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That is a central issue. For the national performance framework to be effective, it has to be a statement of what we as a country are trying to achieve and the outcomes that support those aspirations. Inevitably, funding and policy decisions at an operational level will have enormous significance for whether those aspirations are achieved.

I was interested in some observations shared with the committee by North Ayrshire Council, which is well known to you, convener. The council provided a submission to the inquiry that said:

“The National Outcomes influence the development of our Council Plan which outlines our priorities agreed with our communities and is North Ayrshire Council’s central plan. It forms part of the ‘Golden Thread’ linking national outcomes through to each employee’s daily activities.”

That captures the sense of importance that we want to attach to the national performance framework. In that example from North Ayrshire Council, the contribution from an individual employee is connected right through to the national outcomes as part of the national performance framework. Similarly, budgeting should be so aligned. We must constantly be mindful of that issue in all the planning and decision making that we undertake. We should not take decisions or make judgments that are not aligned with the aspirations that are set out in the framework. Accordingly, we should be able to link decision making at an operational level with the achievement of those outcomes.

The first thing that I will say, which I should have said in my answer to your first question, is that I accept that engagement on the issues will be patchy. That is not satisfactory, but it is an acknowledgement of reality. I will not sit here and deny that reality.

The point that you raise about whether there should be a reward or penalty mechanism is interesting. In a variety of different respects, we should consider whether there is a place for the performance of organisations in the use of public money to influence future decision making.

That is not a route that the Government has gone down. We have gone down more of a route of encouragement and engagement with organisations to get them to acknowledge the significance of the national performance framework and for that to be reflected in the Government’s priorities. However, as I said in my opening statement, the Government will examine with care the outcome of the inquiry and, if the committee comes to conclusions on some of the questions, we will give those issues consideration as we examine the role and content of the national performance framework as part of the review that we will undertake.

Yes, indeed.

We need to have enough people talking about the national performance framework but, if I were to come to the committee and say that I am going to launch a marketing campaign that will spend—[Interruption.] Liz Smith has reacted to that as I predicted. If I said that I was going to launch a marketing campaign of £X million to raise awareness of the national performance framework, I think that it would get the reaction from Liz Smith that it just got and she might not be the only person to give that reaction.

However, it is critical that, in their experience of society, members of the public have the benefit of collaborative policy making that is focused on the achievement of the outcomes. I venture that people want to live in a country in which we

“tackle poverty by sharing opportunities, wealth and power more equally”

and where our children

“grow up loved, safe and respected so that they realise their full potential”.

People in society want to have those experiences, but they do not necessarily need to be able to pass the national performance framework entrance exam through raised awareness. However, public organisations, private businesses and third sector organisations must work together to try to achieve those outcomes so that people experience them.

We have many such organisations already. Any day of the week, Audit Scotland could decide to consider those questions—it has in the past—so I do not think that a commissioner would add an awful lot of value.

There is also Parliament, which exists to challenge on such questions, as does the committee. I welcome the committee’s interest in and engagement on the matter, because it gets to the heart of some of the questions that occupy much of my time as Deputy First Minister, which are about how to encourage more collaborative approaches to policy making and service delivery.

Government is inevitably compartmentalised. We spend a lot of time trying to use the national performance framework as a tool to tell compartments that they must collaborate a great deal more with other compartments to achieve outcomes because we will not transform some of the challenges that affect the constituents whom John Mason represents, such as resolving the poverty that they experience, if we do not work more collaboratively.

The national performance framework’s ethos should be known about not just by those who deliver public services but by those who are engaged in trying to achieve any of the outcomes. Mr Greer put to me the example of a classroom teacher versus senior management; in my opinion, the answer is both.

The classroom teachers who I meet see the wider picture. In general, I do not think that they think that all that they need to attend to is the outcome that

“We are well educated, skilled and able to contribute to society”.

They will be mindful of the outcome that

“We grow up loved, safe and respected so that we realise our ... potential”

and of the outcomes that

“We tackle poverty by sharing opportunities”

better and that

“We ... protect and fulfil human rights and live free from discrimination”.

They will live out all that through the strength of curriculum for excellence.

Therefore, I am distinguishing between an awareness of the national performance framework, which needs to be almost a household understanding—because people should experience those outcomes—and the practitioners’ awareness, which needs to be at a higher level than that household awareness.

I agree entirely about the importance of locally empowered solutions, and a lot of fascinating work is going on. I am closely observing the work that is going on in Dundee in the pilots that relate to the complex relationships around child poverty, employability and engagement in society. Really interesting work is emerging on that, and it is emerging in Dundee—not in other places. That is great, because it may give us an approach to best practice that we can share with others, so that we can begin to move on. There is a really sound platform that enables us to take that forward. Inevitably, that probably gives rise to greater emphasis being placed on some areas of activity than others, which is understandable.

I am interested in the characterisation that Liz Smith gives—that there is a prescriptive approach from the Government. I do not think that the approach is prescriptive. As I look at the evidence, some voices are saying that the Government needs to be more prescriptive, because we need folk to be absolutely complying with the framework.

As you can probably sense from my evidence, I am not persuaded by the get-more-prescriptive approach. I am much more interested in making sure that people are empowered at local level to define the solutions that work for them, provided that they contribute towards the national outcomes.

We were all addicts of Public Health Scotland, believe you me. An important point comes out of that: it was absolutely the focus for a certain amount of time, because Covid was the overwhelming issue. That tells us that although we might sometimes think, “Oh my goodness—people don’t want to plough through all this data”, the experience of Covid was that people wanted to plough through the data, because they wanted to know where we were heading. That is the crucial question: where are we heading?

We have to learn a lesson from that as we look at the material on the outcomes from the NPF. I have certainly been part of discussions in which we have wrestled with the question of data presentation in the national performance framework and have taken the view that, “We can’t present all that complex data, because people will never plough their way through it.” However, the example that Mr Johnson puts to me completely refutes that, because the data mattered. We have to find a way of making sure that we identify the data that matters.

We have had various attempts at that—performance maintaining, performance worsening or performance improving—and there are vast data sets sitting underneath that. However, it is a fair point for us to explore whether there is a collection of data sets that really tell the story of whether we are progressing. Some of those data sets are to hand. I am mindful that colleagues would not look at GDP and say, “Well, that’s it,”—they know that it is one of a number of data sets. There are several data sets that I look at all the time that make me think, “Are things moving in the right direction at this particular time? What I am troubled about?”

We look at those data sets on a constant basis. However, perhaps we need to draw them out, label them officially and have them endorsed by Public Health Scotland—then everyone would look at them.

Mapped against what, sorry?

No—I do not think that that matters, as long as we are all operating in a way that contributes constructively to the direction of travel that the national performance framework expresses. I suppose that that comes back to comments that I made earlier. If organisations were using public money to operate in a fashion that was contradictory to the direction of travel, that would give me concern. I would not understand the point of that, because we have decided on our direction of travel and on what we should be aiming towards. That does not mean to say—in any shape or form—that every approach has to be identical in every part of the country, but we want to be satisfied that people are moving in a direction that complements the national performance framework.