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Thank you for that. I will bring in colleagues around the table, starting with John Mason.

We are doing our own investigation into that, because we feel that there might be conflicts of interest in how some inquiries are undertaken. For example, people might go to the media demanding the expansion of an inquiry in which they have a pecuniary interest.

I have a couple more questions on this topic and then we will conclude, because we are over time.

The AGS said in relation to performance reporting:

“While we recognise improvements have been made to the reporting in 2023/24, the performance report needs to be more transparent with a golden thread linking all aspects of performance and providing an overall view of progress. Without clear targets against which activity can be measured, it remains difficult to form an overall picture of the performance of the Scottish Government.”

He went on to say:

“Aligning funding to priorities is essential for effective decision making. The continuing revisions and development of policy limits the ability to be transparent, provide continuity and report achievement across the key priorities. There is an absence of clearly defined performance measures with measurable targets for all priority areas.”

Do you agree with that, and would you say that it is absolutely critical that measurable targets are included when looking at priority areas and how the Scottish Government delivers?

In Estonia, they tend not to recruit so much from the private sector, but they have people from there working for six months in the civil service, and vice versa. They do a lot of that.

This has been a long session. I thank you for answering our questions. Do you want to make any further points before we wind up the session?

It is on page 21 of the report.

We have to put that into perspective as well. The Scottish Fiscal Commission might not be as good as the institutions in countries such as the Netherlands or, indeed, as good as the OBR, but it is a lot better than those in countries such as Finland, France, Germany, Portugal and Greece, as we can see from the list that you have on page 12 of your report.

I call Michelle Thomson.

But surely that is taken as read. To be honest, that is not really a priority for Government; it is just the nature of the position that you are in. The principle of serving the Government of the day would be taken as read wherever you were in the civil service structure, would it not? I do not want to put words into your mouth, but if you were Joe Griffin—if you were to remain in post—what three things would you like to see being achieved over, say, the next year or so?

If we strip out the areas that you have touched on, such as Social Security Scotland and ScotRail, would the civil service workforce have increased or decreased over the past five years?

What you say is really important, if it is enacted. One of the key issues for the committee and one of its great frustrations has been that everything always seems to take much longer than was initially advised. For example, in December 2023, we sought information on the capital infrastructure pipeline. We were told that the pipeline would be delayed to the summer, and then to the autumn—blah, blah, blah. It will now be published this September, which is a 21-month delay. We were also told that the medium-term financial strategy was not published because of the general election. That will now be published this summer, and so on.

Nothing ever seems to happen on time or when originally advised, there do not seem to be any specific deadlines—it is always June, September or whatever—and there is never anything particularly tangible. That causes frustration as weeks run into months and months run into years. Will there be more emphasis on pinning down those documents? It seems that their publication is derailed by almost anything that happens at Westminster, whether that is a budget or an election or whatever. We realise that those things are important, but it is almost a case of, “We have an election coming, so we will not actually deliver this.” That causes great difficulty with regard to scrutiny.

The committee recommended that consideration be given to civil servants working for the Scottish Government providing long-term insight briefings on the challenges facing Scotland over the next 50 years. In response to the committee’s decision-making report in 2023, you highlighted horizon-scanning work that had already been undertaken in that regard, and you said that you would

“begin publishing reports of longer-term insights in the early autumn of”

2024

“to create a new resource for public bodies and partners in the third and private sector”.

It is unclear whether that has actually happened.

There is quite a difference between summer recess 2025 and autumn 2024—that is nearly a year. In 2023, it was going to be next year, and now it is going to be two years late.

That is one of the things that concerns the committee—the relentless slippage that we see. We are never told, “Oh, we said it was going to be June, but do you know what? We’re actually going to publish it in May.” It is always the other way round—it is always months and months, and sometimes years, behind schedule.

Is that not a bit of a failing, to be honest? A session of the Parliament is only five years, so, if there is a one-year delay, that is 20 per cent of the entire session. It is quite significant. If those documents are important—as you suggest that they are—why has there been a delay of almost a year in their publication?