Chamber and committees

Paragraph 19 of the report talks about the remedial action that the commissioner’s office is taking to address the issues. What confidence do you have that these actions will be enough to address the scale of the problems that seem to exist in the office?

Do you think that the present governance arrangements—I use that term in its broadest sense—are fit for purpose?

Should I interpret from that that you have had specific discussions with the corporate body in connection with the issue?

We talked about sponsorship bodies. They cut across the whole Scottish Government. What are the specific concerns about sponsorship? Individual matters have come to the committee, but you see the full picture across the board. What is the fundamental problem with the sponsorship of public bodies?

I was kind of hoping that you would say yes.

Would it be correct to say that day-to-day risk management is adequate, and that you are talking about more remote possibilities? You quoted the question of a pandemic, which is clearly not something that anybody hoped would ever happen and the preparations for which are obviously very different. Would that be a fair analysis?

To turn this on its head, so to speak, what could have been done differently by all the external bodies that deal with the commissioner’s office in relation to the relationships that broke down? They must have known that there was a problem, and that problem did not happen overnight—it happened over an extended period. What should the external bodies have done to raise a flag about the issue? One external body raised a flag with the commissioner’s office. Did it go anyplace else? Did anybody else have sight of that?

Michael Oliphant specifically mentioned target dates. As he raised that matter, I presume that, in a significant number of cases, they are unrealistic. Have you had a discussion with the Scottish Government about that? Is there any prospect of more realism? It will always be thrown up as an anomaly. If someone does not meet their target date, that is bad and it is a black mark against them.

That brings me to my next question. Paragraph 28 of the report says that the external auditor made 22 separate recommendations. You have already said that there needs to be collaboration with the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and others in order to implement those. What engagement has Audit Scotland had with the corporate body about the report and its role in addressing some of the issues that have come up?

Is there anything that the Scottish Government can do to ease any of the restrictions that have been brought in, or is that completely out of the control of the Scottish Government?