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Good morning. As far as financial management is concerned, it has been broadly recognised that, because of Covid, the Government’s budget was going to be fluid and perhaps more complex. However, I want to look at last year’s underspend of about £518 million, which comes principally from the health and sport and transport, infrastructure and connectivity budgets. In the light of Covid and the associated fluid situation, do you consider the level of underspend that has been reported to be reasonable?

Paragraph 17 of the section 22 report refers to the acting commissioner’s assessment that

“staff were not equipped fully to fulfil the Office’s statutory functions.”

The external auditors therefore recommended in their annual audit report that a formal training programme and workforce planning arrangements should be put in place. In light of that, can you confirm whether a skills gap exists in the organisation and, if so, in which specific areas?

I go back to the size of the organisation. I will not fall back on my rusty Latin to make the point, but I am thinking of an old episode of “Yes Minister” in which Sir Humphrey Appleby explains to the minister the full structure of permanent secretaries and undersecretaries and the full complexity of Government. The minister asks, “Do they all type?” and Sir Humphrey answers, “No. Mrs McKay is the typist.”

Considering the complexity that the organisation deals with and the fact that only one individual has experience of MSP complaints, is there a concern that it is not properly resourced to do its job, and would vacancies have a significant negative impact? Should we be looking longer term at the resource that the corporate body provides to the organisation?

Good morning, Mr Lowe, and welcome to your colleagues.

Will you give us a bit of a flavour of the work that you did to assess the impact of the delay of the census on the delivery of public services in Scotland, and on the allocation of funding to councils and other public bodies?

That answer was quite focused on process. We are going to be out of sync. You identified that there are challenges but said that they are not insurmountable. Can you let us know what some of the challenges are?

I will start by focusing on capital borrowing. In 2020-21, the Scottish Government borrowed £200 million against its capability of £450 million. There was a similar picture with the use of that leverage in 2018-19 and 2019-20. Could the Scottish Government make fuller use of its capital borrowing powers to help to achieve its capital investment priorities?

Finally, I have a three-part question about resource borrowing. Can you give us a flavour of how effective the Scottish Government has been in utilising its resource borrowing powers? Has the pandemic highlighted any concerns about the scale of those powers? Looking back to 2017-18, there was an overestimate of income tax, which meant that the Government could borrow in relation to that. If, year on year, we find ourselves with the same problem, at what point does a forecasting problem become a structural problem? If we continue not to meet the income tax receipts that the Government suggests, do you have any concern that using resource borrowing to balance shortfall might become a structural issue, rather than a forecasting issue? Do you have any concerns in relation to income tax?

On your point about how the borrowing is accounted for, would it be realistic for the capital borrowing figures to be supported and detailed in the consolidated accounts or as part of the major capital projects updates?

Thank you.

It does, thank you.

I have one final question before we move on to the financial impact of the delay. First, I want to put it out there that the cost of the delay was £21.6 million. Given your previous answer, would it be right to say that, even though there is a perception that that money may be lost, you have actually used it to invest in greater flexibility, agility and efficiency in the system? Perhaps crisis begets opportunity in that respect.