Chamber and committees

The substantive item on our agenda is consideration of a section 22 report, “The 2022-23 audit of NHS Forth Valley”. I welcome our four witnesses: Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland; Pat Kenny, associate partner, audit and assurance, at Deloitte; Rebbecca McConnachie, senior manager at Deloitte; and Leigh Johnston, senior manager at Audit Scotland.

We have a number of questions to put to you, based on the report that was produced into the performance of NHS Forth Valley but, before we get to those, I invite the Auditor General to give a short opening statement.

Thank you. Graham Simpson wants to come in with a question in that area.

So it is not a function of, for example, the level of vacancies or of a particular sickness absence rate in NHS Forth Valley.

May I pick you up on your language? You describe it as “rightsizing”, but, in the case of Scottish Enterprise, is it not downsizing?

Yes. Right.

Forgive me, but my reading of what you are saying is that reform equals contraction and rightsizing equals downsizing.

Before I bring in Graham Simpson, I have just one question that I hope is straightforward and which will elicit a quick answer. Currently, there are no public sector pay guidelines. They were not part and parcel of the fabric of the budget presented to Parliament. Can we expect to see public sector pay guidelines being issued?

Thank you. That would be helpful.

I will take us back to the substantive report that we are discussing, which is the Auditor General’s section 22 report. I want to get your position on the record, permanent secretary. Paragraphs 95 and 96 are the conclusion of the report. Paragraph 96 carries a series of five clear recommendations from the Auditor General about a change of approach and development of approach, and so on, with regard to accessibility and transparency; governance and assurance arrangements; the public sector estate; a road map of what the design and delivery of public services, which we have already spoken about this morning, looks like and how you will advance that; and a timetable for completion, as a matter of urgency, of the whole-of-Government accounts, which we will get to shortly.

Do you accept the conclusions and recommendations in that paragraph of the report?

Okay. I will move on to another quick question about the strategic commercial assets division. Do you consider the Petroineos oil refinery at Grangemouth to be a strategic commercial asset?

I am going to move us on to the final couple of areas that we want to speak to you about. One is around the corporate transformation programme. Paragraphs 84 and 85 in the audit report talk about that and remind us of the escalation in costs and the slippage in timetable of the new systems for human resources and finance. The original cost was estimated to be £22 million. It has now almost doubled; it has gone up to £40 million. The date of implementation was meant to be the middle of last year for the HR system and the end of last year for the finance system. We are now told that it will not be until April of this year. Can you provide us with an update on where that is? Are you going to meet those revised timetables?

Is an external information technology contractor involved?