Chamber and committees

Thank you very much indeed.

I bring this part of our proceedings to a close by thanking Helen Russell, Michael Oliphant and the Auditor General for their evidence this morning. As I mentioned at the start of the session, the audit of the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts is an important piece of work, and there are many aspects that we have not had a chance to talk about and put questions on. I hope that, with your co-operation, Auditor General, we will be able to do so in the very near future, because the report contains some very important issues of public concern.

With that, I close the public part of the meeting and move into private.

The second item on our agenda is an evidence session with representatives of the National Records of Scotland. The session follows a section 22 report that the committee considered at its meeting on 9 December 2021 with the Auditor General for Scotland and a team from Audit Scotland.

I am pleased to say that we are joined by Paul Lowe, who is the registrar general for Scotland and keeper of the records of Scotland. Also from the National Records of Scotland are Linda Sinclair, who is the director of corporate services and accountable officer; Anne Slater, who is the director of operations and customer services; and Peter Whitehouse, who is the director of statistical services.

I mentioned that Linda Sinclair is the accountable officer, but I invite Paul Lowe to give us some opening remarks before the committee asks questions.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the second meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private. I assume that all members agree to do so, unless any member indicates otherwise. Does any member object to taking agenda items 4 and 5 in private?

I see no objections, so that is agreed.

Thank you very much, Paul. If you want members of your team to field any of the questions, please let us know who the appropriate person is. If members of your team want to come in, they should type R in the chat function to make sure that I call them.

I will give a bit of context to this morning’s session. A section 22 report by Audit Scotland is quite a serious matter; it happens when alarm bells have been or still are ringing. This morning, we want to probe a little into the journey that you have been on and to consider how things look over the next few weeks because, as you said, the census has still to be delivered.

I will start by reflecting on the second paragraph of the Audit Scotland report, which contains this note from the Auditor General:

“I have prepared this report to draw the Scottish Parliament’s attention to the challenges facing NRS in the delivery of the census programme. This includes the significant impact the decision to delay the census until March 2022 has had on NRS’s costs. There are also ongoing risks to delivery of the programme, including resourcing and financial pressures, which NRS will need to continue to manage so that the census can be delivered successfully in line with the revised budget and timetable.”

Committee members will return to those themes over the next hour.

I want to reflect on the evidence session that we had with the Auditor General on 9 December 2021. You might have seen that one of the issues that were brought to our attention was that an options appraisal report led you, through evidence, I presume, to the decision—or the recommendation to ministers for their decision—to postpone the census for a year. That was a very big decision to make. We asked the Audit Scotland representatives whether they had had sight of the options appraisal report. They might have had sight of it, but they were not in a position to offer it to us. Would it be possible for the committee to see the full options appraisal report?

I am sorry to interrupt, but I want to check something. We were told in the evidence session with Audit Scotland that you were now planning to access some of those data sharing sources. Are you saying that you have not done that or that you have no legal basis for doing it, and that it is not happening?

Thank you for clearing that up.

I must ask you to try to keep your answers a little briefer. I suspect that you will be able to do that in the forthcoming sections. Again, please feel free to bring in members of your team if you think that they can add useful evidence to the gathering of information that we are embarked on.

I invite Craig Hoy to ask a number of questions.

Thank you very much indeed. We have a long series of questions. I begin straight away by inviting Sharon Dowey to ask her questions on one of the themes that you have identified: financial management.

We now have some questions on a—[Inaudible.]—area of governmental roles, responsibilities and policy, which relates to resource and capital borrowing.

That is understood, but your door is still open to further inquiry from an audit perspective into what has happened.

Craig Hoy wants to come in on this issue of fraud as well.