Chamber and committees

I notice that the corporate plan and the delivery plan contain several key performance indicators relating to customer satisfaction. You mentioned the citizens survey. The KPIs relate to the satisfaction of businesses rather than to that of the wider group of citizens. The citizens survey showed that the satisfaction score had fallen from 91.1 per cent in October 2022 to 87.8 per cent in March 2023. Is there a reason why you have a KPI only for businesses and not for that wider group of people?

Good morning. I will start with some questions on the staffing projections that you mentioned in your opening statement and, in particular, what they mean for your current workforce.

You said that the size of the workforce is expected to fall by 10 per cent by 2027, despite the big challenges of the backlog of work. However, it is fair to say that it has not been it clear to the committee—and, therefore, I assume, to your staff—what your projected fall in workforce means for how many people will carry out which roles.

At the previous evidence session, we commented that your corporate plan had lots of diagrams of big people and little people in each department but no numbers to go with those graphics. You said that, in your most recent delivery plan, you do not project any reduction in staffing until 2025-26, so how will that 10 per cent reduction be achieved by 2027? Are you and, therefore, your staff any clearer about what it means for the exact size of the teams that carry out the different tasks?

You touched on the impact of automation and artificial intelligence on staff numbers. What assessment have you done of the potential impact of AI on service delivery? To what extent is it likely to impact on staffing numbers? I presume that you are carrying out that work at the moment and that its full potential has not yet been determined.

We could have a long debate about the term “have regard to” in Scots law. How do you, as a body, avoid this being a tick-box exercise?

Good morning to the panel. The 2020 act creates the consumer duty, which is, obviously, a duty on public bodies to have regard to the impact of their strategic decisions on consumers. To date, ministers have not designated the public bodies, although they have consulted on the list. Will you update the committee on the development of the consumer duty and the likely timescale for its implementation and say a bit more about your role in overseeing it?

Is that guidance likely to be statutory?

Okay. You have a statutory duty to provide that guidance, but I am wondering how enforceable the guidance will be. There is a difference there.

Will you report on the implementation of that duty? I am not suggesting that you name and shame people who fail to implement it, but will you report on how effective it is, because, presumably, that will be one way to encourage stronger enforcement?

The figures that I quoted from the trade unions showed that, in the seven years to 2021, turnover for those companies has gone from £95 million to £2.594 billion, and 3,100 jobs have been created in Scotland. That is a lot of money for the wind farm companies and not a lot of jobs. What will we do differently in Scotland to make sure that we actually get those jobs? Will the Government have a target? Of course, ScotWind will create jobs, but will it create the potential that we believe that it can and should? Will we have a very clear target for the number of renewables jobs that will come from ScotWind?

You should do that, because it is an opportunity for growth. However, there is deep concern that we will not meet the potential, particularly if we do not even know what proportion of the supply chain jobs will actually come to Scotland, and that we will make the same mistakes that we have made in the past—for example, none of the wind turbines that pepper the landscape in my region were built in Scotland. We need to ensure that we do not make the same mistake with ScotWind. It is slightly concerning that we are not able to set a target to measure the proportion of supply chain jobs that will come to Scottish companies.

Do I have time to pivot to a completely different subject, convener?