Chamber and committees

After extensive stakeholder dialogue and parliamentary engagement, we tried to create a framework that gives the public and public bodies as clear a sense as possible of the direction in which the Government is trying to take the country, the purpose of our policy interventions, the values that underpin them and the outcomes that we are trying to achieve. The framework is a distillation of that journey.

That picture is designed to enable a range of organisations to decide what they will do and where they will spend their resources to contribute to the direction of travel. The approach is designed to influence, not direct, the choices that are made locally about priorities and policy making. Given our current statutory arrangements as a country, that is the right approach.

Organisations can then look to identify what they can contribute to the process. A series of measures and mechanisms of accountability provides us with assurance about how much progress has been made on the journey. All those measures are publicly available. Some are published under the NPF, some are published more widely and others are the subject of analysis by organisations such as Audit Scotland.

There is undoubtedly a debate to be had about that because, as I set out in my opening statement and my responses to the convener so far, the national performance framework is designed to give clarity of purpose and direction to the country, to which all relevant organisations—I use that term in its broadest sense—can look and ask, “How is it relevant to us, and how can we contribute to the journey that the country is on?”

Another purpose of the performance framework is to discipline us to make tangible progress in achieving these objectives over time. The issues that Mr Johnson raises are very relevant there, because there could be greater signposting in that exercise, and there could be more definitive targets about what could or should be achieved over a given period. That is a perfectly legitimate debate. That approach would probably require much greater policy direction of what was expected to happen as a consequence. Undoubtedly, there is a debate to be had, and the review that we undertake in 2023 will provide us with the opportunity to reflect on the genuine approach that was taken in 2018 to engage with a variety of interested parties—not least Parliament—and to design a framework that is relevant and effective for policy making in Scotland.

Undoubtedly the framework could be simplified, but the Parliament would have to come to a view on whether, in so doing, it would lose any of the national performance framework’s rounded nature. There are fine judgments to be made here, and I am not trying to suggest that there is any perfect science, but the fact is that some citizens will attach a greater priority to the country putting emphasis on a particular policy area rather than another and will want it to be more predominant in shaping our country’s future. All such considerations are subjective. It is therefore possible that we would lose some of that rounded nature if we were to simplify the framework. However, the upside of following the route that has just been put to me is that it might provide greater scope for making sharper choices about where we place our emphasis and make our interventions.

On the national performance framework as a proposition, I would say—to be frank—that the more you delve into it, the more you discover. It is all there. In the detailed documents, we set out the rationale for why we have arrived at a particular selection of data sets or information to determine progress. That approach can stand up to scrutiny. Nonetheless, people are free to say that they do not think that we have arrived at the right half a dozen indicators to support a proposition on tackling poverty, for example, and that we are not looking at the right things.

Of course, there is scope for that debate to be had, but the rationale for how we have arrived at the selection of information is all there. It is subject to challenge and debate, and the review that we will undertake in 2023 will give us the opportunity to have that discussion.

I would differentiate between some of the issues that you suggest would drive changes in the national performance framework. For example, I do not think that Covid should be a particular driver of change in the composition of the NPF. Covid has happened, and it challenges us, but it is just another issue for us to wrestle with in addressing the agenda of what the NPF seeks to encourage the Government and other bodies to do.

However, the requirement to achieve net zero might force the substantive reconsideration of the national performance framework because it is a strategic policy imperative that, to go back to the points that Daniel Johnson raised with me, might require us to reshape the balance of the NPF for the policy to be realisable. There is scope to do that—that is what the five-year review is designed to do—but it is more about the aspirational elements of policy direction than addressing the consequences of issues such as those that Covid or Brexit has forced on us.

Yes. I was at the heart of the creation of the national performance framework back in 2007, and I convened discussions with representatives of all parties to consider how best we should develop some of the thinking. Responsibility then passed to my successors.

At different times, we considered whether there was a need for an annual statement to Parliament on progress on the NPF. That point must have been considered along with some of the issues around statute, but we do not need statute to require us to provide a statement—we could choose to do so any day of the week. If there was an aspiration for an annual statement, and the committee, in reflecting on these issues, felt that that would be beneficial, the Government would be happy to consider it.

Your opening words were welcome, convener, when you referred to the fact that I have been a regular attender at this committee over many years and have great familiarity with the budget process. In any budgeting process, there is always a challenge in ensuring that budget priorities can be realigned to meet changing trends and demands in society, particularly to achieve different outcomes.

An important point of consideration that has gone into budgeting since—in my view—2007, and which is reflected in the national performance framework, helps us in that respect: that is, undertaking budgeting decisions that help us to align more closely with the achievement of national outcomes.

One example in that respect is investment in early learning and childcare. Clearly, a new amount of money has to be found to ensure 1,140 hours of early learning and childcare for three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. That supports national outcomes whereby we are trying to intervene at the earliest stage to provide the strongest foundations for children to achieve their potential, as is referenced in the national outcome:

“We grow up loved, safe and respected so that we can realise our full potential”.

However, there are financial decisions involved to ensure that we support such objectives, which have to be taken at an operational budget level. The national performance framework provides us with a sense of long-term policy direction and outcomes that we are aiming to achieve. In many respects, those outcomes cannot be achieved without the willing and active participation of local government, which we have been able to rely on in taking forward the example of the early learning and childcare policy objective.

The national performance framework also enables us to take short-term decisions that support the achievement of a long-term outcome, which is its purpose and influence.

The work to enable that to happen is an early priority. As I said to Tess White, a lot of stuff has been interrupted as a consequence of Covid. Although the Government has a lot of data, the data sets to enable us to have a complete picture are not all available, so we have to construct new data sets. Obviously, that takes time. Some of the work has been interrupted by Covid, but I am happy to write to the committee about particular points of achievement in relation to data collection.

That is due to many of the reasons that I have just given. We have had the interruption of Covid.

That is a fascinating and significant question. There are different factors at play. The national performance framework is one example of accountability in our country, but not the only one—there are loads of others. I mentioned audit and parliamentary accountability, but there is also statutory reporting and a whole variety of ways that we can see directly the consequences of an intervention or an item of expenditure on a particular outcome. That will be demonstrable in some aspects of the national performance framework and various other settings in which the issue is tested.

There must be an acknowledgement and acceptance that the national performance framework will tell us a certain amount about the development of policy in Scotland, but there will be a variety of other areas in which to consider that. For example, we could look at the Audit Scotland annual review of the national health service. That is a sharp piece of accountability in relation to several policy areas.

In contrast, the national performance framework tries to structure the way in which we take forward what will inevitably be a long-term journey. We are tackling poverty, but we will not do that in a year—it will take a longer period to tackle poverty. We are trying to encourage a focus on long-term coherent areas of policy, without losing the sharpness of our day-to-day interventions that may or may not contribute to that journey.

I go back to the example of care-experienced young people that I gave to Michelle Thomson. We have research that tells us that the current method of expenditure is not supporting good outcomes for those young people. Given that we want to support better outcomes for care-experienced young people, the Government has arrived at the conclusion that we had better change how we spend the money. That is a concrete example of how we change course if we are not delivering a satisfactory outcome. That is an example of effective accountability.