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During 2021, the Scottish Government commissioned an external consultant to conduct a review of its relationships with public bodies. The review considered the current delivery of sponsorship arrangements in the Government, including how it should organise and manage its relationships with public bodies. It also considered how sponsors and public bodies can effectively manage risk and, importantly, the escalation of issues when challenges arise. What improvements has the consultant advised should be made? Has the Government accepted all the findings?

We will see it then.

You have explained how you will implement the recommendations, but I ask for timescales so that we know when they will be implemented and that we do not end up getting a report further down the line about—

Good morning, everybody. Paragraph 71 of the report mentions that

“Over the last year, there were several changes to the Scottish Government’s Corporate Board.”

Paragraph 72 says that the

“level of change will continue into next year”

and mentions that the recruitment campaigns for the posts of

“DG Economy and DG Net Zero were unsuccessful in identifying appointable candidates. These have been filled on an interim basis and will be re-advertised in early 2022.”

Our papers also note that four non-executive directors will reach the end of their terms in 2022. There is a lot of change and uncertainty there, so how does the Scottish Government intend to ensure stability and certainty within its leadership group? What plans are in place to manage its governance arrangements during that period?

Thank you.

Good morning, Auditor General. The committee has seen a lot of reports, but this is probably one of the most damning. Your comments in the report that

“The Scottish Government has not provided the necessary leadership for progress”

and

“Current arrangements are unlikely to achieve the ambitions for skills alignment at the pace required”

raise a lot of concern. The report states that the

“intended benefits of skills alignment ... have not been realised and the opportunity for more efficient and effective investment has been missed.”

I appreciate that this might be hard to quantify, but do you have any information on what the largely failed project has cost the public purse or, indeed, on what the opportunity costs have been as a result of the catalogue of errors outlined in the report?

I think that you are right—the issue is the lost opportunity to bring benefits.

The report highlights that, although the Scottish Government made a commitment to skills alignment, there was a complete absence of strategic intent or a performance management framework to measure progress. Why were those fundamental elements not put in place? To what extent has that led to the significant lack of progress in skills alignment that is highlighted in your report?

Thank you. I was going to ask about progress, but you have already answered my question.

That brings me to my final question. The audit report takes us up to the end of November 2021. It is obvious that more Government involvement is needed. The Auditor General said that the Government welcomed the report and that it intends to issue further letters of guidance. Are we aware of any actions that the Government has actually taken since the report was completed?

You have covered some of the issues that I wanted to touch on in my next questions. In 2021, the now disbanded skills alignment assurance group was tasked with agreeing a definition of “skills alignment”. That was just three years after the Scottish Government, SDS and the SFC agreed a road map for skills alignment. Is the lack of a shared definition of skills alignment indicative of a lack of a wider shared vision across the Scottish Government, SDS and the SFC? More important, how confident are you that a shared vision can ever be achieved?