‘List of opportunities’ in Scottish quangos, minister says

A “list of opportunities” is being drawn up among Scottish quangos, the minister in charge of public sector reform has said.

However Ivan McKee cautioned that large-scale reorganisations often end up taking much longer than expected and the Government would not take a “big bang” approach.

The public finance minister said he is trying to find efficiencies of around roughly £5 billion of the Government’s back office spending, which he wants to shift to the front line.

Mr McKee discussed his approach at an event held by the think tank Reform Scotland in Edinburgh.

He noted there are around 130 quangos in Scotland and the number had started to “creep back up” after a period of decline.

But reducing the number of public bodies often “takes much longer than you think, costs more than you think and delivers less than you think”, he said.

The minister said he is looking at removing duplication and having common platforms across different organisations.

He said: “Very often, to change public bodies, you’re looking at primary legislation.

“But we are also looking quite actively at the scope – where there are bodies that are very close together – and where it does absolutely make sense to be able to be able to pull them together through making those structural changes.

“I’m not going to go into too much detail on that just now. We’ve got a list of opportunities there.

“Not all of those will come to fruition because we need to do the due diligence on it. But that will run in parallel with the work to strip out duplication and get bodies working more closely together.”

The event’s host Chris Deerin said having “a little list” has a particular resonance in political and historic terms.

Mr McKee said the “chainsaw” approach taken by Elon Musk, who heads Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, is already coming apart with other members of the administration opposing the cuts.

Asked about Labour’s proposal to reduce Scotland’s territorial health boards to three, he suggested this would not be “the best use of our time and energy” and a “big bang” strategy would be fraught with challenges.

Critics say the Government has been vague and opaque in its approach to reorganising the public sector.

In January, Kenneth Gibson, convener of Holyrood’s Finance Committee, said the Government’s plans were “not impressive”.

He referred to a report from Audit Scotland which called for “fundamental change” to ensure public services remain affordable.