Seòmar agus comataidhean

As I have said, it is not up to the Government to scrutinise and hold commissioners to account. That is for very good reason, because, in many cases, their role is to monitor the work of the Government. That distinction is very important.

How the Parliament chooses to scrutinise commissioners is obviously a job for the Parliament and its committees. I heard the evidence on that, and it is clear that there are different perspectives on it. I would expect the Parliament and its committees to do their job and to robustly hold commissioners to account.

This is going to get very boring, but I again preface my answer by saying that it is not the Government’s job to tell parliamentary bodies how to organise themselves. However, what you have suggested is an interesting model that has probably proved effective elsewhere. Certainly, if you were to look at this in the abstract—that is, from organisational design principles—in this ecosystem or anywhere else, what you would look at as a first step would be whether existing bodies that function effectively could be leveraged to take responsibility for other pieces of work. Indeed, the principles around the ministerial control framework speak very much to that—that is, to whether an existing body could carry out the functions that a new body would be asked to carry out.

Who would you want to carry out a review of those parliamentary procedures, Mr Marra?

You need to look at the situation in the broader public sector body landscape. As I said, there are 130-odd public bodies in the public sector. Their budgets, the staff that they employ and their responsibilities are far in excess of those of the commissioners, so the idea that everything is being dumped on the commissioners is very far from the truth—

Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the committee.

I am delighted to be here to give evidence in this session on commissioners who are supported by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Members will have seen the letter from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government that outlines the Government’s position on a number of these matters. I very much look forward to giving more detail and answering your questions on that.

We share a common interest in the issue that the committee is considering. The Government is keen to ensure that the public sector landscape is as efficient and effective as possible, and the work that you are undertaking very much falls within the broader work that I am leading on and taking forward in my new role in reviewing the broader public sector landscape. We want to ensure that delivery is as efficient as possible for the people of Scotland within the budget constraints that we have.

I want to make a very important point, which you understand very well, on the independence from Government of the commissioners who are sponsored by the SPCB and the Parliament. The Government is very careful not to stray into that territory and to be clear about where we are able to support and to give our opinion on things. Any work that is undertaken to review the structures of the parliamentary commissioners is, of course, absolutely up to the Parliament, and decisions should be taken in that context.

It is worth highlighting the work that the Government has done on understanding the need for new public sector bodies. The ministerial control framework that we put in place last year does precisely that. It is a robust structure that takes into account whether a new public sector body is required and assesses the financial implications of that to ensure that the new body will fulfil its objectives and will not duplicate something that already exists. That framework is in place for bodies that are created by the Government. Where a proposal relates to a commissioner who would be supported and sponsored by the SPCB, the Government seeks to engage with the SPCB at an early stage in the process. Clearly, proposals that come from outwith the Government are not included in that framework. It is very important that Government-supported bodies that are created through that mechanism are distinct from those that rightly lie within the guise of the Parliament.

I hope that that gives an outline. As I have said, I am keen to support the work that the committee is undertaking, and the Government is keen to support the SPCB in the work that it is taking forward, or may take forward, in reviewing the commissioner landscape.

Depending on the portfolio, I think that the Government would, of course, always seek to take views from organisations that can reflect the views of various stakeholders. In my experience in the economy space, we talk to a lot of different organisations all the time.

If you are asking whether the Government is concerned about a scenario in which parliamentary committees were not doing their job and that was having a material impact on public service delivery, clearly the Government would have an issue with that. However, we need to be careful of Government straying into that space.

Because of the work that each commissioner has in holding Government to account, it is important that Government is not seen to be stepping into that space and acting as the scrutineer of those bodies, nor is it our role to say whether commissioners are being scrutinised correctly or effectively. That, rightly, is Parliament’s job. If we were saying the opposite, you would, rightly, not be happy about that.

It is all important. Of course it is. I think that you clearly understand that as well. If you are faced with a series of problems and have a job to do to figure out how to save money across that, clearly you give more attention to the areas where you will save the most money. It would be ridiculous not to do that. Nobody would expect you to do that or would thank you for saving £1 million when you could have saved hundreds of millions of pounds.

We expect the Parliament and its committees to be able to do their jobs.

I do not think that that is the case. I think that the process of holding ministers and Government to account through scrutiny processes in Parliament and elsewhere is hugely important, and I do not think that establishing a commissioner post is a method of diverting that scrutiny. I do not see that at all.