Seòmar agus comataidhean

A key initiative is the Cabinet sub-committee on investment and the economy. I understand that you held its first meeting on 10 December, but the next meeting is expected to take place in spring 2025, which seems to leave an awfully long gap. That work is an imperative for the Government, but there does not seem to be a great sense of urgency, given that there will be three or four months between meetings, for example.

Excellent. The committee likes certainty.

This afternoon, the Parliament is debating employer national insurance contributions, which is going to be quite tousy. I am not participating, so I shall look on with interest, but I understand that the level of impact that ENIC increases will have on the public sector is an issue. The most precise figure that I have heard regarding the direct cost to the public sector is £549 million. There might be costs over and above that figure, and we know that other sectors, including the private sector, third sector and so on, are affected. I have no doubt that the issue will be covered in great detail this afternoon.

Can you advise the committee on what specifically the sum of the tranche of money from the Westminster Government will be, when you expect it to be confirmed and when it will arrive?

Lastly, we took evidence from a number of public bodies and the issue of compulsory redundancies came up. Before I ask you about that, I note that you said in your response that you have asked

“the Minister for Public Finance to develop a programme of workforce reforms. This includes workforce trajectories to support the workforce control framework that is being developed for public bodies including recruitment controls, a workforce management policy and related governance arrangements. The framework will be delivered close to the start of the 2025-26 financial year.”

We will be keen to see that when it comes out.

The public bodies all suggested that they wanted flexibility with regard to compulsory redundancies. A policy of no compulsory redundancies was brought in 17 years ago, understandably, in response to the financial crash, when people were really worried about their jobs. However, we now have a situation with advancing technologies and changing jobs where we have a lot of square pegs in round holes. Public sector organisations have to reduce budgets. To achieve that, they are using voluntary redundancy to pay people who they do not really want to lose a lot of money to leave and they are stuck with people who they do not necessarily want to keep, because they might have a skills mismatch or whatever. That approach is not really efficient or effective in delivering public services; it is also very expensive.

Will there be any change, if not directly in the public sector then in some of the bodies, to give organisations what they want, which is to have flexibility in their workforce? That seems to be the implication of your response without your actually saying it.

To be fair, all our public sector organisations—local government, the national health service, whatever—try to do that, but sometimes it is simply not possible.

I will not pursue that any further at this point, because colleagues are keen to come in.

That would be appreciated.

One of the responses that you have given with regard to the medium-term financial strategy is that you want

“to ensure that the public finances are set on a sustainable footing over the medium-term.”

I am interested in what the Government means by “a sustainable footing”. The Government always balances its books—it must, because that is a legal obligation—but the committee has expressed concerns about, for example, the huge increase in social security spending and the impact on other portfolios, which are being squeezed, as a result. What does the Government mean by “a sustainable footing”?

You said that you aim to deliver the work before June. I might be a wee bit cynical, but I am not aware of many Government strategies that have come ahead of schedule. The committee is concerned that nothing seems to happen in originally envisaged timescales, which has been a real issue throughout the parliamentary session.

Under our second agenda item, we will consider the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill at stage 2. We are still joined by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government. Officials who are present for this item are unable to participate in formal stage 2 proceedings, as is set out in standing orders.

Committee members should have with them a copy of the bill as introduced, the marshalled list of amendments and the groupings of amendments document, which sets out the groupings of amendments in the order in which they will be debated.

As members are aware, only the Scottish Government can lodge amendments to budget bills. The cabinet secretary has lodged six amendments to be considered today. Should there be a division, voting will be done by a show of hands. It is important that members keep their hands clearly raised until the clerks have recorded the vote. The committee is required to indicate formally that it has considered and agreed to each section of the bill, so I will put a question on each section at the appropriate point.

Section 1 agreed to.

Schedule 1—The Scottish Administration

Thank you, convener.

One key issue is that there is no clear definition of a framework bill. It seems that every cabinet secretary and minister has a different view on that and, indeed, sometimes, they do not even agree with their own bill team. For example, the Finance and Public Administration Committee looked at the Police (Ethics, Conduct and Scrutiny) (Scotland) Bill’s financial memorandum, about which we had some concerns. The bill team advised us that it was a framework and enabling bill, but the cabinet secretary, when she came before us, told us that it was an amending bill. There is a real issue there.

We tried to get clarification on that from a number of people in the Scottish Government, including from the Minister for Parliamentary Business, the Presiding Officer and so on. The permanent secretary said that he would put

“something in writing around the definition so that we can be clear about what is and what is not in that bracket”.—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 21 May 2024; c 12.]

So far, we have not had that clarification.

You probably know that the UK Government Cabinet Office’s “Guide to Making Legislation” calls a framework legislation

“A bill ... that ... leaves the substance of the policy, or significant aspects of it, to delegated legislation”,

which might amount to a series of powers providing for a wide range of things that could be done, leaving the detail on those things to be set out in the regulations. It is yet to be seen whether the Scottish Government and Parliament will consider a definition of a framework bill that aligns to that one or whether it will be something different.

That is not really the point that we want to make as the Finance and Public Administration Committee. The committee has been very clear that we want to see the scrutiny prior to stage 1. We are keen to have a definition of a framework bill. It does not have to be written in tablets of stone, but the problem is that, if it is too woolly, we might be comparing apples with oranges and we might be in a situation whereby the Government’s view of a bill is X and ours is Y. We do not want to be in that position.

Some of the bills that we are talking about can involve hundreds of millions of pounds, so, certainly with the financial memoranda, we need to batten down the hatches a wee bit before we get to stage 1.