Chamber and committees

Hannah—over to you. Do you want to come in?

Do any of the other panel members want to come in on that point?

A number of people have indicated that they want to come in. We will hear from Alex Cumming from SAMH first, after which we will go to Alex Pirrie from NHS Grampian.

Thank you. That sense of urgency is absolutely right, because these children and young people are only that age once and we need to get it right now. We cannot come back in five years’ time and decide that we should have done things differently. We need to try everything that we can to offer them and their families the support that they need.

I thank you all for the very useful and informative evidence that we have been given, which will allow us to consider our next steps. I am sorry that we ran out of time—I know that some people wanted to come back in. I simply say that, if you are so inclined, we would appreciate your submitting any written evidence to us through the clerks so that any of the points that you have been unable to make during this morning’s round-table session will still be captured by the committee and be a matter of record. We will look closely at those points.

As I think the Auditor General did, I also thank Donna Bell, who gave a commitment to come back with some more information for us, in relation to both the data that Sharon Dowey asked for and the 29 recommendations made by SAMH and the NHS NSS Information Services Division in the 2018 publication “Rejected referrals to child and adolescent mental health services: audit”. As members of the Public Audit Committee, we will find it very useful to understand what progress has been made in the pursuit of the recommendations in the Audit Scotland report.

I again thank you for your endurance this morning. It has been quite a long session, but I know that the committee has gained a great deal from it. I thank you for your time and your energy, and for the great deal of preparation that you will have undertaken before coming to the session.

I now draw the public part of meeting to a close.

Martin, time is running away from us, but you are making some extremely powerful and important points that I am pleased are now on the record. That will allow us to follow some of them up.

We are drawing towards the end of the evidence session. I ask any witnesses who want to come back in to keep any final remarks short if possible.

Colin, I do not know whether you have any further lines of inquiry.

I do not think that anyone has indicated that they want to come in. As we have the Auditor General here, I think that it would be useful to get his reflections on where he thinks we are with data collection—not just data for data’s sake, but data that tells us about outcomes.

Thank you very much for taking part in this morning’s round-table discussion. As I said, I am going to start with questions from MSPs, but panellists should feel free to come in when they want to make a contribution or a point. Sharon Dowey has a question to get us under way.

I welcome everybody to the fifth meeting in session 6 of the Public Audit Committee. I remind members and guests that the social distancing rules of Parliament must be adhered to. If you are moving around the committee room, or if you are entering or leaving it, please wear a face covering.

The first agenda item is to decide whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Do we agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I am sure that we shall be gentle in our approach to you, in light of that. Joining us remotely are Graeme Logan, who is the director of learning at the Scottish Government, and Gayle Gorman, who is the chief inspector of education at Education Scotland. Willie Coffey, a member of the committee, is also joining us via videolink.

I remind those who are joining us remotely that, because this is a hybrid meeting, it would be helpful if you could enter an R in the chat box function if you want to come in on any of the points. Those who are in the room can simply indicate that to me or to the clerks, and we will take your questions or answers.

I want to afford Joe Griffin the opportunity of making an opening statement before we get into the question session.

Thank you for that opening statement. We will now turn to questions.

In the previous session of Parliament, a recurring theme and a cause for concern was incomplete and poor-quality data. When we look at the joint Audit Scotland-Accounts Commission report into outcomes for young people in school education, the issue seems to crop up again. The sets of data that are available, which measure outcomes, appear to be incomplete. The expression used by the Auditor General is that

“there is a lack of robust data”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 9 September 2021; c 4.]

Our first question is this: what are you doing to address that? Are you taking serious action to address it?