Seòmar agus comataidhean

Excellent. That is what we are trying to see more and more of. That is a real issue. Trying to scrutinise the work that has been undertaken over the years has sometimes been like wrestling a jellyfish because of the absence of measurable priorities.

Lastly, the committee has sought clarification of how inward secondments are used to draw on additional resource and provide staff with broader experience. The committee went to Estonia, and that visit opened our eyes in a number of areas, including to the fact that the public sector there interacts quite strongly with the private sector—more than it seems to here, where the public sector seems to be more insular.

I realise that there is an issue of supporting academic secondments that are organised by the UK Research and Innovation policy fellows scheme, but is more being done in the civil service to involve the private sector in other areas of the work that you do, and the other way around, to see how you can learn from each other?

Thank you. I want to wish you well for your future endeavours. I have certainly enjoyed the interactions that we have had. Improvements have been made over recent years, so you can hang your hat on that.

We will have a short break while we change witnesses.

Our next agenda item is an evidence session with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on its second review of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which was published last week. I welcome to the meeting Scherie Nicol, who is the lead on Parliaments and independent fiscal institutions in the public management and budgeting division in the directorate for public governance at the OECD.

I understand that you would like to make a short opening statement.

Thank you for your time. It has been very helpful and we greatly appreciate the work that has gone into the very positive report.

Why are those in two documents? Why is it not one document? Why is fiscal sustainability not in the medium-term financial strategy?

I thought so, but it is good if those things are pinned down and explained. That is a simple, straightforward explanation, but it is good to have milestones saying where we expect to be after one quarter, six months or nine months. That way, for transparency, we have a clearer picture of whether the Government is on track and how much it is saving.

Colleagues are keen to come in, but I want to ask you one more question, on financial memorandums. It is important to acknowledge that progress has been made on financial memorandums, but the committee has had a number of concerns about the financial memorandums that have been presented to us. They have been considerably out of date, frankly, and that has had significant implications for costings and, ultimately, our scrutiny.

A number of members’ bills have come to us, and I am wondering about the change in guidance. You have said that

“the Scottish Government should proactively write to the Committee as soon as it becomes aware of any significantly revised figures (including margins of uncertainty) for FMs during Stage 1 of a Bill’s passage.”

Will that apply to members’ bills as well as to Government bills?

Thank you for that. I will bring in colleagues around the table, starting with John Mason.

We are doing our own investigation into that, because we feel that there might be conflicts of interest in how some inquiries are undertaken. For example, people might go to the media demanding the expansion of an inquiry in which they have a pecuniary interest.

I have a couple more questions on this topic and then we will conclude, because we are over time.

The AGS said in relation to performance reporting:

“While we recognise improvements have been made to the reporting in 2023/24, the performance report needs to be more transparent with a golden thread linking all aspects of performance and providing an overall view of progress. Without clear targets against which activity can be measured, it remains difficult to form an overall picture of the performance of the Scottish Government.”

He went on to say:

“Aligning funding to priorities is essential for effective decision making. The continuing revisions and development of policy limits the ability to be transparent, provide continuity and report achievement across the key priorities. There is an absence of clearly defined performance measures with measurable targets for all priority areas.”

Do you agree with that, and would you say that it is absolutely critical that measurable targets are included when looking at priority areas and how the Scottish Government delivers?

In Estonia, they tend not to recruit so much from the private sector, but they have people from there working for six months in the civil service, and vice versa. They do a lot of that.

This has been a long session. I thank you for answering our questions. Do you want to make any further points before we wind up the session?

It is on page 21 of the report.