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Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 10 July 2025
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Displaying 2881 contributions

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Finance and Public Administration Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 7 February 2023

John Mason

This is not my area of expertise. However, councils tell me that all local authorities agreed that there could be an increase in fixed-penalty charges but that the issue seems to have got stuck somewhere.

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 7 February 2023

John Mason

I do not want to go over too much old ground, although it is a temptation.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund said that the UK economy, unlike that of most other competitors, will not grow this year. Last week, interest rates went up to 4 per cent. Will either of those issues have an impact on next year’s budget?

10:30  

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Budget (Scotland) (No 2) Bill: Stage 2

Meeting date: 7 February 2023

John Mason

Yes!

Members indicated agreement.

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 7 February 2023

John Mason

You suggested that you might be able to give councils a bit more flexibility. Another example that councils gave me was that some money is ring fenced for the health and social care partnerships, but any savings that can be made between the health board and the partnership cannot be moved out to help another part of the council that is under more pressure. Would you consider flexibility in relation to that kind of thing?

Finance and Public Administration Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 7 February 2023

John Mason

Okay. Another suggestion that has been made to me is about teacher numbers. Pupil to teacher ratios vary around the country’s councils. I do not think that any of us wants to reduce the number of teachers, but it was suggested that Glasgow and some other councils have an above-average ratio at the moment and could perhaps have flexibility to at least move to the national average instead of having that extra investment.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

You have said that the way that we use the term “spending review” is a bit different from the way that other countries use it, so I wonder whether we are comparing like with like. From what I can see, for us, a spending review involves looking at the big picture and the overall budget over a few years, whereas, in one of the examples that was given, Germany had a spending review of one part of transport. That seemed to involve looking at one much more specific area in a lot more detail and, as you said, seeing whether the spending was useful. Are we comparing like with like when we use the term “spending review”?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

Can you give us examples of any countries that have undertaken such a review that has led to major changes in how they do things? I am particularly interested in preventative spending: spending more to prevent things from happening, whether that be ill health or crime, for example. We struggle—I think that this is the same for other countries—to disinvest in secondary expenditure.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Monitoring Covid-19 Recovery

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

That makes a lot of sense, because my feeling is that we need both processes. If we take the example of health, which is our largest area of expenditure, we know that we spend too much on reactive health spending, such as hospitals, and not enough on community healthcare, such as general practitioners. The challenge that we find is how to switch spending from one area to the other. Would the type of spending reviews that other countries use help us to do that better?

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

It would be fair to say that we have struggled with that.

COVID-19 Recovery Committee

Budget Scrutiny 2023-24

Meeting date: 19 January 2023

John Mason

On a slightly different issue, we have just had an evidence session with the OECD. You came in straight after the session, so I do not know whether you were able to see any of it. There was quite an interesting discussion around spending reviews, in which we established that the OECD’s definition of a spending review is slightly different from ours. Its definition is based more on the fact that other countries look at specific areas. For example, Germany had a spending review of transport that really looked in depth at what the Government was already spending, to see whether it could make savings and move forward.

I asked the witnesses whether we could learn from that. For example, we could look at the health service and say, “We are spending all this money on reactive care, but we would like to move more into preventative primary care.” The feeling overall was that maybe we could learn from other countries. Is there anything in that space? I realise that that is a new topic, but can we do anything about examining present expenditure to see whether we can free up more of it? Are we already doing that?