Chamber and committees

You talked about the need to return to a constitutional norm. The evidence that we had from retired former civil servants suggested that the situation that we are in right now is anything but normal. What does that path look like practically? Going forward, what does a renegotiation or a new basis or understanding look like, and how would you get to that point?

I am interested in the detail of how the additional procedural steps were brought in, because I do not think that that has been examined.

I will move on to another issue that the committee has looked at—the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Cabinet secretary, you have previously voiced to the committee your concerns about the laws in schedule 1 to the bill that might be thrown off the cliff edge. One of them concerns air quality. When the Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition spoke to the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee this week, she said that a director general had declined a request to remove from the schedule the relevant laws in relation to air quality, and that she would be seeking to escalate a further request to her ministerial counterparts. She pointed to the fact that you will be leading the work on that. Can you give us a sense of what the process now is? You have made a request to retain the important laws that you do not want to be removed through schedule 1 of that bill. Where do you go now that you have had a flat refusal to retain those laws? What does that process look like?

I am glad that you mentioned WHALE Arts, cabinet secretary, because one of the themes that have come through in the inquiry is the power of such community creative organisations, which are driving and developing community and are hitting a lot of objectives around regeneration, education and inclusion. Those objectives would sit well within community planning partnerships, but another aspect of the inquiry is that we have found that there is a bit of a mismatch there. Cultural organisations and the cultural and creative sector are not always represented in the CPP structure. Do you recognise that? If you see creative organisations as being critical to the delivery of community in place and those wider objectives, how do we embed what the creative sector does much more into the planning structure, where discussions about funding, outcomes and partnership working can be taken at more of a strategic level?

You mentioned arts development officers, which might be called different things in different places. It seems that Creative Scotland has had to step in to provide some of the development work on the ground, with the Culture Collective being an example of that. Where does that balance sit now? Do you see more of a role for national organisations to provide the glue and the link between opportunities and what exists on the ground? Alternatively, should local authorities or partners at a local level be funding and supporting that?

Mr Boyle mentioned the great retiral trend in society and the number of retirals in your organisation. To counter that, I notice that you have 48 trainees coming in. I am interested to hear briefly about the impact that that will have on the organisation. Also, how do you retain trainees? A person could come into Audit Scotland saying, “This is great. I can learn on the job here and then take those skills and go anywhere in the sector.”

No, thanks.

Thank you for that. That was useful. My last question is about the 80 per cent good compliance target. What are your thoughts on that? Is it too low?

It is useful to get that temperature check in terms of what your staff feel.

I will move on to another area that I think has come out of staff surveys. We understand that, in responding to surveys, the in-house teams have indicated that they feel that they do not have enough time and resources to complete audits, which perhaps compares unfavourably with other auditing firms. To what extent do you accept that? What are the underlying reasons for the difference between Audit Scotland and other auditing firms? What action should or could you take on the back of that response to the surveys?

[Inaudible.]—instead of just saying, “We haven’t got the time to do this”, say, “Okay, how do we do this in a more efficient or productive way? How do we marshal ourselves in a way that can deliver benefits and reduce pressure?”