Chamber and committees

Willie Coffey has some questions to put to you.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the ninth meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee. We have apologies from Graham Simpson.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on taking agenda items 4 and 5 in private. Does the committee agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

We have some questions on each of the areas that you have outlined, chief inspector, so if you are agreed, I will turn to the deputy convener to get the ball rolling. You will obviously have an opportunity to give extensive answers to our questions, which I hope will reflect the other things that you might have wanted to say in your opening statement.

What is the rationale behind that?

I also note that

“65 per cent of non-court”

transport was on time, meaning that 35 per cent was not. That is the transport to the health appointments that you talked about in quite dramatic terms at the start of this morning’s session. We have also taken evidence about the vacancy rate in GEOAmey, and we have had discussions about salary levels and whether the reason for that high vacancy rate is the remuneration package that people get. Do you have a view on that?

Okay. So, that is a yes, then. The market speaks, perhaps.

I now invite the deputy convener to wrap up the session.

And that remains the situation.

Welcome back to the Public Audit Committee. We move on to our third agenda item, which is consideration of a briefing that the Auditor General for Scotland has prepared on the national strategy for economic transformation.

I am delighted to welcome our four witnesses. We are joined by the Auditor General, Stephen Boyle—good morning, Auditor General. This morning, he is joined by Cornilius Chikwama, who is an audit director; Catherine Young, who is a senior manager; and Kirsty Ridd, who is an audit manager, all from Audit Scotland.

We have quite a number of questions to put on the briefing, but before we turn to those questions, I invite the Auditor General to give a short opening statement.

Thank you for that helpful introductory statement. One of the chapters in the briefing is headed “Reporting progress and measuring success”, so I want to begin by asking for a report on progress and whether success was measured in terms of the previous national economic strategy, which was launched in 2015. At paragraph 4 of the briefing, you mention that the two principal objectives of that strategy were

“boosting competitiveness and tackling inequality.”

We will see whether the new vision is easier to translate into tangible, measurable actions.

This might not be an area for you to comment on, but I would be interested to hear any view that you may have. The previous strategy was formulated and launched in 2015. In 2016 we had a referendum on membership of the European Union, and the UK overall voted for us to leave. As a consequence, the UK left the European Union in January 2020. I am a bit surprised that there has been no revision to the strategy in light of such a significant event.