Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2026 [Draft]
I thank Alexander Burnett for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is on a wee subject that is dear to my heart, as I have over 40 years of experience in the public sector at a senior level, and I know that, over a long period, we have had both good times in the public sector and some very hard times. That aside, since 2010, all of us as chief officers, whether in health, social care or education, or just in general bread-and-butter services such as refuse collection or fixing potholes, have been managing decline.
We used to categorise services as being: statutory services, where you must do it or face a fine or imprisonment; essential services that affect people’s lives; services that are nice to have; and, finally, the category that we still do too much of, which is the “What are we doing this for?” category—and the answer is usually, “Because we have always done it” or “I don’t really know what the answer is.”
During this period of managed decline, we who manage and provide public services have still managed to work wonders, doing the impossible while being starved of funds. However, that is mainly down to the hard-working, committed workers and staff, many of whom are on low wages but have a true sense of pride in their work and a profound respect for the people they are providing the service for.
Over the same period, the Scottish Government has habitually wasted significant pots of money. We have had the ferries fiasco; Gupta’s invisible Fort William smelter; and thousands of civil servants spending time redacting responses to freedom of information requests, to name but a few examples. The cost of those alone comes to about £1 billion. What about the blunders and cover-ups that we have not even heard about yet?
We are running more than 130 unelected quangos that are eating into public money. Some are supposed to distribute public money, but, in some cases, they are hoarding public funds while—in my experience—we had to beg to get access to those funds. If we did not do what the unelected organisations wanted, we did not get the funds. They used it as a method of control, and that is the Scottish Government’s fault. I will name and shame a couple of them: Sustrans, Zero Waste Scotland and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport. SPT has almost £200 million in reserves. We could pay for 1,000 doctors, 1,000 nurses, 1,000 street cleaners and 1,000 road workers all at the one time from that £200 million pot.
Why are we, the Scottish people, putting up with that nonsense? It is a disgrace. Many chief executive officers and directors in those organisations pay themselves inflated salaries and bonuses for delivering poor, out-of-touch services. While I acknowledge that increasing funding for something does not necessarily mean that it will get better, rebranding organisations or adding commissioners, or some other fudge mechanism, does not improve things either.
A public service should be exactly what it says on the tin—it should be fit for purpose and have the ability to do what it is designed for, as an efficient, sustainable, fully funded public service. We need a full shake-up from top to bottom, rather than the jigsaw that we have at present. We need to improve the staple methodology for funding public services in a way that the Scottish people deserve. Transition should not be pie in the sky.
To achieve that, we should be setting a challenging, achievable and clear road map to success. We need to untangle the current cash-absorbing, shambolic mess. We in this Parliament should spend less time talking about seagulls, greyhounds, independence and kicking Americans out of Prestwick airport. We should concentrate on the bread-and-butter services that affect every single person—even people in the chamber. Creating more of the same without fixing the basics, including the funding methodology, is wrong. We need to roll up our sleeves and get on with the job in hand.