Chamber and committees

Thank you, Willie.

Auditor General, you are absolutely right to talk about the human dignity and respect that are at the centre of the Sturrock report and recommendations. I want to look at the overall cost and some of the nuts and bolts of that. Do you have any indication of how many further recommendations for financial payments there are likely to be? Could you clarify who is footing the bill for that? Is the funding coming from the health board itself, or is any additional Scottish Government funding being made available? Could you, Joanne Brown or Leigh Johnston shed any light on what the division is between the value of the compensation payments that have been made and the cost and administration of the process?

Could you begin by addressing those points, Stephen?

The second item on our agenda is consideration of an Audit Scotland report, “The 2020/21 audit of Bòrd na Gàidhlig”. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting. I introduce Stephen Boyle, who is the Auditor General for Scotland; Graeme Greenhill, who is a senior manager for performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland; and Pat Kenny, who is a director of audit at Deloitte PPE.

I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement.

Again I point out that if anybody wants to come in, they should simply put an R in the chat box.

I will round off this section of questions. Is the continuous improvement plan in the public domain, available and accessible, in particular to members of the community who have an interest in the work of the board?

I will start with Pat again.

We will move on to questions about leadership, which the previous section 22 report identified as an issue.

If Graeme Greenhill or Pat Kenny want to come in at any point, they should put an R in the chat box—although I am sure that the Auditor General will bring them in.

Often, what is critical in an organisation is not simply that it makes a change, but that it keeps change going. One of the things that I note from the report is that the board appointed an external change management expert in 2021-22 to

“embed its developing approach to continuous improvement and maintain the pace of change”,

which really relates to my point. Is the appointment of that external change management expert permanent? If so, what should they prioritise in the months and years ahead?

Willie Coffey has some questions that explore some of those areas further, in the context of openness and transparency. Over to you, Willie.

I am bound to reflect on the evidence that there has been a lot of controversy in the Highlands about the centralisation of services. So, when Joanne Brown speaks about service redesign, the question that many people in the Highlands will ask is, to what extent is that clinically led and to what extent is that financially led? It may not be for the Auditor General to offer commentary on that, but any reflections that you or Joanne can make would be useful in getting the inside track on what is pushing those changes.

Thank you very much—that is very useful. There is continuing public interest in the costs of the operation and administration of the healing process, and in the balance between that and the pay-outs themselves.

I have a final point that I want to ask about. Referring to the board risk assurance framework, the report states that

“further work is required to review and redefine some of the risks and the escalation process within the BRAF”.

Could you tell us a little bit more about what further work is required on that? I do not know whether that is for Joanne Brown or Stephen Boyle.

There is mention in the report of an “improvement plan steering group”. Is the expectation that it will continue for some time or is it also a time-limited part of the organisation’s work? I invite Pat to reply. We can then widen the question out, if other people have comments.

Good morning. I welcome everybody to the first meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

The first item on our agenda is consideration of whether to take in private agenda items 4 and 5. My working assumption is that everybody will agree to do that, but if anybody disagrees, please indicate that by raising your hand.

I do not see any raised hands, so the committee agrees to take in private items 4 and 5.