Seòmar agus comataidhean

Okay—thank you.

Finally, will you provide further assessment of the funds committed to and spent on the Covid-19 response?

Did you say that someone else was coming in on that?

Thank you. That matter has been raised before—getting out the money as quickly as possible has caused issues in relation to showing where the money has ended up. It might have been allocated to a department for one thing but then used for something else, because of the need for urgent action.

I go to my second question. Is the Auditor General aware of any plans by the Scottish Government to present a comprehensive report on changes to budgets and final expenditure as a result of the pandemic? If not, would such a report be helpful, and when could it be expected?

You mentioned the tracking of Covid-19 spend. Scottish public sector expenditure in 2020-21 changed significantly from initial plans due to the response to the coronavirus pandemic. In-year changes to budgets, which were primarily due to the additional Covid-19 funding, were reported via three budget revisions—in summer 2020, autumn 2020 and spring 2021. The summer 2020 budget revision gave a good level of detail on the allocation of the Covid-19 Barnett consequentials that had been received by that time. However, the subsequent budget revisions in autumn 2020 and spring 2021 gave much less detail on the allocation of further Covid-19 Barnett consequentials and it has proved very challenging to track how additional funding that relates to the pandemic has been allocated and spent.

I have three questions. First, the pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in tracking in-year changes to spending plans. How can reporting be improved to enable better scrutiny of in-year changes to spending plans, even if those are on a less significant scale than in 2020-21?

Thank you. I hand back to the convener.

The 2018-19 section 22 report highlighted issues with

“a lack of clarity over the respective roles and responsibilities of the”

leadership

“team, committees, the Scottish Government’s sponsor team and the board”,

and with

“board members”

being

“too involved in operational matters.”

That sounds a bit familiar, given another report that we have read. What evidence have you seen that the updated framework document has addressed that lack of clarity?

The committee notes that although the Scottish Government sponsor division is not required to attend board meetings, it receives an invitation. Going by what I read in the report, it would seem that, although the division received an invitation to the meetings and received the minutes from them, it did not read those minutes.

Based on the serious issues that were identified two years ago, would there be merit in the sponsor division attending at least some, if not all, of the meetings in order to demonstrate its commitment to supporting the board and to maintain the pace of change?

Is it too early to work out whether there is best practice that could be passed on to other health boards that have the same issues?

The work on the PMO certainly seems to have been a success. The Audit Scotland report says:

“a substantive PMO director is now in place with short-term mentoring support being provided by the previous appointee.”

Do you have any concerns about the previous appointee leaving? Will you continue to monitor progress once they have left?

Colin Beattie asked when recruitment for the new board would take place, and he mentioned that five of the current board members were on the board at the time of the previous audit. How long have those board members been in position? Were you aware of how long they had been in position prior to the audit in 2018-19?