Seòmar agus comataidhean

If you are correcting it, that is still reactive. You could be writing long-form articles about your approach, acknowledging the situation up front. To me, a key way of starting the process of restoring trust is, for example, what you have done in writing to us today—in other words, completely owning it. The last time that you attended the committee, you probably got the sense that we pushed you hard for an apology to people who felt that they had not been communicated with. There is clearly still work to be done.

I will ask you to do something. Can you turn round and look at the people who are sitting behind you today? It is fair to concede that we have an unusual size of audience for what is normally a fairly dry subject matter. These are people—I recognise some of them, because they were here last time as well—who have chosen to give up their valuable time to come in and sit in on the session. I would ask you to engage with them on the way out, because they often write to us after these sessions, and I have found them to be highly experienced. You might not have been able to see it, but while you have been making your comments, I have seen vigorous shaking of heads from behind you. I am not qualified to say whether what you say is true, but that suggests to me that there is still quite a big disconnect between what people are being told and what you are saying. I am casting no aspersions; I am just recognising it as a fact. It would be great if you could engage with those people, because getting that immediate feedback or even arranging a meeting would be very helpful.

My last point is around visibility. My colleague Michael Marra has pointed out that we on the committee have all been lobbied extensively by people from all over Scotland and our own constituents. However, I am very aware that the people who have lobbied us are only those who have the wherewithal, the health and the mental health to be able to write to us. As Michael Marra said, many people will just be resigned and will have given up. This is where I am uncertain: I still do not have a sense of how people are feeling. My last question to you is: how are you doing client feedback? What pensioner satisfaction data—even though, I suspect, it will not be very good at the moment—are you gathering during the process?

I keep saying that this is my last wee question, but this one is.

I imagine that there is a link with staff morale. I genuinely appreciate and understand that it will be difficult for your staff to work on such complex calculations in a situation that has been foisted on them while they are being pilloried in the media and, indeed, in the Scottish Parliament. How are you managing morale to enable staff to remain focused on delivering for the people who are at the end of the process?

That might be another thing that is worth reporting on. Thank you.

10:15

What sort of statistics are you talking about?

There are lots of other papers apart from The Herald. Other papers will pick up the stories, and they tend to hunt in a pack. Are you managing the media proactively rather than reactively, which is how you have managed it in that example about accurate reporting?

It would be helpful if you reported on that to our successor committee when you provide the next update. I agree with the commentary that the base data that we have so far is quite slight. I would like to see more and, if it were me, I would like to be able to monitor and track satisfaction ratings, because that will tell us about improvements that are being made.

My questions are on a similar theme to my colleague Liz Smith’s questions. In the conclusion of the letter that you sent to us, you said:

“We recognise transparency must accompany delivery if confidence in the Agency is to be restored”.

That goes back to the themes of confidence, trust and communication.

I would like to understand a bit more about your communication plan. Frances Graham has given us some detail about whom you have written to and on what date. However, I still do not have a clear sense of how you are planning to tackle various stakeholder groupings with a lens of specifically doing so not just to communicate but to build trust and confidence.

You are here in front of us today. We cannot bind the hands of the successor committee but, rest assured, we are recommending that it continues to look into this area. I am interested in how you will communicate with the new MSPs who come in. You also have an on-going communication with the current minister, which might change as well.

Help me to understand from the other way round. I can see and hear, “We are writing to these people at this point when more information emerges,” but I do not have a clear sense of a communication plan that addresses the issue of trust across all the stakeholder groupings.

That covers the question, but you are getting an absolute pasting in the media—there is a continuing run of articles. How are you managing that as a constituent grouping that could get some key messages out?

Good morning. I want to follow up on what the convener was asking about in relation to the public sector reform programme. To be a success, it will require a culture change in the leadership team. Can you outline what that means to you and how confident you are that you can deliver it?

Yes, but I am talking specifically, rather than generally. Specifically, it is unheard of for the Scottish Information Commissioner to comment using terms such as “disjointed” and “chaotic”. He is talking directly. There have been a variety of threads, as you know, on the issue of FOI requests around the Hamilton inquiry, but what the commissioner has said is a particularly strong way of expressing things, and he is expressing his own dealings with the situation. I am trying to get a sense of how concerned you are and what you are going to do about it, because it is fundamentally affecting trust in the Scottish Government.