Official Report 702KB pdf
Good morning, and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is a round-table discussion on Scotland’s commissioner landscape.
I am pleased that we are joined by Adam Stachura, associate director for policy, communications and external affairs at Age Scotland; Vicki Cahill, policy and public affairs lead for Alzheimer Scotland; Jo McGilvray, senior policy advocate at Carnegie UK, Craig Dalzell, head of policy and research at Common Weal; Allan Faulds, senior policy officer at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland; and Rob Holland, director of the National Autistic Society Scotland. I welcome you all to the meeting. Thank you for your excellent, very detailed written submissions. Before you came in, we were talking about the amount of time that we spent over the weekend reading and absorbing them, which is a compliment to your hard work in putting them together.
I want to make it clear that this is not a situation in which I will sit and ask each of you questions. I will ask Adam Stachura an opening question that, I hope, will stimulate thoughts and conversation. If you want to come into the discussion, just let me know—put up your hand, nod your head or whatever—and I will let you in as and when I see you.
Without further ado, we move straight to questions. We expect the session to last for 90 minutes or so.
Adam Stachura, I will start with you simply because your name is first on the list and Age Scotland’s submission is the first that I have in front of me. One of the important issues when it comes to commissioners is why we need them and what difference they can make. In its submission, Age Scotland said:
“There has ... been a growth in public calls, policy initiatives and Member’s Bills for new Commissioners which address perceived gaps or inaction from government and public services on important matters.”
What do you consider those gaps to be, and why is a commissioner needed in order to improve matters?
Next, you said:
“We believe that this landscape should grow further”.
To what extent should it do so?
The view that is held by Age Scotland in particular but which I think has grown in recent years among charities, third sector organisations and the public is that a commissioner might be helpful on some big issues. One of the reasons for that could very well be that, as Governments change—in essence, we will have had the second formation of a Government within 12 months—policy priorities can change at the click of a finger. In addition, elections can really change the national priorities, and the constituent groups and the big issues that remain might no longer be on the agenda.
Age Scotland’s view is that a commissioner for older people is necessary. Has there been enough focus on the needs of an ageing population in Scotland? The population has been ageing for a long time and is doing so faster than the population in the rest of the United Kingdom. For instance, has there been enough Government action, priority and focus on a lot of the big challenges that that group faces?
When we look across the piece, including across the rest of the UK, at the work that commissioners do and how they operate, we see that the answers to such questions might be dependent on the individual in each role.
We can see where there has been success. For instance, at the beginning of the Covid pandemic, I and Age Scotland colleagues spoke regularly—if not weekly, then fortnightly or monthly—with the commissioners for older people in Wales and in Northern Ireland, who convened working groups. They were able to put out a call and get together a lot of the right people, as they saw it, to focus on and tackle issues and to offer insight. That work shows how successful commissioners can be in leading campaigns or in having the ear of the Government as honest brokers who offer insight and advice. They take up issues that Governments and committees will not or cannot take up.
There have certainly been gaps in addressing priority issues for organisations and individuals. There has not been enough movement from the Government or the Parliament to address issues at the scale that we think is needed. The committee has demonstrated that commissioners are an established piece of the Scottish political and public service landscape, and the Government has accepted that by virtue of its wanting new commissioners. We look at the commissioner model as an established way of getting more effective action on particular issues.
I understand that Alzheimer Scotland remains unconvinced by the argument that we require additional commissioners.
We appreciate that the role of commissioners is very much to place a focus, and we appreciate and welcome the principle of having a commission or a commissioner to champion the rights of individuals. However, given that there is a lack of evaluation and monitoring of the existing commissioners in the current landscape, it can be quite difficult to understand specifically what value they bring and why having commissioners would be a better route forward than other routes.
When we engaged with members of the Scottish dementia working group and the national dementia carers action network—member-led organisations of people with dementia and carers of people with dementia, respectively—we found a lack of clear understanding of how a commissioner would work to meet their specific individual needs. There is a risk that, by simply having a commissioner to highlight issues in the system, opportunities will be missed to directly address the underlying root causes of those issues. It is therefore important that we think about the whole system of commissions and commissioners and how they would work across the piece, instead of focusing on one particular population or group of individuals.
I know that we are not concentrating on one particular commissioner, but Adam Stachura has put his case for one. Older people are one of the most powerful political groups in the country. They have achieved the triple lock for pensions—I am aware of no other group with that kind of strength. Would older people not be one of the last groups that need a commissioner, given what they already have? It is very different for children, who have no vote and no voice.
How many commissioners do you think there should be? Would you put a limit on the number of them? If we had 100 commissioners, all their voices would be tiny.
It is a good question. We are saying that there are 2 million older people in Scotland, with 40 per cent of the population over 50—
I should have declared that I am one of them.
—and there is considerable ageism in our country, as public perceptions confirm. Children and young people have a commissioner already, but it is not a zero-sum game, Mr Mason. It is not that there is only one thing and that we should take it away from someone else.
Within the population of older people, there are a lot of people who are incredibly disadvantaged and who do not have a voice. Although you might suggest that they are a powerful political bloc in terms of voting, only 3 per cent of older people feel that it is easy to have their voice heard, and only 8 per cent of over-50s believe that policy makers, decision makers and politicians give due consideration to the needs of older people.
In Scotland, 150,000 pensioners live in poverty. That has been the case for a number of years, but there has been no real action by the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish Government to address the issue. In a Scottish context, older people make up the greatest proportion of those who are in fuel poverty, and there has been a 14-point increase in the number of those in extreme fuel poverty.
I do not mean to interrupt you, but, given that you are clearly a strong voice and advocate for those people, why do they need a commissioner, too?
A commissioner would have legal powers to undertake investigations and could work with other commissioners on such matters. A charity, for instance, does not have the ability or the resources to undertake a legal challenge when human rights have been breached or to take up cases on a wide scale. An organisation such as Age Scotland, which is one of many charities and organisations with an interest in older people, is a different creature entirely.
One could make the same case with regard to any of the established commissioners—why is that role necessary if there are other voices there? I appreciate that there are opportunities to have voices raised, but sometimes the action that results from that is limited. To what degree does the Government or the Parliament wish to listen to a charity? There are times when we hear that charities are deemed to be a nuisance in policy making, whether in the Scottish Parliament or in Westminster, because they have ideas that are different from the political philosophy of the Government or political parties. At times, however, politicians will really want to listen to them make a case. The mood is changeable.
There are also cross-sectional issues. Older people are one example, but when we look at all the proposals, we find that there are groups of people who demonstrably face substantial inequalities that clearly have not been addressed on a scale that is necessary, particularly as we look to the future. People might feel that a commissioner is the next step to try to address that. It might not be the perfect solution—who am I to say that it would be?—but, given the current position and trajectory, we believe that some positive actions are required.
I have two questions, Mr Stachura. You rightly said that the older demographic is a very high proportion—40 per cent—of the population. That group has multiple interests and concerns. Do you believe that, if there was to be a commissioner, you would be able to deal with all those interests and concerns?
That is a very good question. The answer is probably not, but it would depend on the resourcing of the commission. Those things are part of the unknowns. Where commissioners work with others is incredibly important. For instance, how would an older persons commissioner work with the Scottish veterans commissioner or the Scottish Human Rights Commission, for instance, to look at the cross-sectional challenges? I am not entirely sure—I might be completely wrong on this—of the degree to which commissions or commissioners work together where issues have been raised that may require better or more specialised knowledge in certain areas.
That raises an interesting point for us as a committee. The commissioners in place so far have a variety of different roles: some are investigative, some deal with complaints and some deal with advocacy. So far, you have said that you think that an older persons commissioner would have primarily an advocacy role, but you also mentioned investigative aspects to that. One of the difficulties that we face—apart from the cost aspect, which is a central concern for the committee—is how we would align the roles of different commissioners if there were to be new ones. I think that it is incumbent on you to explain to us what you would see as the prime role if there was to be a commissioner for older people.
The perfect position would be something that mirrors the role of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. That role has developed and grown over time, and its level of resourcing is probably one of the highest among the current commissioners or commissions. However, you are asking a charity with an interest in older people in particular for a perfect solution—the best thing that we could possibly have. Looking at the effectiveness of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner’s role and the scale and type of issues in which the commissioner can be involved, I think that that would be a good place to look.
Do you see any role for a commissioner in dealing with complaints? Obviously that would not be in a legal context, because such issues would probably have to go to other commissioners, but do you see that as an aspect in which a commissioner might be involved?
I think that it could be. I apologise for being slightly vague, because there is a lot to unpick as to what that role might involve. A lot depends on what the issues of the day or of that generation are, and on what the other routes are.
09:15However, beyond almost anything else, the challenges that older people will face are with accessing health and social care. One of their main concerns is the lack of that, and it is incredibly hard for them to have recourse to justice on that. Although that might link into other parts of public life as well, the ability of a commissioner to complain to Government, NHS boards or integration joint boards—either en masse or otherwise—and have effective action taken and be listened to because they have a statutory footing demonstrates power. The Older People’s Commissioner for Wales has been able to open doors there. People see that and know that they must listen to them in a way that they might not otherwise have had to.
Again, as with all such things, many factors can make it successful or not. It depends on the person, the environment, the people, the Government or the Parliament and on what the commissioner's own interests are, but it can certainly take on big issues. There is demand for it.
Nine out of 10 older people would like one, and seven in 10 people in their early 20s think that there should be a commissioner for older people, and they understand the reasons for that. I do not want to put too much on one particular type of commissioner, of course, but there is an idea that some of these things are not just for people of the day but are for future generations as well.
All people become older. If people’s lives have been made better by virtue of a commissioner for younger people, given that there is severe inequality in later life too, being able to capture challenges before they become problems for people is also important.
I notice that a lot of our guests are very coy. So far, only MSPs have indicated that they want to come in.
I will pose my question to Adam Stachura, but I suspect that other witnesses might want to come in. You made some very powerful arguments, as you do in championing the work that you do, but those powerful arguments surely can be applied to a multitude of concerns.
We have considerable concerns across all of society, so what counter-arguments would you posit as to why there should not be commissioners for other areas that are of similar concern? Some potential commissioners have been suggested, but they are the tip of the iceberg, considering the issues and challenges that we have. What would be the tipping point be before we get somebody advocating for a commissioner for making pâté out of crabs’ eyelashes? I am being a bit facetious, but you get the point that I am making. What are the counter-arguments, and what is the tipping point before it becomes a completely crowded landscape? What the heck is the Parliament—whether it is the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body or MSPs—not doing?
I will try to be very brief. My hope is that others will jump into the line of fire.
I do not think that it is for us to say where the line is. Political decisions are made about where Parliament or the Government feel that there are gaps. I said to John Mason that it is not a zero-sum game in which we can have one thing and must have no more.
It is, because it has to be financed.
I agree, but it is also not a decision that Age Scotland would make. There are lots of other areas that could be seen as gaps.
You might have an opinion about that.
I might have an opinion, but I am not sure where the tipping point is—maybe before a commissioner for making pâté out of crabs’ eyelashes, although a fishers’ lobby might be right up for that. It is a very difficult position, and it boils down to how Parliament, the SPCB and others are able to scrutinise commissions and commissioners and hold them to account to ensure that they are doing effective jobs.
I am sure that there is a greater role for committees in that. Looking through all the evidence that has been submitted thus far, I think that it is clear that some commissions and commissioners do not feel that they have enough time with committees for scrutiny. However, I know that the workload in the Parliament is incredibly heavy, so there will be anxiety about adding more to it, particularly if it is not as defined as well as possible.
I will stop in a second so that others can jump in and maybe make a better case, but politics is what runs this place and the Government. The priorities are clear, but when it comes to a commission for older people, for instance, it is pretty clear that the Government has not focused enough on older people in general and many of the related issues, considering our demographics and the fact that we are looking to make Scotland fitter for the future. Would something like that, which would be on a statutory footing, put more fire under the Government or Parliament to do so? That could be the case.
You have neatly rounded it back to what I know you are very passionate about. If other people want to come in, I am trying to get your sense of where we go from here, because we could end up with commissioners for everything.
Starting from the ALLIANCE’s position on commissioners in general, we describe ourselves as structure agnostic. We are not interested in having particular structures and we are not wedded to any particular commissioners. We are interested in outcomes and whether we can make sure that we have public services that help to realise people’s human rights and to uphold those human rights, so that, when those rights are breached, people can get justice and redress and we ensure that those breaches do not arise in future.
If having a commissioner for making pâté out of crabs’ eyelashes would improve things for people, we would say that it is a good idea. If having dozens more commissioners improved people’s outcomes, we would say that it is a good idea. If there is a way to do it by taking a more strategic approach to the landscape, to refer back to the title of the inquiry, we would also support that.
The question that we need to ask ourselves is, what is the best thing for people’s outcomes? Is it having a range of highly specialised commissioners? Some people might argue that that gives those commissioners deep insight into specific groups and allows them to focus, but it perhaps fragments people a little bit. People are not fragmentary. We are talking about an older people’s commissioner, and there is also a disability commissioner, but there are also older disabled people. If they are facing issues, where do they come to? It is quite difficult to unpick that. Perhaps having a smaller number of generalised commissioners who work together and share knowledge and expertise is the answer.
Another point that I want to make about how we draw the line is that we need to be clear-eyed about what commissioners can do. We are saying that the requests for commissioners are arising from public service failures and people not having their needs met. Commissioners might go some way towards addressing that issue by highlighting good practice, stamping out bad practice, being able to investigate and so on. Fundamentally, however, we have public service failure because we have had more than a decade of austerity and significant cuts to public services. If you strip billions out of public spending on public services, spending a few million here and there on a new commissioner might help to address some of the worst of that, but we cannot expect commissioners to overcome that fundamental problem with finance. That is perhaps the difficulty, because people are hoping that they will get a lot out of commissioners, but commissioners might not be able to solve the fundamental problems that exist in the first place.
I have four members who are keen to come in.
I am pleased that Allan Faulds talked about outcomes, because I was going to ask about those and about how we measure them. Adam Stachura, you talked a lot about effectiveness, which is completely understandable, but one of the concerns that the committee has seen in the evidence that we have received is that it is hard to identify how effective commissioners are and whether going down the commissioner route is the best way of solving issues. I would be happy to hear people’s thoughts on how we measure the effectiveness of commissioners and the outcomes.
I also want to follow up on the point that Allan Faulds made about the route. Are commissioners being used in some cases as a deflection by Parliament and Government, whereby responsibility for an issue that we all identify as an issue is deflected away from Government or Parliament to a body that is not cheap but which is perhaps cheaper than actually dealing with the problem. That might not be the case in all areas but, given that different commissioners have different responsibilities and we have some that advocate and some that have regulatory powers, is there any concern that they could be used almost as a deflection?
The Scottish Human Rights Commission made that point about deflection in its useful paper “At a Crossroads—which way now for the human rights system in Scotland?” There is a degree to which it could be seen as an easy win for Government and for Parliament to say that they have addressed an issue because they have created a commissioner to deal with it. I would not say that the Parliament should take that as a reason to never have another commissioner ever again, but it is something to be aware of and to understand that it can be one of the consequences. It is not the case that, if you create a commissioner, you can pat yourself on the back and say that you have solved the issue.
I will go back to the point about measuring effectiveness. One of the points that we made in our submission was that it is very difficult to do that. That goes back to the effectiveness of preventative spend overall, because you are asking people to identify how much money has not been spent when, by virtue of the money not being spent, you do not know how much that is. If a commissioner has achieved a change to a service or intervened in a way that led to fewer people reaching a crisis point and accessing an acute service, that will save money, but it can be quite difficult to identify just how much money was saved. Therefore, I suppose that that is a question for people who are more expert in statistics and measurement than we are, but we certainly recognise that difficulty.
However, if there is a call for a commissioner, it must have been possible to identify and measure a problem. It seems strange that, once the commissioner is in place, it is then harder to identify the problem or the progress on alleviating it. It just does not seem particularly logical, yet that is what we have seen time and again in the evidence—commissioners have said that it is sometimes hard to look at how effective something has been.
To be honest, I do not think that I have a response to that point, because, as you are saying, it is incredibly difficult to unpick those things.
We often think about disabled people. If you are talking about a disability commissioner, one of the problems that disabled people face is access to social care. There is a huge amount of unmet need in that area. I believe that the Scottish Government is working to identify the level of unmet need. Once we have figures for that, it might be possible to identify the kind of savings that might be made by preventing people from getting to that crisis point and how much it would cost to meet that unmet need versus how much is instead being spent on the consequences of people winding up in hospital because they have not received care. However, perhaps that is a further down the line thing.
We have long advocated for a commissioner to promote and protect the rights of autistic people and people with a learning disability. We did that in the lead-up to the 2021 election, along with other organisations. That received cross-party support in the manifestos, and that is now one of the proposals in the Government’s learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill proposal, so we welcome that.
On the reasons why we campaigned for a commissioner, we have talked about the representation of groups, and autistic people and people with learning disabilities are a population that is often on the margins, where there is not a focus on them and no advocate to speak alongside them and speak up for the issues that they are facing.
You talked earlier about outcomes. We are absolutely focused on outcomes, and we want the commissioner to be very focused on outcomes, because the outcomes for autistic people and people with learning disabilities are stark. We know that children with additional support needs are five times more likely to be excluded from school than their peers. A significant proportion of those children are autistic. Fewer than one in five autistic people are in employment. Research tells us that autistic people and people with a learning disability have a lower life expectancy than the general population, and often, sadly, those deaths are preventable. We also know that there are 300 autistic people and people with a learning disability in out-of-area placements in mental health institutions, far from their families, detained for care and treatment. There are currently very, very poor outcomes, which is why we believe that a commissioner with a focus on this population is required.
What people have told us consistently is that there is a gap between the support that they should receive and which is laid out in policies and strategies—and indeed in the law—and what they receive in practice. The other issue that we know about, from what families tell us, is that they are passed from pillar to post and unable to seek recourse and redress.
Therefore, we would want a commissioner to make progress on those things. That is what we hope for. To do that, a commissioner would need the correct resources, legal framework and focus, and, importantly, to listen to the communities that they would exist to serve.
Rob Holland, you made an interesting comment in your submission. Many of the submissions that the committee has received and much of the evidence that we have taken refer to concerns about the risk of duplication. However, in your submission, you said:
“Potential for overlaps in function is put forward as an argument against Commissioners being established. We would contend that overlap in function should not be seen as a problem, but rather the means of ensuring that individuals do not fall through a gap in ‘the system’.”
However, if there is duplication in the system, surely that confuses the issue and makes it difficult to deliver the outcomes that people require.
09:30
That depends on what we mean by duplication. For example, if we are talking about information around understanding your rights and how to exercise those, there is duplication already. That exists across different websites, whether it is the Scottish Human Rights Commission website or our website, for example. Therefore, in some ways, we do not see that as an issue.
If we are talking about things such as investigation, at the moment, commissioners pursue a generalist approach—they are set up to do that—so there is not focused work on this particular community. Therefore, there would not be duplication in that regard because that focused work is not going on at the moment.
There are six people who are keen to come in. Before I bring you in, Craig, I just note that, in your submission, you said:
“The Scottish Parliamentary Committees are themselves too weak and too vulnerable to being co-opted or ignored by Government”,
which I do not think is something that this committee would recognise as reality.
I think that that point has been brought up by some other committees. If some committees are better at making their voices known, then all power to them.
Part of the commissioners’ role, as we have been discussing, seems to come from that advocacy and protection perspective. Recently, we have seen a much more rights-based approach to legislation in Scotland, and commissioners might well have a role to play in safeguarding rights. If you feel that your right has been broken in some way and you do not know how to redress it, you do not have it as a right—it is not protected. However, that also opens up the messy landscape that we have often talked about in which we do not have rights that relate to every commissioner and not every single commissioner is a protector of rights. If our right to, say, freedom of information is broken, we can go to the Scottish Information Commissioner. However, we do not yet have the right to housing or the right to food, so the commissioners who cover those areas do not have a remit in that regard.
However, that brings in a concern that we have brought up in our submission, which is that a lot of these commissioner roles come out of Government legislation. I do not want to overfocus on the proposal for an older persons commissioner, but our interest in that arose from the early days of the now outgoing Administration when it dropped the minister for older people, with whom we had been developing quite a good relationship. That is normal—Governments will chop and change their ministers to deal with the priorities of the day—but it raises the question of what the landscape looks like in a particular area. There might be, say, a minister and a commissioner covering a particular role; you might have one but not the other; or you might have neither. We might have two different pathways to determining a matter, if we have both a minister and a commissioner for older people or younger people, or we have one or the other, or we have neither.
That is why, in our submission, we looked at why commissioners should be much more governed by Parliament than by Government. However, one of our big concerns in that regard is that, if the Government is creating commissioner roles that are not necessarily backed up by a ministerial role in the same area, democratic accountability could be shifted out of Parliament. Commissioners can come to committees and be held accountable in that way, but they cannot be held accountable to the whole Parliament in the same way that a minister can be. Therefore, I really would not like the commissioner landscape to turn into a landscape of ministers without accountability.
You say in your submission:
“The Scottish Government itself has admitted a lack of research into the evaluation of effectiveness. We would recommend that this research is conducted as part of the review of the role of Commissioners. We would also recommend that until that review is complete, no new Commissioners are created and that existing Commissioners are not replaced at the end of their term.”
A significant gap would be created if that research were to be delayed in any way.
That comes down not so much to what we want commissioners to do but what we want them to achieve. If we do not have evidence of effectiveness, we need to know that. I do not think that we should get into the position of not having an information commissioner, for instance, although I should say that there is very good evidence that that commissioner has been effective.
Five people are still keen to come in, but Ross Greer has been very patient and has been waiting quite a while.
For us, part of the motivation for holding this inquiry is the sense that, when proposals for individual commissioners are posed to Parliament, it is—to put it bluntly—put in a position where no individual MSP or political party wants to look unsympathetic to a particular vulnerable group. Clearly, though, we are heading into a situation where things are spiralling. I want to pick up on what Allan Faulds said about the potential for having a wide range of very specialist commissioners or a couple of more generalised ones.
My question is particularly for Adam Stachura and Rob Holland in the first instance, as they represent organisations advocating for specific commissioners. Given that the vast majority of the commissioner positions that are being or have recently been proposed relate to rights advocacy and the upholding of rights, I have to wonder whether that is not something that a strengthened Scottish Human Rights Commission could do. Most of the proposals on the table at the moment are to do with upholding rights. We already have a human rights commission, so should we not be considering why so far it has been unable to fulfil the specific needs that have been identified? I think that the commission would be interested in having its position, role and resource strengthened instead of the landscape being fragmented further.
That is a very good question. Indeed, the committee explored it with the commissioners at last week’s meeting, and it is one of the proposals in the public consultation on the learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill, which has just closed. It will be very interesting to see the responses to that. It is important that we listen to the voices of autistic people and people with a learning disability, because they are not always listened to.
Last year, we did some research—it is the glossy booklet in front of me—called “Closing the Accountability Gap”, which included the views of autistic people and their families, 96 per cent of whom wanted a distinct commissioner with a focus on their community. There is a strong case, given the incredibly poor outcomes that that community faces, for a focused commissioner who is 100 per cent dedicated to and focused on improving those outcomes.
I am not being unsympathetic, Rob, because I completely agree with that, having sat on the education committee for eight years working with children with additional needs. Unfortunately, however, there are literally dozens of other groups in Scottish society that we could point to as having incredibly poor outcomes and whose rights are not being upheld. Clearly, though, we cannot have dozens and dozens of specialist commissioners.
The Parliament, then, is presented with the challenge of having to ask whether there are certain groups whose rights are being so fundamentally compromised or whose situation is so specific that they require their own commissioner, and that puts us in the very uncomfortable position of having to say that some vulnerable groups are more vulnerable than others and so on. Could that not be addressed by having a strengthened human rights commissioner who can take that intersectional approach? There are people with autism who are also older people, and there are people with autism who are also disabled. Surely a single commissioner, with all the responsibilities and resource that they needed, would be better able to address the intersectional way in which people’s rights are often compromised.
We are completely focused on the outcome. You could beef up an existing commissioner and give them the correct legal powers and resources, but they would also require to be able to fundamentally change what they were doing. At the moment, with their legal framework, they operate—for want of a better phrase—as a generalist body. The question is whether they can pivot to focus on and make progress with one particular group, but I do not know the answer to that.
We are 100 per cent focused on whether the outcomes will improve and whether that is better than having a focused body whose role is listening to autistic people, carrying out investigations in that area and responding to individual inquiries. We are quite sceptical that bolting something on to an existing commissioner will result in the systemic change that we want to see, but we will see what the consultation tells us and, indeed, what communities tell us, too. Without pre-empting the consultation’s results, I imagine that there will be some scepticism from communities who have had their voices ignored for many years if the response is that we are just going to bolt it on to something else and see what happens.
I see that Allan Faulds is keen to come in.
The ALLIANCE was taken with the suggestion in the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s “At a Crossroads” paper of establishing a rapporteurship model. That might address some of the concerns about not having a dedicated voice; although they would be part of the SHRC overall, you might have a rapporteur for people with learning disabilities, one for people with autism and one for older people. We definitely think that such a model merits investigation.
There is something that we would encourage not just the third sector and commissioners, but the Parliament and the Government, to do. Often, we find ourselves advocating for particular policies, then new evidence and ideas emerge, and we need to engage with that new evidence and those ideas with an open mind and not with prejudice towards our previous positions. Setting up each of these commissioners as a separate statutory body, with its own separate staff and commissioner, might result in an incredibly complex landscape, but if what people want is a champion—a word that occurs quite a lot—a rapporteurship model could very well create one.
As we have touched on a number of times—I have said it myself and Ross Greer and others have said it, too—people do not fit into individual boxes. You might be autistic, but that will not be the only thing about you; you might also be an older or younger person, you might be a member of the LGBT community and so on. At the meeting that we had a few weeks ago when the inquiry opened, someone said that people’s lives were not fragmented, so why should the commissioner landscape be fragmented? I found that contribution to be useful.
We at the ALLIANCE are not saying that the rapporteurship model is the one that should be taken up. However, it very much merits investigation by people.
What Allan Faulds has just been saying folds neatly into the point that I am about to make on public expectation of commissions and commissioners, what they can or cannot do, and what they are seeking to achieve. It is through listening to people with lived experience that we identify the problems that commissions and commissioners seek to address. However, whatever their expectation might be of how those issues can be addressed and whether they fit neatly into a particular box, it can be difficult and challenging if commissioners have broad remits and do not necessarily deal with specific groups of individuals or their level of needs. There is a concern that potentially broad commissions might miss the specific needs of individuals, and what we need is something that shores up everyone’s rights.
In our submission to the inquiry, we say that we should explore ways of reinforcing the ability of existing commissions, such as the Scottish Human Rights Commission, to deliver on their current remit and provide the additional resourcing that they might require to be able to do so effectively for all groups of individuals. We recognise, for example, that people with dementia do not fit neatly into a particular box. We have people who are younger and people who are older, and people who recognise that they have a disability and people who do not necessarily recognise dementia as a disability. They would find it difficult to pop themselves into a particular box. In addition, where there are overlapping issues, the level of confusion in the landscape can create difficulty in terms of being able to access the right person at the right time.
We then need to think about how we support those individuals in accessing an easier route towards ensuring that their rights are actually met. We would encourage further investigation of what the existing landscape is and what it is likely to be as we move into the future. We also need to think about how we shore up existing rights and ensure that they are put in place.
09:45
Jo McGilvray, I note that you call in your submission for “a Future Generations Commissioner”.
First, to follow on from what Vicki Cahill said, I think that it is helpful to see calls for a commissioner as the start of a conversation. The goal is not the commissioner itself; as others have said, the goal would be the outcomes that we want to see. However, the conversation can be a useful way of drawing political attention to the issues and exploring all the solutions that could be on the table, whether they involve a commissioner or something else, or the strengthening of existing models.
In response to your point, convener, my answer is yes—we at Carnegie UK are calling for a future generations commissioner. That is linked to certain specific individual benefits that we think that commissioners can bring in comparison with other models, including the ability to drive an outcomes-focused approach; to offer accountability by scrutinising the work of Government and governance bodies, and all the different parts of the state; and, crucially, to drive long-termism. Because a commissioner is not bound by the short-term political cycle in the way that other actors might be, they can take a longer-term view. We think that all of those things could positively help address some of the big challenges that we face, such as making difficult spending decisions and prioritising prevention.
I will follow on from what Jo McGilvray said. The Carnegie UK submission made the point that a commissioner can make “cost savings”. I want to press you on that. How quickly could that be done? Is it inevitable that the costs will be in year 1 and the savings will be in year 25?
I will say my bit before you come in. Should that be one of the measures? When a commissioner meets a parliamentary committee—whichever committee it is—should that committee ask the commissioner whether their work has produced savings or whatever?
I initially put my hand up to speak in response to some of the things that Rob Holland had said, but Ross Greer asked him about some of those points. The National Autistic Society Scotland submission talks about “improved representation and visibility”. That is fine if there are seven commissioners, but—to go back to Ross Greer’s point—what if we have dozens? If there are 100 commissioners, no one will have much visibility. I realise that you are fighting your own angle, but could you take an overall approach and look at the bigger picture? You might get visibility for a few years with a commissioner, until more commissioners come along.
You also talk in your submission about leveraging finance. Can you tell us what you mean by that? Does that mean that the money would come from other vulnerable groups who did not have a commissioner, or from higher taxation? Where would the money come from?
Perhaps Jo McGilvray can go first.
That is quite a difficult question. It comes back to the point that Craig Dalzell made about evaluation, which clearly needs to be strengthened so that we can understand how well commissioners are doing.
If a commissioner is able to successfully drive an outcomes-based approach and improve outcomes, there will be cost savings from all sorts of different places. However, those cost savings are quite difficult to capture, and we are not very good at understanding what would have happened if the commissioner had not been there. If they had not done that piece of work, what would the costs have been? I do not know how you could do that, but there are probably ways of doing it a bit better. Some of that is probably about which outcomes we look at and how we capture progress.
There are things in place in Scotland. We have the national performance framework, which could be better used to capture all those things. All the different commissioners could work to those shared outcomes.
Let me press you a little on that. Is it inevitable that, when a commissioner is created, the first thing that they will ask for is more money for their sector, or can a commissioner look at the money that is being spent and say, “You could spend that same money better”?
They should be able to do that, because one of the advantages of a commissioner, compared with somebody in a public body or a Government department, is that they can take a helicopter view and join the dots, which is difficult because of the way that departmental budgets work at the moment. You are accountable for the money that you spend and the particular outcomes that you are supposed to deliver, but if somebody sat above that and brought the different parts together, there would certainly be potential to save money.
On the issue of money, back in 2018, the Scottish Government published “The Microsegmentation of the Autism Spectrum”, a report that calculated the annual cost associated with autism to be £2.3 billion. That includes the cost of services and support, as well as the loss in economic productivity connected to, as I mentioned, the employment rate being below one in five.
A significant amount of that support is spent on crisis. As I mentioned, 300 autistic people and people with a learning disability are in in-patient mental health hospitals and out-of-area placements at the cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds to local authorities and other agencies. We very much see the commissioner as having a role in ensuring that people get the services that they need at a lower level, so to speak, which would prevent the need for more costly crisis provision. That figure of £2.3 billion would then, I hope, come down.
Is that not fundamentally because we do not have enough money to do the things that we want to do, including—I am sure that we all agree on this—what you have just said we would like to do? A commissioner being created does not create more money.
But a commissioner could highlight through their work that spending money at a certain level prevents further costs down the line.
The committee has struggled with that over the years. We could spend more money in any sector today and save money in year 25, but where do we get the money today?
We have talked about outcomes and the two groups that are principally advocating for new commissioners. There was a bit of focus on the case that has been made, but I have still not heard examples of outcomes having been improved in Scotland as a result of having a commissioner.
Rob Holland, your survey showed that 94 per cent of respondents said that they were supportive of a commissioner—I think that that was question 4 of your survey. I feel that the methodology supported the concept, because you could have asked people, “In the absence of evidence of improved outcomes, do you support a commissioner?” Did you present evidence of improved outcomes to people who filled in the survey, or did you tell them that there was none?
There is not currently a commissioner who is focused on autistic people and people with a learning disability, whereas, with the children’s commissioner, for example, there has been progress in a number of areas.
What areas?
We are looking to that as a model of practice.
In what areas have there been improved outcomes? I put that question to the children’s commissioner last week. We see increasing levels of child poverty, declining educational attainment and a mental health crisis among young people. The children’s commissioner has been around for 21 years, but I am not sure that I have seen evidence of improved outcomes.
It is for the children’s commissioner rather than me to defend what they have done, but many of the things that you are talking about are not the fault of the children’s commissioner—
No, of course not, but you are proposing that a commissioner model would improve outcomes, and I am saying that I do not see the evidence that that has been the case with other commissioners. Given that you are advocating that model, I assume that you have seen the basis on which outcomes have improved for a set of people somewhere.
We see, in the children’s commissioner, a very powerful advocate and champion who is out there talking about what needs to happen for children and young people. There is no such advocate for autistic people and people with a learning disability. We absolutely want the proposed commissioner to focus on outcomes, but I cannot speak to how successful the children’s commissioner has been in relation to some of the areas that you have picked up on.
You are advocating the commissioner model, which is what the committee is exploring, so I am keen to understand why you think that there has been cause and effect—the connection between using that model more and outcomes, which you have said that you are completely focused on.
Adam Stachura, do you have any other evidence?
Those questions, as with all the questions from the committee, are very good and shrewd. I will look at the macro aspect and, if you will indulge me for a couple of minutes, I will go into a bit more of the micro aspect.
When we look at where we are on lots of different issues, including social issues, and big challenges in Scotland, we find that there is either no progress or no opportunity for progress on fixing things. I do not want to litigate with regard to current commissioners and what they do. I do not have much experience of that, because there has been no such thing in this space. Particularly in the case of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, perhaps there has not been a huge amount of focus on older people’s needs because of its remit or its small resource.
However, we see commissioners as taking a more long-term view in trying to narrow the inequalities in some areas, which is not happening at the moment. That could be done through Government action, but Governments can change. As we heard from Craig Dalzell, ministerial responsibilities can change and lots of things could happen in the current set-up, whether that is with regard to the Parliament, committees or changing ministerial positions. However, with a commissioner, organisations or individuals think, “Here is something else, because there is potential and opportunity.”
If we are reflecting, we can look at the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales and the Commissioner for Older People for Northern Ireland. Those are two slightly different positions, because Eddie Lynch in Northern Ireland had, in essence, no functioning Government for a number of years and his term will imminently come to an end. Only within the past month or so has he had any kind of Government to go to with issues, and there has been a stagnant civil service that was unable to make decisions. However, Heléna Herklots in Wales is able to look at certain issues with the Welsh Government. For example, with regard to pensioner poverty, she can try to get the Government to do more work on increasing awareness of pension credit and social security or on ageism reports. That role has a good bit of locus so that the Government can then take action.
That is useful. Have outcomes improved?
To be honest, right at this second, I could not say exactly what the outcome is. Our reflection, from speaking with Heléna Herklots—at one point, on a weekly basis with a coalition of organisations across the UK—is that the outcome is that the role can bring together, in lots of different circumstances, a lot of the right people in the right rooms. The commissioner has the ear of the Government—at times, depending on the political will—to push forward issues, they have credibility and clout, with insight, and they are able to undertake investigations. I apologise for not having the details, but that is certainly our reflection: we have seen that having a commissioner or a commission can work really well.
However, that is quite subjective, depending on what you want the outcomes to be. For instance, in Scotland, you might look at how we can close the digital exclusion gap.
To be fair, I am looking for objective rather than subjective outcomes. We all agree that we have seen really impressive people come before the committee as commissioners. They are incredibly passionate about the people whom they represent, and we share their sympathies. My questions are about the model.
I will take my questions into a slightly different space, if that is okay. People are talking about accountability and, in lots of the evidence, about holding politicians to account for what they say. However, I think that the suggestion is that committees of politicians should hold the commissioners to account. In what way does the accountability model work, and is it reasonable to assume that we will get better outcomes if commissioners hold politicians to account and politicians hold commissioners to account?
10:00
At Common Weal, we have a principle that nobody should govern themselves, so a circular model of accountability such as the one that you have described could be effective.
I understand the technical need for people such as freedom of information commissioners and standards commissioners to oversee Governments and politicians. It is absolutely right and necessary that those people keep an eye on politicians. However, if this is about influence, will there be a conflict in the power structure if we ask politicians to do something and we have lobbyists being held to account on their lobbying? Will that improve outcomes?
That speaks to the point that I was going to raise. When I was reading through the part of Allan Faulds’s submission on the rapporteur model—
That is funny—I was going to talk about that part of Allan Faulds’s submission next.
When I read that part of the submission, Philip Alston’s 2018 report came to mind. When he was the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty for the UK, he produced an incredibly detailed and wide-ranging report on the state of poverty and welfare. It could be argued that that was an effective role, because that really good report laid bare a lot of issues and changed the way that we talk about poverty and welfare in the UK. However, it could be argued that it was an ineffective role, because the UK Government completely ignored the report.
That gets to the heart of the question about effectiveness and accountability: what happens if commissioners are ignored by Governments? I suggest that they can still perform an effective role, but that changes the nature of it.
That takes me to the point that I was going to raise with Allan Faulds. In your submission, you said:
“We would suggest that at a minimum, all Rights-Based Commissioners should report directly to the Scottish Parliament.”
What would the mechanism be for that? If it is not committees, are you talking about commissioners going before the whole Parliament? How do you envisage that working in practice?
I am not sure whether that was my exact wording.
It was—I quoted you word for word.
Perhaps I gave an impression that I did not intend to. I said “directly to the ... Parliament” and committees are obviously part of the Parliament. We are arguing for a dual process. Commissioners come before committees, and committees get reports on what commissioners have done, but the outcome of the reports should go to the whole Parliament, which should be involved in the work. If a commissioner has had their say—perhaps through an annual report—and a committee has scrutinised that, there should be space for, perhaps, a committee-led debate on the work of that commissioner during the previous year. That would allow all members of the Parliament to feed into the discussion about what that commissioner had achieved or not achieved.
It was not our intention to suggest that the committees’ role of scrutinising commissioners should be taken away, but the rest of the Parliament should feed in.
Craig Dalzell, at the start of your submission, you said:
“We believe that the Scottish Government is developing a risk-averse attitude in expanding the growth of Commissioners as it allows Government to claim the credit when policies are adopted and are successful but to ignore ‘inconvenient’ advice or to pass blame for failure.”
Have you got any examples of that?
I do not think that I can give you a concrete example off the top of my head, but it is a risk of that model. I mentioned that, in the current model, commissioners who provide, let us call it, inconvenient advice can be ignored because they are not part of Government, but a minister cannot do that; they have to stand up and take accountability for Government. If there is a shift of roles and responsibilities from ministers to commissioners, we would worry about that.
You talk about the Government developing “a risk-averse attitude” to expanding the growth of commissioners, but a lot of commissioners are coming from the ground up. Rob Holland, Adam Stachura and Jo McGilvray have made it clear that they are keen for additional commissioners, so it is not as if the Government is rolling out loads of commissioners to avoid responsibilities. A lot of them are coming from beneath. That is one of the issues that the committee is trying to address about the expansion of the entire landscape.
Yes, and we have seen that, too. As I say, our interest in the issue came from that moment when we lost the minister for older people, which provoked a call for a commissioner for older people to try to retain some of that lobbying power and accountability. We have seen that.
The Government would argue that it did not really lose the minister for older people; it just did not use the title. In fact, Adam Stachura and I talked about that last week and I commented on the issue in the Sunday Post. I think that older people should be in the title of a forthcoming minister. Removing the reference does not mean that the issues are put to one side; it just makes it look as though those people are not considered to be as important as others, which is an important issue.
On that point, and based on what Craig Dalzell said, is it important that the words are in a minister’s title?
It sends a signal.
I know that it sends a signal, but you could have names that go on for weeks. Surely every issue is covered by a minister, so does it really matter what their title is?
I think that it does. It is not just about what the title is; it is about the number of responsibilities that they have and where they sit. I am not here to give a running commentary on what is or is not worthy of being in the title. I go back to Craig Dalzell’s point about the call for a commissioner for older people coming on the back of losing a named minister for older people. At one point in 2018, there was a Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People and a Minister for Older People and Equalities. I am sure that you will all recall that a commissioner for older people was in the Age Scotland 2021 ask of the Scottish Parliament, when at the same time there was a minister for older people, which shows a realisation that there are complementary roles.
Do you think that the minister cares less about older people because those words are not in their title?
No, I do not think that that is the case. What matters is how much time the Government, ministers or departments have for particular issues. This is not meant with any particular criticism of the current minister or the current set-up, but it just feels as though it has been heavily diluted from where it was. We maybe saw more action in the past. In 2018, we had a minister and a cabinet secretary with named responsibility and it felt like a lot more was going on.
There is a big job for the current minister who has older people within their responsibilities. Reshuffles have meant a bit of merging of things such as migration and refugees into the equalities portfolio. It is about how the First Minister wants to run their Government. I think that the title is really important, and I think that older people feel that it is really important.
But so do people with autism and so do children.
You are absolutely right.
Is “equalities” not a better overall term?
I suppose that there is an argument to be had about whether equalities is the right place to put older people. Should they maybe be in with social justice? It depends on the action and activities. Age is a protected characteristic, so is that the right place? That is a political decision and an outcomes and action-focused decision.
Before I am muted, I will speak to Michael Marra’s point about political scrutiny. I am thinking about a commissioner challenging the Government, not just politicians in general, and the politicians in the Parliament holding the Government to account in the same way as the committees challenge and hold the Government to account.
I talked about a minister challenging—
Yes. The commissioner is there to challenge the Government and ministers on their actions, whereas the term “politician” is really meant in two forms. One is Government and there is also the Parliament and the strength of the committees to do that. The term “politician” is a loose phrase for where a commissioner might go. Having scrutiny of the person who is scrutinising the Government is another route to scrutinising the Government and making sure that important matters are right up the agenda. That is politics. A lot of it will be about not just who shouts the loudest but where the evidence is, what the big issues of the day are and the Government’s political philosophy for tackling them.
It is not just about virtue signalling, Mr Mason. There is an importance in the minister’s title, which might be lost in this particular instance, but there was also a reason to bring it in in the first place. Jeane Freeman previously had a role with older people while she was Minister for Social Security and, at a certain point, it was deemed that the role should be enhanced. The feeling was that it had been watered down among lots of other things. All credit to the ministers but, if I was doing it—and I am glad that I am not—there are lots of really important issues to get involved in, because everything that is important to everyone is really important.
Adam, we touched earlier on the commissioners in Northern Ireland and Wales, and you say in your submission that Wales and Northern Ireland have had older people’s commissioners since 2006 and 2011 respectively, which is a considerable period of time. Your submission states:
“Both have had a positive impact on the experiences of older people, working together with older people to stand up for their rights, enact change and seek justice when things go wrong.”
What have they been able to achieve that we have not been able to achieve in the same space here in Scotland?
They have certainly been able to achieve—whether you can measure this in actual pounds is a slightly different question—the right kind of structure and political noise on issues. I will give the example of Eddie Lynch. Northern Ireland did not have a functioning Government, and he felt heavily frustrated—when reports on work had been collated, he wondered who on earth he should lodge them with and have discussions with.
The commissioner in Wales, Heléna Herklots, has taken forward action on ageism in Wales and has brought that to the Welsh Government looking for actions, but I do not know whether it has been able to do anything on that. The commissioner has been looking at bigger national campaigns on uptake of things such as pension credit. Although that is not devolved to Wales, the commissioner has taken that up, whereas we do not have such concerted central action on that in Scotland.
The commissioner has also looked at issues such as digital exclusion of older people because, as a result of the Covid pandemic, public services and access to them have become predominantly online. The commissioner has been able to challenge public authorities in making sure that the door is open for people, and has been able to do so with the locus and gravitas that comes from being on a statutory footing, whereas, if a charity such as Age Scotland comes to many committees and complains that older people who are digitally excluded have no access to services, not much action is taken. There is much agreement in general, and there is hand wringing from us and others, but the commissioner in Wales has been able to look at issues.
I do not mean this only through the lens of older people, but the issues can change for any commissioner over time. Having a commissioner for older people might have been effective during the Covid pandemic. It might have been effective with regard to putting access to social care and care homes up the political agenda and looking at investigatory powers, when others may not have been doing so. You can look back, but we do not know what is coming in the future.
In the landscape that we have, there is at times a huge amount of frustration among people outside this building, including charities and the third sector, about inaction on things that we care deeply about. The public also has that frustration. The mechanism for a commissioner has been one issue, probably of many, to see better actions and outcomes on the issues that you live and breathe every single day, and your constituency mailbags will be full of those, too.
The opportunity to take better and more effective action depends on the people, the resourcing, the structure and how people work together. For instance, I wonder whether you have cases in your constituency surgeries and inboxes where you might feel that if you got together with a commissioner with statutory powers, you could make something happen and run a big campaign. There is almost a feeling of, “What other tools do we have in our Scottish toolbox to tackle these injustices?”
That is where some of the positioning on commissioners from many organisations comes from. They see that there is a gap and that having a commissioner seems to work or has been established or accepted as a useful mechanism in some places. However, it is clear that there is also frustration around being able to measure the financial outcomes and, in some ways—as I said before—the preventative spend of those actions.
We have been chatting for almost 75 minutes, and we have about 15 minutes left. I will let John Mason in in a minute. He is the only person who has indicated that he wants to come in. After that, I will ask each of our witnesses to think about what they would like to say as a final comment. Perhaps you could touch on an area that we have not covered so far, or you could re-emphasise an area that we already have. I will leave it completely up to you.
I will let Adam speak last, so that he can catch his breath, apart from anything else, and because he spoke first.
I will follow up on what Adam said. We sometimes struggle a bit to measure things, but uptake of pension credit is a long-running problem—it was a problem when I was in Westminster. That is something that we could measure.
You said that the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales has been around since 2006, and Northern Ireland’s has been around since 2011. I am not expecting an answer right now, but could you come back to us with figures to show whether pension credit uptake has improved in Wales and Northern Ireland?
Relative to Scotland?
Yes. It is stuck everywhere, as I understand it.
I will try my best.
Okay, who wants to go first?
10:15
I am happy to go first. We arrived at wanting to campaign for a commissioner partly because many good strategies and many good laws—lots of different initiatives—have failed to make the kind of impact that we want. Although the 10-year Scottish strategy for autism, which concluded in 2021, made progress in some areas, it did not really result in the systemic change that we want. The calls for a commissioner have therefore come after lots of things have been tried but have not made much progress. That is coupled with the fact that the voices of autistic people and people with a learning disability are often unheard. Having a body that has statutory powers to speak up and perceive things is therefore important.
As we have talked about, however, having a commissioner does not by any stretch solve everything, and lots of other important things are included in the learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence consultation, including placing various statutory duties on different bodies as well as putting local and national strategies on a statutory footing. In the proposals in that consultation, which has just concluded, there is a real ambition from the Scottish Government to transform things for that group of people. A commissioner will play a key role in that new and improved landscape, so there is a very strong case for it.
I think that everyone here recognises that there is no easy answer to any of this. Commissioners do all sorts of different things, so a one-size solution will not arise. It is helpful to view the advantages of each proposal on their own merits and in their own contexts and to continue to consider the public administration benefits that commissioners can bring, as well as the costs. It is about value, not just cost.
I mentioned that the worst-case scenario for me would be commissioners turning into ministers without accountability. However, I will leave on a happier and more positive note—
Good.
For me, a positive outcome of the review would be the strengthening of commissioners’ ability to guide committees, to be responsible to the Parliament and, ultimately, to help both of those to hold the Government to account. I would like that model to come out of this process: committees and the Parliament becoming much more empowered to do their job.
I will leave you with thoughts on accountability going beyond just the commissioner, the commission, the Parliament and parliamentary actors. It has to extend further and take into account all the stakeholders who might be involved when it comes to a commission or commissioner achieving what they set out to do to get particular outcomes. Those stakeholders could be individuals from third sector organisations or from other public bodies, who may have a vested interest in meeting those outcomes or dealing with complaints that might come about, or, equally, and probably most important, those with lived experience. We need to ensure that they have some involvement in the accountability model and how that is set out, so that those whom the commission or commissioners are there to serve have some kind of say in what the commission does, how it moves forward and how it engages with those whom it seeks to serve.
Thank you. Allan Faulds has been scribbling furiously over the past few minutes.
A lot of the focus today has been on the champion and visibility side of having a commissioner and their role as a spokesperson and someone who develops policy. We have talked less about the possibility of commissioners having investigatory powers and the right to raise legal proceedings. For example, the SHRC has asked for the ability to raise legal proceedings in its own name.
We know that people whose human rights are being breached or are not being fully realised are struggling to access justice and remedy. If commissioners are able to support people to access justice and get redress for service failure, and that comes with enforceable recommendations or court rulings that public bodies have to follow, we might see substantive and meaningful change. Perhaps a strengthened SHRC with a rapporteurship model might excel. If individual commissioners had those powers, they might help.
I go back to the point that I made earlier, which various MSPs and other speakers have made. A lot of this fundamentally comes down to resourcing and the ability of public services to meet people’s needs. I made the point to the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee during pre-budget scrutiny a couple of years ago that human rights are not delivered with good intentions but, frankly, with cold, hard cash. We need the services to be in place to realise people’s human rights. Until we address the root issue of real pressure on public finances and public services—I appreciate that this inquiry cannot do that and that this committee cannot do that by itself—commissioners will perhaps be a helpful plaster over a wound, but they will not solve the root problem.
It is really important to realise and recognise that outcomes can be better for real people—for citizens of Scotland—today and in the future, and a model of commissioners can be one of the routes to help with that. It can help to raise issues and take action where others cannot or have not, and potentially be a constant for people, whatever their challenges are.
I have talked about the deep frustration that we might have about inaction on things that we are all so passionate about or recognise and see every single day. It is important that the committee looks at the context of the spend of money, but also at the scrutiny and accountability. For instance, where does an older person go to with the issue that they are faced with? Where do they feel that they will get support? It is about not being passed from pillar to post and ensuring that we have effective places for people to get the action that they require and demand. It should be the overwhelming urge of all of us to meet that.
I welcome this inquiry. It is really important, because we have had a growing landscape, and the anxiety about how we are able to manage what we have and what will maybe happen in the future is clear. However, a Government can decide and concede at any point that it wants to commission something, and that will go through if it has the votes in the Parliament.
There are more fundamental issues behind how those things are managed well. In our submission, we suggested that the corporate body might not have the resources that it needs to do as effective a job as it might want to do, or as the committee might want it to do, to ensure that the process works.
We do not necessarily need clarity and uniformity in respect of each commissioner’s role. Overlap could be helpful, and it is important for commissioners to have different powers depending on the need. Therefore, having a really clear map of what commissioners do might not be the best starting point, because they will do different things for different people at different times. The committee should have an open mind about what could be beneficial.
On John Mason’s point, the savings that could be made—I am sure that they will be made—might not always be realised in year 2 or year 3, but if we do not do anything, we certainly will not have any savings in year 25. That is really important to consider.
I thank all our witnesses for their active participation in the discussion. We will continue our evidence sessions next week. Thank you very much for coming along. I also thank members of the committee for their involvement and contributions.
We will have a break until 10.30.
10:24 Meeting suspended.Previous
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