Chamber and committees

With these kind of contracts, is there never any consideration given to the agreement of a fixed-price contract, rather than some kind of cost-plus, evolving and ever-increasing price tag?

Sorry for my ignorance—I have not started reading “Computer Weekly” just yet, although it has been in the news quite a lot recently. Is Oracle the name of the software or the name of the company that provides it? Who is the IT provider? What is the name of the commercial outfit that is providing the system?

And its head count.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Well, pretty much every item is categorised. For example, there is one here called “Taxation: A Very Short Introduction” and another called “Marx: A Very Short Introduction”. Both are listed as

“Appropriate under current policy - recommended to review policy exclusions and out of scope expenditure moving forward.”

What does that mean?

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the second meeting in 2024 of the Public Audit Committee.

The first item on the committee’s agenda is a decision on whether to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Do we agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I note that the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, joins us online this morning.

The principal agenda item is consideration of the Auditor General for Scotland’s section 22 report on the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts. I am particularly pleased to welcome our witnesses, who are the most senior team from the Scottish Government. The permanent secretary, John-Paul Marks, joins us, and is very welcome. The director general economy, Gregor Irwin, is also here. Jackie McAllister, who is the chief financial officer, and Alison Cumming, who is the director for budget and public spending in the Scottish Government, also join us.

We have quite a wide range of questions to put to you this morning, permanent secretary, but, before we get to those, I invite you to make a short opening statement.

Thank you very much, indeed, permanent secretary, for that introduction, which covers many of the areas that we want to speak to you about. I want to take you back to one of the fundamental, key messages from the Auditor General’s report on the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts. He said:

“The delivery of public services in their current form is not affordable”.

How do you react to that?

I think that Graham Simpson wants to come in on a couple of those points, and I have a couple of questions, too.