Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. I want to probe the issues of housing benefit and council tax reduction, and to ask a couple of questions about recovery and prosecution.

On housing benefit, page 11 of the report states that the NFI exercise identified 177 cases of housing benefit overpayments, which had a value of £1.2 million. That is a significant drop from previous years. The report explains that the reduction is mainly due to the use of the Department for Work and Pensions verify earnings and pensions—VEP—alert service.

When did the DWP system come into use in Scotland? Are you certain that it is the reason for the underlying drop?

So there is probably work in progress to try to identify why that sum has risen.

On the council tax reduction, page 13 of the report states that councils identified 772 cases of fraud or error with a total outcome of £700,000 in 2020-21. That is 2.5 times the number of cases that were identified in 2018-19. The report appears to suggest that councils are of the view that that might have been directly caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Will you elaborate on that? What aspect of the pandemic might have resulted in that increase?

I have a couple of slightly broader questions. Given the relatively low number of prosecutions and the cost of living crisis, do you expect fraudulent activity to increase during a period of economic downturn?

That identifies my concern. If you were to steal £14,000 from your neighbour, that would be perceived to be a pretty heinous crime but, because of the size of council budgets, if you steal £14,000 from the council, it appears that, as long as it gets the money back, there is no legal sanction. That is an underlying concern but perhaps we shall return to it another day.

As the corporate body—both within Parliament and, for example, in relation to media inquiries that have come to that body—have you had sufficient levels of communication and transparency in your dealings, principally with external agencies?

In relation to compliance with the Standards Commission’s statutory directions, such directions were issued by the Standards Commission to the commissioner’s office in 2020-21 for the first time. In April 2021, the Standards Commission concluded that there had been a contravention of the direction and that the convener of the commission should send the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body a formal complaint. In relation to the position on compliance with statutory directions as it stands today, are you confident that they are being upheld?

You have talked about improving communications among all the relevant stakeholders, but public trust is obviously important in the process, too. You will know that there has been quite considerable media interest in the weaknesses in governance in the commissioner’s office. From the point of view of the corporate body, have you communicated effectively? Have you had sufficient levels of transparency in relation to both the parliamentary and media inquiries that have come in regarding the activities of that office and the corporate body’s role within that process?

Will you give the committee an update on agreeing and implementing a full investigations manual that could be used in future?

Obviously, Audit Scotland’s evidence suggests the very tight financial arrangements that colleges will face. Are the expectations realistic or will they just add more pressure to an already overstretched resource allocation?