Chamber and committees

We are looking at the review in the context of many years of governance failures in various bodies, of which sponsorship was a significant element. That is an area of real concern.

In the area of capacity and capability, I was alarmed that the report highlights that there is a significant churn in staffing, that many staff who are in sponsorship at the moment are inexperienced and that many posts are vacant. Whatever good ideas you have about going forward, until those posts are filled and you have trained people who understand sponsorship and can take part in the governance process of those bodies, you are going nowhere.

The report was written some months ago. What is the position now? How significant a capability challenge do you have at the moment because of the deficiencies that the report highlights?

Recommendation 8 states:

“Portfolio Accountable Officers … should review the capacity and capability needed in their teams to ensure that relationships are being managed well”

and so forth. The Scottish Government agreed that capacity and capability should be reviewed, and the work was scheduled for 2022.

What progress has been made on that? Is there a date attached to the delivery of that work? How far on our way are we with portfolio accountable officers reviewing the capability and capacity that is needed in their teams?

If Audit Scotland uses an external firm to do the audit, as it does in some cases, there will not necessarily be any additional staffing costs for Audit Scotland, but there will still be an absolute cost, because there is a cost to carrying out the audit. Who will absorb that? Will it be absorbed by the SFT or will it be absorbed within the existing budget of Audit Scotland? It would be useful to understand that.

Okay. Thank you.

Bryan Simpson has mentioned a couple of times workers moving on to reduced hours. Do you recognise that as an issue at the moment?

Okay. The question was for Marc Crothall, but perhaps Leon Thompson can answer it.

You mentioned that, during Covid, there was a drop of about 26 per cent in the number of people employed in the hospitality industry. Was there a pick-up post-Covid? In other words, did the employment level come back up?

Good morning, minister. I have a couple of small questions. First, it is not clear from the documents that we have whether Audit Scotland has formally agreed to take this on. I know that there have been lots of discussions about it taking on additional audit functions and I presume that this is part of that. Linked to that, is there any impact on resources for Audit Scotland? Will it need additional people, money or whatever in order to carry out the audit? Is there a cost attached?

I will direct my first question to Bryan Simpson. We are all aware of the UK Government’s announcement on support for energy costs. Witnesses have already commented that we are seeing an effort that is far short of what the Covid exercise was in a similar crisis. How confident are you that the sector will be able to support its workers through the cost of living crisis?

Marc Crothall, I put the same question to you. How will the sector be able to support its workers through the cost of living crisis? How capable is the industry of doing that?