Costs and Staffing for the Scottish Parliament

1.  The Scottish Parliament Corporate Body will ultimately be responsible for providing the Parliament with the staff and services it requires to operate. In the transition period, immediately after the May 1999 elections, that duty will fall to the Secretary of State. In the meantime, preparations are being made to ensure that the Parliament will have the staff and facilities it needs from the outset.

2.  Capital expenditure of up to £6m will be required to adapt the temporary accommodation based around the Church of Scotland General Assembly Hall and City of Edinburgh Council Headquarters offices at George IV Bridge, Edinburgh, to meet the requirements of the Parliament and to purchase furniture, IT and telecoms equipment for the use of MSPs and the staff of the Parliament. Wherever possible, equipment purchased for use in the interim accommodation will be reused at Holyrood.

3.  Running costs are difficult to estimate precisely, since they will depend on how the Parliament operates and that, ultimately, is a matter for the Parliament itself to decide. The current estimate, based on work undertaken to date, is around £30m annually. This should cover MSP's salaries, allowances and office bearers, property costs; staffing; and other costs in providing services for the Scottish Parliament. These services will be provided by both in-house staff and contracts. Firm downward pressure on costs is being maintained through competitive procurement procedures and examining the most efficient ways of working.

Staffing of the Scottish Administration

4.  Mr McLeish's evidence to the Commission on 1 July indicated that it is not considered that there will be a substantial increase in the number of civil servants, and that Ministers will be looking very carefully indeed at any additional staff that may be required.

5.  In general, the functions to be discharged by officials in the Scottish Administration will be those of The Scottish Office and its Agencies, the Crown Office, the Lord Advocate's Department and the other Scottish Departments; they will continue to be performed after the Parliament is established and the requirement for staff is not expected to increase. However, work is under way in The Scottish Office to quantify any increase in staff resource which, nevertheless, may be needed to take account of the existence of the Parliament. This work is not yet complete, but a number of issues are now clear.

6.  The pressure for any increase will come in three areas:

 -  the transfer of some additional functions from Whitehall Departments to the Scottish Executive;

 -  the potential of the new Parliament to handle more Scottish business than Westminster, and hence for an increased need for official support to the Executive;

 -  the need to ensure proper liaison between civil servants in Edinburgh and civil servants in Whitehall, Cardiff and Belfast.

7.  The transfer of functions from Westminster/Whitehall is, in itself, expected to have only a limited effect on overall staffing levels, although the effect will vary from area to area. The implications for staffing levels of more formal liaison arrangements involving the UK Government and the Welsh and Northern Ireland administrations may not, in practice, emerge clearly for some time. It is the potential of the new Parliament to undertake additional business, and the consequences of that for civil service workloads, this is likely to be the most significant question.

8.  However, against all three of these factors must be set other considerations:

 -  with Ministers and Parliament situated in Edinburgh alongside officials, communications will be easier; there will be less need for civil servants to travel to London, and some advice which is currently given to Ministers in writing will be given more promptly and effectively face-to-face;

 -  the Scottish Parliament will be unicameral, and there will no longer be a need for officials to support Ministerial appearances before 2 Houses.

9.  There are 2 key areas of uncertainty, however, which make firm assessments of additional workload impossible at this stage. Neither the procedures of the Parliament, nor the structure of the Executive, have yet been decided.

10.  The procedures of the Parliament will have a direct impact on civil service workloads. The more legislation that it considers, the more elaborate that consideration, and the more debates or questions which it directs to the scrutiny of the Executive, so much the more work will be required for officials in drafting legislation and supporting Ministers (and also perhaps in supporting senior officials) on appearances before the Parliament. The Consultative Steering Group and its sub-groups are currently working on recommendations for Parliamentary procedures; but this work is not yet complete, and in any event the Parliament itself will be free to accept or reject those recommendations and substitute other procedures, in whole or in part.

11.  Equally, the structures within the executive may be significant. The more Ministers there are holding office in the Executive, the more they will require official support; and if an incoming Scottish Executive seeks to take particular new initiatives in particular areas - perhaps areas which cut across functional boundaries - there will be some need for staffing to support this. But again, the structure of the Executive will not be known until after the elections next May.

12.  On balance, Ministers believe that some additional staff are likely to be required, and officials are currently working up contingency plans for their supply. But as Mr McLeish indicated on 1 July, any increase will be limited. The cost of any additional staff must come out of the Block, and Ministers expect, as will the public, that if resources need to be taken from public services in order to strengthen support for the Executive, these will be kept to a minimum, and increases only made after seeing that existing resources are managed as efficiently as possible.

13  While at present it is not possible to quantify any additional staffing requirements for the Scottish Executive, the best estimate must be that they will be modest. In the meantime, The Scottish Office will take these uncertainties into account as best it can. Hence recruitment exercises undertaken to deal with normal annual staff turnover are being adjusted in various ways - to take account of the fact that some Scottish Office volunteers are expected to go on secondment for a time to help provide services to the Parliament in its start-up phase, to adapt to any identified increases in the need for staff in the remainder of this financial year, and to make sure that potential reserve recruits will be available in the event that firm new requirements are identified - having full regard to the need for continuing economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the discharge of business by The Scottish Office. The Office is also taking action, through new training initiatives, to ensure that existing and new staff have the right balance of skills to meet the demands which will be made upon them.