Chamber and committees

I am a great believer in taking a long-term view of things, rather than short-term views. I have looked at your website: you have done a couple of reports on the impact of the cost of energy. That is a crowded space—so many people are commenting on the cost of living and the price of energy. Like my colleague Gordon MacDonald, I looked on Google. I looked up “prepayment meters Scotland” and, under that, I got Ofgem, Citizens Advice, MoneySuperMarket, the Enfield Poverty and Inequality Commission and Which? magazine, which comes in to me every month. It seems to be an incredibly crowded space. Perhaps I should say that I have a prepayment meter; it is a good thing. Prepayment meters help people budget when they are on limited incomes, which is why I started with it. I appreciate that you have been pushing for them to be dealt with more fairly so that people do not pay more, but my colleague Anne McLaughlin and so many other people are in that space. I am struggling to see what you add to that.

As I understand it, you are working on having a performance measurement framework that we will see in the autumn. Is that the case? Really, that will be when we can start measuring how you are doing. Is that fair?

Yes. On improving efficiency, in one sense, if the budget is limited and councils and health boards have to work within a restricted budget, does that not force efficiency?

You are okay.

We might come back to that and explore it a bit more.

Ms Payne, Reform Scotland’s evidence is quite strong in pushing that decisions should be made at local levels. Could you comment on some of that?

I thank all our witnesses. Is there anything that we have not touched on that you feel we should have asked you about, or anything that you wanted to say that you have not had the opportunity to say?

No? You are all looking quite happy, which is good.

Thank you all very much indeed. I found that fascinating and helpful. This has been about scene-setting for the inquiry. At our next meeting, we will continue to take evidence on the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme.

That concludes the public part of today’s meeting. The next item on our agenda, which will be discussed in private, is consideration of our work programme.

I thank the committee for my appointment, and I look forward to continuing to work with you all. I also thank Michael Marra for stepping in to convene over the past few weeks as deputy convener. I hope that Kenneth Gibson will be able to rejoin us before too long.

Today, we start taking oral evidence on our inquiry into the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme. We will hear from Antony Clark, executive director at Audit Scotland; Professor John Connolly, head of the department of social sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University; and Alison Payne, research director at Reform Scotland. We had also hoped to have Dave Moxham from the Scottish Trades Union Congress, but he is unable to be with us today. We may be able to get him here on a future occasion, and he has submitted evidence that we might refer to. I welcome you all to the meeting. We intend to allow about 90 minutes for the session. If witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate to the clerks or me and we will call you in. We have written submissions from you all, I think, so we will move straight to questions.

I will start by asking one or two questions. My first question is based on something that the previous Deputy First Minister John Swinney said. He said that he was very much leaving the idea of reform up to individual public bodies rather than trying to drive it from the centre. What are your thoughts on whether we can do that, whether we should do that or whether there needs to be at least some driving from the centre? Mr Clark, I will start with you.

I was coming to you next anyway, Professor Connolly—Mr Clark has led me to where I was going anyway—because I read your paper on the co-production of health and social care services, which was interesting. A lot has been mentioned that we will explore later, as we go along—we are scene setting today—but, on the specific issue, perhaps individual organisations will be efficient if we press their budget, but would they work with other organisations? Health and social care is an example but, without central pressure, would organisations look at more joint working and co-production?

You got short answers to that question, Liz.

Michelle Thomson is next. Thank you for being patient and waiting until the end.

I feel that we are getting more questions than answers here. Ms Payne, do you want to come in on the collaboration idea?