Chamber and committees

If anyone were to take up Pat Kenny’s recommendation of an end-to-end review, that issue might be worth considering. From the committee’s point of view, it might be useful if we were able to get data on the accountable officer/commissioner role in the various commissions that are accountable to Parliament. It would be useful for us to have sight of that, because the position of accountable officer is in the Scottish public finance manual as a designated position and is, invariably, I think, the person who is the most senior official in the organisation.

Thank you. I think that it is right that we leave the last word to you, Pat, because it has felt a bit like an exit interview, given the candour with which you have shared your honest assessment of what is going on out there. I found that extremely useful.

I thank the Auditor General, Richard Robinson and Pat Kenny for their evidence. We have found it a very useful session. As a committee, we will consider our next steps. Thank you for your contributions this morning.

Did you have conversations with the business about the fact that its accounts would not be audited?

My final question is about sponsorship arrangements, which the committee has taken a keen interest in. We have dealt, over the years, with good and bad examples of such arrangements. A review carried out in 2021 made 14 recommendations, and, permanent secretary, you gave an undertaking that those recommendations would be implemented by, I think, the end of December 2022. As we meet on 23 February 2023, have you met your ambition of implementing all 14 recommendations?

Good. Craig Hoy will now ask some questions.

Yes. I do not think that I was suggesting that people are not working hard, permanent secretary; I was asking whether we are prioritising, whether the strategy is right and whether the leadership is there. Many of us remember the Christie commission, which had a full-scale agenda for reform involving early intervention, doing things differently and investing at the right time in order to have the most effective outcomes. Much of that remains underutilised. To quote the Auditor General again, I note that he has spoken at various times about the “implementation gap”. The stated aims are very worthy, but the question that we are bound to ask is what is going on out there on the ground.

We are short of time, so we will move on to questions from Craig Hoy.

Thank you. We have two or three more critical areas that we want to cover before the session ends. One of those is public sector reform, which I think Alison Cumming alluded to a few minutes ago.

We know that, following the resource spending review, last May or June, an outline of public sector reform priorities was set forward by the Government that spoke about

“New approaches to public services (such as the development of the National Care Service)”,

“Reforms to public sector capacity and pay”,

“Efficiencies for the public sector, including further use of shared services?and efficiencies in the management of the public sector estate”,

and

“Reform to Scotland’s 129 public bodies.”

What progress have you made with that agenda?

I am afraid that you cannot get away with mentioning Prestwick airport without Willie Coffey wishing to come in with a question, so I invite him to put his point.

The reason why that is important is not least that, as we reminded you last year when you had just arrived in your post, permanent secretary, it has been on-going since 2016. We were promised whole-of-public-sector consolidated accounts in 2016, and here we are in 2023 at stage 1. In his report, which we are discussing this morning, the Auditor General says:

“The continuing absence of a devolved public sector consolidated account means it is difficult to assess the overall health of Scotland’s public finances at a time of greatest need.”

There is quite an urgency—this is quite imperative. Will you reflect on that after today’s session? I do not sense the urgency that we think is necessary to be applied so that we can get a full picture of what we own and what we owe, which is the expression that the Auditor General has used.

I move on to another area, which is capital borrowing. Back in 2018, I think, the then chief financial officer—it was not you, Jackie McAllister, but one of your predecessors—was able to provide to the committee a list of assets that attracted capital borrowing. Is the Scottish Government able to provide a list of underlying assets for which it uses capital borrowing today?

Before we move off this point, can you help us understand whether the green freeport projects, of which there are two in Scotland, will be the subject of scrutiny and audit by the Auditor General for Scotland?