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Well, those working in the relevant portfolio—such as communities, equalities or whatever—would obviously have a close relationship with those bodies, as well as with relevant stakeholders, which would allow them to take a view. The matter that you raise is not something that I am personally aware of. If there is a specific issue, we can check in with the relevant portfolio and write back to you.

Absolutely. If a committee produces a report that is, for good reason, critical of things that the Government has done and the matter is deemed to be in the public interest, I am sure that the media will pick it up.

It is interesting that you have had evidence from those bodies that they do not see who supports them as an important constraint or difference. That is valuable evidence from them. As I said, there are examples of bodies whose independence is clearly important, such as the Scottish Fiscal Commission.

I suppose that I am a wee bit wary, because the Government needs to be able to keep its distance from some of those bodies, for good reason, given the important roles that they play. If that were the committee’s recommendation, I would absolutely consider it. If we were looking at a scenario where—again, this has come up in your discussions—there would be a reorganisation of some of the bodies, that would probably be better handled in the Parliament space than in the Government space, again for good reasons, but we would be open to considering that if the committee felt that that was the best direction.

I do not know whether either of my officials wants to comment.

I absolutely understand that. I simply guard against a scenario in which you give all the bodies to the Government and expect the Government to reorganise the landscape. It would have to be about joint work on a cross-party basis. We are very happy to engage in that space.

In broad terms, I absolutely agree that it is better to catch problems earlier rather than later. As I said earlier, getting the right system design and the right delivery mechanisms is hugely important, because that is where you resolve the problems. You do not resolve the problems by coming along and inspecting out the faults at the end of the process; you design the process so that you are not generating the faults at an earlier stage. That is absolutely true. In principle, therefore, I am very supportive of anything that helps to prevent those problems from happening.

Whether powers could be expanded would depend on what we were talking about; other aspects of that would need to be considered in the round. In principle, however, I have absolutely no problem with an approach that prevents problems from arising earlier in the process.

I agree that we need to guard against the tendency to embrace shiny new things. The problem, however, is that you then get criticised and asked what you are actually doing, which potentially puts you back in the shiny new things space. However, as ministers and as a Government, we have a responsibility to guard against that.

I will keep the regulatory bodies separate, because they do their thing and no one wants to tell them what to investigate.

Regarding the advocacy commissioners—if we can call them that—I would flip the question. I am not sure that we would want to be in a place where the Government was telling commissioners what to look at, because that would be a guaranteed mechanism for missing things. People are out there looking at stuff, uncovering and pointing at the things that they think that we should be looking at. That is valid work, and the fact that it does not all lead to something is not necessarily a problem because it is important that they are doing that advocacy job.

There will be examples of the Government laying out a challenge or having an issue that it wants to deal with. We are taking forward work on public sector reform and would welcome groups, individuals and committees becoming part of that process and having an input. Those groups should make their own decisions about what they want to look at, with a view to having an input into Government thinking or into helping to direct what the Government should look at.

Lots of different groups are doing advocacy. Commissioners and committees can do stuff in that space, as can third sector organisations, non-governmental organisations, campaigning groups and many others. They are not alone in raising the concerns of the groups that they advocate for.

Yes, that is an on-going process. Take what we are doing with shared services, which includes information technology systems and support, human resources, finance and so on: we now have 32 public bodies, I think, on the shared service system. I have calls every month with the director who leads on that to look at the work being done to bring other bodies on board.

I meet people in the various groups representing clusters of public bodies that are working together, in different portfolios, to take out duplication and to seek opportunities for shared services. We will accelerate that work through the public sector reform strategy.

There is quite a bit of other activity there. We do not have a big chart with everything on it, as it is far too complicated for that, but we do have strands within areas, whether that is in IT shared services or in digital resource. We are moving towards virtual digital budgets and the tracking of digital resources, so that we understand how much there is out there—both contractor and employed—what projects those people are working on and how we are prioritising all that.

There is a lot to tackle there, but we are on the journey of getting more information and having more impact on how resources are more effectively shared.

It varies, and it depends on the nature of the body. Some executive agencies are very close to Government, whereas others, such as the non-ministerial offices, are further away for good reasons. It then depends on the portfolio and the nature of what the bodies are trying to do.

I suppose the question is whether a commissioner has a route to be able to create more pressure than a committee can. I am not sure about that. There may well be examples where that has happened. As I said, others might have had a different experience in their portfolios, but I think that pressure can be brought to bear in both cases.

Yes—sorry.