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I welcome everyone to the eighth meeting in 2025 of the Public Audit Committee. Under agenda item 1, do committee members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private this morning?

Members indicated agreement.

I am going to move swiftly along. I invite Stuart McMillan to put some questions to you on public service reform.

Graham Simpson, do you have a final question?

Fifty-five thousand. I am sorry—less is more, as I keep saying. I am trying to take you at your word. We might get it down to 11,000 before the end of the meeting.

My point is that the fact that there are lots of words does not answer the point that is made both in the report and in some of the other evidence that has been presented to us, which is that insufficient attention is paid at the ground level—not as a retrospective add-on—to budget decisions, which is what we are speaking about in this context, and how they affect different groups in society differently.

We might return to some of those themes, but I will move on and invite Graham Simpson to put some questions to you.

You have said that some publications will be produced over the next couple of months, and you have referred to the medium-term financial strategy. There was previous criticism from a range of parties, not least the Auditor General, that there did not seem to be any real reason why a medium-term financial strategy could not have been produced earlier. We have been told that there was a general election and then an autumn budget statement by the incoming Government, but the consensus seems to be that a strategy could have been produced.

Anyway, a strategy is coming out in May this year and there has also been reference to a fiscal sustainability delivery plan. Please give us a bit more detail about what level of information will be contained in those two pieces of work, why it is necessary to have two and what different roles they perform.

That was a very comprehensive answer—there is quite a lot to take in. It is only when we see written documentation that has been generated by that thinking that we will be able get a proper analysis of, and apply proper scrutiny to, what has been proposed.

Going back to what we do know, I note that key message number 1 in the report that we are considering this morning is, frankly, a criticism that the Government appears to be locked into a fairly short-term culture. That key message says:

“The Scottish Government continues to take short-term decisions, reacting to events rather than making fundamental changes to how public money is spent. This approach has so far been effective in balancing the budget”—

you made that point, Ms Stafford—

“but risks disrupting services at short notice and restricting progress towards better long-term outcomes for people.”

We have heard what you have told us, but what can you do to reassure us that there will be a change in culture from short-termism to at least medium-termism, if not long-termism?

Thank you very much indeed. We have questions to put to you over the course of this morning about many of the issues that you touched on in your opening statement. I want to go back to the report that the Auditor General produced: do you accept its findings, key messages and recommendations?

At the end of the parliamentary session, the Public Audit Committee will devise a legacy report, in which it will leave a series of recommendations, recollections and conclusions on what it thinks the committee in the next session should turn its attention to. Permanent secretary, you are about to step down from your post and move on to another post, with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. If you were to draw up a legacy report for your successor, what would be in it?

My reading of what has been included in the Auditor General’s findings is that he thinks that there should be a strategic shift and a cultural shift. There seems to be a culture of reaction rather than proactivity. Whether that is in the context of the fiscal sustainability part of the report or in the context of the public service reform part of the report, that seems to be a common thread.

I have a further point to make before I invite other committee members to come in. In what I thought was a very informative response to the key messages in the report, the main findings and the recommendations for action, you mentioned that you fully embraced the need for equality and human rights impact assessments of decisions that are made. How do you persuade me that it will be different this time? In exhibit 10, the report before us reflects the fact that, back in August 2019, the Scottish Government produced a set of key questions that decision makers must ask themselves when they are setting budgets:

“1. What outcome is the policy and associated budget decision aiming to achieve?

2. What do you know about existing inequalities of outcome in relation to the budget area?

3. How will your budget decisions impact different people and places?

4. How will your budget decisions contribute to the realisation of human rights?

5. Could the budget be used differently to better address existing inequalities of outcome and advance human rights?

6. How will the impact of budget decisions be evaluated?”

Those are all long-established principles that the Government has set itself, yet the report lays bare the pretty woeful attempt to incorporate equality and human rights impact assessments in any decisions about budgets that are being made.

You have told us that you agree with the recommendation on that aspect and that things will be different, but that seems to be a long way from the experience that we have had so far.

Under agenda item 2, do committee members agree to take our next meeting, on Wednesday 12 March, in private?

Members indicated agreement.