Scotland’s public services are still “living within the lie”

Mark Carney’s recent speech in Davos was framed as a geopolitical intervention. But its real power lay elsewhere. It was a warning about how systems persist not because they are effective, but because too many people continue to perform belief in them long after the belief has gone.

Drawing on Václav Havel’s concept of “living within the lie”, Carney described how broken systems endure through ritualised compliance. The greengrocer who displays the slogan he does not believe – not out of conviction, but because it is safer than dissent. The performance itself becomes the system’s lifeblood.

It is difficult to read that and not recognise elements of Scotland’s public sector.

This is not an argument against Scotland’s public servants. On the contrary. Much of the quiet ingenuity, moral courage and rule-bending that keeps people afloat happens because individuals inside the system work around its constraints every day. The gap this piece describes exists not despite that effort, but because of it – because committed professionals are being asked to deliver relational, preventative outcomes through structures that were never designed to support them.

For years we have told ourselves a reassuring story: that we are reforming, shifting to prevention, becoming more person-centred, more integrated, more empowering. That outcomes now matter more than process.

We place the sign in the window.
And then, in practice, we carry on much as before.

The performance of reform

Scotland does not lack policy ambition. If anything, it suffers from oversupply.

Public Service Reform. Christie. Whole Family Support. No Wrong Door. Trauma-informed systems. Community empowerment. Place-based working. Integration. Co-design. Prevention spend.

The language is impressive. The frameworks are sophisticated. The documents are polished. The conferences are busy.

But beneath the rhetoric, the incentives tell a different story.

Budgets remain siloed. Accountability remains vertical. Risk is still punished rather than supported. Short-term funding dominates. Outcomes are discussed but rarely structurally enforced. Frontline autonomy is praised but tightly constrained. Leaders speak the language of collaboration while defending organisational territory behind closed doors.

We say we want transformation, yet we reward stability.
We say we want courage, yet we promote compliance.
We say we want honesty, yet we marginalise those who name uncomfortable truths.

So people adapt, as rational actors always do. They learn the rituals: write the strategy, attend the workshop, use the right language, align with the framework, tick the box, don’t rock the boat.

Not because they believe the system is working – but because it is safer to perform belief than to challenge the structures that sustain it.

That is precisely the dynamic Havel described. And it is precisely the complacency Carney is warning against.

Protecting the system, not the people

The hardest truth is this: much of Scotland’s public sector architecture now appears better designed to protect itself than to solve the problems it exists to address.

We have created structures where organisational reputation can matter more than collective impact; where auditability outweighs adaptability; where process compliance trumps human outcomes; where institutional survival takes precedence over citizen experience.

You see the consequences across child poverty, justice, sustainability, employability, health and education.

We say we believe in prevention, yet only a small fraction of spend is genuinely preventative.
We say we believe in whole-family support, yet funding and commissioning still carve families into disconnected categories.
We say we believe in relational practice, yet contracts reward throughput rather than trust.
We say we believe in empowerment, yet decision-making remains stubbornly centralised.

Perhaps most damaging of all, we have normalised these contradictions.

Incrementalism is reframed as realism.
Caution is presented as wisdom.
System comfort is treated as stability.
Critique is labelled negativity.

Carney’s challenge cuts through that fog: honesty is the first act of leadership.

Naming reality

“Living in truth”, in Havel’s terms, begins with simply naming what is actually happening.

So let’s be candid.

Our system is fragmented by design.
Our funding model actively disincentivises long-term thinking.
Governance is over-layered and under-courageous.
Accountability remains misaligned with outcomes.
We still confuse activity with impact.
We still privilege institutional legitimacy over citizen experience.

None of this is accidental. These are structural choices, reinforced over decades.

The uncomfortable part is that many people inside the system already know this. Privately, the analysis is often sharp. The corridor conversations are honest. The frustration is real.

Publicly, however, the performance continues.

What would “living in truth” look like?

It would involve political and system leaders being willing to say out loud what is already widely understood: that the current funding model makes prevention almost impossible at scale; that we ask frontline staff to be relational while contracting them transactionally; that we reward organisational performance more than collective outcomes; that we speak of empowerment but still do not trust people with power.

And crucially, it would mean acting on those truths.

Living in truth would mean legislating for pooled budgets rather than merely encouraging collaboration. Designing accountability around shared outcomes, not individual institutional targets. Funding long-term relational delivery rather than short-term pilots dressed up as transformation. Simplifying the public body landscape instead of continually adding new layers. Backing leaders who tell the truth – not simply those who sound safest in committees.

This kind of reform is disruptive, uncomfortable and politically risky. Which goes some way to explaining why it remains elusive.

The real gap is courage

Scotland does not suffer from a policy gap.
It suffers from a courage gap.

We already know much of what works: long-term relationships, trust-based practice, local autonomy, integrated delivery, clarity of outcomes, aligned incentives. We see it in pockets where the system allows it to happen. Whole-family approaches that genuinely reduce crisis. Relational models that demonstrably change trajectories. Local leaders who quietly bend rigid processes to do the right thing.

But we refuse to redesign the system around those truths – because doing so would require power to be redistributed, structures to be dismantled, and institutional comfort to be sacrificed.

So instead, we commission another strategy.

Carney’s most powerful observation is that systems derive their power from everyone’s willingness to perform as if they are true. Scotland’s public service reform will remain stalled until more people – particularly those with positional authority – are willing to stop performing.

Not with outrage or recklessness, but with honesty, clarity and structural courage.

Because nostalgia is not a strategy.
Incrementalism is not reform.
And performance is not progress.

It is time to take the sign out of the window.

Sean Duffy is the Chief Executive of the Wise Group