland said:

“It is not clear what discussions took place between Scottish ministers and Transport Scotland about the contract award. There is no documented evidence to confirm why ... ministers were willing to accept the risks of awarding the contract”.

In its submission, the Fraser of Allander Institute says:

“our first priority was therefore to understand how policy is currently made in the Scottish Government.

We expected to find a structured framework of processes which we could build from. We found no such framework. This concerning finding led to us unravelling the various processes and practices currently occurring across different parts of the Government.”

It goes on to say that, often,

“Business cases were performed to the minimum standard”.

We have heard, time and again, that, although these things happen, they happen in very different ways in different portfolio areas. I have no desire to talk about the details of Ferguson Marine—we will leave it to other committees to do that—but it strikes me that, although there might be rules, as Mark Taylor said, there are no consistent methodologies or standards for how appraisals, whether they relate to business cases or commercial decisions, are made from portfolio to portfolio, or even from decision to decision. Is that a fair conclusion to draw? If we were to do one thing, would it be to take a more robust approach to business case development and scrutiny? Would that be pivotal? James Black is nodding his head most vigorously, so I will go to him first.

I broadly agree with that conclusion. Inconsistency in specific ways is okay; it is absolutely fine to use different methodologies to achieve the same outcomes. I would expect individual processes to differ across different parts of Government simply because they deal with projects that have very different characteristics. However, you would expect there to be an overall framework in which challenge happens throughout the process. You would expect an assessment of the inputs to and the outcomes of projects. You would expect the Government to set out objectives and what is to be achieved with the money, as well as some sort of assessment of the socioeconomic and climate impacts.

Of course, that has to be proportionate. There is a world where it can become disproportionate—I have heard of cases in other Governments where civil servants have had to create business cases simply to get access to software, which would obviously be going too far the other way. However, there are projects on which relatively significant amounts of money are being spent but that do not have clear objectives—the Government is simply spending money and does not understand the socioeconomic or climate impacts, even in cases where those are very relevant to the project. That does not seem like an efficient way to make policy.

I will come back to Ben Thurman, because I would like to put the question to him in a particular way. First, I ask Mark Taylor whether he has anything to add to that or any insights from his work at Audit Scotland.

I start with the recognition that there is, of course, a framework—we describe it in our submission, starting from paragraph 31. However, I would not contest what James Black has said, in that there is flexibility in the framework and the application of it is variable—so much so that it is sometimes hard to see how the framework is generally applied.

It is worth saying that the framework is sometimes applied well, so we are not saying that the Government never does this stuff. Actually, we have seen some areas where it is being done really well, and we give examples of that in our submission. There were good ways of working in relation to the Forth replacement crossing and social security devolution—those areas were recognised and identified as specific projects, and they had the infrastructure put around them. I recognise that other projects are smaller and more operational, and perhaps somebody thinking about the issue for half an hour and then making a recommendation around that is the right way to go.

It is in the middle ground where the question arises of how much of this happens routinely. I point to two aspects that are important in that regard. One is the process. We have talked about the scrutiny and challenge process on a number of occasions—that is about who within the organisation is saying, “Show me your business case.” The thing that goes alongside that is a culture in the organisation that values these things and sees them as important. I would not challenge for a second the view that every single civil servant understands that the process is important when money is being spent and when policies are being implemented that impact on people’s lives. However, it is about the priority that is given to that in the moment and the importance that is given to investing time in working through the options, working out what the impact will be and working out how that is going to be measured. When it falls down, that is where it falls down.

Ben, I wonder whether the point ties to what you said about the national performance framework, in that it exists and is the right thing but, actually, there is a need to think about how to systematically weave it in, and a good business case methodology would be one way of doing that. Is that a fair reflection?

From listening to the conversation, it feels as if there is a bit of a distinction between projects and project management and more complex social policy areas. The approach to policy design, delivery and evaluation would be the third bit that I would add to your different steps—that is maybe a little different, depending on the level of granularity in the policy that we are talking about.

The national performance framework and the national outcomes are useful at that more macro social policy level, where we can think about, for example, all the policy interventions that try to improve children’s wellbeing so that we all grow up loved and happy and able to fulfil our potential and whatnot. Essentially, that will enable us to understand whether all the separate policy interventions are making a difference and providing the outcomes that we want to achieve. That is where the national performance framework and national outcomes, and the ability to build the evidence around that, have a lot of value.

I have one final question. Consistency in approach is one thing that needs to be examined. You have all discussed challenge, but I wonder whether it is being conceived of and captured in the right way. In our discussions with officials, it struck me that, when we asked them about it, they pointed towards the use of external people on programme boards. That sounded to me very much like challenge at a policy level rather than necessarily challenge at the level of granular assumptions.

That is certainly the case in comparison with my experience of the commercial world, where you build in challenge at that more granular level in order to ensure that the assumptions are correct, because, ultimately, that is what ensures that you have a robust business case. Is that a fair reflection? Is that backed up by your experience of looking at those situations in detail?

I absolutely recognise the value of that. There are two things to say. There is a cohort of non-executive directors in the Scottish Government who play an important and valuable role and help to provide that challenge process. We see evidence of that at a number of levels, including in the overall director general areas in relation to how risk management and that sort of thing is going.

That challenge happens and we see it. Through those individuals’ involvement and cross-organisational involvement in particular high-profile high-investment projects or programmes, an infrastructure will be built that allows challenge. When there is criticism from Audit Scotland about those sorts of things, it is often about the way in which that infrastructure has been constructed, set up and operated, rather than the intent to have that infrastructure. That is built in there, and it gets down to quite specific programme and project-level challenge.

To give you reassurance at one level, that challenge is often focused on delivery; there is perhaps less challenge around the front end of asking, “Why are we doing this thing and what we are trying to do?” Once we get past the infrastructure set-up, there is a sense that policy decisions are tablets of stone that come from ministers and that, “They have decided, so we need to be doing this stuff.” There is less of that infrastructure around that side of the business.

I will pick up on the front-end point. Speaking from the perspective of Carnegie UK and civil society more broadly, there is a question about where in the process we are invited to engage and provide that critical challenging. We have experienced being invited on to working groups and advisory groups to later find that the thing that we were advocating for was not on the table or within the scope of the conversation. The decision had been made much further upstream and we had not had sight of that process.

There is a question around how to be clear about why people are being invited to be involved in the decision-making process, and there is a question around having full sight of the process from policy design to delivery and being able to have challenge at different parts of the process. It is often the case that we are able to be involved in particular parts of the process but do not have the oversight of what is happening throughout the policy process.

What are James Black’s reflections? To put a different spin on it, is there a need to go beyond challenge and make sure that the approach translates down to a more granular level? That might not be challenge, but perhaps just testing as we go on. We could be challenging at the macro level, but should we continue to test at a more detailed level?

One of the important questions around challenge is what we are challenging, because some aspects of challenge are done well and comprehensively. For example, from what I saw, accountable officer templates are an area of documentation that is done really well and taken seriously across the whole of Scottish Government. That came at the start of the process, or at least it was undertaken at the time that was intended.

There is a what there. What is being challenged? The financial side appeared to be challenged fairly well, but I got the feeling that challenge is very patchy across Government in relation to value for money for society and wider impacts.

Some parts of Government—Transport Scotland, for instance—seemed to have a much more robust way of informally and perhaps even formally challenging some of the more technical or specific details, whereas other areas did not seem to have that culture of challenge within them in relation to looking at the socioeconomic impacts or other impacts.

10:15  

There is the what and there is also the when. When does challenge take place? If challenge takes place too late and the project already has a set direction, there is an incentive to not want to overly challenge it. It is very difficult to realign a project if it is challenged very late on. It comes down a bit to who is doing the challenge and whether they have sufficient clout to make sure that it is understood to be important.

Thank you very much. I had better leave it there.

Good morning, and thanks for attending the meeting.

Following on from the area of challenge that James Black highlighted, I am interested in reflections on culture. The Audit Scotland submission referenced issues around the early learning and childcare policy. It set out that there was not a proper options analysis of the potential impact against cost, no evidence of improved outcomes, and so on. That is the what, but I want to explore why and to what extent those particular issues were related to that programme or divisional culture and, in general terms, how culture affects decision making. I will start off with Mark Taylor.

I will confess to not having hands-on experience of that particular audit around early learning and childcare, but I am certainly aware of the broader issues. Without commenting on that particular policy—because, as I say, I am not sighted on it—there can be a clearly understood desire to have a particular policy implemented, and the focus can be on implementation rather than thinking through questions around what comes with that policy in the round and what contribution the implementation of that policy aims to make in the round.

In that case, it was about investment in the number of hours of pre-school care. That was a significant project and a significant investment—incidentally, we will soon be reporting an update on the process around that. In that particular case, the focus was on the number of hours, and we found that there was less working through of what that increase in hours would actually mean and what the Government was trying to achieve through that. We highlighted in our paper that there is sometimes a tension in that. Is it about getting parents back to work, more flexibility and their contribution to the economy, and/or is it about quality of care, early learning and early years intervention, and support for children? Where is the focus? What is the Government trying to achieve?

There was absolute clarity about hours and timescales, and there were lots of questions about implementation, what that meant for the market and so on, but there was less focus on where the policy would impact. I will use the shorthand of referring to the outcomes in the national performance framework more generally. How does that contribute to those outcomes specifically? We all get the motherhood and apple pie aspects of the policy but, specifically, it is about asking, “What are we doing with this decision and this policy, what are we trying to do, and how will we know when we have done it?” and looking beyond the headline hours, investment and spend.

That is a great illustration of the challenge for Government around such decisions and of where we often feel that the analysis and the thinking fall down. James Black used the phrase “value for money”. From our perspective, it is really hard for a Government to demonstrate value for money at the end of a process if it has not worked out exactly what it is trying to achieve and how that will be measured alongside the spend, so that it can demonstrate the balance between the spend that has been put in place and the impact and outcomes.

It is really important that, at the front end, culturally—that is the root of your question—there is the sense of the Government understanding the value for money proposition in the round and being able to follow through on that to make sure that it is delivered. That has to move up the priority set in relation to the cultural ways of working in the organisation.

James Black and Ben Thurman, what are your reflections on how the culture within a programme or policy development affects outcomes?

As part of the research into joint budget reviews on matters relating to climate change, it became pretty clear, some way into the projects, that a process was going to have to be introduced. Of course, when you are thinking about introducing any processes, you have to make sure that the processes are actually going to be undertaken, that they will not become bureaucratic overheads, and that they will actually achieve what they are intended to achieve. We spoke to quite a lot of civil servants about their policy-making processes, and it became clear pretty quickly that they had a lack of capacity not only to take on new processes but to achieve the processes that they were already meant to be to be undertaking.

Part of that comes down to a culture around speed of policy making. A lot of civil servants fed back that they felt that the prioritisation was to deliver policy quickly and that there is less prioritisation of the extent to which processes should be fully thought through, or that, perhaps, the culture of speed led to that second choice being made. I think that speed of policy making is a big part of the culture that has been set out. There are questions around the extent to which things such as impact assessments are done and are taken seriously and the extent to which monitoring and evaluation is being taken seriously. It is obvious that civil servants feel that those elements are not the priority right now.

Another aspect of the culture issue concerns the extent to which culture is set by governance and leadership. Currently, the Scottish Government has a structure in which it does not have a Treasury. That model is quite different from those that other Governments have. There are some cultural benefits to that, such as the fact that there is a lot more collaboration in terms of openness in the Scottish Government than there is in some other Governments. However, there is also a drawback in terms of the oversight of some of the processes. How those advantages and disadvantages can be married together in a way that addresses the disadvantages will have an implication for the whole of the Government’s culture.

It is hard to speak to the specific example that you gave but, more broadly, it is quite hard to comment on why there are those kinds of differences in culture and the ways that decisions are made across different Government departments. However, we can say that that is something that we have definitely observed in our work.

In the evidence that we gave to the committee during its inquiry into the national performance framework, we said that we found that the ways that people use national outcomes to direct policy and the ways that people gather evidence to understand whether they are making a difference are inconsistent across different departments—often, they applied after the fact, rather than being used to make decisions in the first place. Similarly, the extent to which the values in the national performance framework are embedded in the culture of departments and directorates is inconsistent. From our perspective, until there is clarity about what is being used as a decision-making tool to ensure that there is a strategic and collaborative approach across Government, you will see those kinds of inconsistencies in the way that people work towards outcomes and the cultures that develop in different departments.

You have quite naturally led me on to the next area that I wanted to explore. I noted that your submission says:

“Despite the rhetoric on wellbeing, there is work to be done to put the National Outcomes at the centre of decision making.”

In your experience, how are risk and uncertainty managed? I wonder whether the cross-cutting nature of the national performance framework makes the outcomes less certain. Where there is greater risk, that can often be an inhibitor. It is easier to make decisions about a tiny wee bit of something than it is to do so across the piece. How do risk and uncertainty impede effective decision making?

My question is for everyone, but Ben Thurman can go first.

That is a really important issue. We picked out a couple of things in our response, such as the risk of path dependency—continuing down the same path and ending up with diminishing returns—which we have talked about a little. There is also the risk of incurring future costs. How do we get the balance right between policies that try to mitigate immediate harms and those that are more prevention focused?

For us, it is not entirely clear how those things are being considered in a lot of decision-making processes. We were quite explicit in our written submission that we do not see a transparent approach to appraising risk in the way that decisions are made. Our broader concern is that immediate costs appear to take precedence over longer-term impacts, and that precludes a longer-term, prevention-based approach. That is linked to the short-term decision-making cycle, which has been talked about in the committee. However, it is really difficult for us as an external organisation to understand how that has been brought into decision making without having transparency.

Does Mark Taylor want to come in on that?

I always enjoy talking about risk.

I knew that you would.

I will start with the recognition that nothing that the Government does is risk free. Even if there is a risk-free option, there is an opportunity cost for things that are not done. Decision making is about balancing those risks and, when a decision has been taken and has been implemented, there are risks to manage. Sometimes they can be mitigated, but sometimes we have to live with them in what is being implemented. If the Government aspires to more innovation and transformation, it needs to take risks.

I recognise the way that Ben Thurman has characterised things, and I will develop what he said a wee bit.

I have worked with Government for a long time—longer than I care to remember—and I have seen a significant improvement in risk management as a discipline and a way of working throughout that period. Increasingly, discussions, scrutiny and decision making are framed in terms of risk. However, the focus is often at the implementation end rather than at the front end. People say, “We’ve decided to do this thing. What are the risks that will get in the way of doing it?” rather than “What is the balance of risk that we are taking on?”

The best example of that is the Government’s intervention when companies get into difficulty—I will use the shorthand of industrial strategy. The previous Auditor General for Scotland and the current Auditor General for Scotland have reported and made recommendations on the framework for the risk that Government takes on and what Government is trying to do when it intervenes in companies, and how it frames those decisions. That is an example of how Government does not do front-end risk balancing very well or, if it does it, it does not do it very transparently in a way that is understandable and well articulated. That is what Ben Thurman was talking about. The Government does not ask, “What are our longer-term trade-offs here? What risks are we running by not doing things or by doing things this way?” Trying to assess and use the language of risk at the front end is done less well.

Before I bring in James Black, I have a quick question for you. How much evidence do you see of proper risk management in terms of disaggregation and risk probability outcomes and so on, from an academic perspective? Do you see that being done routinely? I have come across examples when speaking to ministers where there does not appear to be any awareness of how to disaggregate risk. I do not know whether that is something that you have seen.

I cannot speak to what ministers are involved in and are not involved in, other than that I have seen examples of where ministers are reassured that appropriate risk management processes are in place—full stop. On your point about disaggregation, I can give you the assurance that it is routine within Government to have risk registers that assess probability and impact and to manage them actively. That is built in as part of the system. Where we criticise risk management, we do not criticise it in a general way by pointing out that there is none; we criticise the application of it and how well it is working in practice in a particular setting. I will give you the reassurance that that approach to risk is inherent in how the Scottish Government does business.

The question is, how granular do you get? We see the top level—the project level—of that and we understand that that is fed by discussions at a managerial level. What is less clear is whether the middle management really care about that stuff or whether it is more of a process, but I can give you that reassurance that that is the Government’s way of working.

10:30  

I am aware of time, convener, but perhaps James Black can just finish off with any comments on risk and uncertainty in general.

There are lots of different types of risks and uncertainties in what the Government does. There are risks and uncertainty in terms of delivery, where first of all, there is a need for a strong business case that sets out the potential for those risks to occur and what would happen in those situations. There are also risks and uncertainties that are considered in an economic appraisal. We look at risks and uncertainties around whether or not something is going to deliver the expected impacts. That also relies on having an overarching business case framework. Finally, there are methodological risks. In my submission, I pointed out the risk around peatland emissions, where it could potentially have a much larger impact than simply on just one policy.

My sense is that there was not always that joined-up thinking, for example, in respect of peatland emissions, in asking how it might impact on Government targets in aggregate. We might see the climate change plan as a vehicle for doing that, when we have a costed plan in the next round. However, for other social or economic impacts for which the Government may have targets, it is not clear to me that there is an accurate understanding of what those risks and uncertainties may impact. That is always being assessed.

Thank you.

I want to ask about data. It was put to us by two former ministers and one civil servant last week that, when it comes to good-quality decision making in the Government, it is essential that good-quality data is available—if the Government chooses to ignore it, that is another matter. Having such data available is critical to good-quality decision making. Are there gaps in the data that it is necessary to put before Government ministers? Is there anything that we can do to improve that?

The absence of data is one of the big themes of our reporting over the medium term and in the recent past. It functions on two levels. One relates to the front end and one to the back end and what evidence there is of delivery. I make a connection between the two levels. In a learning Government, once we have delivered the policies and gathered and established data about implementation, we should consider what we take from that and how we feed it back in at the front end around the next decisions that come along, either in the same area or more generally.

There are data gaps and the absence of data is an issue that comes up regularly. As a wee side bar, perhaps more can be made of the data that is available. I hesitate to use the word “excuse”, but sometimes that is one explanation why there are gaps, whereas a broader look at the data might be more helpful.

On the question about what we do about it, I am strongly of the view that, as decisions are taken, they need to be informed by available data but also that at the outset, we should build a sensible plan around how we are going to capture data around a policy so that we know that the things that we say that the policy is going to do are in place. We have to put systems and processes in place to do that. That will have benefit in a particular area but will also contribute to that wider sum of knowledge to inform future ministerial decisions.

I will come to other two gentlemen, but first, when you say that there is a case for making better use of the existing data, what is it that acts as a barrier to doing that?

That is a good and complex question. We have touched on time pressures and the need to be seen to be doing something. Some of that squeezes out that front-end data analysis. There are possibly some cultural issues. Again, we need to take the time to find out what the data is and what it is telling us in a particular area at the front end. Generally, when Government sets off to do something, a team is tasked to do it and the first thing that the team will ask is, “What data is out there? Let’s go and find out.” Is there an opportunity to have a bit more of a data store—that is, a comprehensive go-to place that pulls together that sort of information? That was the aspiration behind the national performance framework. However, as the committee has recognised, it is still the case that there is no data set associated with a number of high-level measures in the NPF.

I have to say that I think that Scotland is blessed with an awful lot of people who are putting the facts in place for the Government. Perhaps we need a few more organisations like the Fraser of Allander Institute but, nonetheless, I think the ones that we have are pretty objective.

James Black, when you make a submission on, for example, a very objective analysis of the economy, does that submission reach the right circles? I am thinking about the civil servants and Government ministers who will be making some pretty big decisions about the economy. Is the analysis reaching the right quarters?

It is sometimes difficult to tell, to be frank. We always hope that the analysis that we do is read and is useful. At times, our analysis has led to discussions with the Government and we have seen some change. However, our analysis is not always readily known.

I completely agree with your point about good-quality data influencing decision making. One of the things that we must bear in mind is the extent to which data exists and our biases towards the data that exists. There is often a natural bias towards trusting something on which we have data versus something on which we do not have data. The issue is the extent to which that becomes a risk in policy development. If we consistently do not have data on something, to what extent are we overlooking it?

Take biodiversity as an example. That has led to a number of changes in HM Treasury guidance and the use of things such as benefit to cost ratios. Essentially, we must be careful about not placing too much weight on what we have data on and placing too little on what we do not have data on.

Another issue is the extent to which it is recorded when we do not have information. That missing information might be a regular occurrence. For example, some of my colleagues did an evaluation of the small business bonus scheme. One of the challenges that they found is that the data that needed to exist for that evaluation, which would have been some sort of business database, did not exist readily, .

Your first example about biodiversity is a classic example, because the data that you need will not exist until years from now. That might be slightly different from the business case for deciding on business rates or whatever, because that detail potentially exists, although you might not have it. In the case of biodiversity, the data that you need on which to base policy might not come for another five or 10 years. An example of that is moorlands—we were having that debate last year or the year before. To what extent is that a serious problem for the Government in devising policy? Effectively, there is nothing that it can do to get that data.

That is very challenging. Timing is key for data. Earlier, I spoke about the timing processes. When you are able to introduce data will potentially influence some of your policy options or the decisions that you make.

Some data can be made early, whereas some data might take several years to make. The Government could think about understanding where those data gaps exist. Other data, just by the nature of some policies, must be collected while those policies are operational. There is a mixture in terms of evaluation as to what is available and what will not be available.

I note everything that has been said about the challenges, particularly in relation to the national indicators and in setting policy agendas when there are gaps and some quite significant lags in the data. It is very hard to use it to shape decisions that you are making in 2023 if the last data that you have is from before Covid for example. There are examples of that being the case.

The other point that I want to make—because we are talking broadly about statistical data and population-level data sets—is that there are certain groups in the population that are unseen in data sets, so there is an equalities point here. We know that it is often the same groups that will be unseen in data on housing, education, health, poverty and so on, and they are the same groups that risk being ignored in the way we appraise data and, accordingly, in the way we make decisions.

In our submission, we refer to the need to shift towards a different approach to understanding data—one that includes co-produced evidence and non-statistical evidence—so that we can bring those experiences into our policy-making conversations and ensure that we are moving in a policy direction that ensures that everyone has what they need in life to live.

I want to pick up on a point that Daniel Johnson made earlier about business cases. In your submission, you say:

“Business cases were performed to the minimum standard or missing entirely.”

That links to what Liz Smith said about evaluation. If there is no business case at the start, how can we do an evaluation or a post-implementation review? Why would business cases be missing?

It comes back to the culture and speed. In a time-pressured situation, some things might be done to a minimum standard or processes might be done retrospectively and so on. We see that quite a lot with impact assessments, which are often done right at the end of the process—in fact, almost as late as they can be done. Clearly, they are not having the intended impact if it would be too late at that point to go back and change anything. Therefore, the why is a big question, but part of it comes down to the speed of policy making.

I can understand that when it comes to things such as homes for Ukrainians or dealing with a pandemic but not with everything else. I am from a background where you had to have a business case, so why is it not the same in Government?

That is a good question. I do not know exactly what is happening in Government. I had discussions with civil servants, but it is difficult to ascertain, from what they said, what is happening across the whole of Government among all civil servants at all times.

Business cases are incredibly important for setting out your objectives, timescales, delivery and what you are aiming to achieve in terms of the expected impacts. Of course, that feeds into the likelihood of achieving wider Government targets. Therefore, they are very important. They are also critical to ensuring that your policy is evidence informed. If you are not doing a full business case, you might not be monitoring and evaluating your policy, and, if you are not monitoring and evaluating your policy, there is no link to new policy development to improve the next set of policies.

I will add some reflections on that. On the question of why the development of business cases is not happening, the first thing to recognise is that, often, it is happening and happening well. When it does not happen, it is a question of volume. The number of decisions that Government is making inevitably drives that question of whether a full evaluation can be done. That comes back to the capacity point that the convener asked about at the outset of the discussion.

Prioritisation is an issue for the Scottish Government. How is it ensuring that it focuses on fewer areas—the right areas—in order to do things better, rather than spreading itself too thinly in some cases? The capacity question at the heart of that is about the ability of Government to prioritise. Business case variability, if I can use that shorthand, is probably a symptom of the ask that we all place on Government to do lots of things, which therefore means that things sometimes fall down.

At the heart of that is the fact that, where we have seen good business case development, what happens is that resources are identified, targeted and focused on doing that from the outset in a particular area. There is something about how Government decides to invest in business case development in area A and not so much in area B. That sort of thing happens not only globally but at departmental and DG level, too, and there are also some questions to explore with regard to how such decisions are made and whether they are related to what Government sees as its overall priorities.

10:45  

Your submission contains some good examples in that respect—you have mentioned the Forth crossing, and another example is Social Security Scotland—but what has been on my mind recently is the proposal for the national care service, in which we are being asked to approve the allocation of quite a lot of money without there seeming to be a business case. Have you in Audit Scotland seen a business case for the national care service, or is that something that has been lacking?

As far as the audit view is concerned, the short version is that we are not there yet, but it is absolutely in our sights. What I can offer you comes back to a previous conversation that we have had with the committee on some aspects of the financial side of the proposal not being as well thought through as they could be. I absolutely recognise, as we do in our submission, that the issue is close to the committee’s heart.

I just want to echo what has been said. It is hard to comment on why business cases have not appeared in particular examples, but I would just come back to the point about prioritisation and incentives. If we are talking about issues with capacity and the volume of things that Government has to deal with, the fact is that if a particular proposal does not come with some understanding of the outcomes that have been used to set objectives, with an evaluation process that has been built in from the very beginning through a business case or some other framework or with any incentivisation or prioritisation of the way in which people are held to account, that will be the thing to drop off. The question is: what do we value in the way in which we are making decisions?

You talk in your submission about evaluation being carried out post hoc—I think that that was the term that was used.

Obviously this is a process that needs to start at the very beginning when you set a policy direction. What does success look like and how will we know it if we get there? If that sort of thing is happening only at the very end of the process, the risk is that you miss quite a lot of important learning.

My final question, which is for Mark Taylor, is on record keeping and transparency. Your submission highlights examples where those things are being done well, but there is also, I guess, the example of new vessels 801 and 802, where it is not clear what discussions were had or who gave the approvals. Why does that happen?

Where that sort of thing works well, the records are generated by the process. You have a project board, a project process and business cases at multiple stages—and it is also worth saying that business cases are not one-off events. They build up through time, with different levels of detail.

In such well-controlled—if I can use that phrase—projects or programmes, record keeping is built in. Indeed, there is often a quality system that is driven by record keeping and which provides real clarity. Not only does such an approach have real benefits to us as scrutiny bodies, to you as a committee and to public transparency, there is also real value to Government and to project management in having clear knowledge of where things are at and what is going on and knowing what record to consult when, say, people change and so on.

The flip side of that is record keeping almost as a by-product of the process. The classic example—and I should say that this does not necessarily relate to the ferries—is of there being some email somewhere or something else that people have to cast around to find and which has been banked in some means of communication that we all now use. It might well be in a WhatsApp group or in an email; it is something that we all do, but how does that record then get sucked out, banked, packaged and given the same accessibility that you get in project management approaches? How that sort of thing is captured is, for us, one of the fundamental questions that have come out, not just from the experience or audit that you have referred to but more generally. Of course, capturing these things is not just for the benefit of audit, although it does make our life easier if we can go to a place and find something there; it also benefits Government itself if it knows where things are and how things have been decided.

So we as a committee should be asking for a review of and a more formalised approach to record keeping in terms of who made decisions and how such things are stored. Do you agree?

I would hesitate to suggest anything directly to the committee, but clearly it is important that, as far as the big things are concerned, there is a record of what has been decided and why and that that record forms the basis of communicating with the wider public about such decisions. That speaks to the convener’s earlier point about why applications are not successful. Explaining decisions as well as setting out what the decisions are is an important part of Government.

It would make it better for the committee and for the Government to justify the decisions that it has made.

On the theme of transparency, we also heard a witness say that too much transparency is harmful to decision making because writing everything down prevents civil servants from being frank with ministers. What is your response to that?

I would distinguish between the discourse and the outcome. It is important to write down the decision and why it has been made, and it is important to capture some aspects of that, such as options considered, why some were discounted and that sort of thing. However, that is not to say that every discussion, consideration or investigation of particular areas needs to be banked. It is fundamentally important that, when things are decided, it is clear what has been decided, who decided it and why.

That is exactly what I was going to say. It is not a question of everything being written down in a burdensome and bureaucratic exercise. There is an important democratic point about being able to communicate to citizens and relevant stakeholders how decisions have been made, who was involved in them and what the reasoning behind them was.

There is also something about the quality of decision making in that point about transparency. Our work on budgeting for children’s wellbeing, which is cited in our submission, contains a clear point about opening up the process of setting budgets. Part of the children’s sector is crying out for more involvement so that it can bring all its knowledge and evidence into the process to shape policies that would improve children’s wellbeing. If we are not transparent about how our decisions are made, how budgets are set and how they are evaluated, we are neglecting the wealth of knowledge that exists in Scotland that could support the Government to do its job.

I will come back to you on that, but I will let Mr Black come in first.

I make the caveat that I have not worked in Government, although I have dealt with a lot of civil servants. We have to bear in mind the fact that sometimes there is a trade-off between transparency and the ability to have a frank discussion. For example, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 can cause a bit of fear among civil servants around making sure that everything has been recorded, which can change the way in which things are discussed. Sometimes that might be for the better, and sometimes it might affect frank discussion.

How that balance is struck is difficult but, as Mark Taylor said, we could focus more on the outcomes. In my submission, I referred to what the New Zealand Government is doing in proactively releasing its Cabinet papers. They do not include the full discussion and what happened; they just include what was decided and why. I do not take any particular stance on whether that is good or bad, but it is an interesting approach to transparency.

Mr Thurman, you mentioned children and young people. I was going to ask about that anyway. In evidence from the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and other people on communication, we heard that decisions that are being made should be better communicated to the general public, through, I presume, the language that is used. I am interested to hear your thoughts on that, and on the idea that children and young people should be more involved in decision making. When we come to discuss the national care service or the budget, is such involvement realistic?

I agree with your broad comment about the importance of being able to communicate decisions clearly to the people affected, including relevant stakeholders. The way in which that is done can either build or undermine trust in decision making, and we know that trust is critically important for our democracy right now.

Does that need to involve a bit of the decision-making process, as well as the actual decision?

Yes, exactly. It is about how decisions are made, which connects to how you involve people in shaping a decision. A lot of public consultations are undertaken, and we definitely advocate for greater citizen participation in decision making—we are advocating for that right now with the review of national outcomes.

There are other policy areas in development in which there needs to be greater involvement with the people whom the policies will affect. There is something really important about how you invite people into the process, as well as how you communicate what they say in the process that has shaped or will shape decision making, to create a feedback loop of democratic accountability. For example, you might say, “We created this process whereby we invited your views; this is what we heard and this is how we’re going to act accordingly”.

I am sorry to interrupt you. Do you agree that, often, people give their views and then the Government, the committee or whoever says, “We have heard and considered your views, but we disagree with them”, yet people think that they have not been heard at all?

Absolutely, although I cannot think of any examples where I have heard that being communicated as clearly as you have set out. The openness and transparency that we would like to see is people being able to hear messages such as, “We have heard your views; this is why we are not able to act on that particular part of it, and this is how we are able to act on these other parts”. Does that make sense?

That makes sense to me. We could go on a long time. I do not know whether either of the other witnesses would like to come in on that point.

Yes, very briefly. On communicating decisions better to the general public, one of the things that I recognise is that, often, decisions are packaged either for the Parliament or for the media—they are positioned subjectively. I understand that and I am not criticising it, because it is a really important part of this. However, there must also be a more objective and straightforward communication, particularly to the people who are affected, that almost takes the politics and spin out of it. I recognise that that is easier said than done.

On people being involved in decision making, there are well-understood and well-known participative budgeting processes, and there is an expectation that local government undertakes those in certain areas. That has not been a feature of the Scottish Government’s budget, but there are approaches that, as John Mason asked about, allow people to be involved in budget decisions—there are examples where that happens.

I have a quick comment, too. “Evidence-based policy making” is a phrase that is often used, but there is a big question over what is meant by “evidence” in that regard. In my view, evidence does not just mean quantitative studies of impacts; it also means the more qualitative side, which comes from speaking to people, understanding who will be impacted and getting views. If we are to use that definition, ensuring that children are involved in decisions about policies that might affect them is a form of evidence-based policy making.

Yes. I would probably agree with that.

In your evidence, Mr Taylor, you were quite positive about decision making around the Queensferry crossing, but you were less positive about the decision making involved in the 600 hours or whatever of early learning and childcare. Is that just because one of them is a bridge and it is pretty clear that two sides should join up, so, if they do, it is a success and, if they do not, it is a failure; whereas, with early learning and childcare, it is a little bit more vague?

I recognise that there is a degree of that. I also recognise that, in our assessment of the decision making around the Forth replacement crossing, a big component of that project was the engagement with local communities and consideration of some of the wider knock-on effects and benefits of the construction of the bridge. Those were all part of the project. There was a big physical thing to be built—it was built and the costs were within budget and so on. However, in our report, there was also quite a lot of detail on wider aspects that apply to bridge building, such as the wider implications for outcomes. From memory, we said that part of the unfinished business was the classic thing of going back and showing, retrospectively, what the effect on the local economy has been. Whether the Government has quite got there yet, I do not know.

11:00  

There is more complexity in early learning and childcare. An almost bridge-building approach has been taken to that policy, which is about hours spent in a certain place. In our view, that is a very narrow articulation of what the decision has been about and what its impact will be.

You also said that there might be conflicting aims between what is best for the parents and what is best for the kids.

As I say, we have done a number of reports in that area, and we will look to report again soon, but with regard to our historical reports, that was one of the things that we identified that had not been fully worked through. That is the shorthand answer that I will give on that point.

Mr Thurman, kindness is a point that came up in your report. Can you build kindness into the civil service, or is it just an individual thing?

We did a lot of work on the role of kindness in public policy. We were really pleased to see that value statement at the heart of the national performance framework and the vision of a country in which everyone is treated with kindness, dignity and compassion.

From our perspective, to be successful, valuing kindness has to start with Government. There are certain things that you can do to create conditions that value kindness—we can talk about relationships or use other words—and in which it will flourish. We mentioned the Sturrock inquiry, which involved a set of conditions that did not encourage kindness but which did encourage certain behaviours that had quite a detrimental impact on staff who were working in that situation and the patients whom they were there to serve. There are areas—social security, for example—in which values have been embedded into the way in which people interact, which has an impact on the quality of the service that they deliver.

You cannot go around telling people to be a little bit nicer to one other. However, you can do certain things with the spaces that you use for collaboration and discussion, and with the way that you hold people to account and scrutinise them—whether you take a punitive approach or a learning approach—which will encourage or inhibit kindness.

Mr Black, can the Fraser of Allander Institute measure kindness?

We can certainly try. Part of the challenge is measurement. It is about how you make sure that the Government has a way to work towards objectives. Touching on your earlier question for Mark Taylor, there are certainly areas of Government in which that is easier to do than it is in others.

I teach economic appraisal to students, and the reason why I teach them about a transport project rather than about projects such as childcare is partly because it is easier to conceptualise. If you are trying to come up with a number for the climate impact of a transport project, you have to make some assumptions about the number of cars crossing the bridge, whereas the climate impact of a childcare project is a much less tangible concept.

It can vary a lot across Government, which can sometimes drive some of the differences. However, sometimes, the important thing is not coming up with a number; the important thing is working through the process. In working through that process, you start to see how you can do things in different ways.

Mr Taylor, I will give you the last word, on auditing kindness.

I will just reinforce the point that Ben Thurman made. In social security, the Government deliberately set out to instil a certain value set, and we have reported strongly that we have seen evidence that that worked. Therefore, there is a case study that shows that it is possible to set out to instil a particular set of values and ways of working in a new business area and to set that culture.

Thanks.

Thank you very much. We have gone over time. Daniel Johnson was going to ask a further question, but we will have to call it quits there, I am afraid.

I thank our witnesses for their contributions today. We will continue to take evidence on effective Scottish Government decision making at future meetings. We will take a five-minute comfort break before moving on to the next item on our agenda.

11:04 Meeting suspended.  

11:10 On resuming—