Chamber and committees

Mr Cook, do you want to come in?

On 27 January, we took evidence from the Auditor General, who described the deal between the Scottish Government and the GFG Alliance as a “complex transaction”. He said that

“there is an increasing likelihood that the guarantee will be called upon.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 27 January; c 9.]

Is that a strong position?

Permanent secretary, we cannot hold you individually accountable for this either, but one of the other things that the committee, the Auditor General and the Auditor General’s predecessor have waited for for a long time is the publication of whole public sector consolidated accounts. We understand that they will be produced in two stages, and I think that the stage 1 account is due to be published this spring. Will you bring the committee up to date on what progress is being made on that? Do you expect that target date to be met?

Good morning and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. Before we begin, I remind members, witnesses and staff who are present that social distancing measures remain in place in the Parliament’s committee rooms. In addition, face coverings must be worn if you are entering, leaving or moving around the room, but you can take your face masks off when you are at the table.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take items 4 and 5 in private?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much.

I also wanted to ask you about one quite specific area. At our previous evidence session on this report, on 27 January, we took evidence from the Auditor General on the overspend in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, which arose as a result of special payments of £40.2 million in connection with the acquisition and administration of Rangers Football Club. We are interested not only in the impact of that overspend on the service itself, but in the decision making around those payments, particularly the role of the Lord Advocate in that respect. At the previous evidence session, we were told that there were two cases still outstanding. The Audit Scotland report tells us that the Scottish Government authorised the overspend. Can you tell us who did so?

Just to conclude, I think that you undertook to give us some information in writing about fraud, payment and recovery, decision making relating to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service overspend and so on. That would be helpful. When we survey the Official Report of the meeting, we might find that there are other areas that we want to follow up with you, too.

Thank you for your time this morning and for your thoughtful contributions. I also thank your team: Lesley Fraser and Alyson Stafford, who joined us online; and Jackie McAllister and Colin Cook, who joined us in the committee room.

With that, I suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses.

The first principal item of business this morning is agenda item 2, which is consideration of Audit Scotland’s section 22 report “The 2020/21 audit of Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts”. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting, particularly our newish permanent secretary, John-Paul Marks, in what I hope will be the first of a number of appearances before the committee in this parliamentary session. He is joined in the room by Jackie McAllister, who is chief financial officer, and Colin Cook, who is director of economic development, and, virtually, by Lesley Fraser, who is the director general corporate, and Alyson Stafford, who is director general Scottish exchequer, Scottish Government.

As I have said, I welcome John-Paul Marks to his first meeting, in his new role, with a Scottish Parliament committee—in this case, the Public Audit Committee—and I invite him to make a short opening statement.

Thanks, Auditor General. As usual, feel free to call on Joanne Brown and Graeme Greenhill as appropriate. If they wish to come in at any point, they should put an R in the chat box function and we will ensure that they are called.

Sharon Dowey will ask the first question.

For clarity, FReM is “The Government Financial Reporting Manual”. I just want everyone to be clear about that.

I want to probe the fact that we are sitting with a report that has a disclaimer attached to the audit opinion. Paragraph 3 of the report says:

“Scottish Canals had not obtained a valuation for around £51 million of specialist operational assets which had been capitalised between 2012 and 2021.”

Would you have expected a public corporation—as Scottish Canals was during that period—to have had those assets valued?