Chamber and committees

The figure that I saw was that there was still a gap of £0.5 million. Does that gap remain?

You have touched on my final question, which is about the new UK Government funding programmes. In the past, you have said that there was a lack of clarity about responsibilities for the replacement funds and that you were in discussions on that. Has there been any progress? Do you have a better understanding of what your role will be in monitoring those funds?

The committee will be interested in those arrangements when the matter is resolved. Perhaps you could come back to us when you have some clarity so that we also understand what is happening.

I would like to touch on one or two aspects of that, as well as European structural funds.

Obviously, there have been concerns in the past about the risk of fraud around social security payments in Scotland. However, a large part—more than £3 billion—of the expenditure is administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, under our agency arrangements with Scottish ministers. Therefore, as far as we—and probably Audit Scotland—are concerned, we are not able to establish what the levels of fraud and error might be. However, based on the levels of fraud and error that are reported by the DWP for the benefits that have been paid overall, Audit Scotland has estimated that overpayments in Scotland could amount to £65.4 million. That is a lot of money. How is it accounted for? Does it come back to us as a notional loss? How does that work?

I can hear you perfectly.

Apparently the better value came at a cost of £14.4 million.

The convener asked for a copy of the options appraisal. Will you confirm that that will contain details of the additional costs that would have been incurred had the census gone ahead in 2021?

Will you confirm also that the options appraisal contains details of the estimated additional expenses that were expected due to Covid mitigations if you had gone ahead with the census in March 2021?

I would certainly be interested in seeing the write-offs figure, and I am sure that the committee would be, too.

I will turn to a different subject. The European structural funds programme is in suspension. That is not a new thing; going back over the years, those European structural funds programmes have been put in suspension quite frequently. The reclaim payments are obviously still done through the European Commission. A risk has been identified that, once the suspension is lifted, the payments might not be able to be reclaimed in full. There is a fairly chunky write-off in 2021 of £16 million and a provision of £28.7 million in relation to future underrecovery of payments. I am a bit concerned about the fact that the programme is going to end in 2023 as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Can you summarise the issues that led to the European structural funds programme being suspended? What issues remain to be resolved in order for the suspension to be lifted?

Given the timing and the fact that some funding has already been made available, it seems inappropriate that we have no idea about what the audit requirements will be in connection with the matter. Do you have any timescale?