Chamber and committees

Do you think that, when the Scottish Government communicates with organisations that are looking for funding, it does so in as straightforward manner as it should? For example, one of my constituency organisations had a significant funding bid turned down and, when it asked why, it was told that the fund was heavily oversubscribed. That might have been true, but does that mean that the application was excellent but others were better? Was it just a poor application, or would it not have been an effective use of resources? It seems that organisations are not really told that. They might be told it on some occasions, but certainly on that occasion the organisation was not really told why it did not get the funding other than the fact that that was the size of the pot, this was the number of bids, and it was just not among the lucky ones that were selected. Do you think that such feedback could be improved?

Do you not think that the national performance framework has a role to play in that?

Another argument between siloed and horizontal working is accountability, which Mark Taylor talked about. Who ultimately is accountable when people are working across departments?

There are currently 8 million empty houses in Japan, and mid-range economic countries such as Bulgaria and other eastern European countries have huge out-migration, as well as massively falling birth rates, and they do not have the strong economies that we have, in relative terms.

There is an issue that I want to ask about before I bring in John Mason. When we discuss such matters, we keep talking about 16 to 64-year-olds. Why do we do that, given that the pension age is going to change and will be well above 65 for the bulk of the period that we are talking about?

In paragraph 2.8, on page 16, you say that Scotland has a “projected net annual inflow” of about 19,000 people and that about 9,000 of those people will be from the rest of the UK. Over the months and years, I have said that a lot of the people who leave Scotland tend to be highly productive and educated people in their 20s and 30s and that a lot of the people who come from the UK retire to Argyll and Bute or to Arran, in my constituency, where they have a nice view over the Clyde to Skelmorlie and West Kilbride.

Overall economic performance will be impacted not just by the number of migrants. That goes back to the OECD’s point about intergenerational differences. Do you intend to take such issues into account more in the future?

Thanks very much for that. I certainly feel that the committee has a role to challenge, certainly in our scrutiny function, so that is very much something that I would agree with.

I do not know how in-depth your individual experiences are but, in your experience of the civil service, do civil servants feel that they can challenge ministers? Clearly, individual relationships make a huge difference, and there will be different personalities and leadership styles. We are not trying to say that people should be in a certain box. Do you think that there is an ability to talk truth to power? Do you think that it is limited? Do you think that there should be more of that? What is the relationship of civil servants with that?

I call Douglas Lumsden, to be followed by Liz Smith.

Good morning, and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is an evidence session on our inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making. Before I welcome our witnesses, I thank the civil servants who met us last Tuesday and shared with us their experiences of decision making in the Government. We will publish a summary of the discussions on our website in due course.

I welcome to the meeting Mark Taylor, audit director, Audit Scotland; Ben Thurman, senior policy and development officer, Carnegie UK; and James Black, fellow, Fraser of Allander Institute. Good morning, gentlemen. I will move straight to questions. I want this morning’s meeting to be free flowing. We have already taken huge amounts of evidence from former ministers and civil servants and from our adviser, Professor Cairney, so I will ask some opening questions and I want you to feel able to contribute as much or as little as you wish in response to them.

In the meeting with civil servants, there was an emphasis on key areas, such as the need for strong ministerial leadership; clarity of purpose; the capacity and capability of departments to deliver; civil servants not being micromanaged and having space to work; and clear lines of accountability. All those areas might seem pretty obvious, but do you feel that those aims are delivered in practice—in part or, perhaps, fully? Who would like to kick off?

We move to questions from Ross Greer, to be followed by Douglas Lumsden.

It is on page 19.