Chamber and committees

I have been once before in relation to the treatment of young footballers.

I will get straight into the points that I want to raise. First, the recommendations that led to the proposals to downgrade Wishaw neonatal unit have not been subject to a robust or thorough equality or human rights impact assessment. That is an issue in relation to parents and families but also in relation to babies, because they, too, have rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—a right to life, a right to survival and a right to development—and that has not been properly taken into account.

Secondly, the clinical advice that has been used to justify the decision is now five years old. Thirdly, neither the current minister nor her predecessors have ever visited the Wishaw neonatal unit to speak to the staff there to get their expert view. Fourthly, as Jackie Baillie and Monica Lennon have mentioned, the concentration of the provision of these intensive care resources will bring about capacity and resilience issues. It is extremely difficult to understand the feasibility of families from central and southern Scotland having to go to Aberdeen, which will have one of the proposed three centres.

There has been centralisation of these services in other parts of the UK, but there has not been any proper evaluation of those that could be factored into any decisions that the Scottish Government takes. ScotSTAR and the Scottish Ambulance Service will be significantly affected by the changes and they have not been fully involved in the process. There has been no assessment of the impact on their services.

Finally, this is an issue in Lanarkshire and in Wishaw but there is also an issue about how we provide these services across the whole of Scotland. That is an issue for every member of this committee and every member of this Parliament. We simply ask this committee to take up some of these issues in relation to the extent to which the assessments have been made, the impact on staff, the impact on capacity, the impact on resilience and the impact not just on human rights but human lives.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 21st meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee, which is our first after the Parliament’s summer recess. Fulton MacGregor is joining us remotely.

First, are members content to take agenda items 4, 5 and 6 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I have a quick question before I bring in our final questioner. We read in the report that the Government proposes having a “minimum digital living standard”. Could you tell us a little bit more about what on earth that is?

Thank you. That is helpful.

I will move on. Our final questioner is Fulton MacGregor, who, fittingly, given the topic of this morning’s evidence, is joining us digitally, by video link, from North Lanarkshire.

We have time for one final quick question, which I invite the deputy convener to put.

On that very cautious note, I will draw the meeting to a close.

I thank Mike Neilson from the Accounts Commission, Bernie Milligan and Jillian Matthew from Audit Scotland and of course the Auditor General for the useful evidence that they have given.

We will consider what our next steps will be. I thank you very much, indeed, for your customary willingness to be as open and wide ranging as our questions ask you to be.

That is okay. I will bring Graham Simpson in to ask a quick question in a minute, but it is striking that, in the introduction to the report, in paragraph 6, you say:

“Digital exclusion is strongly associated with poverty and people with certain protected characteristics.”

You go on to say, in paragraph 13, that digital exclusion is caused by affordability, by whether people have digital skills, by whether they “fear or mistrust” digital systems and by poor connectivity or being unable to afford to keep up with technological change.

In paragraph 16, you reiterate that the major causes of digital exclusion are poverty—including being on benefits—and age, because older people are presumably less likely to be able to access digital technology. You say that people with disabilities and those who are socially isolated must overcome barriers to access. That gives a clear sense of those people among our citizens who are predominantly excluded from public services that are digitally provided.

Thank you very much. Before we move to the major part of our agenda this morning, do members agree to take next week’s meeting in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is a discussion on the “Tackling digital exclusion” report, which was produced just a few weeks ago. I am pleased that Stephen Boyle, who is the Auditor General for Scotland, is joining us this morning. Alongside the Auditor General are Jillian Matthew, who is a senior manager, and Bernie Milligan, who is an audit manager, both from Audit Scotland. We are also pleased to welcome Mike Neilson, who is a member of the Accounts Commission, because this is a joint report between Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission.

As usual, we have a number of questions that we would like to put to you, but before we get to those, I invite the Auditor General to make a short opening statement.