Effective Public Services

Speech by Robert Brown MSP on Thu 8th May 2008

I was struck by Derek Brownlee's point about the changing face of government, whereby one sector has priority then another sector becomes a priority at a different time. Under the SNP Government, I presume that the parliamentary draftsmen who provide legislation for the Parliament do not have terribly good career prospects.

The debate is important and the Liberal Democrats have called for it ever since the Government published its plans to reduce the number of national public service organisations by what I thought was 25 per cent but which I now see is 26 per cent. The First Minister has talked about the subject and he was originally a bit wobbly about his start point. He included several bodies that the previous Government had planned to remove-not least the 32 children's panel advisory committees-and he claimed the 32 justice of the peace advisory committees that we abolished, which I mentioned.

To read the debate in full please click on the link below.

Ministers' methods in relation to the sportscotland fiasco were instructive. They told us that they had consulted on the issue. They talked to people in the field, but they could not tell us precisely who they had talked to and they would not publish the responses.

Bruce Crawford: The 32 justice of the peace advisory committees had been rationalised to six, which represents a reduction of 26 and not of 32, as the member claimed.

Robert Brown: I accept that, but the substantial point is that the decision was made under the previous Government-that shows the continuity of Government policy.

It turned out that sportscotland was being dealt with on the model of the historic national concordat, whereby ministers said that one thing had been agreed and everybody else said another thing. The inevitable result was a U-turn that calmed but did not end months of total uncertainty and confusion in the sports sector in the vital months as we developed the plans for the Commonwealth games. That was rather less the "radical and far reaching" ideas to blow

"the fresh wind of democracy through Scotland's quango culture"

that the First Minister trumpeted and more a self-imposed SNP Government humiliation for the hapless Stewart Maxwell that was-if anything-reminiscent of Tony Blair's cack-handed move to abolish the post of Lord Chancellor, which some of us recall.

Liberal Democrats do not demur from the objective of streamlining government. We supported the objective in government and we support it now. Indeed, retrenchment was one arm of the famous trinity of liberal themes as long ago as Gladstone, who famously got his staff to reuse pencils. He managed to run the empire with a part-time secretary, whereas the SNP cannot run Scotland effectively with a bagful of ministers, no legislation of worth and no less than 14 MSPs seconded as parliamentary liaison officers. So neutered is the SNP parliamentary group that only eight SNP members have not been appointed as ministers, committee conveners or liaison officers. I wonder what Glasgow has done to fall so out of grace with the boss that three of the remaining SNP back benchers should be from there.

What is the rationale for reducing the number of public bodies by 25 or even 26 per cent? Why not 20, 30 or 27.25 per cent? Twenty five per cent is a suspiciously round figure. It is claimed that the process will save £25 million over three years. We could perhaps have guessed that, as 25 appears to be the magic Scottish National Party number. That saving is already offset by the £16 million start-up costs of the new skills quango, Skills Development Scotland.

Liberal Democrats welcome the target of £25 million, but it is possibly the only clear figure in the SNP Government's programme. After all, as we saw this morning, there is total obscurity over the number of houses that it intends to build and how much they will cost and, as we saw at lunch time, over the number of schools, if any, that will materialise under the Scottish futures trust. We welcome the £25 million, but it is small pickings from the £2 billion efficiency savings postulated by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, which so far appear to be relatively unplanned, uncosted and unspecified.

The faggots were being placed under Alex Salmond's blaze of the quangos while, in the six months to November 2007, 24 new public bodies were being set up. Perhaps the cabinet secretary might be kind enough to update those figures to May 2008 when he closes the debate.

My concern about the SNP's policy is that, although it appears to have been drawn up on the back of the proverbial matchbox, it is nevertheless presented as a decision made, rather than a proposal to be consulted on. That is why the Government got into a mess over sportscotland and why there is anger at the proposal to abolish the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland, which means that the distinctive voice of disabled people will be lost and subsumed into the generic Public Transport Users Committee. I am not aware of a particular fuss about the scrapping of the Building Standards Advisory Committee, but a bland statement that

"expert advice on building standards will be obtained in other ways"

hardly gives reassurance that plan B is viable and considered.

Some of those bodies were long fought for, do a vital job and should not be unceremoniously dumped without examination and consultation. There has been no cohesive examination of those proposals by sector and no consultation to flush out the pros and cons of the perfunctory decisions that have been made. The figures and percentages have been plucked out of a hat; it is not about what is good for the sector concerned.

I support the Government's direction of travel on tribunals. Lord Phillips is reviewing administrative justice and is due to report in August. The review will produce proposals, which I hope will be consulted on, and the consultation will lead to decisions. That is the right way to do it.

It is time for the SNP Government to bring coherence, order and principle to its programme. It should bring the most significant of its proposals to Parliament and, above all, I encourage it to get into the habit of consulting first and deciding later, rather than the other way round.

I move amendment S3M-1849.3, to leave out from "opportunity" to end and insert:

"commitment from successive Scottish administrations to reduce waste, bureaucracy and duplication in Scotland's public sector; notes with concern the current administration's superficial approach, which appears to be driven by numerical and financial targets alone rather than principles of good governance, and the failure of the Scottish Government to consult properly with the interests affected by key decisions, and regrets that these decisions were taken without parliamentary approval."

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Effective Public Services.