Chamber and committees

Indeed, but I am not saying that you should go over the whole paper.

You have suggested that the outcomes are perhaps not as prescriptive as they should be. Do you think that they should be tightened up? After all, many others who have made submissions have talked about the need for enhanced flexibility in the approach to the outcomes. Where exactly does COSLA sit on that issue?

I understand that, but it is difficult for ministers to do that if they are always getting a kicking in the press for a decline in police or teacher numbers, not putting enough nurses in place or whatever. For example, my health board thinks that we have 85 beds too many, but it knows that if it cuts them, there will be an immediate outcry, even though those resources will be devoted to delivering services elsewhere. That money will not vanish; it will be spent where the health board thinks that it will deliver better health outcomes. However, we continue to face that kind of difficulty. Every politician here is probably guilty of pressing that button when it suits them, too, because you have to get re-elected, apart from anything else. In my view, that is probably the most fundamental barrier to the national performance framework delivering on its outcomes.

In your submission, Mirren, you say:

“the route toward achieving National Outcomes is not prescribed. This leaves the potential for, and advantage of, a wide range of different and often innovative paths to be developed through which better outcomes can be achieved. At the local level this can translate into tailoring specific services to address unique local issues or targeting local groups or communities.”

I wonder whether you can give me a couple of examples of that—and not from Fife, as I will be asking Tim Kendrick for some examples from his neck of the woods.

If you had additional resources in Fife, would you allocate them to increasing the amount of money for preventative spend on, say, poverty? You mentioned your 70:30 split in funding, but if you had a significant increase in the resources available for that, would you continue with that proportion of spend or would you say, “Well, we’ve got this additional money—let’s try to make a real difference in prevention”? How would that work?

We will continue evidence taking for our national performance framework inquiry with a round-table discussion. I welcome to the meeting Amy Woodhouse, head of policy, projects and participation at Children in Scotland; Keith Robson, senior public affairs manager at the Open University in Scotland; Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland; Vicki Bibby, director of strategic planning and performance at Public Health Scotland; Neil Ferguson, head of corporate functions at Revenue Scotland; Elle Adams, programme manager at Scotland CAN B; and Paul Bradley, policy and public affairs manager at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.

I thank you for your detailed written submissions. We have around 90 minutes for this session, which is intended to generate a discussion rather than be a straightforward question-and-answer session. If you want to make any points in the discussion, let Joanne McNaughton, our clerk, know and I will take you in.

This is not going to be Buggins’s turn—I am not going to take you in sequence. People will just put their hands up when they want to come in, and it may be that we bounce back and forward, and the same people may get in more than others. I do not intend to do a lot of talking, which colleagues on the committee will be pleased to hear. I have specific questions about each of your seven submissions that I will ask if I need to, but if we get a free-flowing discussion and we touch on the areas that we want to cover, that will not be necessary. I do not want to be in a situation where I am just going through the questions that you have already answered in your submissions, so if I ask questions, it will be to expand on some of the comments that you have already made.

Without further ado, Vicki Bibby already knows that I am going to go to her first, because forewarned is forearmed. In the written submission from Public Health Scotland, Vicki has said:

“In summary, we believe the national performance framework is fundamentally important as a statement of the shared national priorities and a clear expression of what wellbeing means for the people of Scotland today.”

The historic concordat.

Are you just throwing that out there, Mr Controversial?

Is there any area where you, as a local authority, have learned from other local authorities, and is there any area where other local authorities have learned from some of the good work that you are doing in Fife?

It is not just about people being given awards; it is about how other local authorities have looked at those awards and said, “That is something that we want to adopt in our local authority.” We are keen to see how that has worked in a practical sense.

I thank Tim Kendrick and Mirren Kelly for their evidence today and their responses to our questions.

I will now call a 10-minute break. We will start the round-table session on schedule at 11 o’clock.