Chamber and committees

Thank you for that introduction. The watchword this morning might well be “transparency”.

I will ask the first question. What were the criteria for allocation between the different funds? Have you been able to establish why certain funds were of a certain value and others were of a different value? What work have you done to establish whether those funds were value for money?

Thank you. Before I move to Willie Coffey, I welcome to the gallery The Hon Nathan Cooper, speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. You are very welcome and I am sure that we will have a chance to speak to you later. Thank you for coming to observe this morning’s committee. We very much appreciate your time.

Willie Coffey has a series of questions about equalities.

I know that Willie Coffey wants to come back in on business support funding. I will bring him in, but I will turn next to Sharon Dowey, who also has some questions to put in this area.

Thank you. If you are able to do that, that would be helpful. I recognise that that might not be a central part of your work, but it is of wider interest. It would be useful for us to have an understanding of not just the businesses but whether they were sole traders or businesses that employed people and which sectors were hardest hit.

I think that some of the big retail chains returned their NDR rebates.

Thank you.

Just so that I understand this properly, are you saying that the time lags are a result not just of your ability to carry out the work but of when the public bodies that you are auditing prepare their accounts?

Stuart Dennis used the phrase “catching up”, but the 2021-22 annual report shows that 75 per cent of audits were delivered—which I presume means that 25 per cent were not completed. I think that, this time last year, the figure was 82 per cent, and I am reliably informed that, pre-pandemic, the figure was around 100 per cent or at least in the high 90s. What is the reason for that? Why, on the face of those figures, does there appear to have been not a catching up but a falling back?

Thank you.

Professor Alexander talked about development and things being dynamic, moving and so on. One of the massive adjustments that you have had to make is the move from having an office-based operation, with audits being carried out in other people’s premises, to carrying out a lot of your work in a virtual way. Indeed, the staffing of your office has been virtual. I was pleased to visit the office last week, and I understand that it was the first time that so many people had been in at any one time. How do you see future working arrangements? Do you see a return to the pre-pandemic model of operation? Where do you see the balance between people being present in the office and their working in different locations?

Do you expect to be back to 100 per cent in 12 months’ time?