Chamber and committees

I am sorry, but I thought that you said earlier that you accept the recommendations and findings.

You described Covid-19 as a “shock to the system”. As I read the Auditor General and Accounts Commission report, it says that Covid-19 was a shock to the system that jolted the Government into action and to take steps to try to tackle digital exclusion. However, since the pandemic, those efforts seem to have lost momentum and slowed down and, in the words of the Auditor General, “leadership ... has weakened”.

Does that mean that you accept the criticism from the Auditor General that

“leadership ... has weakened ... and momentum has ... slowed”

since the Covid-19 pandemic?

Can I go back to the report? It identifies an insufficiency when it comes to carrying out equalities and human rights impact assessments. It says that there should be more of them and that it should be systematic. It does not appear to be systematic, so are you, as the Scottish Government, providing any leadership to public bodies on that? I am not asking whether you are telling bodies generally that they ought to do those assessments—are you driving it and embedding it in the digital strategies that have been adopted by public bodies across Scotland?

Have you issued guidance to health boards, Scottish Enterprise and all the other public bodies that you have oversight of?

Before I bring in the deputy convener, I will go back to Lesley Fraser. Lesley, the section in the report on building digital inclusion considerations into strategies and design for digital services says that all public bodies should

“carry out equality and human rights impact assessments”.

Do you accept that recommendation?

Okay. One of the recommendations is that councils

“should map out local resources and assets across the public, private and third sectors, and provide clear routes to digital support and accessible information”.

Does COSLA accept that recommendation? Are individual local authorities pursuing that?

Okay. Mr Wallace, does COSLA accept the findings and recommendations in this report?

I am afraid that we have run out of time. I thank our witnesses Lesley Fraser, Geoff Huggins, Eilidh McLaughlin and Martyn Wallace for the evidence that they have given us and the response that they have given to the Audit Scotland and Accounts Commission report on tackling digital exclusion. We will consider our next steps but, for the time being, I thank them again.

I move this morning’s committee meeting into private session.

We are about to enter the final stretch of this morning’s evidence session. I want to get some clarification on something that came up in the evidence session that we had with the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission. It is on the issue of the blue badge, which is highlighted in the report as being almost emblematic of where there might be an issue around digital exclusion. In answer to a question that I put to the Auditor General, he said:

“It feels that there is a contradiction between the population that is likely to need to access that service and the mechanism through which they are required to do that by public services.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 5 September 2024; c 19.]

One of the three major pillars of the Verity house agreement is about person-centred public services. This is a kind of test of that, is it not? Martyn Wallace, do you want to come back on that?