15/06/2011 Newsnight Scotland

Tonight on Newsnight Scotland. We may not have riots like Greece, and

the public sector strike in Scotland will involve fewer people

than in England, but how exactly do the public here view spending cuts

and indeed how public services are run? We have an exclusive look at

evidence which has gone to the Christie Commission on reform.Good

evening. Many of Scotland's civil servants will join public sector

workers in the rest of the UK on strike at the end of the month as

new figures show the usual mixed picture as to how the economy is

doing. The former STUC boss Campbell Christie will soon be

issuing recommendations on how public services should deal with

the cuts. Newsnight Scotland has been following one element of that

debate. The accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has

conducted what it calls a citizen's jury and the results have gone to

the Christie Commission. Here's Kenneth Macdonald.

Edinburgh in April. There was an election on the way, but these

people are looking at a longer timescale. 24 members of the public

are sitting on judgment on our public services. We have heard from

a range of experts, different types of expertise, about public services

in Scotland. Our job was to deliberate on public services.

has been quite hard going. The came here not knowing what to expect,

but it has been very interesting. partnership between public...

a response to the Christie Commission. It has been sent -- set

up by the Scottish government to look at public services. The scale

we have got is to be bold. That in itself is interesting. The

commission is thinking about what needs to be happening without any

constraints. So we are going to be bald. I would like to introduce our

panel. The outcome of this citizen's jury is being submitted

to the Christie enquiry by PwC. Price Waterhouse Coopers. We have

got together a jury of 24 people who represent sections of the

Scottish population to think about issues that they face as citizens

in finding the public services they need and getting what they want.

The jury is now in. It has The speakers came in to give us

information, people from Audit Scotland, which was very good. Most

people did not know how a -- how public finances were spared. --

spent. The jurors were asked to prioritise public services.

Essential, ideal, nice to have it. Things like free leisure services,

it would be nice to have them, but in this day and age, if you have to

The jury's findings also show how their opinion has shifted after

they heard from expert witnesses. On the question of whether Scotland

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 44 seconds

But opinion has swung the other way What message should this process

sent to the politicians? To listen to people. We are here for the long

term. You have to think about the Politics is too important to be

confined to polling day. An exercise like this can show that

all citizens can have an influence on decision-making. I'm joined now

by Paul Brewer of PriceWaterhouseCoopers who

masterminded the citizen's jury process, and whom you may have

glimpsed in the film there. John Downie is Public Affairs director

of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisation, and Dave

Moxham is deputy General Secretary of the Scottish TUC.

The Christie Commission, if you look at what they have gone through,

they get a lot of information from organisations, but not a lot from

customers of those organisations. We wanted to help them with the

customer, the citizen's view. of the things that struck me about

these results is that they start out in favour of public services,

free public services, but at the end of the day, support has gone

down. But two weeks after the exercise, the SNP won the election.

I would wonder how it representative that was meant to

be? I think the extent to which parties were differentiated on that

issue was something for voters to consider. But a number of these

measures has support from more than one party. What it did bring out is

that once people understood where money was being spent, they became

much more focused and confident about their priorities. But one of

the things that did seem to come out is if you say to people, for

example, do you think that over 60s should get three bus passes? They

think it is a great idea. But when you say it is that for this, they

drop the free bus passes. People commented that it changes behaviour

and demand. Is that something they wanted to see? If you are

increasing demand, you cannot spend money on other things. It gave some

flavour of how the cost of some of the services... Something that

struck me was that people said they wanted a public services that they

could be proud of. They also meant that in a dividing sense. Prior to

be in Scotland, proud to be in Britain, public services that

almost gave them a sense of identity. -- a proud to be. Yes,

there were a lot of values underlying public services. And

people realised that they are very important to them. Are you

impressed by this? Yes, what it shows is what we have been saying

for a while. The agenda needs to move to a greater role for the

third sector, to involve people. One thing I would pick upon is that

we talk about things being free, but they are not three. Somebody

has got to pay for it. Those people who are now retired, they once were

taxpayers. When you put it to people, the choice, people are not

stupid, they can make decisions and prioritise. But Paul Brewer did put

it to people. That is what I mean, prioritising what we need, the

health service, the vulnerable in society. Let's not treat the

symptoms, let's treat the causes. That is what I took from the report.

People are realising they cannot afford free prescriptions and free

bus passes. Nice to have it. But people are saying what priorities

they want to have it. What our members of trade unions in the

public sector feeling? There are big strikes planned down south,

largely over changes to the pensions sector. But there seems to

be less militancy in Scotland at the moment. I think people are

feeling angry and I think they are very concerned about the future of

services that they deliver. Very specifically, we have a situation

where the education unions are likely to strike over pensions. I

would be highly surprised if the feeling was not as strong in

Scotland after September. You think it is the issue of pensions...?

think that it is strongly felt. Adding 3.5% year-on-year increase

for pensions is just too much for people to bear. Yes, I think it is

How long do you think union members in Scotland in the public services

will accept pay freezes, an effective pay cut given the rate of

inflation? We know it is the share and will peak next year. You can

present it as a social contract, it is a fine balance, which way will

it go? It is difficult to predict but what we do know is whether it

is cuts in public services or cuts in pay, we have not really seen

them yet. There has been some element of a freeze and we are

beginning to see it in terms of public services but this is the tip

of the iceberg in terms of what we are expecting. This is a factor,

Paul Brewer, the context of this discussion you were having is not

let us sit down in the extract and have a discussion about how we run

public services, it is that we know there are massive cuts coming down

the line. As Dave Moxham said, perhaps we are not quite aware that

it has not really started yet. and we asked people to say what

they thought was the mood of Scotland at the beginning. It was

really quite fearful, a lot of negative views coming across. Part

of that was that nobody could give you a sense of what these cuts are.

They can see them looming. When the auditor general explain to them and

showed them how public spending had moved through the period since

devolution, growing very rapidly, the cuts, while very substantial,

taking back to wheel expenditure levels of about 2007. That

surprised people. They thought of them back to 1997. Just being able

to size what the issue was I think gay people a bit more confidence to

understand that there is still an envelope with which you can

prioritise thing. -- things. Much of what Campbell Christie has been

expected to deal with is an Armageddon situation. He has been

told that public services will not get back to their current level for

15 years. But it is not incompatible with what Paul Brewer

has just said. It could be that the level of public spending does not

fall below 2000 and several levels but it will still take 15 or 20

years to get back to the levels they were at and there peak.

Another feature that came through was that people were very willing

to think long-term. Looking at means of prevention off social

issues that soak up a lot of public funding, it means that you have to

think of it more long term. People were saying, can we get public

services to be able to operate outside the political cycle, plan

for the long term, invest in prevention, and there is an

appetite for that. John Downie, do you think there's an assumption

that we know what people think but they do not necessarily think that?

I remember an interview with Annabel Goldie where I was talking

about tuition fees and suggesting that all the other parties knew it

was not popular. She pointed out that there was about beer pole

appearing in one of the newspapers show that it was popular. That is

one of the things about the findings of Paul Brewer, that when

you explain to people, it appeared, what was it? It was that nice to

have. And they said they would be prepared to consider tuition fees.

I think that is one of the strongest messages from the report

that when you put stark choices to people about the demographic

challenge that Scott and changes -- faces, at such as care for all

people, moving through that longer term approach and treating the

courses rather than the symptoms, people can actually make choices.

This is the debate we probably should have had during the election

campaign. That is the debate... Are we going to have to make his

decision because they were not really debated in the election, it

was like a bidding war to give more free things to people. And the fact

that there was cross-party support for some of these allegedly free

measures took some of the debate out of this. The Christie

Commission is looking at how public services are delivered and I think

there was an appetite from people just to get more factual

information. Given that there is a pay freeze for at least two years,

and given that pay makes up a very high proportion of the public

sector, if you just keep cutting people's pay into ethnic comedy

really need to face up to these other issues? -- indefinitely.

do. We have to face up to these challenges. It is not something

that over the next four years we can avoid. It is interesting that

people were prepared, when they saw of the public sector finances, to

pay more. That is not a perception that the politicians are taking

from the voters. People realise that if we want the care services,

if we want education and the health service, the money to think about

how we pundit. Is that something you would contemplate up the free

Fred? Perhaps not just pay more for things like pain for prescriptions,

but people are being asked to pay for services that they heart used

to getting for free? We're one of the few organisations that has

consistently argued that the council tax Nice to rise to obviate

the kind of individual charging that your love our eyes have. We

are concerned that the Scottish government has not faced up to his

responsibilities in relation to council tax and the number of

measures that is has had at his disposal and has not used. Opinion

polls Balterley that is an up unpopular thing to do but it would

be the right thing to do. -- will tell you. People said they would

want money to be shifted from lower priorities first and then look at

whether they should have the device to have,. We are sitting here on

the assumption that the Christie Commission will produce these

radical proposals. Will it? I think it will. I think there is a clear

agenda there for the means of delivery of public services to be

sorted out. I can there are high expectations but I don't know they

can deliver. Long term, yes, but I do not know that the short term.

look at tomorrow's front pages. A construction company has pulled

local bidding for the contract. Britain walks out is about the

strikes. Hundreds of thousands of public-sector employees striking on