Chamber and committees

As I am no longer finance secretary, perhaps I could talk about my own portfolio area of the economy. Our economy work all goes back to the national performance framework. That is clearly and starkly included in the decision making that we go through. The First Minister has, in essence, picked four top priorities, one of which is economic growth, but that growth has to be achieved in the spirit of the wellbeing economy. We are not pursuing economic growth to the neglect of all the other outcomes, and that is quite visible in the decisions that we are making.

I will take one of the bills that is included in the programme for government this year as an example—the community wealth building bill. The point is that we are not pursuing economic growth and prosperity as an end in itself; it all has to be part of delivering the national performance framework outcomes, including those on sustainability, the environment, delivering more housing and supporting communities and their health and wellbeing. That is an example where the NPF is embedded in our economy work.

I do not quite follow that question. Could you just clarify what you mean?

The national performance framework is designed to enjoy as much consensus as possible. If we want it to be something that is owned nationally, we have to maximise consensus so that people cannot disagree with it. Except for climate change deniers, for example—to go back to Ross Greer’s point—people do not disagree with it.

The national performance framework is a vision that we want to deliver now and for generations to come, but it sets out the end destination that we want to get to, and it cannot replace the political day-to-day decision making that is required. For example, the committee has just heard the finance secretary talking about winter fuel payments. With regard to the choices in and around that, we want to reduce poverty, but there are a number of different ways to do that. There is the Scottish child payment, and there is building good, affordable homes.

John Mason mentioned roads; in rural areas, roads are part of reducing poverty, because if people cannot get to work or if it costs them a fortune to get to healthcare facilities, that exacerbates poverty. Fuel bills in rural areas are a massive driver of poverty, and that is linked to transport.

The national performance framework sets out, and reminds us constantly of, what we want Scotland to be. However, we still have to take the difficult choices, which can sometimes be between good and better, not good and bad.

This may also be an opportunity to say something about the work to support policy officials who give the Government advice. Policy officials are trained on the national performance framework, and it is promoted to the policy advisers who are tasked with the job of giving ministers advice about what to do or what not to do.

More recently, as of May, the First Minister has been really clear that he wants there to be a focus on strategy and delivery. A bit of restructuring has been going on. People in the strategy directorate and the performance, delivery and resilience directorate are tasked with ensuring that we meet our aims, and they now own the national performance framework. In all the work that they do internally on monitoring delivery and strategy, they must be cognisant of the national performance framework, which provides the ultimate direction of travel.

There is definitely a lot more stick with the work that John Swinney, as the First Minister, has done in government during the early months of his tenure. I talked about restructuring. Under his leadership, the delivery function has been reformed so that delivery is measured and so that we ensure that we do what we say we are going to do. That is why this year’s programme for government is a lot punchier, because it is a lot easier to monitor progress against fewer hard-hitting actions than it is to do that against lots of nice actions that no one could disagree with.

The programme for government has a tight focus primarily because John Swinney places such weight on monitoring delivery—he has tasked a team in the Government with focusing almost entirely on delivery. The same team owns the national performance framework. The rigidity around measuring progress will also be applied to how our actions compare with the ambitions that have been set out in the national performance framework.

That tension is inherent in any document that is owned by all of Scotland. There is no way that only the Government can achieve any of the aims that are set out in the national performance framework; that would be the case only in a structure that was not a democracy. In a democracy, there is agency and many different public sector organisations have responsibility, as well as private sector organisations, which we always seem to forget.

I will give you a small example. The more that fair work principles are embedded in private sector organisations, the more likely it will be that people are paid a fair wage and that their wellbeing is considered, and the more likely it will be that we reduce poverty. That is a responsibility for the private sector. In a document such as the national performance framework, which is widely owned, it is inherent that there will be tensions. That is why I am open to the committee’s views on accountability and implementation. If too narrow an approach is taken that does not hold all of Scotland responsible for achieving the aims, we may miss the point of the national performance framework being a national document.

Stop me if I am getting this wrong, but I assume that you are specifically referring not just to the creation of the wellbeing economy and fair work outcome, but to the overarching purpose of the national performance framework.

I have obviously not been around for the past two years, but on the progress that has been made, I absolutely refute the notion that there is a delivery gap. Scotland’s productivity has grown at an average annual rate of 1 per cent, compared with the UK average of 0.4 per cent. You cannot dispute those figures—they are from the Office for National Statistics.

NSET is our north star. It is clear about how we improve our economic factors according to the international average. That remains our focus, and I think that there is a lot to celebrate in the Scottish economy. I do not propose to do much more writing; I propose to do as much delivery and implementation as possible.

I would be really concerned if we reduced the NSET to just one budget line—

I always engage constructively with Audit Scotland reports. I find them very useful in terms of highlighting where more progress needs to be made—that includes the relevant report. My problem is with your question and not with the Audit Scotland report.

As I said, Audit Scotland often shines a light on different areas in which we need to make more progress. However, I disagree fundamentally with your proposition that you should reduce NSET to a budget line.