Chamber and committees

Dr Foster, does the workload of ministers mean that they cannot keep their eye constantly on the ball? Does that have an impact on the quality of decisions, and does it mean that some of the decisions are, in effect, outsourced because they have to rely on other people to have a full grasp of the detail?

Before you come in, I note that you touched on workload earlier. Obviously, ministers can have a dozen meetings a day. They have to respond to questions in the chamber, formulate policy and speak in debates. They are often pressed to deliver—or indeed are proactive in delivering—statements. They might have a constituency, and they probably have a home and family life. How do they manage to balance effective decision making with those pressures?

Finally, there is the 24-hour news cycle and pressure from ministers to make announcements. They want to be seen to be successful by their own political party as well as the wider public; given that they have the life expectancy of a Hibs or Chelsea manager, you can understand why they want to make an impact right away.

If we are thinking about how we achieve significant long-term outcomes, it all comes back to the same issue of churn and stability in the relationship between the civil service and ministers. Ministers often come up with wonderful ideas that might not be wonderful when it comes to implementation, and they might well long since have moved on by the time that the ideas are actually implemented.

That phrase “monopoly of wisdom” is interesting. We have talked about generalism versus specialism in the civil service but, of course, ministers are almost all generalists. Some of them are appointed to portfolios that they have no understanding of and in which they had no real interest before they were appointed. Indeed, they might rather have been offered a completely different portfolio. That means that they are even more reliant on special advisers and their civil servants.

Given that that situation is unlikely to change and that all Governments will continue to promote generalists, how can we enhance decision making in that context?

That is interesting. They often share the fate of their ministers, so, if the minister does well, they will do well and, if the minister does not do well, they will not do particularly well, although they are not always tied to the minister in that way. They try to help ministers to formulate and deliver policy, so I can understand your view, but the role benefits the governing party and it is politicised, so I wonder whether special advisers have an impact on the access of civil servants to ministers. Are they a kind of Martin Bormann-type character who stands at the door and prevents others, even senior civil servants, from getting to the minister when they might need to?

The next question is from Ross Greer.

Okay. Douglas Lumsden will ask the next question.

Because the discussion is so fascinating, I am in danger of being drawn into it to the exclusion of my colleagues, so I will just touch on one more thing before I move on and let colleagues in.

Paul, in Scottish Engineering’s written submission, when asked about what effective decision making by the Scottish Government looks like and how we can learn from what has worked well and what has worked not so well, you said that what has worked well is the aerospace response group,

“as a response to the significant pandemic impact on Scotland’s aerospace sector”,

and that what has not worked well is the

“Reaction to the current skills crisis”.

Will you touch on why the aerospace response group worked well and why the reaction to the current skills crisis has not?

Yes, you say in your submission that open-mindedness is one of the behaviours or criteria that are necessary in relation to decision making. Auchrannie in my constituency is owned by its employees and it has 170 workers, so it is not always small companies that are owned by their employees. People sometimes think that employee ownership is very small scale, but it can be much larger and can even encompass sectors that people do not automatically think of.

Under our second item, we are continuing our inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making. Today, we will take evidence from two panels of witnesses.

For the first evidence session, we will hear from Alex Thomas, programme director at the Institute for Government, and Dr Helen Foster of Ulster University. I welcome both of them to the meeting.

I intend to allow up to 75 minutes for this evidence session. We will move straight to questions. I will open with some questions; committee colleagues will then contribute.

In relation to the Tolley inquiry into the former Prime Minister, The Sunday Times editorial two days ago said:

“The civil service ... is one of the great institutions of state. Its effectiveness rests on its neutrality. That this is now in question reflects badly on ministers as well as officials. Civil servants must provide candid advice without fear of reprisal. But ministers must be able to demand professionalism and results from their officials without fear of a grievance claim.”

Obviously, that referred to Westminster, but is it the same here?