Chamber and committees

Okay, thanks. When we return after the summer recess, we are going to take more evidence on that with the director general for net zero, so we will get his assessment of that.

Data, measurement and assessment are really important to the Public Audit Committee, as is the word that Alison Cumming used: “transparency”. With that, I thank Alison Irvine, David Signorini, Alison Cumming and Kersti Berge for being transparent and giving us their time and empirical observations about how things work in Government on those questions that are important for all of us; it is greatly appreciated.

We have two principal items on our agenda. The first is consideration of evidence on “The 2021/22 audit of Scottish Canals”. I welcome our three witnesses: we are joined by Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland; Mark Taylor, the audit director at Audit Scotland; and Joanne Brown, who is a partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP.

We want to put quite a number of questions to you but, before we get to those, I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.

Craig Hoy might also have some questions on this area.

I have a request, which I am really making on behalf of the clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre, which is to do with the fact that quite often these programmes have a change of name, especially in the domestic marketplace—Kersti Berge knows exactly what I am talking about. The request is, can you make sure that we can follow the thread of where different programmes go when their name changes, so that, when you produce these major capital projects updates for us, we can see what is what?

I invite Bill Kidd to ask a couple more questions.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 20th meeting in 2023 of the Public Audit Committee. We have apologies from Colin Beattie and I am pleased to welcome Bill Kidd in his place. The first item of business is for members to agree on whether to take agenda items 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Paragraph 4 of the report is pretty damning, is it not? It says:

“the auditors were unable to conclude whether:

• the annual report and accounts give a true and fair view

• expenditure & income were regular ...

• the Annual Report & Accounts are free from material misstatement

• adequate accounting records have been kept.”

That is a fairly heavy charge sheet, is it not?

Before I move on to Craig Hoy, I note that when we took evidence last year from Transport Scotland, it described the situation as it was then as “a fairly narrow point” and, again, said:

“it is a narrow point about the evaluation of assets.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 24 March 2022; c 14.]

Is that how you would characterise it?

To go back to Sharon Dowey’s point, I presume that those figures were not just plucked out of thin air. I presume that they were informed assessments of what was likely to be needed in order to help to meet the Government’s target.

I get that, but I also take cognisance of the fact that the previous First Minister declared that we have a climate emergency. That suggests that some fairly urgent action should be taken rather than a gradualist approach.

I do not know whether Mr Signorini can speak a little about what is happening with peatland restoration and why there is a hold-up there.

I will now bring in Willie Coffey, who has a suite of questions to ask.