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We have heard a lot about the lack of consistency between portfolios around policy making and, even more so, implementation. The explanation is that the things that the Government does are so different that there cannot be an identical approach. I would push back and say that, with some of the large organisations with which I have come into contact, they might have different approaches at a technical level, but they typically have common approaches, which somebody from one part of the business would recognise in broad terms.

Is it a lesson from business for the Government that there can be different detailed implementation but very strong core principles with regard to policy design and implementation?

Do you agree with that, Mr Sheerin?

That was very helpful. Dr Foster, do you have anything to add?

One of the typical reactions that you get when you are trying to implement a consistent methodology across an organisation is, “Well, that all makes an awful lot of sense, but our area is special so we don’t need to follow it.” We see quite often in the public sector that public bodies will try to get around that by presenting their findings or thoughts publicly in line with the methodology while, behind the scenes, they carry on doing what they were doing. To what extent has that been apparent? How much has the approach driven fundamental change in practice, and how much is it simply about presentation of existing practice? How much resistance has there been to that approach, overall?

Thank you very much. That is very helpful. I will hand over, at that point.

I will move on, thematically. We embarked on our inquiry into Government decision making in a very broad sense by thinking as much about how the Government makes decisions on managing changing day-to-day circumstances as about policy making, which is about what Government wants to do in the future.

It is interesting that when we speak to politicians and officials, they naturally talk only about policy; only when they are prompted or prodded do they talk about delivery. I wonder whether there are comparable approaches to looking at how, once a policy is set, it is implemented and then managed in the steady state. Those things are often as important, if not more important, than up-front initial analysis and policy for the future.

That is interesting. One of the things that probably strikes most of us as interesting is the move by the New Zealand Cabinet to publish all of its Cabinet and Cabinet sub-committee papers in public within 30 days. That is quite a striking contrast with how things are done in Scotland and Westminster, where there are 30-year rules and things do not emerge until decades after the discussion. To what extent has that made a difference?

We have also seen that when transparency measures are brought in, the Administration and ministers essentially do everything that they can to avoid channels on which they might be recorded. It is the rise of government via WhatsApp. Have transparency measures improved things, or have things been pushed into the shadows?

The balance between private and public sector productivity is also key for exactly those reasons.

It strikes me that we are not alone, but that countries such as Japan and Finland have had a much sharper focus on the issues than we have had. Do we need to do more international comparisons, not only at the quantitative level but at the policy and qualitative levels, to better understand the challenge?

The point about business cases is exactly what I want to come to next. In its report highlighting the issues relating to Ferguson Marine, Audit Scotland said:

“It is not clear what discussions took place between Scottish ministers and Transport Scotland about the contract award. There is no documented evidence to confirm why ... ministers were willing to accept the risks of awarding the contract”.

In its submission, the Fraser of Allander Institute says:

“our first priority was therefore to understand how policy is currently made in the Scottish Government.

We expected to find a structured framework of processes which we could build from. We found no such framework. This concerning finding led to us unravelling the various processes and practices currently occurring across different parts of the Government.”

It goes on to say that, often,

“Business cases were performed to the minimum standard”.

We have heard, time and again, that, although these things happen, they happen in very different ways in different portfolio areas. I have no desire to talk about the details of Ferguson Marine—we will leave it to other committees to do that—but it strikes me that, although there might be rules, as Mark Taylor said, there are no consistent methodologies or standards for how appraisals, whether they relate to business cases or commercial decisions, are made from portfolio to portfolio, or even from decision to decision. Is that a fair conclusion to draw? If we were to do one thing, would it be to take a more robust approach to business case development and scrutiny? Would that be pivotal? James Black is nodding his head most vigorously, so I will go to him first.

I echo the convener’s points about the usefulness and importance of the report. One of the interesting things about the timeframe is that 50 years gets us very close to the global inflection point at which deaths will start exceeding births—I think that the United Nations predicts that that will happen at some point in the 2080s. This is therefore a global issue and not just a European or a Scottish one.

You said that you have taken the assumption on productivity from the OBR. Is the gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK purely down to demographics?