Chamber and committees

Okay. That is optimistic.

Elaine Lorimer, you want to come in on that, but I also want to ask you a different question. You have twice mentioned that legislation required you to do certain things. Do we need legislation in this space to help organisations to work together—or whatever else—better?

We might come back to some of those points around working with other bodies later, but I am keen to bring other people in at this stage.

Garry McEwan, your organisation is also quite a new one, in a sense, and you have been looking at your structures. Will you say something about that?

Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The first item on our agenda is a roundtable discussion on the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme. We have eight witnesses.

I welcome to the meeting Garry McEwan, director of corporate services, Food Standards Scotland; Stuart MacQuarrie, deputy director business services and transformation, NatureScot; David Page, deputy chief officer, Police Scotland; Chris Kerr, registration and policy director, Registers of Scotland; Elaine Lorimer, chief executive, Revenue Scotland; Karen Watt, chief executive, Scottish Funding Council; Anthony Daye, director of finance and corporate resources, South of Scotland Enterprise; and Kerry Twyman, director of finance and corporate services, Transport Scotland.

I thank all those who made written submissions, which we have been reading.

When you speak, you do not need to press any buttons; the gentleman up in the corner handles all the sound for us. We have around 90 minutes for the session and the plan is for it to be a free-flowing roundtable discussion rather than a more formal system. If either a witness or a committee member would like to come in, they should indicate that to me and the clerks and we will try and bring you in. We have not split the session into themes but, if a particular theme comes up, it would be good to stick with it for a little while before we move on to something else. We want the session to be free flowing but there are 15 of us around the table and so we do not want long speeches from any of the committee members or anyone else.

I will start with Police Scotland. Your paper was quite positive about the reform that you have already seen in the police force. You are welcome to say a little bit about who you are and what your role is, as well as sharing a few points about what you feel has been positive as well as any challenges that you have faced.

That is very helpful. Some of that was quite provocative, so members will come in on some of it.

Thank you. I will bring in Kerry Twyman. I am sorry to have kept you waiting.

You said that your structure is unique—at least among the bodies around the table. Would you recommend that more organisations have that structure, or fewer?

Sticking with the IT theme, I will bring in Elaine Lorimer.

Does that suggest that there are too many public agencies?

Okay—I did not want to take us off on too much of a tangent; I was simply struck by the point about the IT and the number of bodies.

Everyone wants to come in now—that is what happens halfway through the session. I will take Stuart MacQuarrie, Garry McEwan and Karen Watt first, on the IT question, and then I will come to Ross Greer, who has been waiting patiently in the background.