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Local authorities often tell us that they have been on single-year budgets—it is a bit hand to mouth—so they are having to make very quick decisions and are not necessarily looking to the medium term. One of the reasons—this is a personal view—that I feel that a fiscal framework arrangement could help that process is that it could improve the transparency and the expectation of what evidence could be provided before decisions are made.

So, we could add that to your successes in your term of office, to go back to the convener’s earlier question about what you see as achievements.

That was helpful. You will understand why I am asking these questions. This committee has the important job of scrutinising the Government’s budget, and, when it comes to the size of the civil service and the efficiencies that you are making, there is a bit of a grey area with regard to scrutiny, because we like to know that any decisions made are designed to improve outcomes. That is the key thing.

Good morning, permanent secretary. Following on from your previous appearance, I wonder whether I could ask you about what the committee considers to be a very important issue: public sector reform. We are all agreed on the need for public sector reform, and one of the most important things is the size of the public sector and how that plays out in the Scottish Government budget.

The other part of that, which you have been discussing with the convener, is the head count in the core civil service. When it comes to determining the size of the core civil service, is that decision made by the First Minister or by you, as permanent secretary? Is it a minister? Who decides on that? Last time, we were left a little bit in the dark about that.

That is helpful. The reason for the framework bill process is to engage effectively with stakeholders on the bill before it is presented in full to Parliament. The more that stakeholders are involved, the more you feel that there is credibility to your bill.

The problem is that our experience has proven that, for a framework bill that is at an early stage, it is almost impossible to get the right idea of the costs from the financial memorandum. I am interested in hearing from the permanent secretary whether the Parliament should be reviewing that difficulty in getting accurate costs as a potential problem.

I will finish on another point. Parliament has seen a considerable increase in the number of what we call framework bills. The final decisions on what things will look like as a result of those bills are often away in the future and the picture is not very clear during our scrutiny process. That has led to some tensions within the public sector workforce. Do you think that the number of framework bills that go through Parliament is an issue? Should we be trying to reduce that number so that we have better scope for scrutiny and can keep a firm hand on it?

We have had a lot of framework bills, particularly in the past three years, and alongside that there have been difficulties with their financial memorandums. The more framework bills that there are, the more likely it is that it will be difficult for us to consider the detail that should go in the financial memorandum. Do you think that that is a worry for the Parliament?

When you made the decision not to progress with the 2,000 that you mentioned, on what criteria did you make that judgment? Was it something that you decided, or was it something that was open to discussion between the First Minister, yourself and Mr McKee?

That was helpful, and Mr McKee has given the committee a good outline of that, too, but just to be absolutely clear, who is the final decider of the number of people in the core civil service? Is it Mr McKee, as minister; you, as permanent secretary; or the First Minister?

In that discussion, do you think that providers are aware of the cost to themselves? If they do not get the right result on the telephone, they spend a lot of time mailing out a letter at great cost and there seems to be an awful lot of inefficiency in that. My concern is that, although you are all doing excellent work, I am not sure that providers accept that part of the responsibility for the problem is theirs. How can you negotiate that?

Thank you for the evidence that you have provided this morning, which is extremely helpful, particularly with regard to what your agencies are doing to try to address some of the problems.

I have two questions, which I am asking on behalf of several constituents who have contacted me over the years. The first is about telephones. Even people who are relatively digitally aware are so frustrated about some of the telephone calls that they have to make to energy companies, for example; Louise Coupland mentioned issues with contacting medical professionals, too.

When people make the call, they are referred on several times through various options, and each time they get another referral. Sometimes that requires a password, and sometimes it requires them to answer all kinds of personal questions. That goes on and on—in fact, there is a real frustration not just for older people, but for some of us who are not quite so old. As a result of having to be referred on for everything, they get less confident about whether they are providing the right information and getting the right person to answer their question.

A constituent came to my surgery with an energy bill issue. I was alongside them on the phone call. There were seven options, and I have to say that what my constituent should be doing was not at all clear. Worse still, once we got the problem sorted, they then got a letter as though it had not been sorted.

Is there anything that we can do to flag up to the energy companies and those who use these digital formats an awful lot on the phone just how difficult the problem is?