Seòmar agus comataidhean

The number of bodies is one thing, but if that was the only objective—we talked earlier about objectives—we could miss the point there. We consolidate public bodies where it makes sense to do so. We have started work to look at the number of public bodies in each portfolio and whether there is scope for them to work more closely together in clusters. We are already organically creating those clusters, and some are further along that road than others in sharing resources.

Where there is a clear case that consolidation of public bodies makes sense because it will deliver a cost-effective solution and better services, that is very much on the cards.

Absolutely, but we need to be careful about what we mean by zero-based budgeting.

We will look at how the Welsh policy operates. If there were potential for waste tourism, that would be geographically easier to do from Wales into England than from Scotland into England. We will see how that works, take a sense of it and consider it in our deliberations on the tax for the next year.

That is a good question. Because it is a complex system, it is not simply a case of one policy intervention making one difference that you can then measure.

We talked earlier about the landfill tax, and there you have a much cleaner line of sight when we make an intervention: we can see the behavioural change, the tax numbers and how that flows through. On the more general policy ambition, it is the nature of public service reform to have to deal with many interlocking bodies, policies and objectives at different levels.

There is a measure in the amount of money that we can demonstrably save by driving more efficiency across the system. That is one hard measure, and we are focused on measuring savings. There are also measures around what you might call the top line or the ultimate priorities of the Government’s agenda, of reducing poverty, growing the economy and tackling the climate crisis. We have top-line measures, but, as I said, there are clearly many different policy objectives that drive into and can influence those.

I suppose that it is a question of looking for more intermediate measures, many of which are covered in the national performance framework. Again, when it comes to a clear line of sight, many policies and bodies will be impacting that. In some places, it is clearer—for example, in the health service, there is throughput and the number of operations or procedures that are carried out and so on. In other areas, there is a lengthier process before we get feedback on policy interventions. In other areas, it might be easier to measure productivity—within Social Security Scotland, for example.

There is a range of different measures, and we are very open to quantifying some of those if it helps the committee and us to understand them.

If we take those harder efficiency measures, we published data on what public bodies spend and the back-office cuts last year, and we will update it this year. That gives us numbers on the total spend on estates in the public sector, on maintenance of those estates, on procurement, on corporate finance, human resources functions, and so on. That data is now available for the first time across the public body landscape.

In parallel with that, we regularly publish data on how much money we are saving in the estates, and that number is £36 million up to now.

We are working on that now. We are going back out to public bodies at the moment to get data for their 2025-26 budgets. We are working with public sector leaders to understand the best time to do that, but it will be in the next few weeks. We will go out for the next trawl of data, and it will be published towards the middle of this year.

We would welcome that.

Public service reform is a huge challenge, but a proper and appropriate use of the correct levers can directly support the Government’s priority of delivering effective and sustainable public services. In turn, strong public services are better placed to deliver our key priorities of growing the economy, eradicating child poverty and tackling the climate crisis. The powers that are contained in the order are one such lever. They offer important tools to drive public service reform and can be used to adjust the configuration of the public bodies landscape in order to release funds for front-line services and better meet future needs. In some cases, they can also be used to unlock barriers to reform. At a time when resources are stretched and demands on public services are increasing, public sector bodies need to ensure that services remain affordable and sustainable in the longer term, while continuing to support better outcomes for people across Scotland. In many cases, that will require reform and changes to the way that public sector bodies operate.

The order-making powers will enable small-scale changes to be made in a more proportionate and flexible way than would be possible if we had to find a place in the parliamentary legislative programme to introduce and progress primary legislation. I stress that the use of the orders is restricted to two situations: first, to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of public service functions—for example, by establishing the Poverty and Inequality Commission as a statutory public body—and, secondly, to reduce or remove burdens on any public or private sector organisation. Section 17 of the 2010 act has been used to reduce burdens on businesses. For example, orders have been used to amend requirements relating to agricultural tenancies and to streamline and simplify the planning system. Those powers are subject to safeguards in the 2010 act, under which any proposed changes to primary legislation through the order-making powers are subject to rigorous examination and scrutiny. A strict super-affirmative procedure applies to any order that is made using those powers. The responsibility remains with public bodies to address and to try to resolve any issues by other means before turning to the order-making powers.

The public consultation on the powers went live on 16 December last year and ran until 10 February this year. It received 21 responses, mainly from organisations. Sixteen of those responses agreed to extend the powers by a further five years, four opposed the extension and one was neutral. Reasons that were given in favour of the extension included supporting more effective and efficient operations and providing the flexibility to effect change. The small number of responses that opposed the extension of the powers mainly focused on the potential for abuse of the powers or the potential for the Government to reduce the authority of public bodies. I believe that those concerns are addressed by the safeguards in the 2010 act.

I conclude by reminding the committee that, unless the Parliament renews the order-making powers every five years, they are lost forever. The Parliament last renewed the powers in June 2020, so they must be signed off by the Parliament by 2 May this year if they are to continue from June 2025. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions.

That is a good question. I am sure that my colleague the Minister for Parliamentary Business would be delighted to come to the committee and comment on that. However, I will say that we are always striving to make processes within Government more effective and efficient. I am sure that any thoughts on how we can do that in the legislative process would be very welcome.

It would be difficult to do a true like-for-like comparison, in the sense that a lot of things will have changed in the nature of public services that we are providing and how we provide them. It would be a difficult comparison, because you are comparing the world as it is now with what it was back then in terms of the range and nature of public services that we provide or, indeed, the demand on them. I am happy to look at and assess the process that was gone through to arrive at that 40 per cent and see whether there is any way that we can update that.

I remember that exact wording in Christie’s report. It referred to a previous piece of work that was done—I cannot recall by who—and “up to” 40 per cent was the terminology that they used. I do not think that it was a hard and fast number, but it certainly gives an indication of the scale of the opportunity.