Chamber and committees

That is good news.

Was Transport Scotland’s role in providing the sponsor team support successful?

It is encouraging to see that improvements are being made and that lessons have been learned, but we are looking at the historical situation and the role of, for example, Transport Scotland as the sponsor in this particular instance. Do you think that it was successful in that role?

Surely, in the sponsorship role, you would be picking up on the issues around CMAL and, where necessary, feeding that back to ministers.

Thanks for that clarification, which leads me neatly to issues around record keeping. The committee concluded at paragraph 47 of the report that record and note keeping of meetings throughout the vessels project involving Scottish ministers was

“weak and fell well short of the standards of transparency and accountability we would expect.”

The Government’s response noted that

“further guidance has been issued and all parties ... continue to make improvements in record keeping”

and so on.

Can you provide any detail of what those “improvements in record keeping” have involved since our report was published?

You made an important point about ownership of the model. The current consultants own that model, so I presume that Scottish Canals will have to pay them something.

I am pleased to hear that we have learned lessons and that improvements have been put in place, but we are looking back to see what happened. Do you agree—I guess that this is a question for Transport Scotland—that ministers were left somewhat blind as to what was going on in the initial stages because of the lack of reporting from Transport Scotland?

Do you think that there was an expectation among the participating stakeholders that the project steering group had a strong role in this, when that did not exist?

I will move on from sponsorship, over which there is clearly a question mark.

During our scrutiny, Transport Scotland came in for criticism in relation to, at times, its attendance at committee to give evidence, and late and incomplete evidence being received from it with little explanation as to why. That led the committee to question the

“level of respect and regard shown for accountability and parliamentary scrutiny.”

It also issued important evidence to the committee the day after our report was agreed, meaning that it could not be used to better inform the report’s conclusions. Does that show evidence of “respect and regard” for parliamentary scrutiny?

My first question, which is on sponsorship, is for Transport Scotland. Transport Scotland is the sponsor team for Scottish Canals. Can you describe the support that you provide to it?