Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We have in front of us Professor Paul Carmichael, who is director of the Centre for Public Administration (CPA) at Ulster University (UU), and Professor Colin Knox, who is emeritus professor and is still involved with the centre. You are both very welcome. Professor Carmichael, will you give us an opening statement? Members, please indicate if you wish to ask Professor Knox and Professor Carmichael any questions. Please go ahead.

Professor Colin Knox (Ulster University): I will open up, if that is OK.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes, sure.

Professor Knox: Do you have the presentation in front of you?

The Committee Clerk: Members have it in their packs.

Professor Knox: OK. First of all, thank you very much for hearing our evidence today. We appreciate it. The central point that we want to get across is that we feel that the Northern Ireland civil servant is not sufficiently accountable to elected representatives and, ultimately, the people of Northern Ireland. Therefore, in our submission, we address two of your terms of reference. The first one is the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) people strategy and the extent to which it aligns with the Programme for Government (PFG). The second one is the capacity of the Civil Service and what kind of change and transformation might be needed.

The key point that we want to get across today is that the Civil Service has no reliable way of knowing how it is delivering the Programme for Government priorities. Given that that is central to elected representatives' agenda, it seems strange to us that the Civil Service is unable to do that. We illustrate that by three examples in the submission that we made. The first is the Programme for Government itself, the second is the arm's-length bodies (ALBs), and the third is the public-sector reform agenda, which is a component in the Programme for Government. Ultimately, the Northern Ireland Civil Service people strategy is about delivering the nine priorities in the Programme for Government. The recent Audit Office report on the Northern Ireland Civil Service workforce shows the significant limitations to the Civil Service in delivering that programme. The stats are in front of you — the 5,486 vacancies, the number of sickness days etc. That was a damning report about the ability and capacity of the Civil Service to deliver the Programme for Government.

If we go into it in more detail, civil servants will tell you that the well-being framework is there to measure progress on the Programme for Government. Our argument is that the Programme for Government and the well-being framework do not align. The Programme for Government provides you with short- to medium-term activities. In other words, it records inputs and activities, whereas the well-being agenda looks at long-term outcomes. If you juxtapose the Programme for Government and the well-being outcomes, there is no real synergy between the two. Therefore, to suggest that the achievements of the Programme for Government can be captured by the well-being framework, for us, does not tally. In the PowerPoint presentation, we illustrate three examples of that. We pull out health waiting times, housing and safer communities. Look at each of those individual public policy areas. In health, it talks about the Programme for Government investing £291 million in 250,000 additional treatments. If you look at the well-being framework, however, you see a total disconnect, because it shows that healthy life expectancy is worsening and that preventable deaths are worsening. There is no bridge between the Programme for Government priorities on health and what the well-being framework is trying to measure.

The same is true of housing. The Programme for Government promised to start work on 5,800-plus social houses and 847 shared ownership homes. However, the well-being framework shows that homelessness is worsening, as is housing stress. It is the same for safer communities. The Programme for Government provides us with baseline figures on paramilitarism and domestic abuse. The well-being framework does not track any of that. Our key finding in that regard is that it is not really possible to use the well-being framework to assess the extent to which the Programme for Government priorities are being achieved. If you, as elected Members, were to ask civil servants, "How are we doing on the Programme for Government?", I do not think that they could actually tell you, because the performance architecture to capture that just does not exist.

The second element of our argument looks at arm's-length bodies, which are sometimes an overlooked element of the whole public administration structure. In fact — the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) report was very instructive in this sense — of the £18·5 billion public-sector spending in Northern Ireland, about 77% goes through arm's-length bodies. It is those arm's-length bodies that provide the services that most impact on our citizens. The keys ones are health, education, policing and social housing. Those are the big bodies that actually spend public money. We argue that the key thing about all that is that the civil servants do not have a well-defined mechanism for holding those bodies to account, and, in turn, elected politicians do not have the opportunity to hold our civil servants to account for things that are happening in those arm's-length bodies. The fact that 77% of our public spending goes through arm's-length bodies and that there is no clear accountability mechanism for that is a fairly damning indictment of our public administration system.

The Audit Office report found that there is no definitive list of arm's-length bodies and no formal definition of what an arm's-length body is. Twenty-seven per cent of partnership agreements between Departments and ALBs remain unsigned. The report highlighted the huge gap between the Department of Education and the Education Authority (EA), given that they have no formal, signed agreement on what the EA does for the Department. The Department of Finance does not actually monitor compliance with arm's-length agreements. The accountability chain for service users of these key public-sector services is lacking. To all intents and purposes, arm's-length bodies in Northern Ireland are the main public-sector providers. A service user — somebody who uses the health service, the education service, the Housing Executive and so on — should be able to call to account somebody on an ALB board. An ALB board is responsible to an accounting officer in the ALB. He or she is accountable to a permanent secretary, who is accountable to a Minister, who is accountable to an Assembly Committee. If you consider that long and convoluted chain of accountability, it demonstrates to us the weaknesses in your role in trying to scrutinise those bodies and call them to account for that high level of public spending.

The third and final one —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): On that, Professor Knox — sorry to interrupt you — what would you say to the point that many arm's-length bodies and large public-sector entities have scrutiny boards, many of which include public representatives or nominees of public representatives? Do you think that the Education Authority, for example, is not fit for purpose or is not doing its job properly?

Professor Knox: I do not want to say that it is not fit for purpose and is not doing its job properly. The ultimate scrutiny of those bodies lies with elected members, Committees and the Assembly. Since that accountability chain is so long, as I said, the potential for breaks in that chain, where people do not feel accountable to anybody for that massive amount of public-sector expenditure, is acute. It is worrisome that we are spending this level of money but do not have clear lines of accountability. If you were to ask a permanent secretary, for instance, about an ALB, he or she might have problems with a sight line into where the accountability lies for a particular issue in an arm's-length body.

Let me quickly finish, and that will leave lots of time for questions. The third thing that we looked at was the reform and transformation of public services element of the Programme for Government. If you look at the minutiae of that, you see that a lot of it is about structural transformation. It is about creating a transformation fund, which is happening; a delivery unit; the Office of AI and Digital; an interim fiscal framework and so on. When we look at that, we say, "That is creating the scaffolding for public-sector reform, but not the substance". Ironically, civil servants who have responsibility for that could argue that they have delivered on their Programme for Government commitments by setting up those structures, but none of those structures might have improved the outcomes for citizens. In that sense, the Programme for Government is about activities and processes, but do citizens of Northern Ireland see any significant change as a result of the transformation programme, or is it simply there to backfill the deficits in existing Departments? We argue several other things —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): When you say "backfill", you mean spending. There is this transformation —. You are just spending money that is —. The departmental budgets are squeezed, so the transformation money ends up subsidising things that would otherwise have —.

Professor Knox: Yes, it could be the case that they are backfilling deficits in their budgets through the transformation agenda. We do not have any way of asking whether it has made a difference to citizens on the ground. We go into it in a little bit more detail in the slides.

To conclude, those three examples are not separate issues of accountability. There is a systemic issue around the extent to which civil servants are accountable to elected representatives. If that continues, there is a risk that the Assembly and the Executive will lose credibility and confidence as devolution erodes. Without reform that aligns with commitments, measurements and oversight, the gaps between plans and delivery will continue and, in our opinion, erode public confidence in devolution.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Thank you very much for that. As always, members, indicate if you wish to ask a question. I am interested in the time view and the historical perspective. Do either of you think that things have got better or worse over time, either in the past decade or, perhaps, since, as an obvious point in time, this phase of devolution, which began in 1998? Is it possible to say whether the performance of the Civil Service has improved or got worse in that time? Or is that too difficult or complicated a question to answer?

Professor Paul Carmichael (Ulster University): An awful lot of other things have happened at the same time. It is about how you disaggregate the causal effects and so on. If you think back, of course, under the direct rule —.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I am not asking how effective a policy decision has been, or even how complicated and difficult things have been. Brexit and COVID, for example, threw up, as you say, events and challenges. I will phrase the question differently: to the extent that it is possible to say, has the performance of the Northern Ireland Civil Service improved relative to the challenges that it has faced over the past number of decades?

Professor Carmichael: Well, again, Chair, without raking over the history, of course, under the previous dispensation, pre-1998 and the agreement, the fundamental challenge that the Civil Service —. As the late Ken Bloomfield said, the Civil Service was the glue that kept society going. With all due respect to the Civil Service of that era, during the Troubles, it was part and parcel of keeping the show on the road under the direct rule Administrations of the time. Of course, it is a bit like apples and oranges: if one were to ask the populace, "What you think of the quality of the governance that you received then and now?", we know from the survey evidence that whilst perhaps there is a public will to see the system work, there is clearly a profound sense of dissatisfaction with how it, in the round, manages to deliver for people in Northern Ireland. It is difficult to say. I do not want to dodge the question, but you are comparing a time period — the direct rule arrangements — in a very fractured and fraught political context with the more recent times. For all those events that have occurred that you mentioned, we live in, frankly, much more quiescent and peaceful times. The comparison is very difficult to make.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. I appreciate that it is a difficult question to answer. The reason I ask it is to put it in a historical context and to try to give our inquiry a sense of the broad trajectory over decades, not just years or months.

In one of the points that you made, Professor Knox, at the beginning of your remarks, you talked about the Civil Service not being sufficiently accountable. In fact, that runs through your presentation. You used a phrase that I thought contained strong words: the deficiencies and accountability represent an "institutional pathology" within the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Can you say a bit more about that? Those are very strong words.

Professor Knox: Yes. Those are the words of us both. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You are sharing the responsibility [Inaudible.]

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Professor Knox: That goes a little bit to your first question. We still "suffer" from a legacy of direct rule. For example, look at those arm's-length bodies. That whole architecture of our public sector is a legacy of direct rule arrangements. There are still the vestiges of direct rule arrangements. Maybe our civil servants, frankly, did not have to be that accountable. They showed up at an accountability meeting in Westminster every so often, but, beyond that, they could basically run Northern Ireland. During those difficult times, that was a significant job that they were doing. Part of that terminology is really about saying that those things have not really moved on that much. Even when we had the reform of public administration, central government Departments, can I say, exempted themselves from it so that they were looking at the lower tiers of our public administration: local councils, for example. I do not in any way criticise the role that local councils have, but the reform was focusing on tiny areas of the public sector — some might say, to protect their own Departments. Has it moved on? Is there a pathology of lack of accountability? We argue that there is. The reasons for that might well be located in direct rule, but also just a historical institutionalism, where they got used to those systems, which now persist, without anybody asking hard questions about them.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): One of the phrases, which is now almost a cliché, that is used about the Northern Ireland Civil Service is "silo working". Would you say that the structure of the way that we do devolved government, or the way that power-sharing has evolved here, tends to mean that individual Departments are fiefdoms unto themselves? That is reflected in the way that political parties, including probably my own at different points, and probably every party represented here, refers to "my Minister" or "our Minister". That is maybe borne out in some of the behaviours in the Civil Service where they are not deemed to be accountable for the delivery of a Programme for Government writ large but rather for delivery or performance, as it were, within their own fiefdom and bailiwick, and there is not really enough of an incentive for them to work collaboratively. Is that one of the challenges that you identify?

Professor Carmichael: Chair, in a sense, it is inevitable that that fiefdom model to which you have referred develops, perhaps not by desire but by default. With the greatest respect to elected Members, if, in the Executive, everyone has the possessive attitude of, "It's my Department, and devil take the hindmost", that will inevitably colour the behavioural patterns of senior officials and those down the system. We have noticed through our work where the university is involved in our teaching with senior and middle-ranking civil servants that that is a familiar refrain that comes back to us. When they speak in candour, in Chatham House terms, they say that, quite often, they want to reach out to other Departments but that they are drawn back in to playing safe, being risk-averse, not upsetting the apple cart and thinking, "I must serve my Minister rather than our Government". That is what undermines it.

Professor Knox: There is difficulty for civil servants in lines of accountability. To rephrase your comment, Chair, slightly, they see their lines of accountability as vertical. It is from me to the Minister. Many of these wicket problems, can I say, that are cross-departmental require horizontal accountability, and their primary focus is on the vertical rather than the horizontal. It is incumbent on them to be able to work across those while, at the same time, respecting their ministerial portfolios, because not all our public-sector problems neatly fit ministerial lines of accountability. Much more of that could be done and should be done.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I will bring in other members, starting with the Deputy Chair.

Ms Forsythe: Thank you very much, both of you, for coming in. Paul, you made the comment that the Civil Service is operating just to keep the show on the road. I feel that that very much is the culture and that we are facing the challenge of that now. We have seen things being done as they have always been done. You talked about the structure of the ALBs and the vertical reporting. There is an embedded culture, and it is very hard to see how we change it and try to inspire some transformative actions and thinking. I think that the people strategy was a good opportunity to do that, as you said. I think that you set it out really well in your table, with the well-being framework alongside the Programme for Government. There really was a good opportunity for a lot of cross-departmental working objectives coming through.

I used to sit on the Public Accounts Committee, and there was very much a frustration that so many times, when asking questions, the answer came back that it was the responsibility of the arm's-length body or "It was not my Department" or "It went to the NICS board", which was just the permanent secretaries sitting around looking at each other's major capital projects. Do you have any thoughts on the way forward? What can we do to try to make meaningful recommendations that can be embedded right the way through? As you said, everyone is getting on with the job and getting on with doing what they have always done. We almost need to completely step out of it and do something quite transformative. Have you seen it done anywhere else when you have been doing this piece of work? Have you got any examples of anywhere that has really transformed?

Professor Knox: The fundamental thing for me is the Programme for Government. That, essentially, is the political wishes of the elected Members. If you are unable, as elected representatives, to say at the end of the mandate, in one year's time, how you have done against that Programme for Government, there is something fundamentally wrong with that. I think that the issue here is one of performance measurement and of holding the civil servants to account for that. If you have a Programme for Government that is all about activities, civil servants can come in and say, "Yes, we have done all those activities. Tick, tick, tick", but has that made any difference? There needs to be a clearer link between those activities and the difference that they have made to the citizens of Northern Ireland. Are we a healthier population? Are we a safer population? It serves officials well, because they are responsible for delivering it. Why set yourself difficult targets if you are the ones who have to account for them? That is not meant to be a blanket criticism of the many hard-working civil servants, but the structural architecture here does not allow you, as elected representatives, to hold them sufficiently to account for the delivery of the Programme for Government. Civil servants are mandated to provide you with the things that you say that you want for the electorate. That line of accountability just is not there.

Ms Forsythe: I want to pick up on your points about the arm's-length body landscape, which I raise quite often. As you rightly pointed out, 77% of the Budget is spent through the arm's-length bodies. That is so significant. People often get fixated on the centralisation of the Civil Service, whereas a lot of the work goes on in the arm's-length bodies. You drew attention to the missing partnership agreements and there being no central monitoring by the Department of Finance of those agreements and relationships and of what is going on with the arm's-length bodies. We have raised that on the Committee before. There are conflicting roles. The Department of Finance has its own work, but it also has an oversight role. It comes back to what you said about who is accountable for the work. Rather than everyone being keen to put their hands on it and say, "We want it to be better. Let us all get involved", they seem to step back. Is it the role of the head of the Civil Service to oversee those bodies and the arrangements within them?

Professor Carmichael: The way that the permanent secretaries' group and the role of the head of the Civil Service work in Northern Ireland vis-à-vis other structures is, again, a product of our overarching constitutional architecture, but it is clearly suboptimal. In other circumstances, one would expect the head of the Civil Service to have far greater oversight and traction and, frankly, to be able to, if not knock heads together, pull levers and get some movement on the points. Without undermining or disrespecting the role of the head of the Civil Service, I think that, in some ways, he or she is left, shall we say, fighting with one hand behind their back, because, to go back to the Chair's point, the fiefdom mentality of thinking, "This is my Ministry. This is my Department" seems to prevail over what is for the collective good. That gives rise to the kinds of problems that we outlined in the paper.

Professor Knox: One suggestion that we looked at in the PowerPoint presentation was that the Department of Finance could be given a statutory duty to ensure the compliance of ALBs and that governance failure in the ALBs could be made a statutory responsibility of the permanent secretary. At the moment, there is a sense of confusion about who is ultimately responsible for them and for the fact that so many of them have been allowed to be non-compliant with partnership agreements, particularly — sorry, I am not picking on Education, but given the significant size of that budget — that the EA and the Department of Education do not have a partnership agreement in place. It beggars belief that that amount of money is being spent without an adequate accountability chain.

Ms Forsythe: It is about the Department of Finance's duplication of role. I am sure that, as we get into the inquiry, we will hear a lot more about that. In the UK Government, you have the Treasury function and the departmental function. We see it all the time with the officials. We see it with the status of the Fiscal Council. We see it in all those things as they emerge, and very much so with shared services such as HR. When we, as elected reps, ask questions about things such as vacancies and sick leave, the individual Departments say, "That is managed by the Department of Finance under its shared services function", and when we ask the Department of Finance, it says, "Individual Departments are monitoring that".

As you said, Colin, that is incredibly frustrating. When we, as elected representatives, speak to the public, we try to talk about transparency and achieving value for money, yet we cannot get answers for them.

There is definitely a big piece of work to be done. It is not the Department of Finance's fault. Rather, it is a legacy issue. I totally agree with what you said. It is unfortunate that, because of the way in which things are set up, the head of the Civil Service's role has not been more prescribed. That was a recommendation in the PAC's follow-up report on major capital projects. Officials from the Department of Finance have told us in recent weeks that there is a review under way of the head of the Civil Service's role. It is about having oversight. You made a good point about perhaps introducing a statutory duty to ensure compliance, because it is hard to see how any changes will be made here if something is not brought in as an essential requirement.

Mr Carroll: Thanks, Colin and Paul. I am a past pupil of Paul's. I do not know whether that means that I have to make a declaration of interest, but I am putting it on the record. Thanks for all the lectures, Paul.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Do we need to hold him accountable, then? Only joking. [Laughter.]

Mr Carroll: I do not know. It depends on whether you want to claim credit, Paul. I will leave that up to you.

Professor Carmichael: I will wait until I hear the question, Chair. [Laughter.]

Mr Carroll: I declare my support for the UU staff who face losing their jobs.

Thanks for your presentation. It was interesting and useful. Colin's comments about homelessness and housing were interesting. Yes, they were depressing in some ways, but what he said was interesting and confirms what many of us are hearing in our constituency offices about the situation getting worse. That is true in a statistical sense, but the cases that we are dealing with are complex. If I have read your graphs right, the Housing Executive has spent £369 million and the Education Authority £3·35 billion. If my maths is correct, roughly 10% of what is spent on education is spent on housing through the Housing Executive. There is obviously other housing spend, through universal credit and benefits, but the differential seems to be huge, given that people need suitable homes. That is just an observation. I do not know whether you want to comment on it.

Professor Carmichael: I do not have the other figure to hand, but that figure will be the spend on the administration side, and there may be capital within it for the Housing Executive. It does not include turnover, however. Money from rents and so on will amount to far more than £300 million. It must do, given the volume.

Professor Knox: Moreover, housing associations are a separate budget line, so that figure —.

Professor Carmichael: It is probably the net spend, Colin, once rents and the interest charges that the Housing Executive is paying on its historical service commitments, mortgages and so on are taken out.

Mr Carroll: Thanks. I am paraphrasing, but you said earlier that waiting times and healthy life expectancy are getting worse. That is the experience across the board. We had a question for urgent oral answer in the Assembly the week before last on the number of deaths in emergency departments. In 2016, a relatively small number of people died, albeit still too many. From 2016 to 2026, however, 6,000 people died in an ED because they could not get the support and care that they needed. That is a startling figure. My assessment is that there is no accountability in such a scenario. There could be cases of neglect or possibly manslaughter. If so, there should be court cases. We are talking about 6,000 people dying because healthcare was not available, was not adequate or was not provided.

I am not being facetious. It is a genuine comment. Is there a lack of accountability because people presume that heads will roll?

Professor Knox: It goes back to the general point about how to hold those bodies to account for the kinds of incidents that you are talking about. The more convoluted the structures through the arm's-length bodies are, the more difficult it is for individual civil servants or healthcare workers to be called to account for them. Without going into the specific details of what you mentioned — as a constituency representative, you are much more au fait with the details — on our side, we are looking more at the structural inadequacies of the way in which public servants are called to account.

Mr Carroll: I take your point about the level of bureaucracy, and that leads on to my next question. Your presentation mentions appointing a chief transformation officer. Was that your suggestion?

Professor Knox: Yes.

Mr Carroll: Having such an officer sounds good, but I am concerned that Ministers could use it as another excuse, if you will. They might say, "The reason that x, y and z are not happening is because the chief transformation officer isn't in place, as we didn't get the funding".

My next comment is slightly connected. We have too many strategies, including those that are being developed. For the most part, states and Governments should just implement and do what needs to be done. I do not know whether you wish to comment on that. It is just another observation.

Professor Carmichael: You would not be the first commentator, Gerry, to talk about there being a glut of strategies. I will speak from the university sector's perspective, since you raised a particular local issue that there is at the moment. It has been said that there is a family of strategies. Well, they are breeding. Mostly, they adorn bookshelves and do not go anywhere. Students who come from the Civil Service on our programmes regularly say, "Bookshelves groan under the weight of the strategies that are produced and duly noted, before gathering dust. Occasionally, they'll be taken off a shelf to help inform a revived strategy". More action and less strategising may therefore be a more fruitful way forward.

Professor Knox: I take your point that appointing a chief transformation officer could be another way in which to transfer responsibility to someone else, but, in light of the lack of cross-departmentalism, our suggestion, and it is only a suggestion, is that if someone is mandated with cross-departmental responsibility, he or she will at least attempt to bring all the elements of the Programme of Government together in one place and be accountable to elected representatives for it.

Mr Carroll: I like the fact that you mentioned the vacancies in the Civil Service, because, sometimes in such discussions, there is a focus on the number of sick days and the level of absence, without there being a realisation that civil servants are often working multiple jobs.

Finally, Paul mentioned Chatham House Rule meetings. Are you confident that the whistle-blowing policies of the Civil Service and of ALBs are up to speed generally? If people say something in a Chatham House sense — I appreciate that it may not be on a whistle-blowing matter — are the policies fit for purpose generally, or do they need to be revised?

Professor Carmichael: I put the question back to you and, indeed, to other members. To what extent are people prepared to "receive" bad news? Diane said that there may be a culture of risk aversion. All too often, the easiest thing for staff at middle management level and even higher to do is to play it safe, keep their head down and not rock the boat. Unless there are reliable means by which whistle-blowing can occur for the good of the organisation and, in the fullness of time, for the betterment of the delivery of public services, and unless people feel confident that they can voice their concerns without, as it were, coming a cropper or being a spot ball for retribution, there is not going to be that degree of whistle-blowing in public.

Mr Carroll: That is great. Thanks very much.

Miss Dolan: Thank you both for coming to the Committee. We are talking about reform of the Civil Service. It is key to say that reform is not about cutting jobs but about improving the Civil Service and improving productivity. I put that on the record.

Apart from one, my questions have been answered. Departmental overspend on capital projects has come up, time and time again, in reports. Do you agree that the introduction of a multi-year Budget would help ease the pressure on our Departments and help reduce overspend?

Professor Knox: We are boring academics, so we do not want to take the thread into the political realm, but, yes, having a multi-year Budget makes good sense. How you get there, and what political support it has, is outside the realms of our responsibility. In theory, a multi-year Budget provides a certainty of spend for capital projects in particular that will allow them to run much more smoothly.

Professor Carmichael: To add to that, in an ideal world, or a more ideal one, multi-year Budgets would be coterminous with the mandate and the PFG, and, in turn, with the well-being agenda so that there would be a degree of coherence to what was going on, because, assuming that there was no premature suspension or dissolution of the Assembly, there would be a four-year planning horizon, and that would provide a greater degree of clarity and confidence within which decisions could be taken at departmental level and in the ALBs to which Colin referred earlier.

Miss Dolan: That does sound like ideal-world stuff, unfortunately. That was my only question, so thank you very much.

Mr Kingston: Thank you for your interesting and challenging presentation. You have made clear recommendations. From reading through it, however, I wonder whether you are being overly critical in some respects. Can you reply to that challenge? You talk about the efforts at transformation and reform and say that there is no evidence of their benefiting anyone. Some of the measures were brought in only recently. I think that there will be benefits from having multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) in GP practices and from some of the changes that the Department of Justice is introducing. I am interested in whether you think that you are judging too early what is being done or you genuinely feel that there is a lack of measuring, particularly of the transformation and reform initiatives.

Professor Carmichael: On that point, to take Gerry Carroll's question about whistle-blowing, let me just say that a permanent secretary whom I will not name told me — again, I am drawing in the students on our programme here and, hopefully, doing a great sales pitch — that he had a concern about the transformation agenda, which was, to use Colin's words, a case of plugging gaps in budgets rather than really taking issues by the root and bringing about serious transformation in the various areas in which it is required.

The other comment that I will make, Brian, is that, elsewhere in published work, Colin and I have made our case — if you google it, I am happy to share it with you — and have therefore not come to the Committee just to say, "It is all wrong" and, "If only you would do it our way". On the contrary, we have made clear our belief that there is evidence of positive public administration in Northern Ireland. That case has now been produced in academic literature and is there for everyone to see. We have pinned our colours to the mast. In coming here as critical friends, we are simply trying to say that what exists at the moment is clearly suboptimal and needs to be rethought. We can debate whether that needs to be done through having a more rigorous application of the concept of accountability or through vesting the Department of Finance or its officials with greater powers in order to get traction on the issues. It is certainly not the case, however, that we have come here with a wrecking ball to say that the whole thing is a mess and needs to be started again.

Professor Knox: I will pick up on your point, Brian, about our perhaps being overly critical of what the reform agenda will achieve. We are not saying that the reform agenda will not produce some benefits in the long run. Rather, what we are saying is that there is no linkage between what is stated in the Programme for Government and the final outcomes. All of the Programme for Government stuff on the reform agenda covers activities.

As I said earlier, it seems bizarre to us that civil servants could come to the Committee and say, "We've achieved all the objectives of the Programme for Government under reform, but we don't yet know to what extent people's lives will be changed". Those may be long-term outcomes, but, that being the case, there should be some milestones in between so that they can say, "At the end of year 1, we would expect this from the activities. At the end of year 2, we would expect this". At the moment, however, it is a leap of faith. A lot of money is being spent in those areas, so, at some point down the line, through the well-being agenda, we should expect to have healthier, safer communities.

What does that mean? What are the intermediate steps that need to be taken to achieve that? To what extent do we know that doing those activities will lead to that? What are the causal links between the activities that are being done and what is to be achieved? There is literature on what is called the theory of change. How do we know whether those activities, as opposed to others, will achieve the desired outcomes?

Professor Carmichael: On Colin's point, there is a tendency to misconstrue being busy and doing lots of activities as driving productivity. That is not confined to the NICS. It has become apparent in many organisations but particularly those in the public sector. Again, we hold our hands up. Universities are full of people who run around saying that they are very busy and doing lots of activities, but the measure of success surely must be tangible improvements on the ground, not how much frenetic activity is happening in the place, because that is not driving the quality agenda that everyone apparently wants to see.

Mr Kingston: That is as true of the Assembly as much as it is of any other institution. I welcome your being critical and challenging. That is the Committee's purpose through this inquiry. We are wanting to see whether things can be done better, improvements can be made and there can be greater efficiency. You point to the well-being framework and are saying that we should not count success in just the number of buildings, the amount of money spent and the number of tangible objects and qualifications but that we should ask whether people are better off and feel more positive about their quality of life. You make the point that if more houses are being built but homelessness is increasing, that is the measure of people's experience. The Programme for Government was meant to link to the relevant indicators in well-being framework. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but do you see some value in the well-being framework?

Professor Knox: Of course there is some value in the well-being framework. It is like motherhood and apple pie. It is saying that we should —.

Mr Kingston: We should ask people's opinion.

Professor Knox: Yes, but the fact that there is no alignment between the two means that the Executive can say, "We have fulfilled the Programme for Government commitments". Nobody is any better off, however, and that seems to me to be —.

Mr Kingston: It is meant to ask that question.

Professor Knox: It is meant to ask that question, but the indicators are misaligned, and that is where you, as elected representatives, would find it difficult to find out from civil servants whether the Programme for Government has achieved anything and whether people are better off as a consequence of it.

Mr Kingston: I am interested in what you said about arm's-length bodies. You said that they are almost a legacy of direct rule and the Troubles, as powers were taken away from local government. Has Northern Ireland more arm's-length bodies than other jurisdictions? Has there been an over-reliance on them? Yes, arm's-length bodies exist elsewhere, but is there an argument to be made that we have too many and that some services should be brought back in-house, into Departments?

Professor Knox: As you said, that structure is a consequence of local government here not having the same, significant powers that local government elsewhere in the UK does. A lot of those powers went to arm's-length bodies. We were part of the whole review of public administration (RPA) initiative and were disappointed that, in it, there was not a much greater concentration on such bodies. The RPA tinkered at the margins of local government, where there was the least amount of public spending. That is not at all to belittle what local government does, in case you think that I am being overcritical of local government as well. Rather, it is simply to say that there was an opportunity then to relook at those bodies, and it became a missed opportunity. Perhaps there should be another opportunity — an RPA mark II — that is not vested in the hands of civil servants who want to protect their Departments but that instead looks at the public sector holistically, including arm's-length bodies.

Professor Carmichael: Long before the word "quango" was used in GB, it had become the norm in Northern Ireland, although, of course, for different reasons. As Colin said, direct rule had been introduced post the Macrory reforms, and what would have been vested in Stormont ended up being vested in an assortment of appointed boards in the meantime, such as the old education and library boards and health and social services boards. Of course, as Colin also mentioned, strengthened local government that would take back functions was mooted at the time of the RPA and was the favoured model. Interestingly, however, our research at that time, for which we spoke to all the political parties, showed that there was no great enthusiasm for the restoration of the types of functions that would historically have been vested in local government, such as education, social services and housing, which, to some extent, are vested in local government in GB.

You mentioned health. Across the water, health is largely administered under different quangos. It is therefore not surprising that some of the issues with which the Assembly and the Executive wrestle here are visited upon the three jurisdictions across the water. The health service budget is basically out of control, accountability is tenuous and all the mechanisms that have been brought in, under consecutive Labour and Conservative Governments, to introduce that accountability have been brought in and then unwound, having all the while not really driven the important thing, which is productivity in the service. That has really tanked in the past four to seven years. There is very little public understanding. We are therefore in the same predicament as elsewhere on these islands when it comes to health.

Mr Kingston: I have one final question. I have written down, "Productivity and reform are more difficult to achieve in arm's-length bodies". Is that a conclusion with which you agree?

Professor Knox: I would not necessarily apply that to productivity. We have not looked at how productive those bodies are, but they are certainly worth revisiting as a component of the structures of government here. The stark figures are that 70-odd per cent of the Budget is in the hands of arm's-length bodies. That is budget over which you do not have direct control — you very much have indirect control over it — so there is something wrong. That is the budget for key services that affect citizens: health, education and housing services.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We need to move on now, because we have another evidence session to follow, as interesting and useful as this one has been.

Dr Aiken: Thank you very much indeed for your evidence today. Bearing in mind that this has been an area of interest for the Committee for some time, it is particularly noteworthy and that you referred to keeping the show on the road. From the evidence that came out of the renewable heat incentive and COVID inquiries, it is very clear that not only is there stovepiping but there is very little cross-pollination of ideas.

I have a couple of thoughts. What consideration has anybody given to the idea of senior civil servants in Northern Ireland not being promoted unless they have had experience outside of Northern Ireland? From looking at the framework, I notice that a lot of those in Senior Civil Service grades 1 to 4 have just worked their way up through the Northern Ireland Civil Service and do not have any experience outside of it. I wonder whether you can look at that. In policing, for instance, police have to do so many tours outside of Northern Ireland, while, in other areas, people have to be have been in so many Departments before being put into senior positions.

My second question relates to the first. It is quite clear that we had the opportunity for real transformation but that the person whom we wanted to do it — Sue Gray, the great disruptor — was very much blackballed by members of the Senior Civil Service here and the senior leadership of the two largest political parties at the time. How important is it to get a disruptor at the head of the leadership if we are going to make any changes to how the Northern Ireland Civil Service is run?

Finally, I am very interested in your conversations about measurable output and the fact that, if you read the Programme for Government, you cannot put a finger on anything for which an individual is responsible. You have 15 or 16 layers of people who are responsible for it, but nobody actually —. It is the Henry Kissinger question. If I want to see who is responsible for fixing the roads, I could get 20 different answers. How important is it to have direct accountability and responsibility in the organisation that can be measured?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): There are a few different bits there. One was about —.

Professor Knox: Experience outside the Civil Service.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You took notes, so you do not need me to summarise for you.

Professor Carmichael: Thank you very much, Dr Aiken, for your comment. In preparing for today, I was minded to make a comment to the Committee on the very point that you have raised. Whether there is a case for a separate Civil Service in the jurisdictions of Scotland and Wales is a point that has been raised. When it comes to the NICS and its relationship with the UK — the Home Civil Service — there may be an argument for adopting the policy that you mentioned: people must spend some time outside Northern Ireland. Whereas, in the Home Civil Service, there is the government campus, which is the successor to the National School of Government, which is trying to work with the latest ideas on dealing with change in organisations — a point that Professor Knox made — we have our Centre for Applied Learning in Northern Ireland. Really, there are synergies there that are being lost. The NICS should be more open to developing closer links with its counterpart Westminster body.

I will comment briefly on your other two points. You mentioned Sue Gray. Without making disparaging remarks about the individual who did get the position, it is clear that, if you are going to appoint someone who will be, in your words, a "disruptor", they have to be someone to whom the principal parties are prepared to give some ground to make headway. Otherwise, you are clipping their wings before they even get started.

When it comes to Dr Kissinger and measurable output, I will just say — again, I spoke to Colin about this on the way up here today — that the word "accountability" is very interesting because the key part, which is often lost, is this: so what? Somebody is accountable, but what actually happens? How many heads actually roll? Who actually pays a price when things go wrong? All too often, blame is shuffled off somewhere else and the worst that happens to someone is that they are pensioned off, are put on gardening leave or quietly leave the organisation. Until that is addressed, Committees such as this will be sitting for an awful long time debating the same question.

Dr Aiken: Or even given a knighthood and put in charge of a quango, eh? [Laughter.]

I will finish on that point.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You make a forceful point about accountability and, basically — if I am summarising you correctly — the fact that the disincentives are not clear and robust enough in clear examples of failure. I suppose that the counterpoint to that is that, ultimately, the people who are most accountable for policy failure are Ministers, as they are electable at the ballot box. Are there examples in neighbouring jurisdictions where senior civil servants have been made accountable — i.e. heads have rolled — that you think would not have happened here because our system does not provide for it?

Professor Carmichael: None immediately springs to mind, save to say that, unfortunately, the other end of the spectrum, as we have seen in recent times over the water in London, is that heads have rolled perhaps unfairly.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes.

Professor Carmichael: There have been scapegoats for problems that are, frankly, a creation of elsewhere. I make the point again that this is not about beating up on civil servants. Notwithstanding the provisions of the various codes, frameworks and whistle-blowing protections that exist, which are there to protect, it is clear that there needs to be movement here, because, in the end, partly because of the risk aversion that I mentioned, too few people pay the price for failure.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Do you mean politicians as well as civil servants?

Professor Carmichael: Well, in other settings, usually but not always, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and the electorate take their toll on politicians.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It does not happen here, but it does in other places.

Professor Carmichael: In other places, yes. We know that that does not necessarily translate to the Northern Ireland context. Whatever the general electorate's frustration with the system, it is not necessarily manifested in decisive electoral change.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Does that reinforce the dysfunction and accountability issues in the Senior Civil Service that you talked about? Senior civil servants may think, "Look, let's be honest here: no matter how good or how bad these Ministers are" — I know that I comment regularly on the performance of the Executive, but I am not necessarily doing so in this instance — "and no matter how bad the political performance is, these guys are going to get re-elected. They are going to be in power next year anyway, so what does it matter whether I deliver or not?". Do you agree with that proposition?

Professor Carmichael: A fish rots from the head down.

Professor Knox: Yes. They may think, "If we can thole this under a certain Minister, after four years, he or she will be gone. Even if their political party is elected, there will be a new Minister with a new mandate, and he or she may sideline some of the public policy issues that his or her predecessor put in place".

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I think that, broadly, you are not disagreeing with the point that the stasis in our political system does not tend to incentivise civil servants to think, "My career here depends on delivery". First, the public will not punish the parties that are ultimately accountable. Secondly, given the way that our system works, parties will shuffle individual Ministers in and out. Therefore, even if the same party has the same Ministry — often they do not — a different Joe or Jane Bloggs will be in charge of the Department.

Professor Carmichael: May I answer your question this way, Chair?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Answer it however you like, as long as you answer it.

Professor Carmichael: I will answer it. My understanding, from speaking with senior colleagues and politicians, is that the number of instances in the Northern Ireland dispensation in which senior officials ask for written instruction is, in itself, suggestive of a serious problem. From separate work as well — Colin mentioned the Northern Ireland Audit Office report — we know that there are a number of instances in which the account is not signed off: for example, in the Department for the Economy. If that was in private industry, either the share price would tank, the business would be taken over or legal action would be taken. The question that must arise of both the senior politicians and the senior mandarins is this: so what? Where is the accountability if, when all those basic building blocks of sound governance are not discharged properly, nothing ever happens and it just rolls on in its own merry way? It is little wonder that the electorate draws its own conclusions.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK. We had 10 ministerial directions in the last financial year. I do not have it in me at this moment to find the number at UK level, but your point is that the number of ministerial directions required by senior civil servants or accounting officers here is an indication of deeper issues.

Professor Carmichael: It is one indicator. I do not have the numbers for the other devolved fora or, indeed, for Whitehall or the Oireachtas — the Government in Dublin — but, nonetheless, it is out of proportion here, and that tells its own story, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): This session has been most helpful and useful. We really appreciate your evidence. We may ask you for more evidence, perhaps written rather than oral. The PowerPoint presentation that you gave us is a model of clarity and pithiness. Thank you very much for your time; we really appreciate it. As Gerry Carroll did earlier, I acknowledge that it is not the easiest time for people employed in your institution.

Professor Knox: Thank you.

Professor Carmichael: Thank you, colleagues.