09:30
Agenda item 2 is consideration of the report “Improving care experience: Delivering The Promise”. For our first panel session this morning, I have the pleasure of welcoming our witness, Fiona Duncan, who is the independent strategic adviser on the Promise and the chair of The Promise Scotland.
Fiona, I believe that you would like to make a short opening statement.
Thank you for the invitation. As the committee knows, I was appointed to chair the independent care review and to examine the roots and branches of Scotland’s care system. Over three years, more than 5,500 people got involved, including 2,000 members of the paid and unpaid workforce. Importantly, more than 3,500 children, families and care-experienced adults shared their story, which was often one of the most intimate and traumatic events of their life. They were listened to carefully. They shared their stories in the hope that Scotland would do better, recognising that although the review could not change their lives, it could make Scotland a better place for the children, families and care-experienced adults coming behind them.
It was not a consultation. The care community was at the heart of the review. They were in the rooms with people who had power over them and who had made decisions about their lives, often without their involvement. They bravely challenged the status quo because it was not working. They crafted a promise that goes beyond systems, policies and processes and that, instead, focuses on love, relationships, respect and experiences.
Then, in February 2020, when the review concluded, Scotland made the Promise, which has secured and sustained cross-party support, as was apparent at last week’s debate on the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill. Dedication to keep the Promise is evident all across Scotland every day in a huge range of settings, as is reflected in the Audit Scotland report. My role is to help make sure that that commitment and dedication is translated into decisive action to honour the care community and the Promise that it crafted and that was made to it.
The Audit Scotland report acknowledges that the Promise is not one single thing, entity, programme or piece of legislation. Instead, it is a universal commitment across public bodies and political parties to deliver change that can be felt by all care-experienced people and families in and on the edge of care. That requires collaboration, and nothing at that scale has been attempted before in Scotland. The aim is to achieve something that may appear really simple, which is that, wherever it is safe to do so, children must stay with their families, and that, when that is not possible, they must be cared for in a loving environment, with loving relationships, so that they grow up into adults and fulfil their potential.
The “how” is much trickier, as it demands public sector reform, whole-system and multi-system change, and service redesign. The Audit Scotland report illustrates that complexity, and it provides an important contribution to understanding progress. I am grateful to Audit Scotland for that. I accept the recommendations, although they could have gone further, and I thank the convener for giving me the opportunity to speak on them.
Thank you. You alluded to having observed our last evidence session on this subject on 10 December. Some of your colleagues from The Promise Scotland, along with representatives of the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, were witnesses on the panel. They were asked whether they whole-heartedly accepted all recommendations contained in the Audit Scotland report. For clarification, do you whole-heartedly accept those recommendations?
Yes, I do.
When you say that you believe that the recommendations could have gone further, what do you mean by that?
The Audit Scotland report acknowledges that the Promise is not a single thing, a single programme or a single entity. Audit Scotland makes a really good observation about the report, “Keeping the promise: a local perspective”, which The Promise Scotland produced. In my introduction to that report, I acknowledged that it does not look at the police, health or justice—it looks only at local authorities, which gives a partial picture. The picture is accurate, but it is only part of the picture. It is like taking certain pieces out of a really complicated jigsaw—the pieces are right, but they are just not the whole thing.
I believe—the Auditor General knows this—that the Audit Scotland report provided an opportunity to go further by looking at the roles of the many public bodies, voluntary sector organisations and private sector organisations that are involved, and to assess what they were doing, how far they had come, what was getting in the way of further progress and what was helping them to make the progress that they had made. That is where I am at. I accept completely the recommendations; I just wish that the report had gone further.
To be clear, do you mean that the report could have gone further in its recommendations or in the work that was undertaken?
That is a great question. In the same way as the process of the independent care review produced a very specific product—there were seven reports, with the main one being “The Promise”—the process of the performance audit produced a very specific product. I recognise that that is the purpose of the performance audit. If the process had been able to go further, the product would have been different.
Does that perhaps demonstrate a variance in understanding of Audit Scotland’s role? Is it the role of the Auditor General to go further and not to carry out the performance audit via established processes?
That was one of the things that I put in my letter to the Auditor General. That was based on the conversation that was had in this committee in 2024 about how Audit Scotland was going to look at the process. Audit Scotland said that the work was
“an interesting test case”
for the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission
“of how well public service reform is being delivered”,
and that the organisation was
“thinking carefully about how we shape our approach”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 18 April 2024; c 6,11.]
The question that you have just asked is one that I hope to ask the Audit Scotland team in order to really understand the issue. The Promise is a product of a care review, which is the product of a commitment that was made to the care community based on Scotland’s failure to get it right for years and years. Those of you who are really familiar with the Promise will know that, in the seven years prior to the care review, there were six other reviews into how Scotland cared for its children.
The team at Audit Scotland are absolutely right when they say that the Promise is not a single entity or a single programme. There is part of me that wonders whether the performance audit lends itself to something of this scale and complexity. I do not know the answer to that, but that is a conversation that I hope to have with the Auditor General when we meet.
Does that therefore imply that Audit Scotland did not look broadly enough at the subject matter? Was it too narrow or focused? Was it too selective or picky in what it looked at?
I would not use any of those words, because they feel critical rather than curious, and I am curious, not critical. My job as the independent strategic adviser is to challenge the systems and to ask whether, if we have what we have right now in 2030, that will help us to answer the question of whether the Promise has been kept and how we will know that the Promise has been kept. I take every opportunity to do that in a way that is respectful and courteous.
I do not think that any part of the wide operating system that we have, which impacts on babies, infants, children, young people and families in and on the edge of the care system and on care-experienced adults, should be excluded from challenge. If performance audits were telling Scotland what Scotland found out through the care community in 2017-18 and 2019-20 and, indeed, before that by the campaigners who had called for the review, we would not have needed the review in the first place.
I am not critical; I am curious, and keen to have an open conversation with anyone who is willing to have it about whether what we have right now will help to get us over the line and understand that we have kept the Promise.
You will be aware that, at the previous evidence session on the Promise, I asked the witnesses, which included representatives from the Scottish Government and COSLA, and your colleagues from the Promise, whether they believed that we were on track to meet the Promise, and the answer was unanimously that we are not. Given that you have been in charge of the Promise for nine years and, prior to that, were involved in its development, do you accept any responsibility for that?
Yes. We are all responsible for that. You would expect me to say this, but if I had the power and ability to ensure that the Promise was kept everywhere, every day and to everybody, I would do that. I continue to do my level best. I operate without any powers. I am an adviser, and people can choose to take or leave my advice. I am invited into places where there are problems that remain unsolved so that I can get alongside people and help to figure out what “good” looks like.
On the other side of your question, we are sitting here five years down the line, talking about it, and we have got four years and 11 months to go. The Promise can still be kept if every single individual and institution plays their part. The Auditor General and the Accounts Commission said in the report, and indeed at the evidence session on 5 November, that this level of determination and commitment is really unusual. We have sustained it despite the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Every day that we do not do what needs to be done it will get harder, but that does not mean that we cannot get over the line.
The report was fairly critical, though, was it not? The Auditor General highlighted a number of key issues where progress was not being made, which is the point of a performance audit. Among other issues, he talked about governance and accountability, data, measuring and reporting, the resources that would be required, the governance frameworks and the clear lack of lines of accountability and oversight. It was a robust report, to say the least. The Auditor General is identifying that things are not going so well. You say that we are halfway through the delivery period for the Promise. It is not really a good sign, is it?
A lot of the things that appear in the report—many of which were also identified by the care review—are being worked on.
One of the tensions is that we are trying to unpick deep-rooted systemic problems that have been designed and are delivered by humans, so can be redesigned and redelivered by humans. That comes from years upon years of legislation, policy and governance, and all of that needs to be unravelled. You mentioned data. Historically, Scotland measured the data in the care system that mattered to the system, so it was about the system and setting, not the experience and outcome. That is not the case any more. We are not there yet, but we are making progress.
The Care Inspectorate might have come into this room and checked whether it was well lit and well ventilated, and that there were no trip hazards, but it would not have checked whether I was okay, how I was feeling or whether I felt loved, respected or safe. Until we arrive at a set of measures of national progress, outcomes and local delivery—whether organisations, including non-departmental public bodies in areas such as justice, health, housing and education, are doing what they need to do—and that, critically, measures how people are feeling and what their experiences are, we will not have the right data. We are making progress to get there, but we are not there yet. It has taken us longer than we anticipated, because the issue has incredibly deep roots.
09:45
On Monday, at a University of Glasgow centre for public policy event, the chief executive of a local authority said that they were reporting against 160 datasets in different areas. We do not know what happens with some of that data or how it is used. There are a lot of questions about the layer-upon-layer issues and I could give you similar examples related to reporting on governance and money.
My final point is that so much of the change has to happen in a certain sequence, and there is a question about whether policy cohesion will deliver pooled budgets or whether it will need to be demonstrated through data that shows that Government policies are impacting the same people.
I am glad to be here today. This is an important conversation because Parliament plays a critical role. At the end of the care review there were 44 pieces of legislation, 19 pieces of secondary legislation and 3 international conventions of relevance. There are more than that now. Therefore, there are jobs to be done by those at the source of the pipeline—Parliament and Government—right through to those at the delivery end of the pipeline. All of that needs to be unblocked and untangled.
We are grateful to you for coming to speak to us as we undertake our work on this important issue.
I will backtrack for a second just to get my head round where you believe that you fit into the equation, because—I will check the Official Report on this—I believe that you said that, as an independent adviser, it is your job to advise people, but it is up to them to deliver; you are in an advisory position, and other people need to pull their weight and do their bit for all of this to work. I understand that. However, on the other hand, you are the chair of The Promise Scotland, and the public would expect that to come with a level of accountability and responsibility for the overall delivery of the Promise. Is there a conflict? You said that you are simply there to advise people to get on with the job, when actually you are in charge of the job.
Last November, I took the unusual step of publishing my work programme. I set out at 18-month work programme that builds on the specification of my ministerial appointment, which has three functions.
I also took account of the aspects in the Auditor General’s report that referred to me. I wanted to be transparent in how I responded to that, and I want to be transparent about what I do. Accountability is very important. I consider myself accountable to the care community. That is who the Promise was made to. Obviously, I recognise that there is a line of accountability to the Parliament, too, and I respect it. However, ultimately, the people who will decide whether I have done a good job are members of the care community.
The three functions that I have under my ministerial appointment are: strategy, delivery and relationships. The delivery function falls in two places: via The Promise Scotland and via the organisations that I work alongside by supporting them and giving them advice on delivery. We call them the pacesetters, because the people and institutions that I work alongside are the folk who are trying new things, and they are the people who are trying to overcome the systemic problems.
As I said earlier, I operate independently of the system—a system that will continue long after 2030—with no powers and without fear of favour. That is why the relationships aspect of my role is important. I am completely committed to my own obsolescence, and The Promise Scotland is committed to its obsolescence. We do not want to build ourselves into the system; we want to put ourselves out of business so that the Promise is kept.
Page 15 of my work programme is very clear about the responsibilities that I have, which are governed by the Companies Act 2006. I am governed by the governing documents of the organisation, I chair the quarterly board meetings, the annual general meeting and the annual strategy meeting—which is the meeting that the permanent secretary is invited to. I aim to optimise the effectiveness of the board through recruitment and its delivery and I have developed a glide path towards obsolescence. I also provide advice, support and challenge to the chief executive and The Promise Scotland team, which shares the same vision as I do, which is for the Promise to be kept by 2030.
It is interesting that you say that the three key tenets of your role as chair of The Promise Scotland are the strategy for the Promise, the delivery of the Promise and the relationships. Is that correct? Is that your understanding of it?
That is what is in my ministerial appointment letter. However, the strategy element is not strategy for The Promise Scotland; it is strategy for Scotland. In my strategic priorities, I have sustained alignment to Government priorities; I try to build on the progress that has been made on positive change; and I have supported the development of Plan 24-30. We are setting expectations not for the question “What now?” but for “What next?”; I am endeavouring to solve some of the problems that you referred to earlier and that have been referred to in the report; and we have been developing tools to help people to figure out ways to do things differently. I have two delivery mechanisms and I have five relationship priorities.
My point is that, presumably, by default, as the chair, you are the person to whom, ultimately, all lines lead, given the wide remit. Forgive me if I am wrong, but it sounds as though you are not taking responsibility for any of the failures that have been identified in the Audit Scotland report. If I am wrong, and you are, which of them do you take responsibility for?
Just to be clear, I chair the board of The Promise Scotland, which is a board of independent non-executive directors. We have a very specific role and responsibility that is set out by governing documents and the Companies Act 2006. All of that, including the minutes, are available online in the public domain on The Promise Scotland’s website. You are asking me which of the governance data reporting and—
I am asking which of the issues identified by the Audit General you personally take responsibility for.
I am working on all of those, and, as I said earlier, we have four years and 11 months to go. I would not characterise them as a failure; I would characterise them as a work in progress. I am enormously impatient for change. I have never, and will never, lose sight of the fact that I made the Promise, too. Every day that we do not do our level best to keep the Promise is a day wasted. There is nothing in the report or that you have said this morning that I do not take really seriously or that I do not recognise that I play a critical role in, and that comes with responsibility.
Indeed. Mr Simpson has some questions.
Just for transparency, Fiona, I note that we met at the event on Monday at the University of Glasgow that you mentioned; you introduced yourself to me, which was good of you. I think that you possibly did the same with the deputy convener.
Do you think that the Promise will be met?
In my opening remarks, I was clear about what is meant by the Promise being kept. Where children are safe, they will stay in their families. Where they cannot stay with their families, they will grow up in loving environments with good relationships, and they will go on to thrive as adults and fulfil their potential. Do I think that, by 2030, Scotland can get to a point where that is the norm, and do I think that, by 2030, we can get to a point where we stop sitting in rooms such as this talking about the Promise being a special thing that Scotland has made but has not yet kept—where it just becomes business as usual? I think that it is entirely possible for all the custodians of all the systems to do their part, and it is entirely possible for us to challenge the culture and for us to ensure that the money flows effectively. We do not have a day to lose, but it is within our grasp.
We have done the easy stuff—the easy change has happened—so we are in the really difficult stuff now. It is the stuff that has not been done before, such as the data point that the convener made. It is not necessarily going to be easy, and I do not just mean the actual process of doing it; I mean the process of bringing people on board and helping them to understand what they have to change.
I know that I am giving you an incredibly long answer to what was a super-short question. The short answer is that I still believe that it is possible.
But it is challenging.
Incredibly challenging.
My reading of the situation is that it is more likely that we will not get there by 2030.
I am not willing to give up hope.
It is all right to have hope, but there has to be realism, as well.
I think that it is a realistic hope.
Okay. There are a couple of letters that you have sent in that I want to ask about. First, there is the letter that you sent to the Auditor General on 4 September last year. There were some comments in there directed at the Auditor General and we have not really seen comments like that directed at the Auditor General before. Have you got the letter?
I do, yes.
Okay. There is a section in your letter, on the second page, about the clearance draft, which you were sent. It says:
“As it stands, the lead recommendation in the clearance draft creates a significant and entirely unnecessary risk to children, families and care experienced adults.”
Can you explain why you said that?
I can. I would like to reiterate that I sent that letter in recognition of the fact that this is a moment in time—you get one opportunity to engage in something like this, and my job is to take it.
The recommendation did not appear in the final draft; it appeared in the clearance draft. I am very grateful that it did not appear in the final draft. The recommendation was that
“The Scottish Government should carry out a transparent appraisal of the deliverability of the remaining work to deliver the Promise by 2030.”
My view was that if that appraisal went ahead, it would come with some really significant risks. Chiefly, by placing the responsibility for carrying out an appraisal to rewrite the Promise—which has been written and accepted and on which we are five years down the line into delivery—with one organisation that has quite significant responsibility for delivery could result in a promise that was no longer recognised by the care community. It would not be the Promise that was crafted by them or the Promise that was made to them. Indeed, it could have resulted in a promise that was considerably easier to keep.
I think that such an appraisal would also have diverted resources, because it would have required officials to spend time going through all the calls to action in the Promise and appraising where they were at and whether they could be achieved or what they needed to look like. The calls to action could have been diluted. I also think that that diversion of resourcing would have resulted in a pause of the progress that we need the Government to make and the activity that we need it to do.
Another risk—we saw this with the national care service—is that when there is a conversation taking place about whether this recommendation or that conclusion will stay, go or change, the organisations working at the front end of delivery take on that uncertainty and as a result it can create inertia. They could legitimately ask themselves, “Why should we continue doing this if it might change or get rubbed out?” Therefore, I felt that any rewrite of the commitments in the Promise and/or delay to making improvements in the lives of children, families and care-experienced adults created really significant risks.
Can you just read out that recommendation again, if you would?
I do not have the clearance draft with me. I have a note of what I understand is in the clearance draft. I did have a copy of the clearance draft, but—
But you just read it out.
The text was:
“The Scottish Government should carry out a transparent appraisal of the deliverability of the remaining work to deliver the Promise by 2030.”
Okay. If we look at what actually appeared in the final draft, we see the Auditor General saying that
“the Scottish Government and COSLA, with support from The Promise Scotland, should … work together to identify where resources need to be targeted to deliver The Promise”.
That is basically the same thing, in different words.
I do not think that it is the same thing.
Well, it is about carrying out an appraisal. An appraisal is about seeing where you are, essentially, and that is what the Auditor General is saying there. I fail to see how doing that piece of work, however you word it, can put children, families and care-experienced adults at risk. Surely, it is something that you should be doing on an on-going basis.
It boils down to whether you think that an appraisal of deliverability and a consideration of how to resource are the same thing. My concern was that, if you appraise deliverability and say, “Well, that is going to be really hard to deliver, so we are now not going to deliver it”, you could change the Promise beyond recognition. I do not think that that is the same as
“work together to identify where resources need to be targeted”.
The recommendation in the clearance draft would have offered more of an option for people to say “We have appraised deliverability and decided that we cannot or will not deliver.” I think that that is different from asking where resources are needed in order to deliver.
10:00
Surely an appraisal assesses where you are at that point in time. You could conclude that you are not on track, but that does not mean that you stop.
We will never know, because the recommendation did not appear in the final draft. I am pleased that it did not, because, as I set out, there were risks associated with it.
I would argue that what actually appeared is very similar; it is just a different form of words. If you read the Auditor General’s reports on a variety of subjects, he often makes a very similar recommendation to organisations—to check on progress and report back within six or 12 months. That is what he has done here, so this is all quite normal. Do you not accept that your wording—“creates … unnecessary risk”—is a bit over the top? With the benefit of hindsight, do you accept that maybe you could have reworded that, as you asked the Auditor General to do?
Of course I could have reworded it, but I do not know whether I would have reworded it, because I felt that we were at an inflection point. I am very conscious of the Auditor General’s power and of the impact and implications of the reports that he produces. I interpreted those words differently from how you have interpreted them; I went to the possibility of a worst-case scenario and felt that I needed to be clear in my concerns.
I am going to ask you about another sentence, which is near the end of the letter. You say:
“at worst, the report could derail Scotland’s progress towards keeping the promise.”
We asked about that in a previous evidence session on this matter. How can a report from the Auditor General
“derail Scotland’s progress towards keeping the promise”?
Again, I am glad to be here, so that you can hold me to account and challenge me on my language and my approach. I wrote the letter in the interests of continuing what I think has been a good relationship with colleagues at Audit Scotland and the Auditor General.
I go back to the point that I made a moment ago. If my worst-case scenario interpretation of the recommendation to
“carry out a transparent appraisal of the deliverability of the remaining work”
had played out, I felt that, at a point where we needed to up the pace, increase the momentum and have more people do more, there would be a significant risk that that recommendation could take us off track. That could happen simply through the things that I mentioned a moment ago—giving principal responsibility to keep the Promise to one institution, diverting resources away, creating inertia within the system and running the risk that it did not look anything like a promise any more. It would have looked like a Government commitment, as opposed to a promise that was written by 5,500 people, more than 3,500 of whom were children and young people, care-experienced adults and families on the edge of care. That is who the Promise was made to, and that is who crafted the Promise. If there is to be any transparent appraisal of the Promise, it should be done by that group.
It is just that you used the phrase:
“the report could derail … progress”.
The report is essentially an analysis of where we are, how the Promise is going and whether we are on track. It is far more detailed than that, but, in summary, that is what it is and that is what the Auditor General does. That process in itself is hardly going to derail anything, is it? It is surely more of a help than a hindrance.
It was not the process of the performance audit; it was the risk within the final product and that form of words. I felt that we could end up derailing Scotland if the worst-case scenario played out.
The people involved with the Promise were not suddenly going to down tools and stop work after seeing the original draft, or even the final version.
On the inertia as a consequence of uncertainty about the care service, people were not downing tools because they were looking for an opportunity not to keep the Promise.
That takes me back to the point that I made a moment ago about the pipeline between Parliament and Government. Folk at all stages in that pipeline are making decisions about how to allocate resources or about what the priorities are. If there is a hiatus while the Government is appraising the deliverability of certain things, that will encourage people to think that they probably should not do any more until they know what the Government thinks, or that they do not need to drive things further forward until they understand at what point the appraisal will stop. I know that that can create chaos and uncertainty and can lead to a hiatus, because that is what happened during the consultation on the proposed national care service.
We will have to agree to disagree on that, which is fine.
I will ask you about one more thing in the same letter. You say that you asked
“to get more involved in supporting the Audit Scotland team”,
and you accept that that
“is not the usual process”
which it is not. Were you trying to steer Audit Scotland at that point? Were you hoping that that was what greater involvement might lead to?
I suppose that there were a few things. I wanted to share with Audit Scotland what I had learned about what was getting in the way of change and what was helping. One example of that would be the conversations about the whole family wellbeing fund. You know from the report that I had been doing work on a strategic investment and disinvestment model. I was conscious of a potential conflict between short-term, siloed and fragmented funding and the intended design of the whole family wellbeing fund, which was a pot of money to be used over a period of time. Both those things were getting in the way. The Auditor General and his team identified challenges with spending the £500 million whole family wellbeing fund, but also identified challenges with spending short-term, siloed money. I wanted to have conversations with them about what I understood some of the challenges to be and about some of the solutions that we had sought to put in place by getting alongside people in different institutions and organisations. I wanted to share what I knew, to see whether that would be useful in helping the Audit Scotland team to understand what was working and what was getting in the way. That was my intent.
I recognised that that was unlikely to happen. I had asked colleagues within Audit Scotland whether I could get involved, and they had said no. That goes back to the point that I made a moment ago. If I have a moment when I can get involved and can perhaps help Scotland to have a better understanding, I am going to take that opportunity. I respect the independence of the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland, and their need to do their job independently, but I thought that it was worth a try.
It was probably worth a try.
It all has to be worth a try.
Okay. Thank you.
At the evidence session on 10 December, Fraser McKinlay explained to the committee that those responsible for delivering the Promise might have taken the recommendation to review things as a signal to stop what they were doing, which, in turn, might have allowed
“some inertia”
to
“creep into the system, and … derail progress.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee,10 December 2025; c 15.]
Would you not say that it is the responsibility of those tasked with leading the delivery of the work to ensure that that does not happen, instead of the onus being on the Auditor General to adapt his recommendations?
I go back to the point that I made a moment ago: I think that the responsibility is on all of us. I am glad that that recommendation did not end up in the report, and that that risk did not end up being a live one.
I come back to the point that the convener made: I am an adviser, not a decision maker, so I cannot insist that organisations do not make a decision that they might make. Is it, therefore, the responsibility of those who are leading? I think that it is the responsibility of those leading delivery, but it is also the responsibility of everyone else who is delivering or who has a role, a remit, a statutory duty or corporate parenting responsibilities. I do not think that the responsibility sits with any one individual.
That seems to be a bit of a recipe for confusion and a lack of activity. The concern is this: who took the decision—and if the decision was taken, who took the responsibility—to allow this to slow down or, indeed, stop? If it did happen, who is responsible for getting it moving again?
Can you help me to understand your question?
The point that I am trying to make is that someone somewhere is responsible. It cannot just be some diffuse responsibility that magically comes together.
I understand, and you are absolutely right. At every point, there is somebody who is responsible for taking a decision.
I go back to the national care service, which is an example within living memory of when that sort of thing happened. There was a period of time when there was uncertainty about whether children’s services would fall within the scope of that service, and the organisations with responsibility for children’s services—local authorities—did not know whether the work that they were going to do was going to be transferred to another body or institution, or whether another body or institution was going to be taking some of the big decisions.
During that period, there were people who took decisions to invest differently or in something else, or not to build something or to build something else, because that was their decision to take. As you will know very well, Mr Beattie, there is, with any set of decisions, a line of accountability. The shaping of a decision might have been helped by a finance director, by elected members, or by the chief exec and their senior team.
You are absolutely right—there are people who take responsibility. I think that the question that you are asking is: should this have been the responsibility of the people tasked with leading the delivery of the Promise? If so, yes, I agree. I guess that I am one of the people responsible for leading the Promise, but just as the Auditor General talked about it not being a single entity or policy, I am not the only person responsible in Scotland for making sure that the Promise is kept. The Promise was made by an army of people, and that army of people all have their own responsibility to keep it.
It still sounds a bit hit and miss to me.
Do you agree that the recommendation to review was regarded as a signal either to stop, or at least to slow down, what people were doing?
I think that the recommendation about giving Government responsibility to appraise deliverability, which is not in the final report but was in the clearance draft, could have been—and I think would have been—a signal for people to stop or slow down.
And you think that that is what happened.
It did not appear in the final report, so I do not think that that is what happened.
I was asking for your opinion, rather than what is in the report. Do you believe that the review was taken as a signal to slow everything down or, indeed, stop?
The review has never been called for, unless you are referring to the work that was done to identify where resources needed to be targeted. I do not think that that was a signal to stop.
10:15
I will move on. In your letter to the Auditor General, you commented:
“You have observed the ‘implementation gap’ between ‘political ambition and how things are actually delivered.’“
It is the Auditor General’s role to identify those gaps and draw them to the attention of the committee. Scrutinising the issues is an important part of our work. Are you saying that the Auditor General’s assessment of delivery against the Promise is inaccurate?
No, I am not. My letter to the Auditor General says:
“You”—
as in, the Auditor General—
“have observed the ‘implementation gap’ between ‘political ambition and how things are actually delivered.’”
I am recognising that he has observed that.
Earlier, I was talking about the jigsaw puzzle of the Promise and its complexity. It is included in 26 out of 43 Government directorates and 49 out of 117 policy areas, while 100-plus organisations have some sort of statutory duty or responsibility for it. I am saying that the Auditor General’s report provides valuable additional context, but I am also saying that it is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle—it is not the entire picture.
It is clear that you have a concern about the worthy political ambitions being able to achieve what everyone is looking at. There is a question about how the ambitions are delivered. Do you believe that there is a problem with how the Promise is being delivered?
I think that we lost time. Forty-three days after the Promise was made, we went into lockdown because of a global pandemic. One of the reports that I produced at the end of the care review was called “The Plan”. We intended to spend a transition year during which we would archive the materials of the care review so that all the children, young people, families and care-experienced adults who shared their stories with us knew that those had been banked away. However, we also experienced the cost of living crisis, so we did not get folk in a room and we did not design the plan in the way that we intended to. We lost momentum.
That goes to Mr Simpson’s point. I think that we are behind schedule and we have to increase the pace. I do not think that that is any one individual or organisation’s responsibility.
You asked whether I have concerns about how the Promise is being delivered. I think that we are making progress. Since the Auditor General’s report was published, a lot of progress has been made on Plan 24-30 and the Promise story of progress. We have achieved a lot of the things that the Auditor General had hoped to see happen.
We are probably at a point now—and have been since the beginning of the year, with five full years to go—where we have never been clearer about what has to happen. We have never been clearer about who is responsible for delivering the Promise, when it has to be done, what good looks like, and what the starting point is. We now have an opportunity to move a lot faster. My job is to try to help people to get there, rather than criticising them for not getting there.
I hear what you are saying, but that is a little different from observing an implementation gap between political ambition and how things are being delivered. You are looking at how things are being delivered. What about the gap between the political ambition and the delivery?
My letter quotes the Auditor General’s words back to him. He has observed that there is an implementation gap between political ambition and how things are being delivered. He and his colleagues at Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission raise some of those issues remarkably well in the variety of reports that they produce. I am saying to him that I know that he has observed an implementation gap.
Okay—I will leave it at that.
I have some supplementary questions in the short time that we have left.
While I am grateful for your responses thus far during this evidence session—and I cannot speak on behalf of the whole committee—I feel that there is a general sense of frustration that we do not seem to be getting to the bottom of the question of whose job it is to deliver the Promise.
Perhaps we just need to be a bit more frank with each other. If it is not your job as chair, if it is not the job of the chair of the Oversight Board and if it is not the job of a director general in some Scottish Government department, who is responsible for producing a plan, assigning people to deliver the plan and assigning the budget that is necessary for that plan to succeed?
If there was a simple answer to that—if there was one person who was responsible, who held all the power and control, and who could make all of the things happen—they would be sitting in front of you. I do not have that level of power; I offer advice.
I know that you met David Anderson and that you are very familiar with the third Oversight Board report. In that report, there is an acknowledgement that I took responsibility for Plan 24-30. I think that this was partly Covid specific, but I was surprised at the end of the review—when I produced the documents, I figured that there would be a process for them to be turned into a delivery plan.
In the absence of that, we produced “Plan 21-24”, which we published in March 2021. That was a suboptimal process. You have heard about my interest in process and product and the relationship between the two. We did not get people in rooms and we were not planning collectively—
So you produced that document. I do not know what you are waving at me.
Sorry—it is “The Promise”.
Lovely.
Who do you think should have taken on that piece of work? I am sure that you are very proud of it, and a lot went into it, so who should have turned it into an action plan? It goes back to my original question: whose job is it to implement the advice that you have given?
I have two answers to that, because those are slightly different questions.
The Promise was accepted in full across Parliament. My question back to you is: if Parliament accepts responsibility for doing something in full, who becomes responsible for figuring out how to deliver it? Does it then go to Government or to the people who are at the delivery end? I do not know the answer to that, but I have taken responsibility, in the absence of somebody holding the pen.
We had hundreds of organisations taking part across about 25 sectors and across all the systems that I have mentioned. We drew content from their plans, and we have driven content into their plans, so that Plan 24-30 is more comprehensive now than it has ever been. It is Scotland’s route map to keeping the Promise. I have taken responsibility for doing that, and I have worked with the team at The Promise Scotland to do the work that is necessary to update the plan.
To answer your second question, about advice—which probably reflects why I am here today—I believe that my job is to give advice to anyone who has any role or responsibility in and around keeping the Promise. I include the Auditor General in that. I am conscious of the unique powers and access that he has and of the impact that his reports have. For all the organisations, institutions and individuals who have a responsibility, I make myself present in their lives and offer them advice—although I cannot always make them take it.
It sounds to me that, while you can produce documents with advice, you can strategise and you can come up with ideas and tell people what they ought to be doing, ultimately, with the best will in the world, you cannot make them do anything. If they fail to deliver—in some areas, we clearly have evidence of failure to deliver what is necessary to make the Promise happen—that is outside your control. Do you feel that you are perhaps unfairly taking the flak for the lack of progress on the Promise?
No, I do not feel that that is unfair. I have taken this role, and I have taken on the responsibility. I said in my opening remarks that the answer is collaboration, and I think that that is reflected in the report. When you have collective responsibility, you need collective leadership and collective delivery.
I have not written a plan in isolation. I have worked with the people who have responsibility, whether that is those with a statutory duty or all the voluntary sector organisations that are keeping the Promise every single day. They are often the people trusted the most by the children, young people and families who are in and on the edge of care, because they can have conversations with them about their circumstances. We have worked and engaged with all those people to try to build a collaborative plan that everybody owns, so it is not—
But is the fact that everybody owns it and therefore nobody owns it not part of the problem?
Yes and no. The yes part is that that is a risk, but what we have done—
Clearly, that has happened—that is what the Audit Scotland report tells us.
Plan 24-30 was produced in the summer of 2024 and, at the end of 2025, we had spent 18 months building new content. We have had literally hundreds of organisations taking part in the planning process, and they have shared their commitments with us. We have organised and sequenced them, because many of those things are interdependent, and we have driven that commitment.
Plan 24-30 is not a statement of intent; it is a statement of delivery. It is not just about what people say that they are going to do; it is about what they have to do. We have taken 2024-25, rather than the end of the care review, as a baseline and the starting point. We have acknowledged the progress that Scotland has made, and we have 2030 as the hard stop. There are tabs for every single year, and it is clear who needs to do what by when for the Promise to be kept.
We have been working on that for quite a long time but, as a result of the Auditor General’s report, which surfaced that people need a greater degree of clarity, our tone shifted slightly from saying, “What are you doing and what can you do?” to saying, “This is what you need to do.” The advice became slightly more assertive and instructive. I do not have powers to instruct, although I am happy to do it.
You said in an earlier comment that what is ultimately needed is somebody who has the power to legislate, create policy and attach financial resource to the delivery of that policy. Forgive me if I am wrong, but is that not the role of the Government?
The proposed legislation is going through Parliament now, and I have given evidence to the committee that is responsible for overseeing that. That legislation will result in new policies and guidance, and it needs to result in a different approach to resourcing. That is where we are at.
I will rephrase the question. Do you think that, ultimately, ministers are in charge of delivery? You have not specifically and overtly said that in your responses.
There is a risk in boiling it down to something like that.
This is about the wee boy in Inverness today who is living in a children’s home, who is not going to the school that he usually goes to because he is having to live away from his family for a while, and who is living in a residential home with other children who he does not know very well. If that wee boy is feeling a bit lonely and maybe has toothache and does not want to tell anybody because he feels that he has not made friends, he depends on the person standing in front of him. It is about Scotland creating an enabling environment so that it is more likely that the person standing in front of that wee boy keeps the Promise. That is about legislation, policies and guidance, but it is also about culture.
It is more nuanced and more complicated than a law. I said earlier that we already have more than 44 pieces of legislation, 19 pieces of secondary legislation and three international conventions, so I am unconvinced that the law will keep the Promise. The law is necessary to create a framework for change but, in and of itself, it will not keep the Promise.
I did not write the Promise, and no one on this committee wrote it. It was an explicit commitment that was made by the Scottish Government and the former First Minister of Scotland, so I presume that the delivery and keeping of the Promise are the responsibility of the person who made the Promise in the first place.
10:30
The Promise is called that for a very specific reason. The word means both a commitment that somebody makes and an indicator of someone’s potential. The phrase “Fiona is a promising ballerina” was never said about me, but there is a sense of somebody’s potential to be them.
The Promise was crafted through a long period of comprehensive engagement with more than 5,500 people. Although I held the pen on it, much of the content came from the people that the Promise was made to. The Promise was made to that group of people not only by the First Minister but by Parliament, local authorities, the police and the health service. It was made by a huge number of organisations and individuals, and it is on all of them to keep the Promise.
My last question is a simple one. Do you think that it is possible for someone who is an independent adviser to ministers on the Promise also to be the chair of the board that is tasked with delivering the Promise?
I do. The Promise Scotland is not tasked with delivering the Promise; it is tasked with supporting the delivery of the Promise, which is quite a different thing. It is a small organisation of 20-odd people that is committed to its own obsolescence.
I am governed by the Companies Act 2006, and chairing The Promise Scotland is one aspect of what I do, as laid out in my work plan. I give advice to ministers, but I also give advice to anyone else who I think needs it.
Unless there are any other questions from members, we will pause there. Thank you for coming in this morning to give evidence and add to our evidence gathering on the issue.
We will have a short suspension to allow for a change of witnesses as we move on to the next agenda item.
Thank you for your courtesy.
Thank you.
10:32
Meeting suspended.
10:35
On resuming—