Chamber and committees

Great. That would be helpful, because it is a component part of this discussion.

The other thing that is not new—you have already alluded to it—is that Audit Scotland produced a section 22 report on the Scottish Prison Service back in September 2019. Our predecessor committee was so concerned, it is fair to say, about what that report said that it undertook its own inquiry and brought in its own witnesses to try to get to the bottom of things. When I read that report, which came out four years ago, it looks as though a lot of the issues that it covers are the same issues that we are discussing today. They remain, by and large, unresolved. One of the issues contained in the report is that, according to the then Auditor General, HMP Barlinnie

“presents the biggest risk of failure in the prison system”,

and the report warns that

“there is no clear contingency plan for accommodating the 1,460 prisoners”

that it then held. Has there been a contingency plan for HMP Barlinnie?

Thank you. We have covered a lot of ground. We would like to have got to even more, but time has been against us. I thank the Auditor General for his evidence and Michael Oliphant and Tommy Yule for their contributions. They have been valuable in illuminating what is, for the committee, quite a serious section 22 report into the current state of the Scottish Prison Service.

With that, I draw the public part of our proceedings to a close. The committee will now move into private session.

I want to ask about one of those in particular: the spend on agency and bank staff. In his opening statement, the Auditor General mentioned elected representatives being briefed by the health board. I speak as one of the elected representatives who have had those briefings. One of the features of them, which I have been trying to interrogate, is the extent to which there has been a ballooning in spend by NHS Forth Valley on bank and agency staff.

Back in May 2023, it was reported that there had been an increase in spend, year on year, in the region of 70 or 71 per cent. By December 2023, at the last briefing that I attended, the figure that was being cited was a 46 per cent annual increase in spend on agency and bank staff. Could you give us your understanding of the reasons for such a big escalation in costs in that area on a year-on-year basis? What lies behind it? Do you have any sense of how that compares with the reliance of other health boards of a similar size on agency and bank staff?

That is fine. I do not know whether I am asking you to break an embargo, but could you give us an early insight into how 70 per cent and 46 per cent increases in spend compare with the figures that you have been unearthing in your preparation of the overall NHS report?

One of the inferences of what came out of the Healthcare Improvement Scotland report is that, because of things such as poor leadership, there might be higher-than-average levels of absenteeism, and the figure for bank and agency expenditure might be a function of that, but we are being told this morning that that is not the case. I want to try to clarify that.

I think that Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s initial report identified an excessive reliance on bank and agency staff as one concern. I think that it used the description of “serious concerns” in its report, and that was one of its serious concerns.

We now turn to Colin Beattie, who has some more questions to put, and perhaps an initial observation to start us off.

That will be a bit of a relief for my constituents in the Forth Valley health board area. Nonetheless, although we are talking about recovery from Covid and the backlog in treatments because of Covid, an already ageing population and, probably, a climate of rising demand, health boards are expected to produce savings of 3 per cent across the board and, as you described, NHS Forth Valley will have to come up with at least twice that amount. Will you explain how that works? It strikes me that that might be unsustainable financially and in terms of outcomes.

Yes. One of the lessons that we have learned is that culture change is one thing, but it is keeping the culture change going that is probably the harder task.

My final question—I think that you alluded to this in answering Graham Simpson’s questions—is about how far there is to go through the assurance board process and so on. Again, when I had a briefing from the assurance board, which I think was as far back as May of last year, the expression that its members used was that they thought that there was a long way to go at that stage. We are now several months down the line, so that position might have been revised but, at that time, the assurance board was saying—I took a note of it—that there was no clear path to de-escalation. What is your assessment of that today?

Good morning, and welcome to the third meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee. The first item for consideration is whether to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you very much, Auditor General.

I invite the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, to ask the first series of questions.