Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thanks for that. With regard to the staffing issues that you have mentioned, and perhaps the additional problems for significantly rural health boards, I note that, a long time ago, I was in the military, and if you trained to do something specific that was quite expensive, they would keep you in the military and tell you where you would serve. In the NHS, whether in relation to GPs or other services, could there be some kind of local or national control whereby, once someone graduates from medical school, they would be obliged, at least for a period thereafter, to go to where there are shortages of GPs or whatever? Could there be a role for that or would such an approach simply not fit in today’s health service?

Thank you for that. I also thank all your staff for their work over recent years.

My questions might be a bit naive and all over the place because I am a new member of the committee.

I am interested in the point about inflation and how energy prices falling back is

“leading to slightly lower expectations for inflation and interest rates in the near term.”

From what I observe, core inflation has increased to 6.8 per cent and most commentators think that we are going to get at least one interest rate increase and probably two more interest rate increases, which will affect the housing market and mortgage rates. When do you expect to see a reduction in inflation? Last year, we were told that that would be in the middle of this year, but that has not happened.

Yes.

You will be aware that there are Covid inquiries in Scotland and the UK. They will look at various things including the shortcomings of politicians, mainly, and others. However, having heard you speak, I think that it is worth saying that it was an absolutely fantastic achievement to get through Covid and keep the services running. I hope that, in due course, people will recognise the scale of that achievement.

Going back to the subject of Michael Marra’s questions, I note that you said that you intend to reduce the numbers of supplementary staff by half this year. We are only about three months into the financial year, but do you have any idea how things are going so far?

We have heard a couple of interesting examples about, for example, how Brexit impacted on one organisation, which had to move from a platinum standard down to a gold standard. We have also heard about trying to effect public sector reform during a time of constrained budgets, post-crash from 2010 onwards. That has affected public sector reform, but I am struck by the prevalence of public sector reform being frustrated by or foundering on IT projects—not necessarily digitisation.

For example, about a decade ago, Disclosure Scotland had a terrible experience with an IT project. Police Scotland is sitting with at least eight different legacy systems. There was also the case in the UK of a national health service system in which investment of about £4 billion achieved nothing. Do the organisations around the table perceive themselves to be too small to wrestle with some of the big IT providers in order to get a grip on budgets and timescales for big IT projects that are fundamental to public sector reform? For example, for the police, even implementing what Parliament has set in new laws is difficult with the legacy systems that they have.

Garry McEwan made a point about getting a smaller group of experts with experience across the piece in such projects—good and bad. Would that be a way to overcome what I perceive to be an imbalance, in that quite small organisations are trying to deal with very large, sometimes multinational, IT companies?

I would like to go back to IT, convener—I do not know whether that is okay.

The reason for raising IT in the first place was really to do with project management and the fact that such projects can swamp smaller organisations, but the issues that have been drawn out are quite interesting.

The data issue, which a lot of people have mentioned, seems to put an obligation on organisations to ensure interoperability at the very start. I think that there has been a change in culture in that respect, with the general data protection regulation and data protection in general being widely perceived as having had a too-chilling effect on data transfer and sharing. That might suggest that a big change is needed.

One issue is data, another is project management and the last issue is the more mundane matter of shared services. Going back to David Page’s point about how we work our way through this, I have to be perfectly frank and say that, having had ministerial responsibility for four of the organisations around the table, I do not think that this will happen unless it is mandated. Somebody is going to have to say, “You’re going to have to put together a group that can look at this.” The cybersecurity issue, which might seem contrary to the issue of data management, is now hugely important, but that sort of approach is not being applied consistently.

My final comment is really just an observation. The fact is that, if we do not join up the dots in a way that suits us for the data that we need, AI will do it—indeed, it can do it right now. If we are not part of it, AI will just supersede any Chinese walls that we might have between collections of data, if that makes sense. We are as well to get ahead of the game, but to be honest I do not see that happening, given the way in which public bodies currently operate. They will, quite rightly, look after their own interests. It goes back to David Page’s point: unless there is a perceived benefit for both bodies involved, it will not happen unless it is mandated.

I am a new member of the committee, so I am not included in what Liz Smith said about the concerns of the committee. I disassociate myself from those remarks.

I am a bit surprised that we have gone down the route of gender recognition reform, but let us stick with that for a second. That policy is in not just the Scottish Government’s manifesto but everybody’s manifesto. Two consultations were undertaken, and the proposals have been subject to more parliamentary scrutiny than any other measure that I can remember in my time in this Parliament. Despite that, at the end of that process we are in a situation in which another Government has said that it will nullify the bill. That is the biggest development that we have seen in public administration or in decision making in the Parliament, certainly since my time here and I think since its inception.

If another Government just steps in, without saying what it thinks is wrong with the bill and says that it will strike it down—incredibly, some members in this Parliament support the UK Government doing that to this Parliament—what is the effect on the civil service and ministers when considering further policy initiatives? That threat has been raised again in relation to a couple of other measures, such as the deposit return scheme. What is the effect on policy making in the Scottish Government of that interference with the Scottish Parliament?

This question might be for the permanent secretary. It may be, from what the committee has heard so far in the inquiry, that these issues, which in my view have by far the biggest impact on decision making in the Scottish Parliament, have been covered already.

Aside from a capricious Government deciding, for political reasons, to try to gratuitously supersede a decision of this Parliament, there are now various instances of legislative consent motions, or the Sewel convention, being ignored, which was not the case not too long ago.

In the early stages of policy development in the civil service in particular, does that have a chilling effect? Do you have to take into account, in addition to all the other factors, the likelihood that some minister in the Westminster Government is going to do something that completely ignores the interests of this Parliament, or is going to increase the likelihood of legal conflict between the two Administrations? Is that part of your thinking, or do you—as the DFM just said—try to zone that out of your thinking at the start?