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Thank you for that. Back to you, convener.

Good morning, everybody. I will stick to the really quite interesting discussion that we have been having about scrutiny and accountability. My questions are for Cornilius Chikwama and Catherine Young, whom I recall from my time on the Public Audit committee and their many reports on this matter. Indeed, you might recall that I mentioned this issue at the time, too.

What is the scrutiny and accountability role for members of the Scottish Parliament with regard to the money that the Scottish Government has given to the various growth deals? As I have said previously, I do not recall having any involvement in this whatsoever, other than when Audit Scotland would present an update report on the generality of the growth deal. Is it not a little bit curious that we as MSPs had no formal role in scrutinising that? Is it an opportunity that we have missed?

That is interesting. Democratic oversight, which Neil McInroy has mentioned several times now, is a different thing altogether. Having a reporting line back to a Scottish Government department, for example, is one thing, but having open scrutiny that is conducted by members of the Scottish Parliament is quite another and, in my experience, there has been none of that from the start of the growth deals until now.

You could call this session exactly that, but that is not quite what I am getting at. There has been no regular involvement by MSPs—certainly not the MSPs whom I know and to whom I have spoken about whether they have had any direct role or participation in scrutinising any of the spend on behalf of the Scottish public. It is more of a comment, convener, but I just think that we missed a trick by not being involved and not widening that scrutiny role. I would probably ask the same question of the UK Government, if we were to have a session with it: where is the scrutiny—the democratic scrutiny—of its investment locally in, say, a county such as Ayrshire?

That aspect of the growth deal has been missing from the jigsaw for a while now, and I just wanted to share that with colleagues and get your response to that. I would be interested to hear Neil McInroy’s view of that democratic oversight aspect, too.

That is fair enough, but let me give you an example. I know that a couple of projects have been—let us say—dropped from the whole Ayrshire growth deal programme, but I only found out about that through the press. If the Scottish Government is funding these projects, is it not appropriate for some aspect of the Scottish Parliament democratic process to be involved? It is one thing to say, “Let’s have democratic oversight that’s as local as we can make it”, but it is another when substantial amounts of money are being put into these projects at Scottish and UK Government levels without any real participation from the members of this Parliament—or perhaps even the other one—in that decision-making process.

I want to go back to Fiona Collie, who talked about unpaid carers in answer to my first question. In your submission, you tell us that unpaid carers do not really have any meaningful access to resolution or redress through the ombudsman. Have I understood that correctly? For the benefit of the committee and the public, what is the position? If people feel that they need to raise an issue and take it to the ombudsman, do they have access?

Good morning, Professor Gill and Professor Mullen. I want to ask about the new obligations and duties that the ombudsman has taken on board or, rather, been given. You referred to it as

“considerable institutional experimentation, with the addition of the Scottish Welfare Fund jurisdiction”,

and being the national whistleblowing officer for the national health service. When that sort of thing happens, where does the ombudsman draw expertise from in order to take on board that widening scope of investigation?

Thanks for that answer. You are basically saying that there is no real noticeable impact, positive or otherwise, of the additional burdens on the ombudsman service. That is what I wanted to ask, but I think that you mentioned that in your response.

Turning to budgets and financing, your submission also indicated that we need to properly support and fund the ombudsman service to perform its role effectively. We know that and we know about the significant pressures on public finances at the moment. How does the ombudsman’s budget of £6.7 million a year compare with that of other ombudsmen services that you know of? Is that a sufficient level of funding for the service to carry out its duties, albeit that they have been expanded, as you mentioned a moment ago?

I will turn to the complaints model that was introduced in 2011. Since that time, the number of complaints has steadily risen. What is the evidence that the approach of bringing in that model has worked? Should we naturally expect the number of complaints to increase as a result of introducing a new model for complaints handling?

We might come to that a bit later on, Professor Gill. Thank you very much for answering those questions.

Good morning. Paul Blaker and Peter Stewart-Blacker have raised issues about who deals with complaints about the ombudsman service. I imagine that that question will inevitably find its way into our discussion as we take the inquiry further.

For the moment, however, I want to ask about the ombudsman’s annual report and the significant increase in complaints that the ombudsman received in 2023-24 compared to the previous year—the number is up 33 per cent. What are the reasons for that increase? What trends do we see? In what areas of public service are more complaints coming in? I would be much obliged if you would share your thoughts on any of those issues, please.