Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning and welcome to the 12th meeting in 2021 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

The first item on our agenda is to take evidence from the Deputy First Minister on public service reform and the Christie commission. Members have received a background paper from the clerks. Mr Swinney is joined today by Scottish Government officials Laura Turney and David Milne. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite the Deputy First Minister to make a short opening statement.

Absolutely. Demand is clearly increasing much faster than our ability to provide services. Apart from anything else, people have to be trained. We cannot just magic professional caring staff out of nowhere.

Does that not make it even more important that we have the right conditions to support change, meaningful collaboration and innovation? How do we incentivise that in the public sector? I know fine well how it was incentivised in the private sector, as I worked in it for many years, but how can we make it happen? You touched on early learning, but it is supported by additional funding from the Scottish Government in resource and in capital, which makes change much easier. However, in areas where we are in difficulty such as this, with the perfect storm and exhausted staff—and it does not help with recruitment when the media continually focus on how exhausted and worn out NHS staff are; I do not know how that encourages people to go into that service—how do we make the change that we need if we are not to be in the same situation next year and in subsequent years?

How frustrating is it that best practice is not shared as much as it could be? For example, the previous parliamentary session’s Local Government and Communities Committee found that the level of sickness in the best local authority was only one quarter that of the worst. They were both Scottish National Party-controlled councils, by the way, so we cannot make a political argument about that. Given the size and scale of Scotland, is it frustrating that strong methodologies that are in place are not being looked at, copied and implemented elsewhere so that we can take things forward in a much more positive way with the limited resources that we have?

Thank you very much for that opening statement. You have actually covered many of the areas on which I was going to ask questions, so I will just ask about a number of issues that follow on from them.

The Christie commission followed soon after the passing of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, which means that a decade has elapsed since both. You said in your opening statement that there are many examples of reform that have made a tangible difference to people’s lives, but can you touch on one or two of the most significant examples in that respect?

The only way is ethics. I call Daniel Johnson.

Thank you. That is helpful.

You will have read the Official Report of the meeting that we had three weeks ago at which we took evidence from three academics who expressed some frustration about areas where progress was not being made. One of those areas was preventative spend. The Scottish Government’s response to the report of the Christie commission says:

“we will reform our public services through: a decisive shift towards prevention; greater integration at a local level driven by better partnership; workforce development; and a sharper, more transparent focus on performance.”

However, those academics were of the view that that really has not happened. There are strong reasons for that. It is difficult, particularly in financially challenging circumstances, to encourage organisations to disinvest in one area in order to invest in another, but the academics were of the view that there does not even seem to be a definition of what prevention means in the Scottish public sector.

How can we take that crucial area forward and deliver the culture change that, 10 years ago, when you led on this issue, we all agreed was very important in changing attitudes and ensuring that prevention delivers for the people of Scotland?

On you go.

That would only lead to more questions.

I have one final question. In Scotland, we have 128 non-departmental public bodies and 32 local authorities, and we have health boards, health and social care partnerships, community planning partnerships, and city and regional deals. When it comes to public understanding, probably south of 1 per cent of the population understand how those things work together. You talked about optimum service delivery in one of your responses to Daniel Johnson. I realise that there are vested interests and that things are difficult to move, structurally, but is there a case for decluttering the landscape?

I appreciate that. I was a councillor at that time, when one local authority, Strathclyde, became 12 local authorities, which meant that we had 12 new social work directors, 12 deputy social work directors and so on, and lots of structures had to be put in place.

It is an area that we must keep under review, because there can be a disconnect between the people of Scotland and all the different structures if those structures become impossible to understand. It can be hazy even for elected representatives if there are too many overlapping structures.

I thank the Deputy First Minister and his officials for their evidence. The next item on our agenda, which will be discussed in private, is consideration of our work programme. I would also like to update members on some areas of interest and importance.

Community involvement is important. I was at a public meeting a week past Saturday in Lochranza; its population is 120 and 75 people were at the meeting. I open up questions to colleagues.