Ivan McKee
Member of the Scottish ParliamentWikipedia
20
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11
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9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 20 mentions across 11 episodes found for "Ivan McKee".
Oct 2, 2026
Alex MassieHOST
if uh if they don't fall so you know it's supposed to fall by about 0.5 percent every year in this parliament and then in the first but last year public sector headcount went up by 1.1 percent so uh just to catch up uh with where they ought to be by now they would need to reduce it by what 1.6 percent this year um well i suggest that's unlikely to happen um but that imposes lots of additional costs um and makes things increasingly difficult for the finance secretary.
Alex MassieHOST
And then you had Ivan McKee yesterday.
Alex MassieHOST
He was being probed by Murdo Fraser and was eventually forced to say that, yeah, well, if we run out of any alternatives, any other means of dealing with people, redeploying people, voluntary redundancies, little glide paths into a comfortable environment, retirement, and so on and so on.
Alex MassieHOST
And then yes, I suppose in the worst possible case scenario, we might have to consider compulsory redundancies for people whose jobs no longer exist.
Alex MassieHOST
that meaningful reform.
Alex MassieHOST
And so it's a kind of proof of concept.
Alex MassieHOST
If the unions are unhappy, then Ivan McKee, from his point of view, is probably doing something right.
Alex MassieHOST
But politically, that is quite difficult for Ivan McKee's boss, John Swinney.
David AndersonGUEST
He's been around since it happened.
David AndersonGUEST
He has got a new lean, mean fighting machine of a ministerial team with Ivan McKee for public reform.
David AndersonGUEST
We met with Mary McCallan and the new minister recently.
David AndersonGUEST
for the promise last week and they are saying all the right words, but it's still only words.
10 MINS LATER
Martin GeisslerHOST
I mean, the public service reform agenda, a lot of people think is just a shorthand for cuts, which will actually potentially make the promise even more difficult to deliver, won't it?
David AndersonGUEST
Well, the truth will out.
David AndersonGUEST
As you say, we wrote to Ivan McKee and he gave us assurances that that would not impact.
David AndersonGUEST
We know that we need a massive turn towards prevention.
Coll McCailHOST
attempting to remove more than 11,000 of them from their roles by the end of this parliament, right? And that is the context in which this entire public service reform agenda has been proposed and packaged.
Coll McCailHOST
And if you listen to the manner in which Ivan McKee, who is the cabinet secretary responsible for these changes talks, He talks about excessive management layers, efficiency savings.
Coll McCailHOST
He talks about trade unions not being able to dictate the work from home policy of the civil servants in Scotland.
Coll McCailHOST
And I think that there is a sort of bid to capture a populist sentiment regarding how the public might conceive of a bloated civil service and doing so in service of little more than an attempt to effectively rebalance the interests of capital and labour in Scotland that is the Scottish Government's broader agenda at the moment on one hand you take 11,000 jobs out of the public sector and on the other hand you fill the country with foreign direct investment and outsource your policymaking decisions that the civil service would once have carried out to foreign multinationals and consultancies.
Tom HunterHOST
definitely.
Tom HunterHOST
And the other thing that I hope they grasp the nettle of, and it's Ivan McKee who's got this brief, which is a tough brief.
Tom HunterHOST
He's a good guy, Ivan.
Tom HunterHOST
He was one of the few people with business experience in the government.
11 MINS LATER
Tom HunterHOST
And we've been going at it now for 19 years.
Tom HunterHOST
And it's ridiculous the stuff we've got to go through.
Tom HunterHOST
We went to the Scottish Government, Ivan McKee actually, we need a different job, and we said, let AI do the grunt work of this and then the planning officers can deal with the anomalies, Willie.
Tom HunterHOST
And he told me that, oh, no, it was all fine.
Alex MassieHOST
You could agree with that, while at the same time wondering exactly what it is the government is proposing.
Alex MassieHOST
And it seems to me that there is going to be a world of political difficulty for John Swinney and Ivan McKee and other ministers in this regard, because I do not see COSLA, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, being on board with this.
Alex MassieHOST
I do not see the big city councils being on board with the suggestion that some of their roles might be split up.
Alex MassieHOST
I mean, how is all of this going to work? Where is the detail? What is it all going to mean? And why does it have to be done by the end of the year?
Andy MaciverHOST
But the performance of the government, and I was very careful to say this is up to 2024, because I think you sit on a public service reform committee, Alex, that wouldn't exist if John Swinney didn't acknowledge that his predecessors hadn't done a good job.
Andy MaciverHOST
Ivan McKee's job wouldn't exist if John Swinney didn't acknowledge that his predecessors hadn't done a good job.
Andy MaciverHOST
These jobs exist because things need repaired.
Andy MaciverHOST
That committee exists because things need repaired.
Chris McCallHOST
I think this is one issue that Michael Marra or Joe Fagan will have to deal with is that Anas Sarwar made a big play about we should reduce the number of health boards he went on and on about this and now the SNP have agreed and they are going to cut the number of health boards so Joe Fagan or Michael Marra they can't, I mean maybe I'd be surprised but it's unlikely they're going to come out and say do you know what actually we disagree so I think on that front they're pretty much going to have to go along with what the SNP want to do there One issue, though, that maybe they could carve out, you know, a position for themselves, as John Swinney's talked a lot about the need to save money, you know, talked a lot about wanting to reduce the number of people in the public sector, although I believe figures out this week show that the headcount's gone up even more.
Chris McCallHOST
But maybe if, you know, if Ivan McKee and John Swinney and Jenny O'Gorough, you know, they're looking at the Scottish Government books and at some point they say, these are actually worse than we feared.
Chris McCallHOST
We're going to have to make some really unpopular cuts.
Chris McCallHOST
Maybe there would be some space for a new Scottish Labour leader to step in and say, we're not going to tolerate redundancies.
KarenNARRATOR
The move comes after the Scottish Government's public services reform strategy proposes to reduce the number of quangos and cut the number of people employed in the public sector in a bid to fill a looming £4.7bn black hole in public finances.
KarenNARRATOR
Public Service Reform Secretary Ivan McKee said, Our public service reform focuses on delivering the things that matter most to people, such as easier access to the NHS and more efficient services.
KarenNARRATOR
We are rewiring the system to ensure they are high-quality, efficient and sustainable for generations to come by tackling duplication, sharing services across organisations and making better use of data, digital tools and the public estates.
KarenNARRATOR
Reform only works if the workforce helps shape it and the expertise of the staff at our non-departmental public bodies will be critical to the success of this change.
Sarah DavidsonGUEST
Yeah, we want to end on an optimistic note.
Sarah DavidsonGUEST
So I think it's a good thing as a cabinet minister with responsibility for public service reform in Ivan McKee.
Sarah DavidsonGUEST
Now, he will need to be able to exert a measure of authority over his colleagues and that authority will come from the first minister.
Sarah DavidsonGUEST
That's the only place it can come from because inevitably individual portfolio ministers have interests that are going to be tested in this.
James WalkerHOST
I mean, I was watching the debate yesterday and it wasn't just Alan Brown.
James WalkerHOST
There was actually an interesting bit when Ivan McKee was doing his closing remarks where Alan Brown did another intervention.
James WalkerHOST
And it appeared to me, at least, that Ivan McKee was a little bit irritated.
James WalkerHOST
with the idea that, you know, one of the backbenchers, one of the SV backbenchers would dare to question.
James WalkerHOST
But that's maybe speculative for me.
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