Chamber and committees

I am pleased if the situation has improved but, as we are an audit committee, we look backwards. We look at what was, not so much at what is, and we try to get to the bottom of it—to drill down as to why something happened and how it can be prevented in the future. That is our role.

It appears that there have been significant gaps in governance. We want to get to the bottom of that and find out how we can ensure that it does not happen again, because there is a pattern—this has happened elsewhere, albeit not necessarily to the same extent. We want to know, therefore, whether there is an endemic problem. For example, is there a problem in the recruitment processes? We look at everything.

I will return to a point that I made before. Training is fine and necessary for a board when that is to keep members up to speed about new requirements or about how a process develops, but, when a board member is appointed, I would expect that person to have the skills, experience and ability to be a board member without needing a huge amount of training. If not, what is the point of appointing that person?

For example, to what extent is the private sector going to be involved in just transition? Just transition implies helping those who are less well off to make the transition without getting into financial difficulties or fuel poverty, for example. I am struggling to see a role for the private sector in that, because the private sector requires a return. How does that work with public sector funding?

Focusing on just transition, the Scottish Government already has some financial support schemes for individuals in place. Has the Government actually estimated how quickly those current schemes will become oversubscribed? It is clear that there is a limited amount of public funding available.

That figure—35 per cent in fuel poverty—is certainly very startling. The Scottish Government will obviously have to find more money to enable those individuals to make the transition, and that is a huge task.

How challenging is it going to be to actually achieve a just transition in decarbonising heat for homes? Thirty-five per cent is a huge amount of people in fuel poverty.

I hear what you are saying—that training has been provided to the board over a period of years, that there is induction, and all the rest of it. However, that did not work so well. What is the point of training people and giving them all that guidance, when it appears on every side that that did not work and they did not take any notice of it? Where is the scrutiny? Where is the challenge?

The governance review and the overall picture here at my desk do not look too good.

That is a relatively short time.

I bring in Duncan Thorp to respond to the question of consistency and the complexity of the procurement system in particular.

How best can this be taken forward? Definition is really important.