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As someone who has sat on the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body through more than one parliamentary session and who also sat on the corporate body when we went through very difficult financial times as a country, I know that we applied very rigorous controls to our budget, leading, at one point, to significant reductions in the overall cost of staff provision at that given moment.

I will turn to David McGill in a moment, but I come back to the fact that, particularly in this parliamentary session, we have been consolidating views expressed in the previous session that we were underresourced with regard to support for committees as well as very strong representations from parliamentarians, who felt that their offices were underresourced, too. In comparison with other Parliaments elsewhere in the United Kingdom, there was a reasonable case to be made in that respect, but embracing those changes meant a significant financial increase.

At this point, I should correct the record. I think that I might have said that 80 per cent of our costs as a Parliament are for staffing; however, I was thinking of office-holders at that point. The figure is 70 per cent. Even when that is the case, it is difficult to see anything other than a negative consequential impact on our ability to operate as a Parliament if we were simply to unilaterally adopt the principle that you have suggested.

It is back to where it had been. We had a higher budget last year, which, I seem to remember, I might have been responsible for advocating, because we were in a year in which we were uncertain about inflation. It is worth remembering that, when we presented last year’s budget, the forecast of the external bodies was that we would be in negative inflation by April this year, but that has proved to have been somewhat ambitious. At that point, the corporate body was slightly cautious about accepting that view, and it therefore chose to have a higher contingency to meet what looked to be a much more volatile position than was necessarily being presented. This year, we felt that it would be wrong simply to maintain that higher level of contingency, so we have brought it back to a figure that is more typical and similar to the one that we had previously.

We certainly do not have a window sticker that says, “You must spend your budget”. It is open to members to determine that.

Very often, the uptake happens because of in-year changes. Staff leave, and it then takes quite a period of time for them to be replaced. For example, in my own office, a highly paid member of staff left unexpectedly, and there was a period of time in which I reassessed whether I wanted to replace that individual in quite the same way. It has meant that, in this particular year, my own utilisation of the staff provision will be less than it has been in other years. That kind of reality will apply across most parliamentary offices, making it unlikely that we would ever have a year in which there would be a 100 per cent utilisation of the overall budget.

We have worked out that 93 per cent figure by looking at experience over the years, particularly the mid-years of a parliamentary session. Obviously, in the first year of a session, the figure will usually be less than that, because there will be a lot of new members who will not have any staff at all and will be in the business of recruiting them. It therefore seems relatively reasonable to look at the mid-years of the Parliament if we are looking to pitch things at the required level.

I do not think that there is ever a year zero in examining such issues. The process is on-going, but changes that we make often lead to consequential opportunities.

However, we have interrogated requests for additional moneys to fund particular projects, some of which we have asked to be deferred or to be looked at again.

Thank you for that trenchantly-put sequence of observations. I will come to David McGill in a moment, but the first thing to say is that percentage increases can look quite sensational in relation to some relatively small budgets.

As you know, the corporate body has discussed with the committee the overall expansion and principal understanding of what office-holders are doing, and we are grateful for the inquiry that you now have under way. However, the corporate body’s responsibility is not to editorialise, but to enact the will of Parliament; that is why, Parliament having decided that the office-holders shall exist, our responsibility is to ensure that they are able to undertake and dispose of their functions effectively. Some of them have had additional responsibilities applied to them and some have made budget submissions that Huw Williams and Janice Crerar, who operate with the office-holders on a daily basis, have interrogated, and which the corporate body has declined to accept.

It is therefore not the case that the budget before you has not been scrutinised, analysed, interrogated and, in some cases, declined. However, some of the office-holders still have relatively low overall costs such that, when you apply a percentage, it can look quite significant, although it could, in fact, be the case that just one additional employee or partial employee has been added to it.

I will allow David to expand on that.

You identify the two key issues. The latter is the one that I wrestle with, because it is not clear to me that any overarching body is looking holistically at the office-holder landscape. The corporate body’s responsibility is to enact the will of Parliament. The Scottish Government can propose the establishment of commissioners. Members of the Scottish Parliament can propose the establishment of commissioners through members’ bills.

In my experience, every one of those proposals has been considered in isolation in relation to the actual proposal before Parliament, but never in terms of the overall landscape. In the most recent debate, I, on behalf of the corporate body, tried to introduce that point into the discussion on the patient safety commissioner. It becomes very difficult in a debate about progressing legislation in respect of a particular commissioner, when everything in that debate is about the merits of the position in question, to have a wider discussion about what Parliament is doing in the round, seeking to do or prioritising. Even if you were to argue in favour of commissioners, we are considering those issues not in any structured way but on the basis of who is proposing what at any given moment in time.

As we have come to appreciate the concerns around the growth in the number of office-holders, we have, among ourselves, questioned the ability of the corporate body to look at and properly scrutinise those matters. We did a piece of work on whether other structures were open to us, and we looked carefully at the legislative framework in which we operate. The corporate body cannot devolve its responsibility for scrutiny of office-bearers; it is a requirement under the legislation that the corporate body is responsible for those matters. We have therefore, within the time that we meet and in our agendas, sought to expand the scope that we have for proper scrutiny of office-holders.

We have been going through a sustained period of having each one of the office-holders attend a corporate body meeting to explain and justify their budget and to talk more generally about the work that we are doing, so we are increasing the interest and scrutiny that we bring to the task. However, I do not diminish the reality that this is a corporate body that, at one time, had to scrutinise two office-holders, is now having to scrutinise eight—if the patient safety commissioner is the eighth—and might be invited to scrutinise even more. Moreover, it has to scrutinise office-holders whose responsibilities, in some instances, are increasing, too. That becomes a challenge.

However, this is our responsibility from a governance point of view. The actual performance of office-holders is the responsibility of parliamentary committees. In some cases, one or two committees have responsibility for several office-holders. Accommodating that into their ability to do the work that they might wish to do, to scrutinise legislation and to hold the Government to account is an equally significant challenge.

I will say something about a comment that I made earlier. In my own group, there is a general acceptance of the principle that we have a growing office-holder landscape. However, when it comes to saying, “Don’t stand in the way of the commissioner that I want to create,” individual conflict arises. That is one of the things that we have to wrestle with.

I think that we are slightly at sea here. We can take this away, look at it and come back to you, if that would be helpful.