Chamber and committees

That might be a philosophical point, Mr Hoy.

I will look more closely at the pilots. One of the pilots that is highlighted in the report was undertaken in Fife Council on the national entitlement cards for travel. How long did that pilot take place for? What period did it cover?

Yes, a single bus journey of £3.10 may not be worthy of a major national exercise in trying to understand what is happening.

Another interesting area that you mention is the pilot that is under way with Social Security Scotland. That pilot looks particularly at whether there are examples of people claiming benefits as if they are resident in Scotland when they actually are not resident in Scotland and at any cases of people who have multiple addresses and are, therefore, putting in multiple claims. How many matches have you found through that pilot?

Do you have a sense of the scale of that? Is it at the level of national entitlement card fraud in Fife, or is it much more widespread?

I do not want to put words in the witnesses’ mouths but they said in answer to the initial question that was put to them on the blue badge scheme that the mortality rate among people with disabilities was higher than that in the general population. That might explain why there was a rise during the period. It is worth waiting to see what the next round of NFI results tells us about that before we jump to any conclusions.

I take you back to Sharon Dowey’s initial question on the practice of conferring with the clerks on areas that the corporate body considers that committees should scrutinise office-holders on. Did that take place in session 5—yes or no?

I will bring Willie Coffey back in later, but I will now switch to Craig Hoy.

I am not sure that the committee believes in coincidences, Mr Williams, but we are keen to be kept abreast of the progress that you are making, because that was an important recommendation in the Auditor General’s report.

Willie Coffey has another couple of questions before I turn to, last but not least, Colin Beattie.

On that constructive suggestion by the committee to our witnesses, I draw this evidence session to a close. I thank Maggie Chapman, David McGill and Huw Williams for being prepared to come to committee this morning to answer the questions that we had and respond to what has, by common consent, been a very difficult situation that has raised some pretty fundamental questions about the governance structures and whether they need to be reformed.

As I said, we are a committee that is principally concerned with outcomes and not necessarily with reviews. We will discuss our next steps, but I am sure that we will be keeping a close eye on the issue to understand how effectively any changes that you have heralded are implemented. I thank the witnesses once again for their time this morning.

We have two items of public evidence gathering on our agenda. The first is consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s report, “National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2022”.

Our witnesses from Audit Scotland, who are in the committee room, are Antony Clark, executive director, performance audit and best value, and Anne Cairns, manager, performance audit and best value. We have some questions to put to the witnesses, but, before we get to those, I ask Antony to make a short opening statement.

Thanks for that helpful clarification.

You have said that the amount of fraud identified in the exercise was slightly down on that identified in 2020, which was when the exercise was last undertaken. Do you see that as a sign of success in that there is growing public awareness, or as a sign of failure in that more fraud has gone undetected?