Chamber and committees

Great. Thanks.

I mentioned that Willie Coffey has some more questions in that area. Do you want to come back in, Willie?

At that point I would like to draw this session to a close and thank you, Auditor General and Carole Grant, for your input. I am quite sure that Social Security Scotland and its performance is something that the Public Audit Committee will continue to have under its watch. Thank you both very much indeed.

On 2 March, the Conveners Group of the Parliament had a meeting with the First Minister, and I raised with her some of the concerns that Richard Robinson said were expressed by Audit Scotland about the link between budgets, funding announcements and spending levels. In response to one of my questions, the First Minister said that she knew that JP Marks, the new permanent secretary, is keen to talk to Audit Scotland and the Auditor General about how we do that in general as well as the additional funding for Covid, and that was about trying to identify where the money has gone. Have you had those discussions with the permanent secretary?

Can I pick up on something that you said in reply to Willie Coffey about the rail franchise money—the £441 million that was given to the rail operators? Are you saying that that was all Barnett consequential money, or that additional Scottish Government was money put in?

Thank you very much indeed for that opening statement. You mentioned the minister in your opening comments. Rather unusually, the minister wrote an unsolicited letter to the committee on 19 May, in which he set out his response to the report, using expressions including

“significant progress”,

“the scale of what we have achieved”,

“a very substantial achievement”,

“the Scottish Government is preparing well”,

“the recommendations that Audit Scotland have highlighted are areas we had already identified and were working on prior to receipt of this report”,

“things are demonstrably working”,

and

“we have got robust processes”

In and among all that, do you think that there is a recognition of the scale of the challenges that you identify in the report and which you mentioned in your opening statement, and a recognition that substantial risks remain—not least, for example, that of getting operational staffing in place? Can you comment on what you see as the position of Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government on that? Do you think that they fully recognise the challenges that lie ahead?

Looking to the future and reflecting on the past, what do you think have been the critical factors that allowed for the reasonably successful start to the work of Social Security Scotland?

Thank you.

We move to item 2 on the agenda. The first of our evidence sessions this morning is on two reports that were produced by the Auditor General.

Our four witnesses are in the room for the first evidence session. I am pleased to welcome Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, and, from Audit Scotland, Richard Robinson, senior manager; Martin McLauchlan, audit manager, performance audit and best value; and Ashleigh Madjitey, audit manager.

I invite the Auditor General to give us a short opening statement.

I am not sure that it is that keen if that undertaking was given three months ago and it still has not been fulfilled, but the committee can take a view on that.

It is not unusual for you to sit before us and talk about a lack of good-quality data. Looking at the reports that are before us today, it seems to me that that is really what you are saying again. Given the investigations that you have already conducted, how confident are you that we will get the good-quality data that allows for the transparency that we all want to see?

I have one final question. There are examples of companies that have taken millions in furlough money—I know that that support is reserved to the UK—but have also taken millions in Government compensation towards their fixed costs. I see that in the same financial year, those companies that are taking that significant amount of public money are also paying out substantial dividends to shareholders or doubling their directors’ pay. Some of those companies are registered in tax havens. Were any of those things taken into consideration in drafting the criteria for who was eligible for Government support?