Chamber and committees

I will finish with a fairly straightforward, I think, question. The COSLA and Scottish Government mental health strategy was published after the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland reports came out, and the committee is very interested to know when you will publish a progress report on where you are with the commitments in the delivery plan and, in particular, when you will report back on the workforce action plan. Again, for the avoidance of doubt, we have been told by a number of witnesses that there is—to quote their expression—a “workforce crisis”. When is there likely to be a progress report?

You are talking about a revenue to capital budget transfer during this financial year to help to meet the cost of that change. How will that be funded in future years? As I understand it, any savings that we get will not really start to accrue until 2025, so it will not be next year but the year after that. Is my interpretation correct?

So, what happens between now and April 2025?

Thank you. That would certainly be a useful thing to do.

One of the other areas where I was struggling a bit to make the comparisons and to understand the narrative that is in the submission to us is around the estate strategy. I think that Stuart Dennis might have clarified matters a little for me earlier, but just so that I am clear about this, if I look at the overall figure for property, we are told that there is going to be an estimated financial saving of in the region of £2.2 million over a 10-year period. That is an average saving of £220,000 a year. We are also told in paragraph 78 that the Glasgow accommodation cost rise is in the region of £298,000. I want to make sure that I am comparing apples with apples. That is a one-year figure versus the 10-year figure for the net saving. It is helpful if the units are immediately comparable, but I am not sure that they are in that case. Could you develop that and explain to us what the increased costs are, what the decreased costs are and what the net position is over a one-year, a three-year and a 10-year period?

Good morning. I want to develop that point.

One of the things that stood out for me was table 2, which shows your budgeted expected income from various public bodies that you charge fees to. If I am reading that table correctly, it says that the proposal is that the audit fees that are charged to further education colleges will rise by 6 per cent, the income generated from the fees charged to local government and the national health service bodies will increase by 8.7 per cent, and the expected fee income from central Government bodies—Scottish Government departments and sponsored bodies—is projected to decline by 1.3 per cent. What is the strategy that lies behind that?

Okay, but it is useful for us, as a commission, to be able to compare one financial year with the next financial year, or apples with apples, so perhaps there is a better way that you could present that information. Can I deduce from what you have told us that the fees that you are charging to Scottish Government departments and sponsored bodies of the Scottish Government are also rising by 6 per cent?

So, there will be net savings on the estate by 2025.

Can you just confirm what the strategy is? You have described how the Government has stated that, for understandable reasons, it wishes to grow the national health service workforce. Exactly a week ago, we had representatives from the further education sector talking about pretty drastic reductions already and contemplating even more drastic workforce cuts in the future. A couple of weeks ago, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance stated on the BBC that the public sector workforce will have to shrink. If the public sector workforce has to shrink, the policy is to grow the NHS workforce and we have seen one component of the public sector in front of us describing some pretty catastrophic decisions that it is contemplating, what is the overarching strategy?

We all understand that an institution such as the Scottish National Investment Bank will back some winners and some losers, but it is quite unusual for the loser to be directly under the ambit of the Scottish Government, is it not?

Absolutely. I will throw into the pot the fact that the GFG Alliance is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

Before we move to another area of questioning, I will take you back to what you told us on 27 January last year. You said:

“there is an increasing likelihood that the guarantee will be called upon.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 27 January 2022; c 7.]

Do you have an update on where you stand on that question?