Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:45 pm on 11 November 2020.
I'll just start with Llyr, if that's okay. Thank you very much for acknowledging, as we do, actually, as the Finance Committee, that, by working together, we're getting an increasingly transparent presentation of the budget that's possible. We're always happy to take recommendations on how to do that better. That might be something that Mike was referring to right at the end there, but I actually missed his last question—I'll come back to that.
Yes, as I explained in my opening presentation, we've worked very hard here. We started from a zero-budget position to identify what we needed to spend money on, or what we thought that the next Commission would need to spend money on, and, as ever, a significant amount of our costs are pretty much—you know, we're already committed to them, leaving us with a minimum amount of discretion for where we can be innovative, if you like.
The point about the windows, obviously we've flagged this up with you before, and you're quite right, Llyr, there's a feasibility study that's been done on this, but regrettably, the Commissioners themselves haven't seen that yet, and as soon as we have, then obviously we'll be in a position to make the suitable reports to the Finance Committee about what they say. You're right that it's a—. The feasibility study itself is not so expensive, but the overall costs will be. But I think it's worth us bearing in mind that this is not just about getting some new windows; this is, in no small part, to do with health and safety—some of these windows are verging on the dangerous. But also, we have a commitment, as a Senedd, to work towards our sustainability goals, and it's pretty clear that the windows that we have at the moment aren't helping us do that. So, there's more than one reason for changing the windows, if you like. However, it is going to be a big expense and your comments about whether this should receive public scrutiny have certainly been noted, and obviously we'll take that back to the Commission.
The standards commissioner—yes, I think you were given apologies in the Finance Committee for that report not being ready, and we're grateful to you for acknowledging that it's effectively COVID priorities that have just bumped that down the list of things to do. But you'll definitely be receiving that.
With the long-term savings, part of what we do, in presenting the budget, certainly at the beginning of a Commission, is to try and look across the five years, but certainly the three years, and give indicative figures of what we would expect next year's budget to look like. And in-built into that is a level of looking ahead to see what savings we can make, or, sadly, as is more frequently the case, what things might actually cost. But, for example—we've been in this cycle before—we're looking ahead at the moment to some contracts coming to an end, and whether whoever takes the new contract on, or even if it's the same individuals—to see if we can make savings there.
I think you mentioned the voluntary exit scheme. I think we were pretty clear right at the beginning that that was about reshaping the workforce in order to respond to the challenges that the Commission now has, and that includes new skills being brought in. Some staff, of course, were able to be retained with different types of training. But in particular—I only mention this because you mentioned engagement a little bit later on—what that directorate now looks like and what it's trying to do is completely different from what we were doing before, and it needs the new skills to do that. All the directorates are aligned with the three strategic goals now, and they are of equal importance.
I might have missed something here, so apologies if—. Oh, yes, the committees—