Hansard

Like Des McNulty, I come to the debate not as a member of the Review of SPCB Supported Bodies Committee but as a veteran of the Finance Committee's inquiry into the corporate governance of and issues around commissioners and ombudsmen back in 2006. I rather wonder whether I am falling headlong into Joe FitzPatrick's invitation for fresh people to look into the issues. I will tread carefully.

That 2006 accountability and governance inquiry was long running, and it was quite controversial at the time. If memory serves me correctly, it achieved what would be considered unachievable these days: it united me, Wendy Alexander and John Swinney in unanimously supporting the Finance Committee's recommendations. That is some mean achievement. It is nice to see some of those recommendations flowing through into how we are considering the roles of commissioners and ombudsmen now. The committee inquiry in 2006 was a long one, as I have said, but it would be fair to summarise it in a very short way: the situation that we discovered was a guddle. It had been created not through any particular intent; things had arisen in an ad hoc manner, and that had led to a complicated and inconsistent set of arrangements.

I agree with what other members have said about the issues being difficult. I have also sat through the Scottish Commission for Public Audit's inquiry into the corporate governance of Audit Scotland. Admittedly, that is a rather different office, with certain statutory conditions attached to its work, but we have wrestled with difficult issues around how to preserve independence while also considering appropriate terms of office and how to restrict outside interests that might be perceived as giving rise to a conflict of interests. Such decisions are difficult, and there is perhaps no right or wrong answer—we simply have to try and find the best answer that we can.

I wish to go back to some of the issues that Des McNulty raised, in what I thought was an excellent speech, following on from our inquiry back in 2006. It struck me at that time, particularly when we were considering some of the decisions that had been taken about location and budget, that a perception was growing that any attempt to challenge decisions that had been made by a body or commission that had been set up by the will of the Parliament was somehow an attempt to interfere with its independence. I simply do not accept that assertion. Things have perhaps improved since, but I got the impression at that time that there was a reluctance on the part of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to go too far, particularly in challenging some of the budgetary arrangements that had been put in place by commissioners and ombudsmen. There was perhaps a feeling that we needed to tiptoe around such issues.

In his speech today, Des McNulty talked about the balance between independence and accountability. It is entirely appropriate to acknowledge that we can have independence without forgoing any attempt to restrict the finances that go to organisations. The issue for bodies will be that they will have to prioritise and make judgments as to how to deploy the resources that they are allocated. Reducing the resource that goes to a body does not in itself restrict its independence.

The Parliament and its corporate body could exempt the organisations concerned from the looming public sector spending squeeze, to which Tom McCabe alluded, because the Scottish Parliament's budget is top sliced, but it would be wrong to do so. As Des McNulty said, the choice is effectively between helping individuals and funding organisations that sometimes provide advocacy for individuals.

It is important to consider the remit of the Review of SPCB Supported Bodies Committee. The committee did not—and was not asked to—consider the desirability or need for some of the organisations and commissioners, although we might need to reconsider that question in the future. No doubt some people will view the committee's report not just as a justification for not merging the children's commissioner with other organisations, for example, but as a validation of bodies' continued existence. That is not what the committee was asked to do, and it is unfair to characterise its remit as such.

Johann Lamont made a valid point about diseconomies of scale, and we need to be careful that we do not automatically make the assumption that larger is better. Equally, we must be keenly aware of the difficulties of ensuring that public money is spent appropriately. We should not fall into the trap of assuming that, simply because we have set up commissioners and ombudsmen in the past, they should somehow be exempted from the difficult decisions that will fall across Government.