Chamber and committees

You can have the final word from the committee.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 13th meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item on our agenda is to agree to take agenda items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Okay. Being resourceful, as it is, the committee will do its level best to tackle some of the issues that are raised in those two reports. To begin, I invite the deputy convener, Jamie Greene, to put some questions to you.

Yes. I have a very quick question for Alyson Stafford. You are the director general of the Scottish exchequer, and you have a service level agreement with HM Revenue and Customs. When did you first get sight of these reports?

I repeat that my understanding is that at least one of the reports was due to be published in January, and ministers had sight of that last year. Why was it only yesterday that the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament, which is conducting an inquiry into the administration of Scottish income tax, received that? Could somebody explain that? Alyson Stafford, can you explain that?

One of the reports that we are discussing is the Auditor General’s report on “Administration of Scottish income tax 2022/23”, in which he says that getting some of the longitudinal analysis on behaviour, for example,

“will help inform future tax policy decisions and enable more informed scrutiny.”

That is why we are here, so I find it extraordinary that you have had that information, in whatever form, that you have not shared with us, as members of the Parliament. Do you not see anything wrong with that?

So, ministers were setting the budget on the basis of information that might have been statistically invalid.

I will bring Graham Simpson back in later, but I will bring in Willie Coffey at this juncture.

Thank you. By mentioning the fiscal framework, you are in danger of opening up another front, but I will resist the temptation.

We are out of time, so I will draw this morning’s session to a close. I think that we might have further questions to put to you, not least—frankly—because of the late arrival of the two documents, which are lengthy and detailed and require proper scrutiny by the committee. We also look forward to the further information that Jonathan Athow and Alyson Stafford have said that they will supply to the committee. I think that I can safely say that Colin Beattie will supply you with his top 30 before the week is out to illuminate his point about those areas where he thinks that there are still significant gaps.

With that, I thank our witnesses Phil Batchelor, who got off very lightly this morning, Jonathan Athow, Alyson Stafford and Lorraine King, who got off quite lightly, too, although I thought that she made a very telling intervention. Thank you very much for your time.

I close the public part of the committee’s deliberations so that we can move into private session.