Chamber and committees

You said that it would not be advisable for us to move to a model of having a single college for Glasgow. At the moment, there are multiple colleges in Glasgow. Should all three colleges in Glasgow provide every course, or should we not recognise that, in an area where there are multiple colleges that a young person or student could realistically commute to, it would be more effective to have centres of specialism, whereby some colleges could develop a depth of expertise in certain areas?

Should the bill include reporting provisions? I completely agree that having blunt national targets could undermine the more nuanced approach that is needed in different communities, but it is important to ensure that there is still a national focus and that there are requirements for Government to report to Parliament, even if that report is, as you indicated, essentially a consolidation of the efforts and outcomes of a range of other organisations. Would you be open to having reporting requirements? It would be a mistake to put too much specific detail into the bill, but could there be mechanisms or ministerial powers to create reporting frameworks, so that we have something that allows for effective national scrutiny five, 10 or 15 years from now?

My question follows on quite neatly from that point, because I am interested in how we are actually going to measure success and what the outcomes will look like.

You mentioned the census. It was interesting that the census indicated two directions of travel. On one hand, in places such as Glasgow there is significant growth in the number of children being educated through the medium of Gaelic, so there is a growth in the number of people who are speaking Gaelic between 9 and 3 on school days. Some, but not all, of them will speak it when they go home, but they certainly will not speak it when they go to the shops or the youth club or when they are on the bus or are applying for a job.

However, as you pointed out, the last remaining majority Gaelic-speaking communities are now no longer majority Gaelic speaking, which means that how we measure success will be different across the country. What do you see as being the key measures of success from the Government’s perspective?

I would like to go back to Michael Marra’s question about in-year budget savings and the path to balance. The permanent secretary mentioned the 2024-25 budget-setting process as being painful, which is certainly my recollection of it from the position that we were in at that point. What we ended up with was a prudent budget but, inevitably, it still carries pressure. That is inevitable every year, particularly given that public sector pay negotiations are not in sequence with the budget, so there is always a level of uncertainty. The Government will have to go through a similar process this year with the path to balance. The amount varies each year, but there is a path-to-balance process every year.

Part of my frustration with the path-to-balance processes that I was involved in was the length of time that it often took to make decisions that everybody seemed to agree were inevitable—either decisions that something would have to be cut or decisions that something was of such high priority, because of the impact that a cut would have on the public or because it was a political priority or whatever, that it definitely was not going to be cut. However, the length of time that it took created poor value for money.

In 2023-24, the delays to the flexible workforce development fund would be one example of that, but there were lots of others. Is the way we do in-year balancing not quite a poor-value process? There is a whole series of decisions that get dragged out beyond the first, second and even third quarters. Financial decisions are being made in the fourth quarter and money is being released that, inevitably, will not have the same value as if it had been released in the first or second quarter or if it had not been released at all and had just been carried over.

I am all good, convener. There is no point in repeating what Michael Marra asked; I had the same line of questioning.

Taking on board what Jackie McAllister has just said about the significant range of external factors that affect us as well, you both agreed that there is some frustration with the delays in making these decisions. What are the internal factors within the organisation that are causing these delays? Ultimately, these are decisions for ministers to make. To what extent are the delays the result of decisions that could be made sitting with ministers perhaps for some time because, for quite understandable reasons, they hope that, if they wait long enough the situation will improve and they will not have to make an unpleasant decision, and to what extent are they delays that are happening elsewhere in the organisation and not at ministerial level?

Finally, I am interested in how you manage portfolio reallocation as part of that in-year process. If we look across the past three years, which is probably the best period to look over, we see that there are certain portfolios where it is easier to make savings in-year than it is in others. It is easier to make in-year savings in education and health than it is in justice. So much of the justice portfolio is very fixed from the start of the year. However, when we have year-on-year compounding uncertainties, particularly over the past three years because of things such as double-digit inflation, that means that we end up with disproportionate in-year savings in certain portfolios happening year after year. The compounding effect of that is quite significant. How does the Government control for that? My worry at the moment is that that is not being sufficiently controlled for and that portfolios such as education in particular have lost out over the past couple of years. When we get to halfway through the year and so much spending is locked up, understandably the only place we can go is areas where there is flexibility, but those are the same areas as in the previous year and the year before.

Before Jackie McAllister answers, could I press on that a bit? Is the disproportionate impact on certain portfolios being discussed in the Cabinet? I assume that that gets discussed in the Cabinet because cabinet secretaries, particularly those who are losing out, will want to represent their own portfolios. At your level in the civil service, is that specific point about the compounding effect of certain portfolios having to bear the brunt of it being raised discussed and assessed ?

Good morning. James Wylie, I want to pursue with you the issue that Michelle Thomson raised about how to measure success, and what success looks like.

Do you take into account the outcomes in the national performance framework when you are measuring success locally in this regard, or are there not really relevant indicators for your local context, particularly in relation to success around language in an Orcadian context?

Yes, I will bring James and Joanna in in a second, but I have a final question for Donald on that.

One of the challenges for us—across a range of legislation—relates to the balance between what we put in primary legislation to give definitive clarity versus what we want to put in secondary legislation and statutory guidance to allow for flexibility of approach and, in particular, localised approaches. Is there anything that could be included in the bill to provide more clarity or, ultimately, is it the case, as you have just indicated, that that should be left to the more flexible approach that secondary legislation gives us?