Order!

Our first item of business today is a Ministerial Statement, on the Reorganisation of the Scottish Administration Green Paper.

Ministerial Statement

Oifigear-riaghlaidh,

I today present the Scottish Government’s plan for the Reorganisation of the Scottish Administration.

Our Programme for Government had the title ‘Progress. Opportunity. Delivery.’ This plan is focused on the delivery aspect, an aspect of government often forgotten by politicians.

Currently, we have two main organs for policy to be announced and delivered. Cabinet Secretaries, with their portfolios, and Directorates(-General). The fact that these are split is not necessarily the problem. The problem is that there is essentially no link between ministers and civil servants. This means that the Government can’t be as agile as It needs to be, and makes things needlessly confusing for everyone.

Our proposal today fixes that. Our main policy is the merger of directorates and portfolios, into ‘departments’, similar to in Westminster. This means that there is a direct link between political and non-political overseers of policy.

Civil servants must be free from the influence of politics. But that Civil Service Code already asserts that, and the current system doesn’t stop that at all. All this does is make it easier for civil servants to work with politicians within the confines of good governance.

This is a common sense change, and I’m open to questions about it.

Thank you.

The Green Paper can be found here

This Green Paper and Statement was written by the Most Hon. Lady /u/model-avtron, Marchioness Hebrides LT CT PC MSP MLA MS, Tòiseach, on behalf of the 21st Scottish Government.