Chamber and committees

Professor Tominey, should we be setting targets at all? Would it be better if we did not, and instead just did good work?

I will explore the other side of Marie McNair’s question. Seeing as Professor Patrick was speaking about that, perhaps she could start.

We are talking about something like 54,000 low-income children who are not getting universal credit. However, the other angle is that some who are not in low-income households—we have been given a figure of 241,000—are in receipt of universal credit and the Scottish child payment. It is obviously nice to give people money, but is that a good use of funding?

We have had a lot of good input already. Mention has been made of the commissioners that we are not looking at, which include the likes of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, the Auditor General and the relevant bodies for prisons and constabulary. Have we made a mistake in just concentrating on the ones that are supported by Parliament? Should we have been looking at the wider landscape?

Those bodies—or some of them, at least—are seen as being very independent.

One school of thought is that everybody should have a commissioner—I am being half serious—and that the Parliament should make a plan to set them all up. We would have a women’s commissioner, an animal rights commissioner and so on, to cover absolutely everything. Would that be feasible?

I am seeking reassurance that there is a balance between things being recorded as they should be and the private space for ideas.

I am reassured from what you are saying that things are improving, because we have felt in the past that there has not been a great understanding. If things are improving, that is positive.

I will move on. I have been thinking for a while that it would be good to have just one body—the obvious one would be the Scottish Human Rights Commission—and to plug lots of other things into it, although I accept that that would probably not be appropriate for some commissioners, such as the Scottish Information Commissioner. What you have said today has strengthened my thinking on that, but what would be the disadvantages of that approach? Why would it not work, or why could it not work, to put most of the commissioners into the Scottish Human Rights Commission?

We have mentioned WhatsApp messages and I believe that a review of policy in that area is going on. Can you assure us that it is still possible for a minister, a cabinet secretary or the First Minister to engage in a private conversation, brainstorming or whatever, with civil servants as appropriate? I think that that used to happen on WhatsApp and it was seen as just sharing ideas sometimes. That now seems to have been clamped down on. Is there still space, as I think there should be, for a bit of interaction that is off the record?

Permanent secretary, I understand that on 16 April you met the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee at Westminster. Do you think that there is a good understanding at Westminster generally, and certainly among civil servants, of Scotland and our particular situation?