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You talked earlier about making sure that targeted outcomes are driven by your spending choices. Recently, it emerged that the total cost of Government spin doctors has reached £100 million over three years—I concede that that figure includes spending by health boards. Will that kind of Government and associated departmental expenditure be included in your public sector reform programme? Before you allow such a significant increase in the future, would it be better to tie that expenditure to a public service outcome target? What could the public service outcome target be for increases in expenditure on spin doctors as opposed to doctors, for example?

My final question goes back to the convener’s question about large in-year transfers. I want to close this one issue down. A number of stakeholder bodies that have come to the committee have said that they would like what the convener described to happen and that it happens elsewhere. Are you saying that it is impractical, undesirable or impossible? Which is it?

I hate to dampen your optimism, but the other problem is that, when we look back at other Parliaments and other public inquiries, we see that they, too, carried out retrospective analyses that identified the shortcomings that we are identifying here.

For example, the Thirlwall inquiry looked at past recommendations on healthcare issues and found that many had not been acted upon; subsequently, we have seen the same issues happening. The Grenfell tower inquiry recommended that there be

“a publicly accessible record of recommendations made by select committees, coroners and public inquiries”,

which the Government was to use to track the progress of implementation or, otherwise, explain why it had failed to implement recommendations. That has not happened. Moreover, only last year, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee held an inquiry similar to this one, which came to some of the same conclusions that we will, rightly, come to.

One element, which you identified in relation to Jersey, is the scepticism about Government engagement with public inquiries once they are established. However, there should not be a similar level of scepticism about parliamentary engagement in oversight. We do not want to make work for ourselves or be accused of a power grab but, on the basis of your experience so far—not that I want to short-circuit our inquiry—do you think that the Parliament is the solution to some of the problems that we see here? Instead of the Government being in the driving seat, once an inquiry was established, the Parliament would have oversight and an on-going commitment to observing what was happening.

Good morning, Professor Cameron.

I have been looking back at the use of royal commissions in the past, and I counted that, in the 1970s, there were 12 such commissions. Now they are very rare; presumably, the Government, the Parliament and the public weaned themselves off that form of inquiry and found different ways of making those big decisions. Is that the kind of seminal tipping point that we have got to now, do you think? Should we be looking at a fundamental alternative to public inquiries?

On the issue of royal commissions, it is very like Sir Humphrey Appleby in “Yes Minister” to call for a royal commission to kick an issue into the long grass. Do we need greater engagement with the public on such matters? Their first demand will be for an inquiry, and a judge seems like an independent person, but the outcome is that, 10 or 15 years later, nothing has happened; people have died; and victims are left without answers. Should the conversation be more inclusive than it is at the moment and should we level with the public that such an approach is not working for them?

Mr Marra probably tested the convener’s patience with his line of questioning, so I will not seek to do that, but, in your letter to the Scottish Affairs Committee, you clearly asserted that full control over spending and tax—full fiscal autonomy—

“would create a fairer system that would protect public services and allow investment in our economy.”

What is your evidence for that? From whom did you commission that evidence to allow you to make that statement on the public record?

That is probably best done in another place.

Turning from tax to spending, I note that public sector reform will be fundamental to future public spending proposals. Your letter to the committee says that the public sector reform programme and strategy will be published in June. Can you say when in June that will happen? Will it be before, alongside or after the publication of the medium-term financial strategy?

Would you sack those civil servants if they were identified?

On the issue of judge-led inquiries, Sir John Sturrock, in his submission, bemoans the fact that there is a “judicial, detailed forensic approach”, which he calls “overly legalistic”, and which he says leads to an adversarial system. However, it does not have to be that way, does it? Presumably, we can smash that approach and start again.

Finally, in relation to mission creep and budget creep, I presume that there are downsides to setting a limit on or a budget for an inquiry. Based on your experience, what could be the negative consequences of such a move?