Chamber and committees

In the interests of time, I thank the minister for that update, which was useful.

I will return to what Mike Burns said about voicing an appropriate level of frustration to the group on data. That issue is of interest to members of the committee, and to Parliament as a whole, across a wide variety of areas. We produce a huge amount of data in the public sector, but that does not necessarily drive improvement in the way that we want it to or even give us an accurate reading of how the system is operating. Will you tell us a little bit more about what you mean when you talk about trying to streamline the data that is being produced to drive improvement? What is the working group’s process for doing that?

That is absolutely something that we can and will raise—I will certainly raise it—with the minister.

I just want to check something. In the meetings that you have had with the minister and with the First Minister, have they given you any indication that there will be a full response to the “Paving the Way” report coming on their part, or do they consider events since then to have somewhat superseded it?

Again, we can raise that, so it is really useful to put it on the record.

My question follows on quite neatly from Ben McPherson’s question about consultation, co-design and engagement. As you said, not everyone in the care community will want to engage at a national level on questions of policy and legislation, but we are looking for examples of good practice. Can we draw on the practice of any local authorities or other public bodies that are engaging within their sphere and remit and doing it well?

I very much welcome the instrument, and I think that it will go some way towards resolving some concerns. However, I am interested in what the process of escalation would be. You will be familiar with the current issues at the City of Glasgow College. That is what has caused me to ask the question, but I am asking it in a general sense, because I think that it applies to more colleges than just that one, particularly where colleges sit under the regional board in Glasgow or Lanarkshire.

There are still questions from unions about how they should escalate an issue if they are unable to resolve it with college management. What is the role of the college board, the regional board, the Scottish Funding Council and you in that? Will you explain how a trade union that has been unable to resolve an issue directly with management should go about escalating it? I am sure that, as MSPs, we all get lobbied by unions on a variety of issues in this regard, often with a variety of suggestions about whether the issue should go straight to the SFC, straight to you or straight to the college board—or, in some cases, the regional board. What process should be followed if there is a concern about redundancies, particularly when the correct process has not been followed?

Thanks, convener. I have two questions. I am conscious of the time and the fact that you have all touched on these issues in various ways, so feel free to be concise or simply refer me to your previous answers.

The first question is about how we disseminate best practice and embed it in the system. It has been pointed out that there is loads of best practice happening across the board but that it is happening in a very patchy way; various folk are good at various things, but nobody is doing everything in the way that we want it to be done.

I direct this question at Mike Burns in the first instance. Are we being systematic in how we collect evidence of best practice and in how we then embed that across the system? Everyone has a lot of anecdotes about it, but I am not sure that we are actually seizing best practice and embedding it wholesale.

That is concerning, but it is good to put that on the record, and the committee will be able to raise it with the Government.

I presume that you have had engagement from the Government in other spaces over the past 18 months—there has not been zero engagement. As much as it is critical that you get a response to that report, I just want to check that the Government has engaged with you in other contexts.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, absolutely.