Chamber and committees

Hello. Earth calling Keith.

I thought that you were going to say that it was your final, final, final question. [Laughter.]

It is a question of priorities when resources are limited, to be perfectly honest with you.

You talked about looking at such things again. When the committee was in Estonia a couple of weeks ago, we heard that the Estonian Government is looking at zero-based budgeting. Is that something that the Scottish Government would be looking at, for example? Incidentally, Jimmy Carter famously implemented that in the United States, way back in the 1970s.

Thank you for that opening statement. We will probably have a wide-ranging discussion today. As you will know, we have taken a lot of evidence in recent weeks about what other people believe the approach should be as we move forward. Of course, to discuss that, we have to look at where we are at the moment and you have pointed out the challenges that we face.

Last week, we took evidence from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. One of its concerns is that the Scottish Government’s understandable approach to eradicating child poverty is perhaps a bit two-dimensional. For example, it focuses on benefits. COSLA has said that the Scottish Government having increased benefits by £984 million over what the UK would have provided in the current year has not necessarily helped all the people in poverty that it should. COSLA says:

“The opportunity cost of these decisions needs to be considered.”

It goes on to say that

“economic development and employability services which help to create jobs and support people facing barriers to the labour market … and sustain work in fairly paid jobs”

have taken a knock because less money is available for employability funding. It has also said that such funding would help with

“reducing dependence on the welfare system”

and with providing more

“affordable housing supporting people out of poverty, reducing homelessness and improving health and education outcomes.”

It has also suggested that putting that £984 million in local government, for example, could have provided 15,000 to 20,000 additional jobs.

On the same issue, Professor Heald said that it is not progressive to invest in benefits if doing so impacts on the services that go to the poorest people.

Yesterday, I went with Tom Arthur to a project in my constituency that looks at providing employability services for parents. Over the past seven years, It has provided some 300 part-time jobs of around 20 hours a week and has got people into the labour market who had never been in it before or who might have had to take years out, due to having had children. Such projects underpin the Government’s anti-poverty strategy, yet the project says that it is threatened by the fact that the Government says that it will just increase benefits, meaning that money will no longer be available to provide the services.

Even in schools, for example, educational psychologists and campus cops cannot be afforded by local government because the money is going to another area of spending. We realise that the budget is fairly limited and fixed, and that there is not great room for manoeuvre, but it is about choices.

That is a long-winded way of saying what I asked at the beginning, which is, what studies has the Government made of the opportunity cost of spending money on straightforward benefits, for example, rather than on supporting local government services?

I agree that multiyear funding would definitely make a significant improvement.

Local government also asks for flexibility. For example, the Government has a fairly rigid policy on teacher numbers, although one or two local authorities are railing against it. The local authority in my area has 12.7 pupils per teacher, compared with the Scottish average of 13.2, but the average is 18 in England. The issue is that outcomes have not really improved relative to the amount of money that has gone into that service. Having to maintain high levels of teacher numbers means that other services that support a child’s psychology, such as classroom assistants, are having to be reduced. I know that the teaching unions might not be too happy about this, because they are looking for even more teachers despite the falling pupil numbers, but would it not be better to give local authorities more flexibility in how they spend the resources that they have, which would produce better outcomes? That is what COSLA has said—you will know that, because you have spoken to it yourself.

The next item on our agenda is the Scottish Government’s proposed national outcomes, which will form part of the national performance framework. I welcome to the meeting Kate Forbes, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic, who is joining us remotely from Shetland. The cabinet secretary is accompanied by Scottish Government officials Keith McDonald, who is unit head in the strategy division, and Katie Allison, who is analytical unit head in the central analysis division. I welcome you all to the meeting and invite the Deputy First Minister to make a short opening statement.

I thank the Deputy First Minister for attending from Shetland, and I also thank the officials. Shetland is not as beautiful as Arran, which is in my constituency, but it certainly seems a lot easier to get to. That concludes our scrutiny of the national outcomes. We will report on our views and recommendations to the Scottish Government in November.

I ask committee members who are able to do so to stay behind for an informal discussion with University of Dundee students and staff about our work and to answer any questions about the session that they observed today with the cabinet secretary.

Ground control to Major Tom.

Okay. I have questions on capital, public sector reform and digitalisation, which I will not be able to ask unless colleagues do, because of time, so I sympathise with you.

Jamie Halcro Johnston is next, to be followed by John Mason.

Aw, what a wonderful world that will be—motherhood and apple pie all round.

I have one or two more questions, just to finish off. We need a focus on clear and measurable milestones to identify tangible improvements but, in our 2022 report on the national performance framework, we noted that, five years after the previous review, a number of NPF indicators had no data. What guarantees do we have this time that all indicators will provide data so that we can measure progress from the start?