Chamber and committees

Did you pay for the legal advice that you sought on whether the cases that were dismissed without investigation could be resurrected? Was it your legal advice or was it the Parliament’s?

We mentioned at the beginning the number of recommendations. You have subdivided some of them, so you are working on 26 recommendations. Based on the Audit Scotland breakdown, there were 22 recommendations, and it was reported to us that 10 had been implemented, 10 were work in progress and two had been set aside or had been overtaken by events and so on.

Can you tell us what progress you are making? Do you accept that breakdown—that analysis that says that around half of the recommendations have been implemented but around half are still work in progress? Is that still a representation that you recognise of where you are as an organisation?

That will be good. We are a Public Audit Committee. On the one hand, we do not believe in coincidence and, on the other, we like to see statistical evidence to support arguments that are put before us.

I have another small question. When you replied to Willie Coffey, you mentioned the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. You are, of course, an independent commissioner.

Thank you very much. I am conscious of the time, so I encourage members and witnesses to make their questions and answers as concise as possible. I turn to Colin Beattie to ask a couple of questions about digital exclusion.

Do you not qualify that by saying what the average wait is? I know that you do not want to falsely raise people’s expectations, but it can also be a deterrent. If I have a complaint about the way that I was treated last week and am told that that behaviour will not be addressed for eight months, there is the issue that other incidents might happen between now and then to people who might be in the same position as me. In my view, that seems to be an odd decision to take.

Thank you. I am going to move things on now. An issue that we have come back to several times this morning, but also in previous evidence sessions that we have had with the Auditor General, is staffing capacity and performance. I invite Roz McCall to ask some questions on that.

Roz McCall touched on that in her questions. The report that we have before us from Audit Scotland, which is a recent report, albeit that it is on the previous financial year, recounts that there was a proposal to restructure the staffing in the office that would generate savings of almost half a million pounds—£450,000—but that has been reversed. That sends a signal to us that there was a proposal to scale down quite significantly the operations of the commissioner’s office, maybe in line with the 84 per cent rejection rate. If you could come back on that point, that would be helpful.

We turn to questions from our deputy convener.

The final area that we want to cover before we finish up is the sponsorship of public bodies, which has been the subject of some discussion and evidence gathering at the committee over the past couple of years, in relation to concerns that we had about the Crofting Commission and more broadly.

The Scottish Government gave an undertaking last spring, I think, to have a review and we took evidence in the autumn of last year but it seems as though it is a continuing concern. At one point, you said that there might be an opportunity for a fundamental audit of the sponsorship arrangements. In the context of the work programme discussion, can you tell us where you are on that? It seems to be a recurring theme and we would like progress to be made on it.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 11th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023.

The first item on our agenda is to agree to take items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.