Chamber and committees

Grand. Martin, do you have anything to add on bureaucracy?

Thank you very much.

You mentioned people, which is the key thing in all this. You talked earlier about delivering for the people of Scotland. Are people—the populace at large—utilised enough in some of the commissioning work, particularly specialist commissioning work that has an impact on their day-to-day lives?

I wonder whether David Livey or Duncan Thorp want to pick up on those questions.

I am surprised that your members have not come up with some of them. I wonder whether Duncan Thorp has anything.

Duncan, do you have anything to add?

Let me give you an example, and it might be something that you have come across. At certain points—although not so much recently—there has been a real aversion to putting fair work into contracts, with lawyers saying to folks, “We cannot really enforce this” or “We might be challenged on this.” There was also the European ruling—Rüffert v Land Niedersachsen. What is your feeling about aversion in that area and has it been overcome to the degree that you would like it to have been?

Basically, people are short-term bean counting instead of necessarily looking at the whole-life costs.

I will play devil’s advocate, given the answer that Pauline Gordon has just given us. As an MSP, I have heard on numerous occasions that a good piece of work has been done in commissioning, which has led to procurement, and then the procurement has become process driven. Folk say that the accountants and solicitors are more in the driving seat than the folks who actually know what is required on the front line. Is that still a difficulty that is encountered regularly?

It is a pity that George Adam is not here, because he would without a doubt have been interested in those Paisley stories.

We have heard from others—and, indeed, from the witnesses here today—about bureaucracies and that, sometimes, the system is still process driven. The legislation itself is good, but when it comes to implementation, things can still be process driven. We have also heard that the tender documents, the putting together of the contract and the commissioning can be good but, when the lawyers and the accountants get a hold of it all, everything changes. What is your experience of some of the risk-averse situations that come into play when, say, lawyers and accountants get a hold of all of this? That question is for Lindsey Millen.