Seòmar agus comataidhean

Yes, but if you look at the annex and the covering document that went to ministers asking for their confirmation, you see that it does not seem to match up in terms of concerns.

The email that went to ministers contained those annexes. If I was a minister reading the covering email that asked to give confirmation that I was content, I would look at the clear indication that the terms are

“broadly comparable with the tender specification”

and at the assurance that previous

“financial assurances in previous shipbuilding contracts ... subsequently faced problems”

and so forth, and I would say that a decent job seemed to have been done in mitigating the risk.

Convener, do we have time for questions on accountable officers, governance and all those other things?

Can you briefly indicate what actions the board has taken to review and refine the board risk assurance framework? That question might be for Pamela Dudek or for the chair.

My focus, which is on two areas, is partly based on some of the comments that you made last week. Some of my questions probably relate to points that fellow members have raised, but I would like to get the sequence right in my mind because it is a bit complicated.

CMAL awarded the contract to build the ferries—it was the body that signed that off. There was no ministerial direction to do so—jump in if I am telling porkies; I am trying to get it right—so there would be no piece of paper for that. Is that correct?

On the face of it, I would agree. However, as you have said, there is ambiguity. As I said, if I was a Scottish minister receiving the covering email, I would just have looked at the bit that said

“broadly comparable with the tender specification”

and so on, and said, “Right. They seem to have done their job.” However, that is probably for a different discussion.

On FMEL, one of the concerns that I raised last week was about the destination of the money and what has happened to it. We can speculate that the £45 million, which was really for working capital, paying salaries and keeping the yard ticking over, was used for that purpose. However, tens of millions of pounds went into the yard and there is no evidence that, at the point of nationalisation, work or equipment of that value was lying there. What happened to it?

You have said that, because FMEL was a private company, Audit Scotland has been unable to carry out proper due diligence. Now that it has been nationalised, do we own that history? Can we look retrospectively at what happened to the money? There must be some record of it some place.

It seems to me that there was an awful lot of evidence in the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee report. I would have hoped that that might have led you down that road without waiting for the Public Audit Committee.

Moving on from that, what actions has the board taken to address the Sturrock report findings and to foster a much more open organisational culture?

Absolutely—if Boyd wants to come in, he can talk about that.

I have one last question. An issue that did not really come up in the report was Raigmore hospital. For years, it has appeared as a sort of problem child, for which costs were significantly higher in areas such as prescriptions and, I think, consultants. What progress has been made to reduce costs in relation to Raigmore?