Chamber and committees

Good morning and welcome to the second meeting in 2022 of the Scottish Commission for Public Audit. I seek agreement from members to take agenda item 4 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Do any other commission members wish to ask any questions? Auditor General, do you want to add anything to what you have already said?

Thank you. I will go straight into questions, the first of which is a fairly obvious one. There are significant cost pressures identified in the 2023-24 budget proposal, particularly in the way of cost of living pay increases for in-house staff. You are looking to uplift to the April 2022 pay award an amount of £658,000 and for a further provision of £615,000 for the April 2023 pay award. Why are two years of pay awards required in the 2023-24 budget proposal? We assume that there was provision in the 2022-23 budget proposal and you have not sought further cash for that year. How does that work?

How much is the contingency that you are retaining, which you hope to dip into if you have to go a bit higher on pay next time?

Thank you. I have one final question. You have touched on hybrid models of working and so on. I know from past discussions that that is an active issue. However, is the overall delivery model under consideration at all? What costs and benefits are there for having the audit work provided by in-house teams versus outside people? Are you looking at the whole possibilities in terms of how to deliver services?

Agenda item 2 is Audit Scotland’s 2022-23 spring budget revision. Members have a copy of the spring budget revision in the meeting papers. I welcome to the meeting Professor Alan Alexander, chair of the board of Audit Scotland; Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland; Vicki Bibby, chief operating officer at Audit Scotland; William Moyes, chair of the Accounts Commission; Martin Walker, director, corporate support at Audit Scotland; and Stuart Dennis, corporate finance manager at Audit Scotland. I welcome Vicki Bibby on her first appearance in front of the commission in her role as chief operating officer.

I invite Professor Alan Alexander and then the Auditor General to make short introductory remarks if they wish.

That is fine. Stephen Boyle, do you wish to add anything?

Audit Scotland usually sticks approximately to Scottish Government guidelines on pay rises and so on. You have adhered to that over the years. Presumably, you have now departed from that to negotiate pay rises based on an industry norm.

Thank you.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of Audit Scotland’s budget proposal for 2023-24. Members have a copy of the budget proposal in their papers. We have the same witnesses for this agenda item as we did for the previous one and, again, I will invite Professor Alan Alexander followed by the Auditor General to make any introductory remarks that they wish.