Chamber and committees

What do you mean by a “long-standing relationship”?

Okay. When you appeared before us in March, you told us that, through your committee meetings,

“we had regular conversations about public reaction to excessive spend, so there were challenges at the time. There was a lot of pushback, but we kept up that challenge.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 21 March 2024; c 17.]

So, which is it? Was it a surprise that that was the way that governance arrangements were working and that that is how the approval process was being interpreted, or was it a long-standing battle that you were having with the former chief executive officer?

Yes—as long as you are not going to read out a rehearsed contribution. We would like you to answer the questions that we are putting to you, Mr MacRae.

The appraisal form says that the training was for a new member of staff.

Jamie Greene has a final question.

Before we finish, I have a final question for Michelle Quinn and Kersti Berge. Kersti, you mentioned the reviews. There is an independent review into WICS and, interestingly, an internal review of the Government’s sponsorship arrangements. I do not know whether that should not be the other way round, to coin a phrase. Anyway, Parliament was told that certainly the independent review would be published by late summer. I know that we have had a nice week of weather, but we are coming towards the end of summer. When do we expect that report to come out?

Okay. Can you tell me about the examples that the Grant Thornton report unearthed, which were about employees who booked their own travel? For example, if I were to be called to a meeting in London tomorrow, or if I needed to get to Stornoway on Saturday, I might, at such short notice, cut through the bureaucracy and just make my own booking. Why was a flight to Brasília, or Kigali, in business class, booked in the way that it was, and who did it?

Right, okay. Let me move on. Another ambiguity that came out in the audit was on the application, or the interpretation, of the £75 gift threshold that had been set. Where have you got to with reviewing that? It seemed to have been applied in such a way that it looked as though people were trying to get around it.

One of the other areas highlighted in the Audit Scotland report, which is also brought out by the Grant Thornton review, is the whole policy on reimbursing people for meals. I do not quite understand some of the terminology around non-city meals, city meals and limits. Ms Quinn, we were told by Mr Brannen at the previous evidence session on the topic that the use of credit cards involves a no-drink policy. However, it is pretty obvious from the findings that have been unearthed by Grant Thornton that, unless people were eating huge amounts of food, a large proportion of those claims—some of them without receipts—were made for alcohol. Can you confirm that first of all?

Why would he be unsure of that?

So a meal at L’escargot Blanc in Edinburgh, where the cost was £140 per head and £315 of the total bill of £562 was spent on alcohol, is outwith your policy?