Chamber and committees

I have a WhatsApp on-call group with my private office so that if I put something in the system at 8 o’clock at night, somebody in my private office picks it up quickly and responds to it. It is a convenient tool because someone will see that I have asked, “First thing in the morning, can I get blah blah?” rather than my having to send an email that may or may not be picked up. However, that is not about avoiding scrutiny; it is just about quick communication to a range of people, one of whom will pick it up. That is the example that I would give.

That has not been my experience. It can sometimes feel that the opposite is the case and that it can take a frustratingly long time to make decisions. Sometimes, you get advice, go through it a number of times and have lots of discussion on the various options that are put in front of you, which can take time, even when there is an eagerness to get on and do what is in front of you.

In some situations, a very quick turnaround is required. For example, I mentioned in my opening remarks the responses to Ukraine and the Covid pandemic. Rapid decision making is required in out-of-the-ordinary situations, but that does not mean that it should not still be good decision making; it means that decisions have to be taken quickly and that the best evidence and advice that has been brought to you has to be relied on. You can rely on experience and on previous decisions and their outcomes, but sometimes the situation is new and there is nothing to draw on. That requires judgment. Sometimes, that will be the right judgment. With hindsight, some decision making is clearly not right, but the best judgment will be made on the best evidence at the time.

I have been a minister in Government, on and off, for more or less 15 years. When you gain confidence and experience as a minister, it enables you to make decisions more quickly and be able to challenge some of the advice that comes to you more readily than a minister who perhaps does not have that experience, who might, quite rightly, take longer to make a decision.

I do not recognise the comments that Liz Smith refers to. I can go only by my experience in Government over that time.

Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be here to talk about effective decision making.

I am conscious that the subject area is very broad. The Scottish Government takes many decisions of different types on a daily basis. Consequently, my opening remarks will focus on the areas that I think might be most helpful.

The types of decisions that the Government makes range from decisions on public investment to decisions on taxation, service delivery and, of course, legislation. In recent times, key decisions have been made on urgent issues, such as receiving refugees from Ukraine and responding to the pandemic, and on long-term programmes, such as the roll-out of social security in Scotland. As those examples illustrate, Government decisions cover complex issues that are often of national importance and often involve a degree of political contention.

Understandably, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to such varied decisions, but there are principles and governance that support effective decision making. In relation to principles, the policy prospectus that was published at the end of April sets out the Government’s three defining missions—equality, opportunity and community—and the outcomes that we want to deliver over the next three years. As a Government, we have developed a distinctive Scottish approach to delivering policy and public services, which is based on four priorities—first, a shift towards prevention; secondly, improving performance; thirdly, working in partnership; and, fourthly, engaging and developing our people.

In relation to governance, the Scottish Cabinet sits at the top level of decision making. It is supported by Cabinet sub-committees on certain key areas, such as legislation, and by a range of official governance under the corporate board and executive team, which is reinforced by official guidance, including the Scottish public finance manual and the civil service code.

We recognise the importance of external advice, challenge and scrutiny, including, of course, by the Parliament. We integrate external views into our decision making in various ways, including through consultations and stakeholder engagement and through groups such as the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls and the delivery board for the national strategy for economic transformation.

We also recognise the importance of transparency. That is why we are delivering Scotland’s third open government national action plan in partnership with civil society; it is why we will set out our financial and fiscal assumptions in our medium-term financial strategy later this month; and it is why we routinely publish impact assessments relating to policy decisions.

The quality of advice that supports decision making depends on the skills, capability and professionalism of civil servants. The Scottish Government is implementing its people strategy to support continuous improvement and the updating of skills and capability, and it has introduced measures to improve record keeping as part of its information governance programme. Effective decision making often requires evidence on what works, and the Scottish Government is supported in that regard by professional analysts, scientists and other specialists in the civil service and by expert advisory groups such as the Covid-19 advisory group, which played a significant role during the pandemic.

Given the varied nature and complexity of decision making, the Government does not claim to always get everything right, but our decisions are supported by professional advice and formal processes, and we have made many decisions that we can be proud of over the years—decisions that have made Scotland a better place and have led to improved outcomes for people living here. However, we are always willing to learn lessons and to improve, which is why the work of this committee is so important. We look forward to considering its recommendations.

Well, third sector groups are varied in that we tend—

Okay. Let us take third sector groups first. We tend to give funding to them through what we call intermediaries, which then give the funding to third sector organisations—some of which are quite small—that apply to the intermediaries. That helps the Scottish Government, because, as you can imagine, with the plethora of small third sector organisations, it makes more sense to do it in that way. I do not have in front of me the breakdown of who gets what in terms of percentages, but I am certainly happy to furnish the committee with that information.

We encourage third sector organisations not to become wholly reliant on any single source of funding, because, for sustainability reasons, the wider a spread of funding sources, the more sustainable an organisation becomes. You will understand that, with the best will in the world, policy priorities can change within Government, which means that difficult decisions have to be taken that, sometimes, include the ceasing of funding. If an organisation is wholly dependent, that becomes difficult.

On quangos, we have 129 public bodies in Scotland, many of which—most of which, in fact—are reliant on Scottish Government funding. Some are able to raise commercial funding. For example, Forestry and Land Scotland has been quite successful in generating commercial money, which is good.

My final point is that we are reviewing and want to reform the landscape around those 129 bodies. Again, I am happy to furnish the committee with information about that piece of work as we take it forward.

As you point out, there was six years of scrutiny of and debate about that policy, which is a level of long-term debate and scrutiny that few other policies have been through. Was everything done perfectly? Probably not. There are always lessons to be learned around all that. What I would say is that the EQIA did look at the impact on women and girls generally, although I accept what you say about the specifics and we might need to reflect upon that. However, if we think in general terms about the level of consultation, scrutiny and engagement, I personally engaged with a range of diametrically opposed organisations, many of which were in favour of the bill and many of which were against it.

If you are talking about organisations that receive Government funding and which side of the debate they were on during the process, I accept that a number of women’s organisations that receive Scottish Government funding were in favour of the reform, but those same organisations have been very critical of the Scottish Government in other policy areas and they have not held back in saying so, including in the justice field.

My conclusion from all that is that we need to guard against any perception, real or not, of organisations that receive Government funding taking a particular stance on issues, because the evidence shows that organisations are robust in their criticism of the Government, even when they receive Government funding, and that is how it should be.

Let me come on to some of those. Obviously, the Covid inquiry will look at and scrutinise all aspects of how the Government responded. You should bear in mind that, when Governments respond to something that has never happened before, it is quite challenging. There is no blueprint that can be taken off a shelf to navigate through a global pandemic. Inevitably, therefore, things were done at speed in a way that, in hindsight, leaves us asking whether we would have done such things in normal times and whether we could have done them differently.

I absolutely accept that lessons need to be learned. If we have another global pandemic, we will have the experience of what worked and what, perhaps, did not work. The full public inquiry will come up with recommendations on some of that, which all Governments need to—

The presumption is for transparency, in that anything that influences your decision should be part of the submission.

In my discussions with civil servants, they bring all the inherent risks alive by telling me what lies behind the submission—for example, that one group of stakeholders is vehemently opposed to something because of X, Y and Z, or another group of stakeholders will be fully in favour of it because of A, B and C. Those are situations where judgments can be quite difficult to make, because you know that none of the options will please everybody and that a group of stakeholders will think that a certain decision is absolutely wrong.

In trying to come to a conclusion, you have to ask what the objective is. What are you trying to achieve? The submission is meant to give you advice on taking forward a particular policy, and you have to navigate through that. Ultimately, sometimes you make a decision in the full knowledge that it is not going to please a particular group of stakeholders.

That is an absolutely critical piece of work. We are taking that forward.

You might have a fair point. The exercise that we are going through at the moment is very much looking at value for money, impact and whether something delivers on outcomes. We are really trying to land that in the right place for short-term fiscal balance. On the longer-term position, you spoke about what is critical, highlighting that there are things that maybe do not deliver on the intended outcomes that we need to take a hard look at. That work is under way at the moment.