Chamber and committees

The SPCB recognises the importance of providing flexible and responsive parliamentary services that support MSPs and their staff in fulfilling their roles. The pandemic has shown us new ways of working, and there are lessons, such as the value of extending information technology support until the end of members’ business, that we can take forward in our response to the pandemic and more broadly in relation to the provision of services.

Providing comprehensive parliamentary services has to be balanced with staff rotas and shifts, a commitment to fair work employment practices, and the budgetary constraints that the Parliament works within. The SPCB is discussing how services may be able to adapt and improve post pandemic. We will seek to take members’ views as part of that so that we can ensure that we are providing excellent parliamentary services to support members and the way in which they choose to work.

I think that some of the frustrations that the member has outlined are shared by members of the corporate body as well. In response, my answer is that no website is ever finished. We have an on-going programme of changes and enhancements to make to the website, and it is informed by feedback—the member’s feedback and that of others.

The previous website was over 10 years old and built on outdated technology that was no longer supported, so we had to make substantial changes to the technical side of the website to make improvements.

We know that there are things that we need to adapt. For example, the search function is part of on-going work. We have already made changes to filtering options and that kind of thing in response to feedback, and other improvements will be made by the end of this financial year. Things such as committee reports and Scottish Parliament information centre briefings are currently on a different site, which makes things difficult. We are in the process of creating the uniform site, which should be done in the next few months.

Before Covid, our education services offered three different support packages to schools: a visit to the Scottish Parliament; a visit to the school; and resources for independent use by the teacher in the classroom. The average annual spend across 2018 to 2020 was £194,260. The cost of providing inward and outward visits was roughly equal, at £97,802 for inward visits and £96,458 for outward visits, including travel costs.

We are budgeting for a similar amount in 2022-23, as we anticipate a gradual return to pre-Covid demand and service levels towards the end of this academic year. In 2020-21 and 2021-22, we have not been travelling, and have ensured that the budget has been available to support other areas of the Parliament where required.

According to political economists, uneven development—the uneven or unequal development of the economy—is an inevitable function of capitalism. It is seen in various dimensions—for example, different sectors of the economy are developing to varying degrees and at different rates. That unevenness can be and has been established on the basis of any number of different metrics, such as employment rates, income levels and rates of economic growth. It is also seen in various scales, from intra-urban differences, through regional differences, to uneven international development. It forms the basis of many inequalities and social injustices that we see every day. It is vital that we do what we can to avoid those dangers of uneven development—inequality and social injustice. In that vein, I agree with much of what Rhoda Grant said.

A key problem in the UK has been the two-speed development that we have experienced for decades. The financialised economy of the south-east of England has been preferred by successive UK Governments. The UK has never recovered from the mass deindustrialisation in every other part of the country. As always, the Tory assumption is that the south-east of England has got it right and the rest of the country has got it wrong. However, the failure to provide the infrastructure for economic development in the rest of the country is a substantial part of the reason why we have a two-speed economy.

We were promised that the funds that the EU had channelled into that infrastructure would be replaced after Brexit, yet what we see in the UK Government proposals is an exact replication of everything that we were told was wrong with the EU, including decisions made by distant bureaucrats, following political agendas that do not necessarily reflect those of the people. Furthermore, the value of the funds do not match what they replace.

While the UK Government may consider that, in the words of the Prime Minister,

“Scottish devolution has been a disaster”,

the problem for the Prime Minister is that people want decisions made much closer to them. We know that the real challenges facing us—the climate and ecological crises as well as the pandemic—

We use web analytics and user research and feedback to assess the effectiveness of the website on an on-going basis. We have a continuous improvement programme for taking forward work on the Parliament website, and we use the insights from that to inform how to prioritise various bits of work. We are proactive in seeking feedback. For example, we are about to launch an online user survey to gather further information.

There are a couple of things to consider. We want to ensure that the offer that we make to schools is available for all schools, regardless of their proximity to Parliament or regularity of engagement. The team has been doing work to reach out to schools over the past few months. We are reaching new schools and are trying to enhance that engagement to ensure that we do not see some schools with repeated engagement while other areas are neglected or out of touch.

Jamie Greene is right: CPGs and others are eager to get back to meeting in person. We review that on a regular, on-going basis, and we balance mitigations and the risk of virus transmission in the building. We hope that we will have an update prior to the Christmas recess, before we return in January.

Chris, do you want to comment on that as well? In particular, you mentioned earlier the number of economically inactive people. How can we make the connections better?

On the skills gaps in leadership and technical skills, can Richard McClelland say a little more about what we need to think about at the macroeconomic level or at the focused, targeted level to support the people with whom you engage and the organisations and companies that you support?

It would be rude not to bring in Paul Little. What are we getting wrong specifically in respect of leadership and the technical gaps that we are identifying?