Chamber and committees

That is good and beneficial, but it is probably not quite enough. I used a quotation from North Ayrshire Council earlier:

“It forms part of the ‘Golden Thread’ linking national outcomes through to each employee’s daily activities.”

I chose that quotation because I thought that, in all the material that I looked at in preparing for the committee, it best captured my aspirations. It is not that people ought to be able to rhyme off all the national outcomes but that their contribution to what they are doing should be significantly guided by the aspirations of the national performance framework. That quotation probably best expressed what the Government is trying to achieve.

We need to undertake external engagement that will allow us to identify, in essence, what type of country people want to live in, because that is the question that fundamentally drives the contents of the national outcomes. What type of country do people want to live in? We need to hear that from members of the public, as distinct from practitioners who deliver the services or interventions. A fundamental understanding of what type of country people want to live in ought to shape much of our thinking in that respect. We will do that through a range of engagement mechanisms. Some of that might be through community gatherings. Some of it might be through survey material. We will use different tools to gather that information.

I come back to the word “patchy”, which the convener put to me at the start of the session. I would be stunned if the Wise Group found itself at odds with the national performance framework or the need to refer to the NPF. I have known the Wise Group well for about 25 or 30 years; its thinking, ethos, outlook, perspective and practice have heavily shaped the NPF. However, some organisations in the country are not operating at that level and need the NPF to give them a clear idea of where they should be heading.

On the specific example that Liz Smith put to me, I do not think that I have anything to teach the Wise Group to any discernible extent, but there are other places in the country that would benefit from learning from some of that experience.

First, I agree whole-heartedly with Mr Johnson about the Scottish Leaders Forum. Essentially, we said that we needed to translate the national performance framework and the achievement of outcomes into practical realities, and it has really advanced the thinking on that issue. Of course, the forum is a collection of people who influence this whole area of delivery, but I hope that that gives the committee some confidence that such practice is going on in different aspects of the public sector.

In response to the points that Mr Johnson has put to me, I think that there is an opportunity to build on that work. We need to test ourselves as to whether our actions are consistent with the framework. For example, when I read a Cabinet paper that develops a particular policy position, it will narrate the relationship between the policy intention and the national performance framework, but that relationship has then to be reflected the whole way through from a policy development angle, in budget choices, in operational decision making and so on. Coming back to some of the points that Michelle Thomson put to me, I would say that an approach that is based more on picking up the pieces will be less aligned with the national performance framework than an approach based on early preventative interventions. We have to look at where we can establish that alignment in all aspects of policy making.

Recognising the fact that the solutions to issues that members of the public face are not generally found in neat little compartments is an on-going challenge. Government generally operates in neat little compartments and I have said to the committee numerous times that I spend much of my time trying to overcome those neat little compartments.

Let us take, for example, the formulation of the child poverty delivery plan, which was published by Shona Robison. Behind that process was an extensive amount of cross-governmental dialogue, which I chaired, to ensure that the plan would get cross-government intervention and support. What came out of that dialogue was a collection of measures that addressed not only direct financial support to families, but employability support and wider holistic support, drawing on aspects of transport, childcare, early intervention, mental wellbeing and counselling for people who are economically inactive. As a result, the plan was much broader. A lot of cross-ministerial dialogue was involved to get to that point—probably more than should be needed, but it was necessary in order to get across all those compartments.

What we produced was a much broader and much more relevant intervention, which was much closer to the aspirations of the national performance framework than it would have been if we had just left the work to the compartment within Government that formally deals with poverty, which is Shona Robison’s responsibility. If we are going to tackle poverty, we need to work on education, health, transport and employability—it will not take place in a neat little compartment.

I explained to the committee the focus on the big themes of eradicating child poverty, economic recovery from Covid and net zero. Those big issues are all tackled on a cross-ministerial basis to give us some chance of ensuring that our interventions are commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

Lastly, Mr Johnson asked me about how to influence methods of achievement. This is where I come back to where I started in this answer, with the Scottish Leaders Forum. We have to turn the NPF into a practical reality, and we have to operate an empowered system. I do not think that we need to wait for Scottish leaders to say, “We shall do this”.

Some of the best outcomes that I have seen achieved have been through members of staff feeling confident that they are doing the right thing and delivering better solutions to members of the public. In so doing, they might not have been thinking, “I must do this to satisfy national outcome 5”, but are thinking about what is expected of them through the national outcomes.

I am not sure, but we might potentially be in danger of talking at cross-purposes. If a community is developing its approach to tackling child poverty, that will obviously be with the objective of eradicating child poverty, which is right at the heart of the national performance framework.

Liz Smith might have a point if the Government was saying, “You must do the following,” but the Government is not saying that. The Government is saying that we want, by our collective efforts, to eradicate child poverty and that the Government will put in place certain things, but that is not exclusive. If people think that other things can be done in their community to eradicate child poverty, by drawing on their resources and capacity, they should just get on with it. Let us hope that that makes a big impact on the child poverty levels in the country.

The degree of prescription is in the Government saying what type of country it is trying to create and inviting a variety of private, public and third sector organisations to work with us on that journey. We are not specifying, “You must do the following.”

In our performance approach with organisations, we put challenging demands on them in what we expect of them. The Government is not entitled to do that in relation to local government but, if you look at the reports from the Accounts Commission when it looks at individual local authorities, it has pretty bruising things to say to them on occasion and it may have bruising things to say to them in a comparative sense. There will be challenges to performance and we should be willing to consider those challenges to performance.

There are always different approaches that can be taken. We have to satisfy ourselves that organisations are operating with good will in a direction that will help us to achieve the national outcomes.

There is a mixed picture with regard to some requirements. For example, Parliament has put into law statutory targets that must be achieved in relation to child poverty, and the same thing exists for net zero. Parliament has legislated for certain elements, and it is just a matter of fact that they must be achieved. That means that we must have a degree of intensity that is commensurate with achieving those targets. However, that does not exist in all areas of policy—it cannot because, inevitably, we have to give some areas of activity more attention than others. The Government has made its choices—we are giving more attention to Covid recovery, child poverty and net zero.

The national performance framework helps us to have as clear a shape and concept as possible of what is going on, so that we can judge whether progress is being made. Daniel Johnson put to me—fairly—the issues about data. The national performance framework should enable us to compare the situation in the country today with the situation 12 months ago and to judge whether that is satisfactory. That is an important measure, because we need to be able to judge whether our society has advanced as much as we would have hoped that it would.

We have to consider that issue. Nobody wants the process to be vague—that is what we are trying to avoid. It has to be meaningful and discernible. The Government is making a genuine effort to construct a national performance framework that enables us to do that. However, the review that we will undertake, which will reflect the feedback of the committee and its inquiry, gives us an opportunity to judge whether there is more that we could do. You put to me an important point that we will consider.

The ownership of the NPF is clear: it is owned by the whole of society but is driven by the Government. That is the best way that I can express it.

The outcomes in the framework will not all be delivered by the Government. We need to successfully engage the business community, for example, on some of the questions as part of that. However, ultimately, the framework must be owned by the whole of society if we are to have any aspirations to deliver its contents. What then emerges is the degree of priority that the Government gives to the framework in its agenda and how we go about encouraging and motivating participation in the framework from a range of organisations.

As to the relevance of the national performance framework, it is more important today than ever. The principal areas of the policy agenda that the Government wishes to achieve are, in summary, an economic recovery from Covid, the eradication of child poverty, and addressing our commitments on net zero. Those three principal aspirations of Government policy will not be achieved in neat little compartments within Government. They will be spread across a range of the national outcomes that are part of the national performance framework. As a consequence, we must encourage a collaborative, non-compartmentalised approach to policy making to ensure that we achieve the Government’s policy objectives in a fashion that achieves the aspirations of the national performance framework.