Chamber and committees

Professor Bean made some interesting comments in reference to the impending meeting with the MPC and what is focusing minds on inflation and, specifically, its causes. How easy is it to use economic data to home in on the cost-push factors in inflation and on demand-led inflation? In previous meetings on the economy, people have spoken to us about cost-push inflation being very strong.

That is very interesting. In Scotland, there has been a significant problem in specific sectors such as hospitality and tourism, so I was interested in how such issues are measured.

My final questions are about the chancellor’s budget. He made the decision to be a bit more demand led—in other words, he wanted to ensure that public spending was at a higher level than it might have been—and to increase some taxes. Has the budget led to some increase in the demand side of the economy? Is it having an impact on inflationary pressure?

Would it be correct to assume, therefore, that, because of some of the blockages in the system that you mentioned earlier—specifically, the tightness in the labour market and employers not being able to fill some of the available jobs—your understanding is that the expectation factor may be increasing?

I have just one question. Quite a few of the witnesses who have appeared before this committee have indicated that they think that consumer behaviour has changed quite markedly under Covid. Do you have any way of estimating whether that change is likely to be permanent?

Are there implications for savings patterns as well?

That raises an interesting question about how appropriate it is to set national targets. If a Government has made commitments on specific targets—we have all been guilty of talking in terms of targets—does that take away from the ability to home in on other areas of measurement and improvement that might deliver aspects of what the Christie commission recommended?

The argument is really interesting. During our evidence session on 9 November, we discussed with Professor Mitchell and the Auditor General the question of trust. These days—this is not a party-political point—trust in politics is not easily found, yet the public want to have a level of trust in the people who deliver their public services, whether that is education, health, transport or whatever it might be. Politics is not in a good place at the moment—partly because of the Covid situation, which is obviously nobody’s fault at all—and it is hard to find the same degree of trust as we previously had in systems and, dare I say, in politicians.

At the core of the debate is the extent to which we can improve the level of trust if the lines of accountability are proven to be pretty watertight and if people understand why decisions have been made and what they can do to ensure that those decisions are the right ones for delivering their public services. Do we need to foster that debate?

I will ask questions about the answers that Mr Swinney just provided to the convener. I will build on a comment that Professor James Mitchell made at the committee’s meeting on 9 November. He was clear that there was a lot of good will across the political spectrum for the Christie commission but, 10 years on, we are still asking why it has not all come together. Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, said in that evidence session that leadership in the public sector is in some cases not held sufficiently accountable for its decisions. Will you comment on that?

If those accountability mechanisms are in place, are they working sufficiently well? Do some processes of accountability need to be reformed?

One thing that struck me during the first wave of Covid was how magnificently well our hospitals responded to the intense pressure that was on them. I heard more than once that that was down to the fact that doctors and nurses were taking the front-line decisions about how the Covid wards had to be organised, rather than some of the people who are normally associated with the administration of health services. That is particularly relevant to the running of Scotland. To what extent do we need to move towards a system of accountability that is more in the hands of the people who run the front-line services, rather than those of the people who administer services?