Chamber and committees

You mentioned the block grant. There has just been a renegotiation of the fiscal framework. Are you satisfied with the outcome of the renegotiation?

I have a question just for the record, because something is not entirely clear to me from my reading of the accompanying note that goes with the table of purchases. The note refers to the fact that the monthly limit on the UK Government e-card is £10,000, whereas the Scottish Government limit has been £25,000 per month. It talks about alignment. Can you confirm whether the Scottish Government monthly limit for e-card use will come into line with the UK Government level of £10,000?

That is fine—you accept the conclusions. We will ask questions to get into a bit more of the detail of some aspects of those in the time that remains.

For the avoidance of doubt, that is a long-standing request from the committee, dating back to 2016. I think that the committee was promised it in fairly short order at that time, but here we are, almost eight years later, and there is no sign of it.

Just to be clear, we are not asking for that as a matter of curiosity or because of some kind of hobbyist interest. We think that it is really important, as does the Auditor General, that we understand what we own and what we owe. Individual components of the public sector are, of course, expected to provide audited accounts so that we can see what they own and what they owe. All that we are requesting is that we get something similar across the whole of the public sector in Scotland.

We recognise that there have been obstacles to that and that there is the latest series of obstacles that are outwith your control. I think that you described that in the letter that you sent to us, permanent secretary, but I want to reaffirm the store that we set by that and the importance that we attach to it being tackled urgently. The language of the Auditor General continues to be that that is a deficiency that needs to be addressed with some urgency.

Do you think that there have been so few concerns about ministerial spending decisions in all that time that a written authority would not have been warranted at any point?

Can I take from that that you do consider the oil refinery to be a strategic commercial asset? Does it fall within the scope of your strategic commercial assets division?

What is the latest position on the submission of audited accounts?

Thanks, permanent secretary. We do get regular reports on IT projects, so we do get opportunities to view and review those.

As we are on the subject of software, I will finish by turning to our resident in-house expert on all these matters: Willie Coffey. Willie, do you want to ask the final couple of questions?

I thank the permanent secretary, John-Paul Marks, for his time and his willingness to answer our questions. It is greatly appreciated. I also thank Gregor Irwin, Jackie McAllister and Alison Cumming for giving us the benefit of their insights into the way the Government is working and how the reform programme is progressing.

I will close the public part of this morning’s meeting and move the committee into private session. Thank you very much.

I will move on to a couple of other areas. Permanent secretary, you referred to the fact that you accept the need for public sector reform. Presumably, you would also accept one of the other recommendations, which is about better workforce planning. Why were there no details on either of those in the budget that was presented recently to Parliament?