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We will do so. If that funding was for this session of Parliament, which ends in six months, there are no guarantees that the £350 million will be available to future Governments and Parliaments, which is a concern.

Linked to the issue of resource is that of people. The report is excellent in highlighting some of the challenges facing the workforce in social care and the care sector. Two statistics jump out at me as the most worrying, because we need people to deliver the services. One is that there is a 10 per cent vacancy rate for social workers. I do not know whether that is good, bad or indifferent in the bigger picture of health and social care. More importantly, a similar proportion—13 per cent—of social workers are very likely to leave the job in the next 12 months. It is not that they will maybe leave or are considering it because they are a bit stressed or overworked. They have clearly been questioned by their employers, unions or third parties and have said that they are very likely to leave. We must assume that that is a fairly accurate figure.

Where did you get those numbers? How concerning are they?

They are very concerning. I would be concerned about any public sector area where four in 10 people felt unsafe in their place of work. That is a shocking statistic, and, given those circumstances, it is no wonder that people are considering leaving the profession—I am surprised that it is only 13 per cent, as it would be a lot higher in any other business. Those people are clearly passionate, love what they do and do not want to give up, but that is a real concern.

I will sum all this up. The Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland have done intensive work in producing the report and highlighting the issues, and it has rightly received a huge amount of media coverage over the past month. Based on your professional judgment, is it Audit Scotland’s position that, by 2030, the Promise will be delivered? Alternatively, is there a risk that the Promise will be broken for some or all care-experienced young people?

Might you revisit the issue in coming years to follow and track progress?

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to join remotely this morning. It is much appreciated.

I have listened very carefully to the questions that have been asked, and I have a few other areas to cover, but I want to clarify a few things that have been said. First, I want to press on the issue of gaps in information and data, which came up earlier in the meeting and was raised in the report by the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General. The report is clear on the matter in referring to specific circumstances. Paragraph 35 says:

“there is currently no consistent, comprehensive national monitoring system in place to assess the condition of existing flood-protection schemes.”

The report then goes on to explain that, in practice, that means that, because information about whether the existing schemes are performing effectively is not available, it is not clear if they are providing the protection that they were presumably meant to provide. It is an open question, but who wants to address that specific criticism?

You will all—[Interruption.] My apologies—it is difficult to see who is speaking because I am not in the room. I have a lot of questions and not everyone needs to answer every question.

I want to point to the Bellwin scheme, which is one example of where a bit more work could be done. The Government could have a contingency fund available to local councils, because, as we have heard, it is often local councils that bear the brunt of dealing with the issues first-hand—and that get the most criticism. As you will see if you read some of the news reports on recent storm events, it is local councillors and officers who get the first wave of criticism from local residents—perhaps rightly so in many cases, but equally their hands are often tied when there is simply no capital funding available. Perhaps this is therefore a joint question for the Government and COSLA.

Use of the Bellwin scheme funding has gone up massively over the years, presumably as a by-product of requests for funds, due to more incidents. Is there an argument for having a bigger pot of cash sitting there, which is not necessarily agreed up front for the council but which could be used by any local authority in the country at any point to support communities on a small-scale and immediate basis? I will talk about compensation in a moment, too.

In that case, I hope that my question was positive and has inspired the possibility of looking again at the scheme.

That brings us to a wider issue, namely what people expect in communities that are affected by a flooding event. It is fair to say that, in some areas, the response has been quick and has got better over the years, as a result of a change in direction and focus. In other areas, however, communities have absolutely felt let down.

The example of Brechin was raised earlier, and there are anecdotal stories about specific households and businesses there that felt that they were treated very poorly, not just by local government, but by national Government. In Cupar, after storm Gerrit, which unleashed havoc in that community, some businesses were waiting five or six months for compensation, and many were not even eligible. Even for those that were eligible, the level of the compensation grants was extremely low.

I appreciate that there is no open-ended pot of cash for compensation and that the scheme must be focused and targeted at the communities that are most affected by flooding. However, is the money getting there fast enough, and is there enough of it? If the answers to those two questions are no and no, what representations will officials make to ministers on improving that? After all, we need to do better for communities.

Thank you for those answers, which go some way to addressing the point about how you are responding to the audit report, which is welcome.

Paragraph 39, on the next page, has another specific critique that I would like to point you to. It is about the joined-up approach to managing flooding both within and between organisations. Specifically, the report says:

“there is a lack of joint action within and between organisations.”

It refers to a

“separation between engagement with communities on flood schemes and engagement on broader resilience issues”,

as well as

“a lack of long-term strategic planning”

and

“disjointed delivery”.

Those are all fairly negative comments on what is supposed to be a joined-up approach. The fact that we have so many agencies represented on the panel, and that there are many others involved that are not on the panel, is testament to how complex flood management is. Ultimately, whose responsibility is it to ensure that all those disparate organisations are working together, communicating well and agreeing a joint national plan, which clearly does not exist at the moment?

Time is tight, so you will excuse me for not bringing in any more responses, but thank you for the responses that you have given me.

I guess that what has hit me most from your comments on the nature of flood defence systems is that the one-in-200-year efficacy model is based on historical data. Most people will be quite surprised by that. Historical data is of course helpful and useful, but surely we should be designing things based on our knowledge of what the future is going to look like. That is not actually that difficult to do these days—I know that SEPA, for example, has done some good work with the University of Strathclyde on artificial intelligence models—but my point is that if you base your plans on what has already happened, you will be designing a system that is not fit for the future.

Okay—I will not labour the point.

With regard to flood defence systems being fit for purpose, we have already spent a huge amount of money, with costs doubling or trebling from original expectations. Of course, new schemes are in play, and we know how expensive they are, but one of the big tests will be whether they actually do the job that they are intended to. The proof of the pudding will be very much in the eating, because what local communities really care about is whether a system will protect them, their homes, their businesses and their high streets.

The Brechin example is interesting. That scheme, which cost £60 million and was completed in 2015, was described to the people of Brechin at the time as a one-in-200-year defence system, but it lasted only eight years before it was breached. I appreciate that the answer to my question will be, “Well, it was an unexpected and extraordinary weather event that caused the breach”, but you have been talking about all the money that is spent on consultants and how few people with world-class expertise there are. How can we spend tens of millions of pounds on a defence system that does not do its job after less than a decade? My concern is whether it will happen again, and I do not think that simply blaming the size of the waves and the force of the wind is good enough.