���˿���

We would welcome that.

Public service reform is a huge challenge, but a proper and appropriate use of the correct levers can directly support the Government’s priority of delivering effective and sustainable public services. In turn, strong public services are better placed to deliver our key priorities of growing the economy, eradicating child poverty and tackling the climate crisis. The powers that are contained in the order are one such lever. They offer important tools to drive public service reform and can be used to adjust the configuration of the public bodies landscape in order to release funds for front-line services and better meet future needs. In some cases, they can also be used to unlock barriers to reform. At a time when resources are stretched and demands on public services are increasing, public sector bodies need to ensure that services remain affordable and sustainable in the longer term, while continuing to support better outcomes for people across Scotland. In many cases, that will require reform and changes to the way that public sector bodies operate.

The order-making powers will enable small-scale changes to be made in a more proportionate and flexible way than would be possible if we had to find a place in the parliamentary legislative programme to introduce and progress primary legislation. I stress that the use of the orders is restricted to two situations: first, to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of public service functions—for example, by establishing the Poverty and Inequality Commission as a statutory public body—and, secondly, to reduce or remove burdens on any public or private sector organisation. Section 17 of the 2010 act has been used to reduce burdens on businesses. For example, orders have been used to amend requirements relating to agricultural tenancies and to streamline and simplify the planning system. Those powers are subject to safeguards in the 2010 act, under which any proposed changes to primary legislation through the order-making powers are subject to rigorous examination and scrutiny. A strict super-affirmative procedure applies to any order that is made using those powers. The responsibility remains with public bodies to address and to try to resolve any issues by other means before turning to the order-making powers.

The public consultation on the powers went live on 16 December last year and ran until 10 February this year. It received 21 responses, mainly from organisations. Sixteen of those responses agreed to extend the powers by a further five years, four opposed the extension and one was neutral. Reasons that were given in favour of the extension included supporting more effective and efficient operations and providing the flexibility to effect change. The small number of responses that opposed the extension of the powers mainly focused on the potential for abuse of the powers or the potential for the Government to reduce the authority of public bodies. I believe that those concerns are addressed by the safeguards in the 2010 act.

I conclude by reminding the committee that, unless the Parliament renews the order-making powers every five years, they are lost forever. The Parliament last renewed the powers in June 2020, so they must be signed off by the Parliament by 2 May this year if they are to continue from June 2025. I look forward to answering the committee’s questions.

That is a good question. I am sure that my colleague the Minister for Parliamentary Business would be delighted to come to the committee and comment on that. However, I will say that we are always striving to make processes within Government more effective and efficient. I am sure that any thoughts on how we can do that in the legislative process would be very welcome.

It would be difficult to do a true like-for-like comparison, in the sense that a lot of things will have changed in the nature of public services that we are providing and how we provide them. It would be a difficult comparison, because you are comparing the world as it is now with what it was back then in terms of the range and nature of public services that we provide or, indeed, the demand on them. I am happy to look at and assess the process that was gone through to arrive at that 40 per cent and see whether there is any way that we can update that.

I remember that exact wording in Christie’s report. It referred to a previous piece of work that was done—I cannot recall by who—and “up to” 40 per cent was the terminology that they used. I do not think that it was a hard and fast number, but it certainly gives an indication of the scale of the opportunity.

In terms of providing the leadership, absolutely, but you have to recognise that—this is not an excuse; it is just the reality—public bodies are not subsidiaries of ministers. They are operationally independent to varying degrees. Although we control the amount of funding that we allocate to them, the effectiveness with which they adopt efficiency measures can be variable, frankly. That is why it is important that we continue to work with public sector leaders.

The governance board, which will have its first meeting by the end of this month, will contain public sector leaders and private sector-experienced individuals with experience in the area. We are seeking to roll out more measures for monitoring workforce and recruitment in public bodies. We continue to collect more data on how public bodies choose to spend the money that the Scottish Government allocates to them. All of that is about moving us in the right direction on having better data, more coherent policy and strategy, more engagement and, frankly, more empowerment of public body leaders, so that we can work together to seize those opportunities.

A number of variables can impact the budget position, including year-end audit adjustment, variation in demand-led schemes, the year-end tax position and other factors. All those could be operating within a range, which the total of £350 million will cover. Some of those might be more than we expected, and some might be less. We will not know that until we get the final numbers, but we estimate that £350 million is sufficient to cover all those variables.

That is a good question. I do not have that number to hand. Officials might have that number—no, they are indicating that they do not. We will come back to you on that. I suppose that you could do the division there, and that might give you a clue—

I am sorry—I will let Scott Mackay answer.

Those are two different things. As Scott Mackay said, contingencies existed previously and would have been there this year anyway. If we had not centralised it, the contingency would have been spread out across a number of programmes and portfolios. We would then have had to balance how each of those played out and then brought the money back in and reallocated it as necessary. It is a mechanism for treating centrally money that is there anyway, in order to make how we manage the process more efficient and to hedge against issues around the rules on ensuring that we do not breach the resource borrowing constrictions.

The UK Government consequentials were, as we have said, at the top end of our expectations, but it is important to recognise that there are many variables. There are big numbers on the tax side, and there are big numbers—hundreds of millions of pounds—on the social security side across a range of programmes. We have talked about capital slippage in programmes, and we might come on to talk about the ScotWind number. We have talked about the in-year borrowing requirements and the total number. All those have potential variations of hundreds of millions of pounds. Getting all of that to add up is the challenge.

We will come back to you on the specifics of that particular benefit, if you want to understand more.