Chamber and committees

You have reported that there are a number of vacancies, and you have previously stated that the organisation faces issues with recruitment. How does that fit with the decision to approve an early release at a cost of £75,000?

Accounting judgments require detailed consideration and scrutiny by auditors. Can you confirm that you are content with the judgments that were made by Audit Scotland and the disclosure of those in the annual report and accounts? I mention that in the context of work in progress. Note 9, on page 86, refers to work in progress of £1.9 million. That is included as a judgment of work completed but not yet charged to audit bodies. There are significant sums involved.

As there are no further questions from members, I thank the witnesses for their attendance of this portion of the meeting, and I call for a short suspension so that we can change witnesses.

You touched on adjustments to the accounts. On page 8 of your audit report, you set out the adjustments that were identified in the audit and processed in the financial statements. One of the entries was for £114,000 and has an impact on Audit Scotland’s expenditure. Will you explain the basis of that adjustment and how it was identified?

I have one other point. At the very beginning of the process, we raised the question of the approval for the £6.27 million sum. That is a significant sum, and you have probably looked at the approval process. I am told that that was first raised in summer last year. Did you become aware at any point up to the conclusion of the accounts of that and of the deviation from the approval process?

I will move to something a bit different, boards are being asked to find recurring savings of 3 per cent. How is the Scottish Government supporting boards to achieve that? At this point, it must be incredibly difficult to achieve that; I cannot remember the last time that boards were not asked to find recurring savings.

I am thinking of expensive vacancies, such as consultant vacancies, because greater savings could be made by sliding the marker a bit further into the future.

Where are you with implementation of the revised edition of “The Blueprint for Good Governance in NHS Scotland”?

How do you monitor the effectiveness of the non-executives?

The committee has seen lots of reports on individual boards; most frequently, there is a problem with the board making recurring savings. Most of the savings seem to be one-offs that might not be repeated in a subsequent year, which is not a very comfortable situation. Sometimes, boards manage to make the savings through vacancies, which has its own issues.

How can you be sure that that 3 per cent is possible, given the experience that we have seen, board by board, and the fact that such savings do not seem to happen?