Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. I welcome everybody to the 24th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Okay. Thanks.

I want to pick up on the last point and will bring in Andrew Burns to answer. There are four indicators, and the report calls for consistency in their application and use. Perhaps that suggests that, currently, they are not used consistently. For example, I do not know whether some local authorities, with health boards, rely on only one or two of the indicators and not on all four. There might be reasons for that. The committee is interested to understand whether your calling for consistency of application of the suite of indicators at Scottish Government and local government levels implies that that is not happening at the moment.

The Auditor General can start; maybe Andrew Burns can then come in.

In the end, the test will be how many section 22 reports are brought before us by the Auditor General and whether Mr Johnston has to come before us to defend a situation that arises from failed sponsor arrangements. We have found it really enlightening to hear about the work that is being done to prevent recurrences of those. What I take from the evidence that we have heard is that you are looking in detail at instances in which things have gone wrong to learn lessons from that and to build those lessons into the training that you give to the people who are responsible for ensuring good relationships between sponsor departments and public agencies, non-departmental public bodies and so on.

We are out of time. We would like to follow up on some areas to get more information from you. You have not withheld anything from us; it is just that we have run out of time to get some of the detail that we are looking for.

I thank Paul Johnston, Catriona Maclean and Mary McAllan for their evidence. I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

We now go to questions from Colin Beattie, who joins us remotely.

Thank you—that is very helpful. I have other questions in my head. However, because of the time constraint that we are under, we could maybe set those out in writing for you to follow up on to get a bit more—as I think that Mr Johnston described it—granular detail on some of those areas. That would be helpful to the committee.

I will bring Willie Coffey in shortly—I just have a final question first. This might be for Catriona Maclean to answer. To some extent, you described the difference between the public bodies unit and the public bodies hub, which is alluded to in the report and on which there is a related recommendation. Can you comment on where that lies?

I am also interested in understanding this: you described how you are 80 or 90 per cent of the way through training people in sponsor roles in the Scottish Government. To what extent are you involved in the training of the members of those boards, and the people in agencies outwith central Government who are oftentimes involved in making operational and strategic decisions for the non-departmental public bodies and agencies and so on that they are on the boards of? Will you tell us a bit about the extent to which you have a training programme or have any other interaction with those people?

Welcome back. In this session, we will take evidence on the Auditor General’s briefing paper on tackling child poverty in Scotland, which came out on 22 September—so, by our standards, it is relatively hot off the press.

I am pleased that the Auditor General is joined by, from Audit Scotland, Tricia Meldrum, senior manager, and Corrinne Forsyth, senior auditor, performance audit and best value; and I am particularly pleased to welcome Andrew Burns, who is here as a member of the Accounts Commission, because the report was jointly produced by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission. Andrew, we are delighted that you are able to join us.

I turn first to the Auditor General for an introductory statement, after which we will ask a number of questions.

I will just follow up on Colin Beattie’s questions. It would be useful for us to understand what the vacancy rate is now and what it was at the time of the report.

I am also interested in the fact that sponsor roles are not seen as “sexy”—somebody says that in the report; I am not sure that it is the view of the report. I am not sure what that means. People in sponsor roles are in bands A to C. The salary range starts off in the low £20,000s in band A, but goes up to about £76,000 in band C. Are you having difficulty in attracting people to the higher-paid posts or to the lower-paid posts? Where is the problem in that spectrum of pay grades?

That is helpful. We will come to questions on the local government and health board data collection and reporting mechanism. At this point, Sharon Dowey has a few questions to put to you.

I am going to have to draw this session to a close, but I thank Andrew Burns, Corrinne Forsyth, Tricia Meldrum and the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, for their evidence this morning. I am afraid that we have run out of road, but we might well come back to you to follow up your oral evidence.

I now draw the public part of this morning’s meeting to a close.