���˿���

Yes—I, too, am restraining myself from coming in on the back of that.

It looks like a Cy Twombly drawing—if it was, it would be worth around $70 million.

Ferries are boats that carry people.

To wind up the session, I have three further questions to ask.

One of the things that I really like about your report is the wee take-home messages, which I think are quite helpful. In one of those, on page 16, you said:

“new ideas are applied patchily to established practices.”

How could that be improved?

To follow up on that, you refer on more than one occasion to the need to trust public service professionals, which is obviously fundamental.

On the other side, I know that, when the Scottish National Party Government came in in 2007, there was concern that there was not any buy-in from the civil servants who were there, who did not think that the SNP was gonnae win and that, if it did, it was gonnae last six weeks and that Tavish Scott, as was famously said, was gonnae come in. Of course, that did not happen.

Civil servants are appointed to ministers. That is not how we, as ���˿���, recruit our own staff in our own constituency offices, many of whom we have known for years; sometimes we have not known them that long, but they tend to be much more open about their political views with us.

How can we build that trust in such circumstances? Personal relationships are obviously key, but how can we do so on a broader basis?

I think that, from a politician’s point of view, there are some ministers who fear that they will be perceived as having a “Yes Minister” kind of relationship and that they will not be the ones who are running the show in their own departments, or that that is how it will sometimes be perceived. That can perhaps make relationships a wee bit difficult.

I will end on the “policy cycle” and “policy spirograph” images on page 17. Will you talk us through that a wee bit?

Well, the floor is yours.

Good morning, and welcome to the eighth meeting in 2023 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Our first agenda item is an evidence session with Professor Paul Cairney to inform our inquiry into effective Scottish Government decision making. Professor Cairney is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Stirling and an adviser to the committee. As part of our inquiry, the committee commissioned Professor Cairney to provide a research paper on effective Government decision making, which has been shared with committee members. I welcome Professor Cairney to the meeting.

Before I invite Professor Cairney to make some opening remarks, I pass on apologies from Liz Smith, who is unable to make it to the meeting.

Thanks for that very positive ending to your opening remarks. [Laughter.]

Your report brings into sharp focus the monumental nature of the inquiry that we have decided to embark on, because we could move in so many different directions. There is a clear difference between political rhetoric and reality. I mean that in the most positive sense. For a number of reasons—one relates to resources—politicians from all political parties are not always able to deliver on the ground what they seek to achieve.

We are focusing on how decisions can be made more effectively. When we speak to a number of civil servants from different departments next week, it will be interesting to find out whether there is a coherent decision-making structure in the Scottish Government, or whether some parts of the structure make decisions significantly differently from others. What is your experience of that?

John Mason and I were members of the Finance Committee between 2011 and 2016, and we did a lot of work on prevention. There were a number of frustrations at that time. First, we can all identify good approaches to preventative spending, but it is extremely difficult to get the resources to disengage from delivery models that are not working particularly effectively. Secondly, everything that we do is, of course, within the hothouse of the chamber and the media. Everything is measured by the number of nurses, the number of police officers and so on rather than necessarily by outcomes at the end, although there are attempts across the board to have more focus on those outcomes.

We understand that there is no perfect delivery system. In your introduction, you say that Governments can aspire to do wonderful things but that there are innate contradictions. For example, involving a number of partners in the decision-making process can conflict with strong central decision making and a decisive ethos so that people outside can see where their Government is heading and what it plans to do.

I suppose that it is about trying to look at the least imperfect system. In the report, you look at New Zealand in some detail including, for example, how New Zealand might own some of its failures of policy—although I think that the Opposition will do its best to point that out without any Scottish Government involvement being necessary. You also point to some of the successes in Wales and what is being done there.

Although they are in the report, would you talk to a couple of those examples for the record? Also, can you go beyond New Zealand and Wales to talk about where else we could look at. There are international models of delivery. Are there other areas that you think the Scottish Government—and, indeed, this committee—could look at?