Chamber and committees

Welcome back. In this session, we will take evidence on the Auditor General’s briefing paper on tackling child poverty in Scotland, which came out on 22 September—so, by our standards, it is relatively hot off the press.

I am pleased that the Auditor General is joined by, from Audit Scotland, Tricia Meldrum, senior manager, and Corrinne Forsyth, senior auditor, performance audit and best value; and I am particularly pleased to welcome Andrew Burns, who is here as a member of the Accounts Commission, because the report was jointly produced by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission. Andrew, we are delighted that you are able to join us.

I turn first to the Auditor General for an introductory statement, after which we will ask a number of questions.

Thank you—that is very helpful. I have other questions in my head. However, because of the time constraint that we are under, we could maybe set those out in writing for you to follow up on to get a bit more—as I think that Mr Johnston described it—granular detail on some of those areas. That would be helpful to the committee.

I will bring Willie Coffey in shortly—I just have a final question first. This might be for Catriona Maclean to answer. To some extent, you described the difference between the public bodies unit and the public bodies hub, which is alluded to in the report and on which there is a related recommendation. Can you comment on where that lies?

I am also interested in understanding this: you described how you are 80 or 90 per cent of the way through training people in sponsor roles in the Scottish Government. To what extent are you involved in the training of the members of those boards, and the people in agencies outwith central Government who are oftentimes involved in making operational and strategic decisions for the non-departmental public bodies and agencies and so on that they are on the boards of? Will you tell us a bit about the extent to which you have a training programme or have any other interaction with those people?

We now go to questions from Colin Beattie, who joins us remotely.

It would be interesting to understand the process in relation to the establishment of Scottish Rail Holdings and whether that is classed as a small body. I do not know how many people it directly employs, for example.

There is a tension here, is there not? I picked up something else from reading the report. In paragraph 4.11, an interviewee encapsulated what they thought was necessary, which at first I was quite attracted to, but then I thought about it a bit more and I have another comment on it.

In that paragraph, the interviewee says that it would be useful to set out

“what you can expect from us”

and

“what we expect from you”.

I thought that that was a neat encapsulation of the issue, although when I reflected on that a bit more, I thought that it sounded a bit like a master-servant relationship—it did not sound like a partnership of equals.

One thing that we come across in section 22 reports is a blurring, a confusion and an unclear sense of where roles and responsibilities lie. Paragraph 4.4 warns that

“Establishing a separate body and then managing it too closely risks undermining the benefits of separate status.”

First, do you agree with that analysis? Secondly, how do you see that in relation not only to Scottish Rail Holdings but to other bodies that are being created to deliver public services under the auspices of the Scottish Government and maybe at the instigation of the Scottish Parliament?

Good morning. I welcome everybody to the 24th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Okay. Thanks.

I want to pick up on the last point and will bring in Andrew Burns to answer. There are four indicators, and the report calls for consistency in their application and use. Perhaps that suggests that, currently, they are not used consistently. For example, I do not know whether some local authorities, with health boards, rely on only one or two of the indicators and not on all four. There might be reasons for that. The committee is interested to understand whether your calling for consistency of application of the suite of indicators at Scottish Government and local government levels implies that that is not happening at the moment.

The Auditor General can start; maybe Andrew Burns can then come in.

In the end, the test will be how many section 22 reports are brought before us by the Auditor General and whether Mr Johnston has to come before us to defend a situation that arises from failed sponsor arrangements. We have found it really enlightening to hear about the work that is being done to prevent recurrences of those. What I take from the evidence that we have heard is that you are looking in detail at instances in which things have gone wrong to learn lessons from that and to build those lessons into the training that you give to the people who are responsible for ensuring good relationships between sponsor departments and public agencies, non-departmental public bodies and so on.

We are out of time. We would like to follow up on some areas to get more information from you. You have not withheld anything from us; it is just that we have run out of time to get some of the detail that we are looking for.

I thank Paul Johnston, Catriona Maclean and Mary McAllan for their evidence. I suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

I am about to turn to Colin Beattie. Before I do that, I must observe that Mr Johnston has invariably appeared before us or our predecessor committee when things have gone wrong and when section 22 reports have been conducted by the Auditor General. This morning, we are outside the eye of a crisis and are keen to have an evidence session that allows us to understand how things work now. That is why we are interested in hearing more about where things are going right.

Colin Beattie is joining us online.

I am going to have to draw this session to a close, but I thank Andrew Burns, Corrinne Forsyth, Tricia Meldrum and the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle, for their evidence this morning. I am afraid that we have run out of road, but we might well come back to you to follow up your oral evidence.

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