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That is very helpful. I recognise your point that, when amounts are allocated, they might be labelled, but that does not necessarily mean that you know precisely where the cheques are going. I see both witnesses nodding at that.

I will move on to why there is a transparency issue. The bullet points under paragraph 41 rang alarm bells for me. The paragraph says:

“The existing processes for monitoring the budget were not designed to separate out specific spending in areas across portfolios”.

On reallocations, the report says:

“it is not always possible to establish the detail of reprioritisations within directorates.”

Will you explain what you are saying? On my reading, one of two things is happening—either the Scottish Government has the information but is not sharing it or reporting on it, which would be troubling, or it is not effectively tracking the information at the sub-directorate level, which is not just worrying but downright dangerous. I expect an organisation with a budget of about £40 billion to track its spend by organisational units that are well below directorates. Which explanation applies? Are you comfortable that the Scottish Government as an organisation is tracking its spend at an effective level?

Thank you for that answer, which I do not disagree with. I must emphasise that, ultimately, the national performance framework is useful. I guess that I am wondering whether it could be made more useful. On the points that you just raised, is there not an alternative approach? It is not necessarily purely about setting targets, but emphasis could be applied to certain measures. With balanced scorecards in particular, that is explicitly what you do—you attach weightings to particular measures. Could that approach be taken to strengthen the strategic value of the measurements that are included within the framework?

My reflection on what you have just said is that it is about making explicit how you use the data, which I think might be helpful. We all recognise that the measures are important, but I wonder whether there is a need to report against them more explicitly. I cannot recall the last time a minister made a statement explicitly about the national performance framework—not so much about it as a tool but about its outcomes and what it was saying in their portfolio. Do you think there is a need to have more explicit reporting by ministers against the measures in the national performance framework?

Whenever I have looked at the national performance framework, I have been struck by how it seems to be strongly influenced by the balanced scorecard approach that we see in a lot of modern management thinking. The Kaplan and Norton paper from back in the early 1990s that instituted that thinking highlights four areas: customer perspective; internal perspective, or looking at what the organisation excels at; innovation and learning; and shareholder return. Not all those areas apply to government, but there are analogues such as the citizen’s perspective, and the last one about how we generate revenue, or the economic perspective.

The other critical thing that Kaplan and Norton say is that those measures have to be explicitly linked to goals. The national performance framework seems to be very broad, and it does not appear to have that level of focus. Certainly, those perspectives do not necessarily seem to be preserved down to the level of the national performance goals. On reflection, as we look to improve the national performance framework, I wonder whether greater focus—so that those measures could drive strategy rather than being a broad basket of measures—would be of some advantage.

One of my worries with the national performance framework is that it is very broad, in terms of both how the objectives are framed and the number of measures that sit below those. I wonder whether there is a missing layer. For example, the national outcome for children and young people is:

“We grow up loved, safe and respected so that we realise our full potential”.

I do not think that anyone anywhere would disagree with that as an objective. When we go through the national framework, we then immediately descend into some quite detailed statistics. I wonder whether an intermediate layer is required, on how the overall objective will be achieved and on what measures will drive that. Ultimately, we have to discriminate between different measures, because some measures will essentially be input measures, while others will be output measures. Some measures will trail, and others will be early indicators. Without that strategic emphasis on what is more important and without differentiating between different types of measures, we just have a sea of data, which does not drive change or orient behaviour across government.

Do the other witnesses have anything to add?

I would like to follow up the discussion on the operation of the fiscal framework. The 2019-20 budget contained tax proposals that should have raised an additional £500 million, but, because of the block grant adjustment and the fiscal framework, only £148 million of additional funding came to the Scottish Government. My understanding of that is that we did not do such a good job of growing the number of taxpayers in Scotland or their ability to pay tax—in other words, how much money they were earning. Is that correct? If so, what does that tell us about the policies that are being pursued in Scotland to grow the tax base and earnings? Does it tell us something about the Scottish Government’s ability to use the big fiscal lever that it has, or does it, in fact, show that that lever is not really effective? I am trying to remember what I learned in economics in my first year at university on elasticity of demand and the tax rate. Does it tell us that people switch behaviour when we alter tax rates in Scotland?

I ask David Eiser to respond first, but I am interested in hearing from the other witnesses.

Do Susan and David agree that we need to both prioritise enterprise support and increase its focus? Would you support that proposition?

Please do.

I take your point about the public sector, but a significant number of people—if not most people—who have been on furlough are employed by the private sector. What policy interventions would you like to see? Would they involve skills and retraining or perhaps job guarantee schemes? What interventions would the STUC like to take place to preserve private sector employment?