Seòmar agus comataidhean

That is one of the reasons why I am asking the question. You held a Scottish Parliament information centre breakfast seminar on this exact issue, considering the challenge of climate change against other issues. It is essential that the information that we need in order to scrutinise is as available as possible. Where there are different policy choices, politicians have to make decisions about whether those are good or bad, and just getting to the information about effectiveness is absolutely critical, including to this committee. Are there other areas in which we need to boost the data?

Both, actually. You said at that breakfast seminar that there is a bit of a trade-off whereby we have to measure up what the Scottish Government should prioritise. That was one of the best events that you have run in the Parliament, because it gave us a wider perspective on what the challenges are, and the reason why it was good is that we got additional data. The charge on this Parliament is to measure how effectively we are spending public money. I just wonder whether there are extra bits of information that we could have.

Local authorities often tell us that they have been on single-year budgets—it is a bit hand to mouth—so they are having to make very quick decisions and are not necessarily looking to the medium term. One of the reasons—this is a personal view—that I feel that a fiscal framework arrangement could help that process is that it could improve the transparency and the expectation of what evidence could be provided before decisions are made.

That was helpful, and Mr McKee has given the committee a good outline of that, too, but just to be absolutely clear, who is the final decider of the number of people in the core civil service? Is it Mr McKee, as minister; you, as permanent secretary; or the First Minister?

Good morning, permanent secretary. Following on from your previous appearance, I wonder whether I could ask you about what the committee considers to be a very important issue: public sector reform. We are all agreed on the need for public sector reform, and one of the most important things is the size of the public sector and how that plays out in the Scottish Government budget.

The other part of that, which you have been discussing with the convener, is the head count in the core civil service. When it comes to determining the size of the core civil service, is that decision made by the First Minister or by you, as permanent secretary? Is it a minister? Who decides on that? Last time, we were left a little bit in the dark about that.

So, we could add that to your successes in your term of office, to go back to the convener’s earlier question about what you see as achievements.

That was helpful. You will understand why I am asking these questions. This committee has the important job of scrutinising the Government’s budget, and, when it comes to the size of the civil service and the efficiencies that you are making, there is a bit of a grey area with regard to scrutiny, because we like to know that any decisions made are designed to improve outcomes. That is the key thing.

That is helpful. The reason for the framework bill process is to engage effectively with stakeholders on the bill before it is presented in full to Parliament. The more that stakeholders are involved, the more you feel that there is credibility to your bill.

The problem is that our experience has proven that, for a framework bill that is at an early stage, it is almost impossible to get the right idea of the costs from the financial memorandum. I am interested in hearing from the permanent secretary whether the Parliament should be reviewing that difficulty in getting accurate costs as a potential problem.

When you made the decision not to progress with the 2,000 that you mentioned, on what criteria did you make that judgment? Was it something that you decided, or was it something that was open to discussion between the First Minister, yourself and Mr McKee?

I will finish on another point. Parliament has seen a considerable increase in the number of what we call framework bills. The final decisions on what things will look like as a result of those bills are often away in the future and the picture is not very clear during our scrutiny process. That has led to some tensions within the public sector workforce. Do you think that the number of framework bills that go through Parliament is an issue? Should we be trying to reduce that number so that we have better scope for scrutiny and can keep a firm hand on it?

We have had a lot of framework bills, particularly in the past three years, and alongside that there have been difficulties with their financial memorandums. The more framework bills that there are, the more likely it is that it will be difficult for us to consider the detail that should go in the financial memorandum. Do you think that that is a worry for the Parliament?