Hansard

It is not often that I can follow Mr Kerr in a debate and agree heartily with many of the sentiments that he has expressed. I particularly agree with his starting point. Although we all agree, I think, that there will always be a demand for us to undertake more preventative spending, it is important that we recognise what we are currently doing and what has been done in the past.

That is why, in my opening speech, I acknowledged that this Administration has built on what we inherited from the two previous Administrations and, I dare say, from the Scottish Office in the old days—surely some good things must have come out of the Scottish Office. We have done that in recognition of the need to tackle the issues. In a sense, the argument that we are at a point when we must, for the first time, change how we allocate spending misses the point; over different periods of the political cycle there has been a genuine effort to tackle some of the long-term problems in Scottish society. I am confident that the approach will be sustained, whatever the composition of the Parliament after the election.

There have been a number of thoughtful and substantial contributions to the debate. I will concentrate on three areas that relate to how we take the agenda forward. The first is leadership and how that is expressed in this context. During the lifetime of the Parliament there has been a debate about that, in which Johann Lamont has actively participated. Is it about ring fencing, which was much utilised by previous Administrations, or is it about trying to create willing agreement, which has been very much the hallmark of the current Administration?

I think that members well know my feelings about ring fencing. However, we must be able to answer confidently the question that Johann Lamont put to us about how we establish a meaningful connection between framework and strategy and delivery. We must be able to demonstrate that the approaches that we take in the context of delivery and leadership address that point.

The second area is evaluation. Margaret Smith said that we must be much more assiduous in evaluating what works. The corollary of that must be that if something is not working we must stop funding it and change our priorities. That is not easy to do—we all know how difficult it is. However, if there can be acknowledgement that we should stop funding things that do not deliver the results that we think they should deliver and fund new priorities, we can have a model that will serve the Parliament well in the years to come, particularly given the financial times that we are entering.

The third area is how everything that I have talked about translates into the budget process. I appreciated, as I always do, the way in which Mr Finnie expressed himself in that regard, and I appreciated his beautiful explanation of opportunity costs, which brought back happy memories. He and Mr Brownlee asked, “How does all this appear in the budget process?” Having presided over four budgets that, by the nature of the process, have had to acquire support from other political parties, I can see how Parliament could be presented not only with the draft allocations that I present to it habitually in September but, earlier in the year, with some choices for different ways in which we could tackle particular problems.

Mr Brownlee said that that would add to civil servants’ workload. Well, they have the summer months and they must be kept busy during that period—they have certainly kept me busy in the summer months over the past four years. There are ways in which we could formulate propositions about choices and different ways of attaching greater or lesser significance to particular questions, which would come to Parliament for consideration, perhaps in the fashion that we are considering the report now. The point that Margaret Smith raised about being prepared to confront whether measures are working or not could manifest itself in such a process.

The measures that we have introduced, such as the early years fund that Mr Ingram announced yesterday or the change fund that the Deputy First Minister announced, are the latest efforts to change the focus within the balance of preventative spending to try to deliver better outcomes. Obviously, we will report to Parliament on those outcomes.

I will deal with another couple of specific points from the debate. Elaine Smith intervened on Mr Welsh about the health in pregnancy grant. I point out—I know that she knows this—that its abolition is one of the changes that the United Kingdom Government is making. Obviously, supporting mothers-to-be is a very important part of the support that we can put in place for the benefit and wellbeing of young people.

In her speech, Elaine Smith went on to make powerful points about breastfeeding, as she has done throughout her service in Parliament. I observe that the Government has concentrated on breastfeeding in some of its social marketing activity. Communication costs have been allocated to launching and running a TV and radio campaign to support the greater uptake of breastfeeding.

That is an example of how public information promoted by Government can have a pretty good and desirable impact. We get criticised, of course, for spending money on advertising and all that goes with it, but I hope that Parliament acknowledges that, sometimes, choices are made for the right reasons—namely, to try to structure different outcomes.

I hope that I have signalled the Government’s willingness to take a continuous approach to preventative spending. The report will certainly give the incoming Administration food for thought and I hope that I am part of that to take forward a positive response to the Finance Committee’s work.

I will make an observation on Johann Lamont’s point about some of the simple examples of preventative expenditure. She mentioned a lunch club for elderly people that might just keep them connected and out of hospital. I visited a lunch club in the village of Inchture the other day. It has nothing to with the public sector and everything to do with about three local people who make it their business to gather together 60 or so senior members of the community once a fortnight for a good meal and a good blether. The social interaction and benefit of that was obvious when I walked in the room. Even the smallest interventions of that type can have the most significant impact in our communities.

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