Chamber and committees

Willie Coffey has some questions.

The principal item on our agenda is consideration of the 2021-22 audit of the Crofting Commission, which has been laid before Parliament and about which we have an evidence session. I welcome our three witnesses: Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland; Pat Kenny, a director for audit and assurance at Deloitte LLP; and Kirsty Ridd, an audit manager at Audit Scotland.

We have some questions to put to the witnesses, but before we get into those I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.

I re-emphasise the point that it would be useful for us to see what interaction there has been between the commission and the crofting communities. Although many of us would welcome the arrangement of direct elections, it has to be more than that and an on-going relationship. It may be that we need to speak to the Crofting Commission itself about that, but any perspective that you could give would be very helpful.

Sharon Dowey has another question to put to you.

But—sorry, Auditor General, I will bring you in in a moment—is that a net increase in the budget, to pay for senior management, or is it just a rebalancing of the existing budget?

Yes, that is quite reassuring. For the purposes of today, you said that you did not think that the majority of it had gone on to the senior management team. In rough terms—or exact terms, if you have that information—what is the division of additional resource that is going into those front-line posts versus that which is going into the senior management team?

Thanks very much. As none of the committee members has any more questions, I am going to draw this meeting to a close. I thank Pat Kenny, Stephen Boyle and Kirsty Ridd. We appreciate your input this morning. There are some things that we might want to follow up with you and the Crofting Commission.

I now close the public part of this morning’s meeting.

The principal item on our agenda is consideration of a section 22 report, “The 2021/22 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. I am pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning: the Auditor General for Scotland, Stephen Boyle; Michael Oliphant, audit director at Audit Scotland; and Helen Russell, senior audit manager at Audit Scotland. We have an extensive range of questions to put, but before we get to that, I ask the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.

You go even further than that when you say that

“The Reserve balance is not disclosed within the Scottish Government consolidated accounts.”

It is a matter not only of where the reserve is and transparency over its movement, but of the figure itself not even being disclosed in the consolidated accounts.

Further in, the document talks about the comprehensive business case that needs to be made in order to give the green light for Government intervention in a commercial business. It talks about the strategic case, the economic case, the commercial case, the financial case and the management case. Were any of those cases the subject of proper scrutiny for the investments that are listed in your report?