Seòmar agus comataidhean

You have produced a disclaimer in two years. On the basis of your engagement to date and looking at the present situation, would you say that Scottish Canals now has the bandwidth, capacity and competence to ensure that we will not be doing the same thing again this time next year?

Before I delve into detail about a couple of infrastructure projects, I want to go back a bit. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance has said that there will be a prioritisation exercise in relation to infrastructure spending. You have said a little bit about how you will approach that in relation to net zero and public services. Is it therefore safe to say that road projects will be given less prioritisation than perhaps net zero? Can you see a conflation of the two in relation to road infrastructure helping to achieve net zero objectives?

Has that prioritisation exercise changed since the Bute house agreement?

My next question might be one for Alison Irvine. You will be aware, particularly in relation to South Scotland residents in the Scottish Borders, West Lothian, East Lothian and Midlothian, of the £120 million planned potential intervention at Sheriffhall roundabout to relieve congestion at what is now a very congested pinchpoint. In 2020, it was held up quite significantly by a campaign that was led by the Green Party, with a local public inquiry getting under way earlier this year.

Do you have a revised timetable for the Sheriffhall intervention? Is it perhaps one of the areas for reprioritisation? After all, at any given time of the day, cars can be sitting idling in huge tailbacks, which will be having an environmental and economic cost. Where does something like Sheriffhall fit into the broader prioritisation exercise, given that one party in the coalition is clearly opposed to such interventions?

As far as the presumption of priorities is concerned—and given the 7 per cent reduction in the capital budget that you have talked about—would it be safer to say that you can see investment flowing away from those sorts of projects towards public transport, net zero and public services? With regard to managing my constituents’ expectations, is that the kind of expectation management that we should be engaging in?

I do not want to repeat or, perhaps, to labour some of the points that the convener has already made, but I note that paragraph 5 of the report says:

“The auditors reported that they had not received all information and explanations required for their audit in relation to the property, plant and equipment balances. The auditors also raised concerns about the overall quality and timeliness of Scottish Canals accounting records and working papers. This has led to significant delays to the audit process.”

I can second guess what you are going to say, given your responses to Mr Leonard, but is it safe to say that your concerns go far wider than the issues related to the property, plant and equipment balances?

Regardless of the size of the team, that sounds pretty poor, given that we are talking about the public purse. The report states that auditors did not receive all the information or explanation that was sufficient for the audit in terms of property, plant and equipment balances. Did you get the impression that the staff who were there were fully engaged with the process, and were they open and transparent with you?

You blame economic headwinds but, obviously, mistakes were made in the past. On that basis, should any of your predecessors have resigned?

On 27 April, the First Minister said:

“It is my expectation and the Government’s expectation—the chair of Ferguson Marine knows this very well—that there should not be bonuses in the current financial year, 2023-24”—[Official Report, 27 April 2023; c 12.]

However, that was flatly contradicted at this committee by the chairman of the yard, Andrew Millar. Was the First Minister overspeaking or trying to somehow exert some remote pressure on the board?

As the convener identified, it is the first time that written authority has been used since 2007. Will you explain in a bit more detail specifically why you thought that it was necessary to provide that written authority? What were you seeking to achieve and what were you seeking to avoid occurring?