Chamber and committees

Thank you for that undertaking, director general.

I will bring in the deputy convener, Jamie Greene.

That is capital only.

That is not 15 minutes solely for you.

Excellent. Thank you.

With regard to the expiry of PFI contracts, what deliberations are made about those contracts? What support is given to the organisation, whether it is a local authority or another public body, to make the transition? Do you factor in alternatives to returning the contract in-house? Do you consider extending the role of the private contractor on the PFI contracts, if it is an operational matter? Do you consider putting the contract out to tender so that other private providers might come in, or is the default position of the Government that those contracts will return in-house, or come in-house?

I do not think that the committee needs examples of Scottish National Investment Bank portfolio investments; we can look those up elsewhere.

About 15 minutes at the most.

The principal item on our agenda this morning is an evidence-taking session on the Auditor General for Scotland’s briefing paper, “Investing in Scotland’s infrastructure”. I welcome our witnesses, who have joined us in the committee room.

I am pleased to say that we are joined by the director general of the Scottish exchequer, Alyson Stafford. Alongside her are witnesses from the Scottish Government: Morag Angus, chief surveyor; Dr Alison Cumming, director of budget and public spending; and Alan Morrison, deputy director of health infrastructure, investment and personal protective equipment. We are also joined by Alison Irvine, interim chief executive, Transport Scotland, and Peter Reekie, chief executive, Scottish Futures Trust.

In light of the timetabling this morning, we have agreed that there will be no opening statement and that we will go straight to questions. I will begin by asking the director general of the Scottish exchequer a straightforward question: is there any change to the Scottish Government’s capital allocation following yesterday’s budget statement?

Okay. Is that a reduction in the block grant figure? Changes are also projected to be made in the financial transactions sums that you get, are they not?

This is almost a technical question, but why, in projecting forward, can you have with any certainty a sense of what the figure for a real-terms cut will be? We do not know what inflation will be in two months’ time, never mind two years’ time, do we?

Thank you. My colleagues might have further questions on the subject of yesterday’s budget statement, but I now turn to the Auditor General’s report. I also want to take into account a letter that you sent to the committee on 29 January in which you addressed some of the points raised in our evidence session with the Auditor General.

One of the recommendations that the Auditor General made was on the extent to which you provide “clear and regular information” and the extent to which that information bears out whether it supports “wider governmental goals”. He also commented on improving reporting on “individual projects and programmes” to better highlight cost overruns and/or delays. Will you update the committee on where you are in responding to the recommendations?