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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?

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.

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?

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?

I echo the convener’s points about the usefulness and importance of the report. One of the interesting things about the timeframe is that 50 years gets us very close to the global inflection point at which deaths will start exceeding births—I think that the United Nations predicts that that will happen at some point in the 2080s. This is therefore a global issue and not just a European or a Scottish one.

You said that you have taken the assumption on productivity from the OBR. Is the gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK purely down to demographics?

Thank you for that helpful clarification.

I understand the points that you made in previous answers about productivity not being a silver bullet. However, on the basis of what you say in the report, is it fair to say that the key parameters are the level of spend; the level of taxation; immigration, and therefore net population growth; and productivity? It strikes me that we have quite good measures on the first three of those things, but do we have enough focus on and insight into the last one? In particular, do we need to focus much more carefully on productivity per capita and the distribution of that productivity both geographically and across the population?

The balance between private and public sector productivity is also key for exactly those reasons.

It strikes me that we are not alone, but that countries such as Japan and Finland have had a much sharper focus on the issues than we have had. Do we need to do more international comparisons, not only at the quantitative level but at the policy and qualitative levels, to better understand the challenge?

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.

Professor Cairney, your last statement neatly summed up the subject that I am circling around. Your paper is really interesting and excellent, but I wonder whether the bit that I am interested in is actually the next tier down.

I was struck by the fact that everyone in the group that I was in framed every decision as being either policy driven or financially driven. My experience of effective organisations is that the really important bit is what happens in between. To my mind, policy, in a business context, is about strategy and overall direction, while what are critical are the frameworks for delivery and implementation. I had hoped that there would be some examination of the decision making beneath all that. In other words, once the policy has been set, framed and determined, how and by whom are decisions captured and structured at the next level down? After all, that is very often where policy fails.

Am I barking up the wrong tree, or is there something in that? Does that area need to be better defined? It seems that people out there want to talk about policy and finances and civil servants want to talk about policy and finances. Is there an issue around a lack of definition and clarity about those day-to-day management decisions?

To my mind, it is not necessarily about specialism; it is about who is responsible at what stage. There is a point at which we are all very clear about the framing of policy and its outcomes. Ultimately, the minister stands up in Parliament. That is relatively clear, but it is about the individual bits.

We are all trying to avoid specific examples, but there was a significant contract variation in the ferries contract that was documented by an email chain. That stands out as being not right—that is not how things would happen in a well-functioning private sector organisation. In the financial services sector, you would find yourself butting up against all sorts of regulatory rules if you did that.

The issue is perhaps more about how policy is monitored, but is there also a point about roles? There was an interesting bit in our discussion about accountable officers. Is how the civil service captures who is managing the in-flight policy based on role rather than structure or process? Is that an area that we need to probe at more?