Chamber and committees

Graham Simpson wants to come in, and then I will go to James Dornan.

Well, no, you called it “pushback”.

Thank you very much indeed. I want to place on record the committee’s thanks for the amount of information that has been provided. There was a delay in publication because some of the information had to be redacted, but we will come to the substance of some of those documents and what they tell us.

It was useful for Mr MacRae to remind us at the outset that the whole purpose of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland is to ensure that Scottish Water provides

“long-term value and best-in-class levels of service”.

I am sure that, this morning, we will scrutinise whether WICS lives up to those standards.

Mr McGill, in October 2023, Audit Scotland sent you an email regarding the business case for the Harvard business school course, in which it questioned why expenditure of more than £20,000 required approval by the Scottish Government, when the board’s approval level was for expenditure of more than £100,000. I think that the expression that was used in that email was:

“this seems the wrong way around”.

Have you addressed that issue?

Do you expect that to be before the October recess, for example?

Do you think that it will be before Christmas?

Rather than steal Colin Beattie’s thunder, I will go straight over to him to ask questions about the staff training policy.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 23rd meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on the committee’s agenda is to invite our new member, James Dornan, to declare any relevant interests.

That is the firm of Shepherd and Wedderburn.

Who were your previous legal advisers in the course of the past 20 years?

This is my final question. Does the Scottish Government have a limit on what staff can spend on meals per head?