Chamber and committees

I welcome everybody to the Public Audit Committee’s eighth meeting in this session of Parliament. I remind witnesses, staff and members to respect rules on social distancing and that, if they are moving around or entering or leaving the room, they should wear a face covering.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take business in private. Do members agree to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private.

Members indicated agreement.

We note the comments that have been made on how the budget was put together by the commission the last time around. We will look with interest at how next year’s budget is put together.

Another theme that has exercised us quite considerably, and which we want to probe, is the relationship between the commission and the sponsoring division in the Scottish Government. The report says that, during the past year, the relationship has “deteriorated significantly”. Auditor General, will you expand on that and put some flesh on the bones?

Did your team look at communications between the sponsor division and the commission, including the board, in order to understand what that relationship was like? Were you able to amass any evidence that pointed to relationships—or lack of relationships—that rang alarm bells?

In the previous session, the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee raised concerns about the adequacy of sponsorship arrangements between the Scottish Government and public bodies, especially non-departmental public bodies. I think that those arrangements are set out very clearly in the Scottish public finance manual. Accountable officers in organisations, as well as, I presume, board members in those organisations, should receive some training on, or be led to some understanding of, their roles and responsibilities and what sponsorship arrangements should look like. What is your sense of that? To what extent has that happened in the past and is it happening now?

Mr Beattie has a series of questions that will probe governance and the different areas of responsibility.

We are drawing towards the end of the evidence session. I will bring in Sharon Dowey shortly.

Mr Kenny mentioned the hopefulness that comes with the commissioning of an external consultant’s report. However, did I not read that there was a consultant’s report in 2016 that looked into the Crofting Commission? The question that that provokes is to what extent there is a similarity between the findings of the consultants in their 2016 report and what Deloitte uncovered in 2020-21. Is the Crofting Commission just dealing with the same issues? Are you as auditors having to deal with the same issues? Are we as the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament having to deal with the same issues over and over again?

Craig Hoy has some questions about the PPE contracts and how they were experienced, particularly by people on the front line.

That would be helpful.

Carole Grant, do you want to come in with a final word?

Thanks. Committee members have a whole suite of questions to ask.

On your previous answer about those who directly represent crofting communities being on the commission, Auditor General, do you—or perhaps Pat Kenny or Graeme Greenhill can answer this—have any sense of the extent to which the issues raised in the report have affected the key services that the commission provides to those communities?