Chamber and committees

The issue from the committee’s point of view is that, as the Auditor General has said, the publication of a briefing is often a signal that there is probably a more detailed section 22 report coming soon, so the committee then has to decide whether to allocate time for scrutiny based on the briefing or wait for the full section 22 to be published. I realise that that is a judgment for the committee at the time; I am just pointing to the uncertainty that is created.

Have you had an instance where you have published a briefing in good faith but, when the full scrutiny takes place, the content of that briefing is modified?

In terms of the severity of the impact it would appear to have.

Coming back to the original question, what sort of balance do you see in the future between the more formal section 22 and 23 reports and the less formal briefings and blogs?

Another issue is the approach to Scotland’s colleges. For a large number of years, Scotland’s colleges have continually come up as an issue, but the issue—or, I should say, the emphasis—has changed over the years. The subject of finances always lies behind the matter; at the moment, you are expressing concerns about the sector’s financial sustainability, the SFC’s new funding model and the ability of colleges to continue to offer the courses that they need to offer.

At the moment—it was not so much the case in the past—the colleges’ financial situation is being driven by staffing costs, and we have seen some fairly dramatic statements from colleges about the percentage of resources that are being or will be eaten up by such costs in future. This is very much a changing environment; it is all fast paced, even though these things have been developing over the years—I think that you get where I am coming from when I say that. How will you change the type of output that you will publish in this respect? Obviously, we are looking at entirely different things now; the old types of report that you produced on this were appropriate to the issues at the time, but we are now in a new world, so to speak. How will you approach that?

Minister, we are all aware of the tremendous challenges that every organisation faces because of the financial situation and tight budgets. Is there a danger that pressures on the public finances will dilute the importance of the quality aspects of procurement activity?

I hear what you say about the ideal approach, but the evidence that we have been getting is that some of the key contracting authorities in Scotland are struggling in relation to having the resources and the skills to do the work. We asked one panel whether the cheapest deal should be taken or the deal that would give savings over a period, consistently and sustainably. The problem for some of the authorities was that they do not have the resources to do the more complex calculations that are important for long-term investment. How can you support them in that?

In the evidence that we have taken, it was made clear that decisions on procurement were not always based on the cheapest price but on the cheapest price over a period—the theory being that you spend money now to save money in the future. However, the current financial pressures will put that approach on the back burner, realistically. Everyone is looking to the short term and at closing the budget gap now. How do we monitor that? How do we understand that issue and manage it?

I will continue with the topic of resources. We have heard from contracting authorities about pressures being caused by the lack of resources such as time and skills. Those resources are needed to maximise effective procurement and commissioning practice. How do the Scottish Government and other bodies effectively pool and share procurement resources? How could that be improved to better support contracting authorities?

In fact, insurance is the next thing that I will ask about, because the situation is quite serious. I understand that insurance has been kept in place for all the properties, but there is still a big question, because insurance is not intended to cover RAAC, so the replacement of RAAC will probably be for the owners to fund in some way. I imagine that RAAC is present mainly as cladding on blocks of flats and so on, as opposed to individual houses—is that correct?