When the new, and first, Cabinet Secretary for Public Service Reform, Ivan McKee MSP, opened the first debate on public service reform of Session 7 on 11 June 2026, he described it as “the defining task of this session of Parliament”.
At that point, it had been almost a year since the Scottish Government published its Public Service Reform (PSR) Strategy in June 2025. This set out 18 different workstreams which aim to remove barriers to reform.
The 18 workstreams of the Public Service Reform Strategy
Source: Scottish Government, Scotland’s Public Service Reform Strategy: Delivering for Scotland (2025)
Perhaps unsurprisingly in the lead up to an election, most of the detail that followed the announcement of the strategy focused on setting out high level strategic aspirations and targets. Much of this came through the Government’s Scottish Spending Review 2026, which went into more detail on efficiency and reform plans for each portfolio area of the coming three years up to 2028-29. This included targets to reduce the public sector workforce by 0.5% each year up to 2029-30, and £1.5 billion savings over the period of the Spending Review.
On the PSR Strategy itself, the only update before summer recess came in the form of an update of the Theory of Change-based approach to developing a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Framework, in March 2026.
What was unclear, when the new Public Service Reform Committee formed in June, was exactly how this defining task for the Government would play out in policy interventions –
- How might the Government’s approach compare to the action taken following the recommendations of the Christie Commission on the future delivery of public services in 2011? As we explored in a recent briefing, the most significant interventions in the aftermath of the Commission were the move to single national bodies covering police and fire services, and the introduction of Integration Joint Boards for health and social care.
- How would the Government find ways to address the implementation gap between strategy and service delivery, including the “mismatch” between the Scottish Government’s vision for Scotland and how effectively public sector performance is assessed as noted by Auditor General Stephen Boyle?
- How could the Government approach priorities such as partnership and collaboration in a way which reflects genuine partnership working, and genuine service transformation?
- What practical measures might the Government take to support investment in prevention in the context of rising demand for acute services?
The expectation of SPICe and other observers was that both the Programme for Government and an anticipated update on the PSR Strategy would provide more detail on how the Government would follow through its intentions in its policy and legislative plans.
Programme for Government
The Government published its Programme for Government 2026-31 on Tuesday 1 September 2026, and this set out four key priorities, which are broadly the same as those highlighted during the Spending Review earlier in the year:
- Eradicating child poverty.
- Growing the economy.
- Tackling the climate emergency.
- Delivering a stronger NHS and public services.
This is the first Programme for Government which is presented as covering a full parliamentary session – previously, although longer term aspirations have been set out, the Programme for Government has been presented as covering a single year at a time.
In the new Programme for Government, the Government outlined intentions which positioned Health and Social Care at the centre of its public service reform agenda. This included signalling an intention to simplify the NHS by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards and to build on planned reforms to further reduce the number of special Health Boards. The First Minister has since confirmed that this will not result in compulsory redundancies. The Programme for Government also suggested that the governance and delivery of social care would be reconsidered, and committed to engagement with local authorities, trade unions, and healthcare and service providers over Autumn 2026 to reach agreement on reform of social care. Both areas of reform are anticipated to feature as part of the anticipated Public Service Renewal (Scotland) Bill, to be introduced during the 2026-27 parliamentary year. The Government explains, in the Programme for Government:
“The Bill will seek to give statutory backing, where required, to reform the public service delivery landscape in support of the aims of the Public Service Reform Strategy. The Bill will improve the fiscal sustainability of the public service delivery landscape through restructuring, including possible merging and abolitions of public bodies and the transfer of functions between core government and public bodies.”
The focus in the Programme for Government was very much on reform of the public sector, and did not cover the wider range of sectors that deliver public services.
Linking the Programme for Government to the Public Service Reform Strategy
Although the Government signals that the actions set out in the Programme for Government will support its Public Service Reform Strategy, the publication does not link these directly to the specific workstreams or pillars of the Strategy. It does, however, explain the following, which reflects the narrative under Workstream 2 of the PSR Strategy, on Accountability and Incentives:
“In line with the PSR Strategy, work with Audit Scotland to review the audit and scrutiny landscape and identify opportunities for simplifying and integrating processes and bodies whilst maintaining a robust assurance system”.
The narrative on leadership in the Programme for Government appears likely to tie into Workstream 1 of the PSR Strategy, on Leadership and Cultural Change. The narrative in the document explains:
“Through our Public Service Reform Strategy, we committed to setting out a shared vision of great public service leadership through a Public Service Leadership Statement. The Statement, and its implementation, will be critical in shaping the leadership behaviours and organisational cultures needed to deliver the transformational change Scotland requires. We will invite leaders across local government, public bodies, trades unions, and delivery partners to join us now in shaping a clear vision for our future governance and planning for its realisation through a programme of reform.”
If the announcements around simplification of health boards and discussion on the pooling of resources across local government services at a regional level are seen as a reflection of Workstream 3 of the PSR Strategy, on ensuring the right delivery landscape, this suggests that the Government’s main focus of activity is towards the ‘Foundation’ workstreams of the strategy.
Public Service Reform Strategy update
The Cabinet Secretary for Public Service Reform wrote to the Public Service Reform Committee on 7 September 2026. This focused on providing a RAG (red, amber, green) status update against all 18 workstreams of the PSR strategy. Although it included some detail on next steps, detail on timescales and measures of success were limited, and the update didn’t expand in any detail on the proposals put forward in the Programme for Government.
In his covering letter, the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service Reform confirmed the focus on the foundations of public service reform:
“The new commitments set out in the Programme for Government are well aligned to the PSR strategy. The commitment to re-wire the state to improve service delivery takes forward the actions in Foundation 4 to review the public body landscape and in Foundation 3 to deliver regional and community empowerment. But achieving the change we want to see will take more than simply reorganising the public service delivery landscape, and the pillars and foundation of the strategy remain the cornerstone of our approach.”
Convener of the Public Service Reform Committee, Bob Doris MSP, whilst referring to the update during evidence-taking from the Cabinet Secretary on 10 September, said:
“It is safe to say that it read like a corporate governance framework to monitor reform in the workstreams, rather than a document that this committee, public services themselves or the wider public would use to find out what any of it means in practice.”.
As with most RAG updates, the status assigned is the Government’s own assessment. Under Foundation 2, on Accountability and Incentives, a ‘green’ status is assigned to the action “refresh and renew the National Performance Framework in 2025”. This suggests that successful delivery to time and cost appears “highly likely”.
Given that, at the time of writing, the revised National Performance Framework has yet to be laid before Parliament, some might question the assessment of this action as being on track to be delivered on time. As we have explored in past analysis, the Government has been clear about the reasons for adjusting its timetable, but the RAG status does not necessarily reflect the fact that the Parliament and stakeholders have been waiting for detail of revised outcomes well beyond the initial timescale for review.
The Cabinet Secretary for Public Service Reform wrote to the Finance and Public Administration Committee, copying in all committees, on 15 September 2026 to offer an update on the National Performance Framework review – this did not provide any new information, but confirmed that the Government intends to launch the reformed National Performance Framework “soon”.
Detail on the approach to reforms
On publication of the Programme for Government, Professor Graeme Roy, writing for the Centre of Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, said:
“it was perhaps notable that the Programme for Government, and accompanying statements, contained limited information on progress against either the efficiency or workforce targets”.
As the Convener of the Public Service Reform Committee noted on 10 September:
“Committees tend to scrutinise and count what we can see. It is hard to scrutinise what we cannot see—”
When asked to provide more detail on the modelling underlying the savings and workforce targets, the Cabinet Secretary declined to put figures against the proposals, though he did commit to sharing any modelling available with the Committee. He also clarified that detailed work on “pulling the numbers together” on the NHS proposals was “now starting”.
The Cabinet Secretary’s explanation of the approach being taken suggests that, rather than using modelling or projections to set targets and develop outline plans, the targets are intended to form a ‘starter for ten’. How these aspirations might be achieved is a matter for further consultation with the public bodies affected. The Government has been clear on its intent to engage in discussions with local government and partners on the future of local government and social care, but there is less detail on the consultation approach to the proposals around NHS restructuring.
There is the added confusion about what the Government is actually proposing. In the Programme for Government, the wording was clear that the Government intends to simplify the NHS:
“by replacing the current 14 territorial Health Boards with two Strategic Health Boards”
In a follow-up debate on the Programme for Government on 2 September, Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care Angela Constance MSP confirmed:
“We will replace the current territorial health boards with two strategic health boards—east and west.”
The Government has signalled that alternative arrangements will be discussed for the three wholly island authorities, such as the Single Authority Model that the Government has been exploring in partnership with COSLA. It is as a result unclear whether the proposals actually mean a reduction from the 11-mainland territorial boards to two, or whether the suggestion is that there will essentially be no ‘health boards’ covering the island authorities. It is also unclear how the proposals will affect partially or wholly mainland authorities that might wish to pursue a Single Authority Model, such as Argyll and Bute.
The Programme for Government made some bold announcements, with snappy timelines. Despite this, between the lack of clarity on proposals and targets and what they might look like in practice, and limited detail on the revised National Performance Framework, it’s possible that the journey to implementing reforms and understanding their impact may be a long one.
The Convener of the Public Service Reform Committee, on 10 September, asked the Cabinet Secretary in relation to the National Performance Framework:
“Can I get a reassurance that there will be a dashboard of indicators that will be meaningful to members of the public and this committee when we seek to monitor the situation?”
The Cabinet Secretary’s response of “Yes” indicates that although the journey may be long, there’re is hope that the map, and its key, will start to emerge soon.
Ailsa Burn-Murdoch, Senior Researcher, SPICe