Chamber and committees

I thank you for spending a big chunk of your evening with us; we realise that it is about half past 10 over in New Zealand. I apologise for the difficulties that we had. I am not sure what end they were on, but it was great that you soldiered on throughout. We really appreciate it.

At future meetings, the committee will continue taking evidence on effective Scottish Government decision making, and I certainly hope that we can engage with you again in the future.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting.

Thank you very much for that introduction. I do not know whether colleagues heard everything that you said, but we will certainly ask questions and probe.

I will kick off before I invite colleagues around the table to ask questions. I want to go back to the start of the process regarding the Public Service Act 2020, which followed on from another act 32 years previously. Why was it felt that legislation was needed in order to try to change the culture and behaviour in New Zealand?

In effect, the process helps best practice to be inculcated across the entire Government. The interim evaluation that was commissioned in late 2020 touched on a number of points, one of which was the fast-paced change of policy work and the difficulties of changing entrenched behaviours. What kind of entrenched behaviours need to be changed in New Zealand?

That resonates, because we have some of those issues in Scotland. Our paper says:

“capacity issues and speed of decision making makes prioritisation and following those processes challenging. It also favours decision-making focussed on firefighting rather than addressing longer term challenges and squeezes the time for data analysis and identification of data gaps at the start of policy development.”

How is your new process in New Zealand able to overcome that long-term difficulty, which many Administrations face?

That concludes questions from colleagues. I have just one more question to finish off. There are a number of similarities between Scotland and New Zealand, in terms of parliamentary structure. Obviously, the populations are not too different.

You have 120 members and we have 129. You have been a unicameral Parliament since 1951 and we are a unicameral Parliament. You have select committees and we have committees, and your committees interrogate policy and ministers as ours do. How effective do you feel that the select committee structure is in doing that, and if you could put in place one change to make the process more effective—if you believe that a change is necessary—what would it be?

I am the very handsome and charismatic one. [Laughter.]

I notice that there is a head of the policy profession who is responsible for improving the policy system—its capabilities, processes and standards—and helping to improve the outcomes that they contribute to, including higher quality policy advice, better Government decisions and better outcomes for people in New Zealand. Our briefing on the Policy Project goes on to say that

“a sample of policy advice papers is assessed by a panel”.

Do you have an example of how that has worked in practice? How do you ensure objectivity, as opposed to subjectivity, in that process?

That is great. Thank you.

Yes, we can. I apologise. I think that you were cut off when you were responding to John Mason.

We were hoping that the evidence session would only go on until 10.10, but three members have yet to speak and we have lost more than 20 minutes because of interruptions. Would it be possible to extend our session a wee bit?

I will have to suspend the session as we have lost the connection. I apologise, John.