Chamber and committees

You used the phrase “open system”. That sounds more like a description of an attitude or an ethos for the organisations than something that we would put in legislation, because it is quite difficult to say, “There will be an open system.” For example, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society talks about taking on board the views of different groups. That suggests that the groups would not necessarily be on the board or the committee, but there would be a listening attitude.

It is helpful to have that clarified, as I was slightly confused. That is fine.

Can you expand on your thinking with regard to only one body making awards? As an outsider—I am new to the committee and my background is not in education—I think that it looks like as much of a natural monopoly as, say, supplying water. In other words, there is no point in competition. What is your feeling about the good of competition in this respect?

I will continue on the theme of representation and how people’s voices are heard. In the material that we have received, we have the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland saying that children should be more involved, the Educational Institute of Scotland saying that there should be a majority of teachers and lecturers on some of the bodies, and employers saying that they want to be involved. It just seems endless. You must have had some experience of that when you were doing your work and listening to people. Before we discuss what is going to happen, will you tell us a little about how you managed to listen to all those voices?

Could you keep your remarks fairly brief? There would be a cost to that, and I think that that is quite a political issue.

I presume that the alternative would be to make further cuts in other expenditure.

Okay. That was a bonus question that I had not really planned.

Mr Lonsdale, in your submission you say that you would like

“to reduce the cost of running the government”,

as

“this would ease the pressure on the funding of other services”.

Are there risks in reducing the level of government? We have seen examples—the major recent one was Grenfell—of what happens when there is a lack of oversight and regulation and the Government is not involved enough. Are there risks around health and safety in cutting the level of government?

I will not ask how much you spent. [Laughter.]

Okay. Ms Manson, thanks for your submission, too. One of your themes seems to be the need to reduce business rates—non-domestic rates. Have you any suggestions for how we should fund that?

Glasgow has some very good examples of businesses in the hospitality sector that are expanding and seem to be doing very well.

The convener touched on the idea of longer-term planning and the medium-term financial strategy. I was struck by a line in Mr Robinson’s submission that says:

“More will be known following the UK budget expected on 30 October, at which point the Scottish Government must look to see how sustainable its current plans are”.

That suggests that we cannot plan for the future, because, even for the coming year, we are having to wait until 30 October in order to see what the scenario is. The committee has been pushing for more long-term planning from the Scottish Government. Is that unrealistic?