Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Hansard will provide a report on this session retrospectively. The Scottish Government's permanent secretary was asked for comment and has written back with bits of information including a copy of the August 2026 report, 'Serving Scotland: our five-year plan'. The permanent secretary will not come to give us evidence.

The Committee Clerk: No. There seems to be a lot of nervousness about things like that, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Yes. That is sad, to be honest. I thank Joe Griffin. The obvious point that he makes, which is true, is that, in a constitutional and legal sense, the Scottish Government workforce is different, in that it is part of the UK Civil Service — or, if you prefer, the Home Civil Service — whereas the NI Civil Service is entirely separate. It is, however, worth saying —. Did we ever establish whether the accounting officer responsibility exists?

The Committee Clerk: It is not the same. We will make this more logical. We have put what we can in a table. I am thinking far ahead and about the existing design of the head of the Civil Service (HOCS) office. It might be useful for members to look at how that works, how Scotland and Wales work and how the Cabinet Secretary works, because there are striking differences.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): One thing worth saying is that, if you look at the numbers on page 3 of the Scottish Government's briefing document, you can see that the Scottish Civil Service is less than half the size of ours. In fact, it is not much more than a third of the size of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. That is because things such as welfare are not devolved; nor are many council things. The briefing paper states that it excludes public bodies. Lots of jobs that are done here by civil servants reporting, in effect, directly to the Executive are part of local government in Scotland. It is interesting.

'Serving Scotland: our five-year plan' is a little bit clearer on the programme for Civil Service reform. It is a wee bit clearer than what we have. It has fairly clear statements about what Scotland intends to do to change the Civil Service. It is a bit more user-friendly and comprehensible. It includes some of the same verbiage and jargon that exists in all Civil Service documents, but it is a little bit more concise and comprehensible. That is one observation.

Dr Aiken: There are a couple of things. We have heard, numerous times, that we are not comparing apples and oranges. That is a refrain that comes every time. However, the more that we drill into the detail about what the core functions of the Civil Service are and what they do, the more we realise that one of the pieces of work that we have to do is identify those areas. There is a substantial difference in the Scots and Welsh process of headcount and what they deliver. It is fairly easy to segregate out some of those roles within the Northern Ireland Civil Service that do not do those. They include the key functions of delivery in government, which are laid out very starkly. We are getting a message that might be useful for the report. The Home Civil Service approach creates a set of structures and procedures. We are not part of that, so we have no view or oversight of how our Civil Service works. We have been able to see two reports: we have seen one from the Welsh, and now we are seeing one from the Scots. The reports are pretty clear, even though officials will not come to speak to us. The key point is that we are already getting significant lessons that we need to be looking at. The Northern Ireland Civil Service cannot keep on saying, "It's not the same" or "It doesn't marry up" or "It doesn't add up". I have a lot of respect for the Finance Minister. However, he talks about comparing apples and oranges. The reality is that we need to be comparing like with like; otherwise, a lot of inefficiencies and deliverables are being hidden. That is my view.

Mr Kingston: This is a very useful contribution. It is hard to compare the number of staff when functions are delivered through different organisations, some of which are within the Civil Service and some within Departments and arm's-length bodies. Pages 4 and 5 of the submission address recruitment procedures and controls. It states that Scotland is aiming to reduce:

It goes on to state:

We see temporary promotions as a negative, but, if it is a way of filling a vacancy with an existing staff member, there is a place for it, rather than automatically advertising every vacancy that arises. The approach is one of setting a target for reducing costs, challenging and, when vacancies arise, seeing where there can be redeployment. It is helpful to see that set out.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): The problem arises when temporary promotions become a default structural thing and something that leaves people feeling stressed out. If you are temporarily promoted, you are working to a grade and are getting the salary and the pension contributions at that moment, but you are not substantively promoted and, at a moment's notice, could have your pay cut, for example. You deal with all the excess responsibility, which might involve lots of extra reports, burden and stress, but you do not have the certainty that that is your substantive grade. That might be contributing to some of the welfare issues. However, you are right: it has a place, obviously, and it creates flexibility in the workforce.

Ms Forsythe: I want to build on the point that Steve made. If anything, it is a finding, but do we perhaps want to ask more questions around the structure of public-sector staffing? We are looking into the performance and culture of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, but the Minister mentioned at Question Time in response to questions from me on the National Wealth Fund and on the Fiscal Council report on pay how the public sector in Northern Ireland was different with local authorities and structures within financing. You could draw a line under it now and say, "This is a finding. It's different, and it's problematic because we are not getting funded and our structures are not in place and something needs to happen", or, given that our inquiry is still live, we could ask a few more questions such as whether it is something for the Executive Office (TEO). Where does looking at the structure of the Northern Ireland public sector sit? I do not know exactly what to ask or who to ask. We are looking at performance and culture, which is driven a lot by the funding package and the fact, as Steve said, that we are comparing apples with oranges. Where do we go with that? We can have a simple finding that states, "The crux of why we can't transform or do things better is because we are not comparing like with like". We could ask a little bit more around that. I do not know whether it is something to go to TEO with or where we go with it. I just feel that it is a big thing.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is a question about the structure of the Civil Service and —.

Ms Forsythe: Sorry, Chair. It is not just the Civil Service. That is the issue. We are looked at the NICS, but the issue that keeps coming through is that, when funding issues are identified through the Treasury, because local authorities, health and education are structured so differently in other parts of the UK, that never gets translated to here. We get feedback from Wales and Scotland that everything is different. The Home Civil Service is different. Nothing is the same when it comes to comparing. Is there somebody, under HOCS or somewhere in Northern Ireland, looking at the public-sector staffing structure and governance and how they are funded compared with Northern Ireland very much on the lines of the Fiscal Council report? It is different here, but, for us to be able to get into the detail of what we can do better in the NICS, it needs to be a bigger piece. That is a recommendation, but I do not know who that belongs to.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That is really asking, "Does the differential structure of the entire public sector here have an impact" —

Ms Forsythe: Is it being assessed by anybody?

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): — "on the performance of the Civil Service and public service outcomes and therefore how well civil servants are perceived to do their jobs?". We could crystallise that question rather than boiling the ocean because you could get a very big answer. We had evidence before the summer from two academics, one of whom was at Ulster University. It might be a question in the first instance for academics/the think tank world.

The Committee Clerk: We can go back to the Research and Information Service (RaISe), which has mechanisms that allow us to bring in experts. Some figures in that evidence session were striking, highlighting how 77% of budget is dealt with through arm's-length bodies (ALBs) yet we still have huge numbers of public-sector workers who are directly responsible as part of the NICS. There are a lot of issues around that. I suppose, from what the Deputy Chair was saying, that the function and ownership of the NICS legally sit with the Department of Finance, and that is something that HOCS raised. She referred to the constitutional position on which her role is based where she is nominally head of the Civil Service but does not have control of it because —

Dr Aiken: There is a saving of a quarter of a million pounds a year before we even start.

The Committee Clerk: — it clearly sits as a Department of Finance function, and that is legislated for. That is where you start to see the peeling away of the differences between what we have here and what they have in Scotland, Wales and London and in the South. It is an entirely different structure based, I suppose, on setting everything up from scratch. Our structures, as Members will be acutely aware, have grown piecemeal. The role of HOCS was introduced without any specific or new legislation or amendment of any legislation as far as we can see.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Let us crystallise this into a question, which is to ask RaISe to have a look on our behalf or to establish potential witnesses who might give us a view in written or oral evidence on what burdens or challenges the differential structure of the public sector writ large when compared with neighbouring jurisdictions create for the Civil Service and how it performs. For example, people are doing things as civil servants here who would in England and Scotland be local government employees; or, in the South of Ireland, they might be in state-owned autonomous bodies, whereas, here, a lot of them are civil servants. Does that create particular delivery challenges? Does it also create a problem where you have the anomaly of accountability at the top around the head of the Civil Service? You have a very large Civil Service that encompasses a greater part of the public sector than in neighbouring jurisdictions but a relatively weak leadership at the top. That is not a comment about individuals.

The Committee Clerk: It is structurally weak, perhaps.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Structurally weak is what I mean in the sense that the head of the Civil Service is not an accounting officer nor are they — I think that this is a reasonable comment — in any sense a chief executive of government here. They are a figure at the top who has an important coordination role, but they are not a chief executive of the public sector. However, the NICS is, in large measure, either the public sector writ large or, indeed, running the public sector. I think that that comparison, via RaISe, would be helpful. I can think of witnesses who gave us evidence previously. The Institute for Government, which is based in London, might provide interesting evidence on that.

The Committee Clerk: We will look at that, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I think that it would be helpful to have that in written or oral form.

Dr Aiken: This is just a quick one. From the conversations that we have had with the Secretary of State, government officials and the Fiscal Council and from the Fiscal Council report that we had the other day, it is very clear that this is now a measurement that is being taken forward. Thanks to the open-book exercise, the Treasury came in and the smartest boys and girls in the room gave the numbers on the significant costs of the delivery of government.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That might be their assessment of themselves, Steve, but I am not sure that the Committee would necessarily endorse it.

Dr Aiken: We need to drill down on this, because it will increasingly be used as a metric to measure our effectiveness and what our Civil Service does. So, we are going to have to bring some realistic comparison between them. If we do not, this will increasingly be thrown back at us, and it will be thrown back at our Civil Service unless we can get those answers. That might be a fundamental thing that comes out of our investigation. We do have to compare ourselves in the same ways, on the same delivery and on the same outputs. That is how our costs are being measured and compared.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): You are talking specifically about headcount in the Civil Service. You are talking about two things. First is the issue that there are people who, in other jurisdictions, would be in other bits of the public sector but here are in the Civil Service. You are also talking about the initial finding by the Fiscal Council. They are two related but separate questions. One is the size of the public sector and another is the fact that more of the public sector is in the Civil Service here, yes?

Dr Aiken: There is another critical question —

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I just want to be clear about what we are asking.

Dr Aiken: — that came out of what Sir Robert did. We deliver about 134%, or whatever it happens to be, of what an English or Welsh civil servant could do, or, as the Fiscal Council said, their nearest equivalent. We are delivering 168% or something like that, so, as the Fiscal Council sees it, there is a differential of 30% in output based on how it measures it. We need to really look down at those figures.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That sounds like we are talking about productivity. I am not sure that the Fiscal Council actually gets into productivity. Does it?

Dr Aiken: That is the problem. We need to be able to identify what we are measuring so that we are comparing like with like. We cannot say that we are a unique case where it costs more to deliver unless we can say what civil servants are delivering, what that compares against and how it compares. The Welsh reports and the Scottish reports were very useful, and those point clearly to how we need to unwrap this a bit.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): I think that that is fair. I am cognisant of the bandwith of our amazing Clerk team and of the Committee's schedule and time. I do not think that we are going to be able to give any kind of authoritative view — people will certainly have views, and it certainly will come up — given that the Fiscal Council itself is in the foothills of looking at the public-sector workforce size. It will come up in our discussions, and we are hearing from the Fiscal Council about that report. On the Civil Service report, I think that the comparison that you are talking about is with where the workers are. As I said earlier, somebody who might be working in local government in Scotland is doing that job as part of the Civil Service here. It is about getting a more robust comparator on what our Civil Service covers that the Civil Service elsewhere does not cover.

Dr Aiken: We will have to do that, because —

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): OK.

Dr Aiken: — we will always —

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): That is the question that we will ask.

Dr Aiken: — otherwise be arguing over the question of costs. We need to do it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We will not ask, "Is our public sector too big or too small?" because we do not have the bandwidth to answer that question, important though it is.

Dr Aiken: If we ever get back —

The Committee Clerk: That is the next one. That is what we are planning for the next iteration.

Dr Aiken: — that is one for next time.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is a question that will come up at the Committee, and we can ask it in other ways in other contexts, but it is not for this inquiry to ask it.

Dr Aiken: The Committee should retain oversight and ownership of it.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): Inevitably, we will do so, and we will hear from the Fiscal Council. In this Civil Service inquiry, it would be tricky for us to get enough evidence to come up with a robust answer, given that the Fiscal Council itself is just —.

The Committee Clerk: Chair, it is probably worth mentioning — you will come to it later in the meeting — that the Committee had written to the Minister about the data gaps that the Fiscal Council highlighted, particularly as they related to our ability to capture the things that we are talking about. The Minister is looking at that. It comes back to the fact that the systems are so different. Many of our fairly old, legacy structures are ones that Scotland and Wales simply did not have. When they set up their devolved models, they based them on much lighter, more flexible systems that were much more like the English systems. We had legacy structures from the previous Parliament that they did not have, so our structures were organised around something that was fairly dated. Theirs are much more modern and flexible.

Dr Aiken: It is something to regret because, even though our Parliament had been moribund for 30-odd years and we came after both the —

The Committee Clerk: It is our legacy.

Dr Aiken: — Scottish Parliament —. Right. OK.

The Committee Clerk: That is the legacy that we have. Nothing really changed in the way of structures.

Dr Aiken: OK.

The Committee Clerk: There is lots to do, Chair.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): It is all constitutional history. OK.

The Committee Clerk: We will come to that.

The Chairperson (Mr O'Toole): We will continue that, and the paper from the Scottish Government will be added to the evidence base for the inquiry.