Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you for coming to the committee. You might have heard a bit of the previous evidence session, in which the witnesses suggested that some of the agency support is a bit inconsistent. How do you feel about the homelessness agencies in that regard? Are there inconsistencies across different local authorities?

Also, are there specific changes that need to be discussed and suggestions that need to be put to the Government on the legal framework and the civil remedies that are in place for people who have suffered badly from domestic abuse?

Is that misinformation the result of a lack of joined-up thinking, or is there deliberate misinformation to try to push people away?

Are there inconsistencies in how local authorities provide that support?

I saw your name there.

I have one brief but nevertheless important question. Ms Clelland, your response earlier to Mr MacDonald was very interesting. You said that there are inconsistencies across some of the agencies that are trying to support people in abusive relationships, as well as across local authorities. Have the witnesses come across any concerns that there are inconsistencies in the law, particularly when it comes to civil remedies for people in such circumstances?

I ask that question because, at the beginning of this year, the Scottish Law Commission asked for views to be fed back to it about whether changes need to be made to the law in relation to specific issues with civil remedies, and the results were quite revealing. The people who came back on the question said that there were a lot of issues—about 10 or 11 issues were flagged up. If you think that there are inconsistencies in the law, can you outline them?

Okay. I will pursue that later. Thank you.

I think that Mr Greer has given a very good assessment of what went wrong. He sits on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, as I do and as Mr Mason does, and he knows that discussions are being had about how public bodies are accountable to the Parliament. Indeed, how, exactly, we improve that will be a big discussion for the next Parliament. Does he think that the process of improving accountability, which, effectively, is what we are trying to do—we are trying to ensure that the SQA is much more accountable for its actions and therefore will be held to account if something goes wrong—is just a problem with regard to the relationship between that one body and this committee, or is there a wider issue about how we improve the scrutiny of public bodies?

There have been issues when short-term planning has taken over from longer-term planning. As you rightly said, that tends to happen in difficult economic circumstances, because quick adjustments are having to be made, particularly if something happens internationally. Sometimes, an exogenous shock affects the UK. Do you feel that that is an issue? When we look at the transparency of this, is having to make adjustments on a short-term basis very quickly creating some challenges for medium-term and longer-term financial planning?

Last week, we had some very interesting conversations with the OBR about some of the challenges that forecasters are facing. I suspect that we might have similar discussions with the Scottish Fiscal Commission in the evidence session this morning. I raise that because the OBR expressed considerable frustration about the recent spring statement, as its projections on welfare spending were based on policy commitments that the UK Government had made but that were no longer the case. The statement made short-term and late adjustments, creating considerable frustration and difficulties for the OBR. In Scotland, the Scottish Fiscal Commission expressed its concerns that the mitigation of the two-child cap came very late in the day.

I know that you cannot comment on policy or on whether the right policy is in place, but do you think that Governments making very late announcements is creating genuine challenges and difficulties for forecasters and, therefore, for people like yourself, who are having to audit what is happening? Is that causing greater difficulty?

Thank you for all the excellent work that you do. I want to ask about the challenge of trying to measure the effect of putting more money into something to improve outcomes against measures that are not related to money. The reason I ask this is that, some years back—it was probably about 10 or 12 years ago—Reform Scotland did an interesting study on the considerable increase in the amount of money that had gone into education in Scotland in the context of declining outcomes in literacy, numeracy and some other issues.

Building on what the convener said, more and more money is being put into health—that is what has happened in Scotland. Some of the outcomes are not encouraging at all, while others are. How easy is it to get a handle on the effectiveness of measures that are financial—that is, measures that are down to more money being put in—against other measures that are having a positive effect but have nothing to do with money?