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Seòmar agus comataidhean

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 26 November 2024
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Displaying 2151 contributions

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Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

Clearly, the issue is that book value, and to an extent market value, will assume that the smelter is a going concern, and it will be valued accordingly, whereas the forced sale value will simply be the value of the land and buildings but without the business attached. That is the critical value to ensure that we have cover.

I will move on—

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

How much has the Scottish Government actually recovered with regard to fraudulent payments and payments made in error? Do we have a figure for that?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

Data is always king. Getting data, including in the right format and so on, is always a problem—that problem comes before the committee all the time. It does not seem difficult to get data relating to this issue. I would have hoped that the Government would have plans to report fraud and error, and could report on the amounts recovered. That seems pretty basic to me.

I have a final question to wind up. What lessons have we learned in relation to not only fraud and error but the processes that have been put in place? Have we learned anything from the situation?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

The committee would certainly be interested in a bit more data around what has happened in terms of recovery and so on. Looking at the big figures south of the border niggles me—I wonder whether we are missing something.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

That is true, but I would be surprised if the external auditors did not have a role in providing the information that the board needed to enable it to comply with whatever was required in relation to the assets.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Canals”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

Looking at the big picture, is there a governance issue?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

I would be very pleased if we have managed to keep fraud down to this level. I just have a niggling worry.

Colin, you partly answered my next question when you talked about controls, counter-fraud checklists and so on. I was going to ask you about the action that the Scottish Government has been taking to reduce and manage error and fraud, and perhaps you can give us a bit more detail on that.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

I am a bit concerned that we do not seem to have a grip on recovery. Is that not quite important? You are making estimates of how much the fraud and errors amount to, but you have no idea about recovery. I would have thought it a simple matter of calling the councils and getting the figures from them.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

Surely we need to know how effective that is and what the outcomes are.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”

Meeting date: 24 February 2022

Colin Beattie

The logical extension of that is that until you know the whole picture, you cannot know whether all the estimates that you are making are particularly accurate.