Chamber and committees

The situation around FTs has been mentioned, and clear concern has been expressed about the changes in funding. I want to allow you to put on the record any mitigations and your planned approach, given the Scottish Government’s undoubted focus on supporting business and growing the economy. Can you give any further insights on how you will mitigate the loss of FTs going forward?

Thank you for those responses. The problem is that, as we all agree, we do not know anything until the data is there. Obviously, your function fits in with that. However, how do we strike the right balance between retrospective assessment and future forecasting, particularly if we are to adhere to good principles of accountability and responsibility? Do you have any plans to put some meat on the bones? How will that make your scrutiny role—and ours—more complex? It may be that, as you start to get more information coming through, you will also consider reflecting on that. The situation is beyond complex already, and this will make it complex cubed, in my humble opinion.

We have spent a large part of this evidence session looking at and evaluating the complexity of Audit Scotland’s scrutiny and our scrutiny. As Mark Taylor pointed out, it is the case that we can start to understand a lot of spending only once it is in the past.

I will ask about something that I am struggling to get my head around. In my former life in management, there was a clear difference between accountability and responsibility. I see that difference writ large here, because the Scottish Government is accountable for spend outcomes via the national performance framework, which we have talked about, but it has no responsibility in certain areas. We have the curious situation where the Scottish Government is accountable for the outcomes but it has no responsibility for efficient and effective delivery. The UK Government is responsible, but it is reluctant to be held accountable, or it has no accountability in the area.

It is on the record that the replacement for European Union structural funds will be spent by the UK Government and administered by a local government minister—I think that it is the English communities minister—direct to local councils. How on earth can you audit that effectively? I can see that Mark Taylor thinks that that question is a belter. How are you reflecting on that additional complexity and linking it back to outcomes?

In terms of the stats for your group, where does Grangemouth fit in all the measures that you would apply—particularly, I imagine, around profitability? I do not mean in relative terms to Scotland’s economy, but in relative terms to the group.

You must have sensed the point that I was coming on to. I was going to ask what you would need to do in order to move Grangemouth to number 1. In particular, what structural issues would you seek to overcome?

Just to finish off on this point, with reference to the current structure of the owning company, does the level of debt leverage limit investment?

I just wanted to clarify that.

Good morning. I want to address some questions to Charles Hammond. You commented earlier that Scotland is “peripheral” to Europe. With regard to comparative shipping figures—I do not know how up to date these figures are now—there were reports that Reykjavik in Iceland, which has a population of about 350,000, shipped as much as Grangemouth. What are the current comparable figures, and what might be the reason for that?

With regard to the performance of all the ports that you own, where does Grangemouth fit relative to the others? What ranking would you give it?

Where stuff is shipped out of some of your other ports down south, do you have a sense of the percentage of leakage?