Chamber and committees

Undoubtedly, decisions could be taken to tilt the balance in order to place more emphasis on, for argument’s sake, the outcome that

“We live in communities that are inclusive, empowered, resilient and safe”

as opposed to the outcome that

“We are creative and our vibrant and diverse cultures are expressed and enjoyed widely”.

We could say that there is much more importance in ensuring that we have greater progress on community empowerment than on cultural appreciation. I extracted those two topics randomly, but of course there is scope for the balance to be tilted. Obviously, we would have to be aware of what the implications of that might well be, because we are trying to achieve an approach that enables us to fulfil the purpose of policy making in Scotland. There is scope for us to reshape the balance of that to address other and particular priorities.

That is a really good example to focus on. When we come down from the national outcomes, believe you me, there is no shortage of data beneath the aspiration of children growing up loved, safe and respected. There is no absence of data. Indeed, that is highlighted in the national indicators, and they are only a snapshot of the data that is available.

As for what is required, as somebody who was immersed in that area of policy for five years, I would be examining a whole range of data sets to establish trends for whether we are heading in a positive direction or a negative direction as a consequence of the experience of children and young people in our society, and I would be intervening at an operational level to remedy instances where I thought that there was a need for stronger performance.

If we take an indicator such as the quality of children’s services, for example, that is an area that I would be examining very closely, looking at the data identified by the Care Inspectorate and Audit Scotland and at some of the wider collection of data on child protection and child wellbeing issues so as to determine—to go back to the convener’s point—the degree to which I needed more of a focus on area A versus area B in the country, where very different patterns might be emerging. What was driving good performance in area B versus poorer performance in area A, for instance? What would we need to do as a Government to be confident that we were doing all that we could to ensure that children were growing up loved, safe and respected and to intervene so as to secure better performance where that was required?

The question that Mr Johnson fairly puts to me is whether that can be more visibly set out in the national performance framework, somewhere in the gap between outcome that children and young people

“grow up loved, safe and respected”

and the half a dozen indicators. I think that there is a reasonable point to be considered as to whether the information that we promote to reflect the achievement of the outcomes represents the most effective collection of data, as there is a whole host of data that we could select from to enable that to be the case.

The link between public spend and outcomes is complex, but it is critical that it be properly understood. The national performance framework helps us in that endeavour, but there are other things that also do so. The process of audit and evaluation, particularly policy audit and evaluation, is critical in that journey.

There are other interventions, such as the independent care review, which took about three years to consider its evidence. I will summarise thousands of hours of research and analysis in the next couple of sentences not to be in any way disrespectful but because we have limited time. In essence, the review said that the money is not spent well on delivering good outcomes for care-experienced young people and, therefore, we should reshape that spend. We are now doing that, which we set out by our acceptance of “The Promise” report and the steps that we announced in the programme for government.

That is a good example of exactly the point that Michelle Thomson puts to me: we are spending our money one way, but it is not delivering good outcomes, so we need to think about shifting how we spend it, which is what we are doing on that issue. There are other examples that I could cite. In youth justice, over about 10 years, we have substantively realigned the way in which we spend our resources to deliver better outcomes. Many fewer young people have their life chances influenced, affected and undermined by interactions with the criminal justice system because diversionary routes are available to them to enable them to achieve better outcomes when they have faced difficulty in their lives. That involved realignment of spend from how we did it before to how we do it now.

There has to be a willingness to consider some of those questions and we must be prepared to spend the money differently, however complex it might be to decide on the priorities and challenges.

That is my point. In many respects, we are trying to create new data sets. For obvious reasons, we have been severely restricted in the collection of data during Covid. When I pressed the education system for information on participation, engagement and attendance, there was a fair amount of resistance from a number of public authorities—not least, local authorities—to the data demands that I was placing on them, but I wanted to be satisfied that there was online learning and adequate engagement, and I could collect that information only from local authorities. We have to strike a balance in relation to what we can reasonably and legitimately demand at any one time during a pandemic.

That is an entirely fair challenge. I would not advise that a minister’s only interaction with the performance of a policy area should be to look at that chart and say, “Oh, that’s improving, I don’t need to worry about that”. We have to go beneath that and look at the patterns and the trends. I assure Ross Greer that when ministers are briefed about detail and performance—and this relates to my response to John Mason a moment ago and a number of other answers that I have given this morning—the underlying pattern in performance is highlighted, challenged, explored and compared against what might reasonably be expected, so that there is a proper understanding of whether the conclusion that has been arrived at is reasonable.

I want to see improvements in economic performance and economic growth, which is vital for us as a society. A multitude of factors affect economic performance. We are vividly seeing the effects of Brexit on economic activity, and we are seeing the impact of Covid on the economy. However, the growth figures show that the recovery is improving following the downturn as a consequence of the pandemic. That is welcome.

The Government is focusing on a range of interventions to improve performance. As part of the Covid recovery strategy, it is important to improve families’ financial security, which is critical to eradicating child poverty. To strengthen that financial security, we have to have better-paying employment opportunities in our society. Stimulating a higher-quality economic environment is crucial.

I encourage the committee to look at all this in the round. Some of the performance maintaining that is happening is the maintaining of a high level of performance. The level of performance that is being sustained is not pedestrian; it is of a high level. That is no mean feat, given the challenges that we face as a society.

I assure the committee that there is a culture in Government and public authorities that is constantly seeking improvement in the delivery of public services. I refer you to some of the examples that I cited in my discussion with Michelle Thomson, where there is a challenge to existing performance to improve further via a variety of reports and analysis.

I have been around in this area of policy long enough to have just about seen it all, frankly. One of the first things that I did as finance minister in 2007 was to remove hundreds of ring-fenced funds from local authorities to provide them with much greater scope and flexibility in how they could operate. A lot of that ring fencing has not returned, which means that local authorities have a huge amount of scope to act. They also have general powers in relation to wellbeing, which the convener of the committee has championed over the many years of his involvement in Parliament.

There will always be a demand for more money from local authorities—I do not expect that that will ever change—but the Government does all that it can within the resources that are available to it to ensure that local authorities have the funding that they can rely on to support local services. Of course, Parliament has a process by which it can shift that balance, if it chooses to do so.

I am keen to encourage the deployment of public expenditure in a way that is closely aligned to the achievement of outcomes. We should do that at all times. I have cited the example of the policy shift to expand early learning and childcare. That involved a deliberate financial choice to improve an outcome, which was about the quality of the start that children get in their lives. That is a good example of what we do with money to affect an outcome. The response to the care review is another good example. The review pointed out to local authorities, really quite bluntly, that their route for expenditure is not delivering good outcomes, and it presented a different way to do it, which we accept.

Much of the data analysis is configured around trends, rather than moments in time. Mr Mason’s point is best addressed by looking at the experience over time, because that will highlight whether an underlying, sustained period of improvement might have faltered because of Covid, in which case we might be optimistic about making a return to improved performance. That will be best detected by looking at the trend performance in the data.