Hansard

Debates such as this are significant and have the potential to be very beneficial. The process of producing a report to highlight key themes that have reappeared before the committee and which have been of particular concern has been a worthwhile exercise. That said, the committee is soon to be dissolved, so the exercise will be truly worth while only if the Parliament in the next session, the next committee and the next Government take heed of the concerns. I urge them to do so, because we have the opportunity to bring about improvements.

Initially, I will focus on one of the report’s three themes—data collection and measuring quality. As a new member of the Parliament—never mind the committee—early in 2009, I had much to take in, and nowhere more so than on the committee. The first time that I became aware of a data collection issue was during our deliberations on the Auditor General’s report “Drug and alcohol services in Scotland” in spring 2009.

In a previous role, I worked hard to fight the closure of a residential alcohol rehabilitation centre. I joined campaigners in arguing that the move towards home-based treatment was not sufficiently tested to argue that it would achieve better outcomes. Naively, I asked the campaigners for their killer statistics that would prove that their way was tried and tested, but they had none. All that they had was anecdotal evidence and short-term data. I was again naive in thinking that that was a one-off, and that it was an issue just with that project or that area, because when I found myself studying the Auditor General’s report I discovered that in that case—and, as I later found out, in many others—there was a real dearth of data and data sharing. On something as important to our communities as drug and alcohol services, that was extremely worrying.

One shining example of good practice was highlighted in the Auditor General’s report. In the West Lothian Council area, at least, there was appropriate and detailed outcome measurement, and an outcome-based system was used for commissioning services, which made sense. That was great for looking at what was effective in West Lothian, but what of the wider Scottish context? Did we have the detailed information to advise practitioners in drug and alcohol work about what worked best for particular types of people? Did we study practices in European countries where deaths from alcohol and drug abuse were dropping, while deaths in this country were rising? Did we have the comparisons to allow us, as the Public Audit Committee, to say that public money was being spent appropriately? The evidence told us that in all three cases we did not. Coming at the issue so soon after my election, when I was still able to see things as a non-politician, I was shocked.

The present Government has made remarkable progress in having a drugs strategy that operates on a national basis, although I find it breathtaking that it was the first such strategy to operate in Scotland.

I have to say—and I will do so gently—that there have been times when, as a member of the Public Audit Committee, I have felt frustrated by the party-political basis on which the committee’s discussions have seemed to take place. To me, that is not what the committee should be about. For example, the fact that a disproportionate amount of our time was spent on a relatively small amount of expenditure was due, I firmly believe, to the political capital that was seen to be there for the taking. Eleven sessions were held on the gathering. I accept what Jamie McGrigor says, but we must remember that that event generated £8 million for the economy of Edinburgh alone. In contrast, only three sessions were squeezed in on the Edinburgh trams project, which is costing us dear on a daily basis—although we all hope that the mediation that starts next week will work. My point should be self-evident.

It often felt that the committee’s remit extended only to scrutinising the expenditure of the current Government and not to scrutinising that of the previous Executive. It was as if problems with data collection, transparency and governance were the result of SNP decisions rather than long-term issues that had been overseen by the previous Executive. It was interesting that members were astonished or outraged at a compromise clause in a senior civil servant’s contract—we have heard that again today—which led to suggestions of secrecy within the SNP Government, yet the very members who were so astonished were in government when the procedures for those compromise clauses in contracts were drawn up. I often found myself resisting the temptation to say, “If you feel that strongly about it, why didn’t you do something during the eight years you were in power?”