Chamber and committees

Thank you very much indeed, Mr Brannen. That sets out some helpful parameters that will guide us in asking our questions.

I ask the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, to get us under way with some opening questions.

We have a final couple of questions, which Willie Coffey will put.

I hear what you are saying, Mr Brannen, but I have to reflect on what the committee was told when we took evidence from the Auditor General. With regard to the deputy director network, which seems to me to be at a lower level than this GCE board, he said:

“there ought to be some formality”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 18 May 2023; c 6.]

He went on to say:

“All that requires an additional level of formality; minute-taking is one of those fundamentals.”

Question 1, therefore, is: is a minute taken of the GCE board? Question 2 is: why are you refusing to publish it?

Thank you very much indeed. I take the opportunity to place on record my thanks to Craig Hoy for the contribution that he made to the work of the committee over the past two years.

Under item 2, members of the committee are invited to agree whether or not to take business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Mr Brannen, you mentioned taxonomy, which is the classification of spending into categories of high, medium and low carbon impact and so on, is it not? Mr Raines, you mentioned the Fraser of Allander Institute. In some of its commentary, the Fraser of Allander Institute is quite critical of your taxonomy. It says:

“These classifications are very broad. For example, all health spending is classified as neutral spending, regardless of the underlying activity. This risks misclassifying high-emission activities as beneficial, or carbon-reduction activities as harmful. It is not known what emissions impact a spend classified as ‘high’, ‘low’, or ‘neutral’ emissions actually has.”

That is a fairly fundamental criticism of the model that you are using. It says:

“Both the high-level carbon assessment and taxonomy carbon assessment of the capital budget methodologies are, in our view, unable to provide an adequate level of scrutiny and transparency.”

How do you respond to that?

I have more questions on areas that relate to that, but I will turn first to Colin Beattie, who has some questions to put to you.

Okay. Some of the international comparisons might be interesting. As a committee, we might have a look at what other countries do to provide EV charge points.

Before I bring in Sharon Dowey, I have a question. You said at the outset, Mr Brannen, that you welcomed the Audit Scotland report. Do you accept all its findings and recommendations?

I will bring Graham Simpson back in.

My final question is about the relationship with the Scottish Government sponsor division. We were told in evidence last year that Transport Scotland attends board meetings of Scottish Canals and that it—this is the expression that was used—“sits hand in glove” with Scottish Canals. Is that a characterisation that you recognise?