Chamber and committees

Has the job evaluation exercise itself been completed? Have recommendations been made on job roles and the grades that go with those?

Tricia Meldrum, do you know the answer to that?

Thank you very much indeed. We now move into private session.

I have a final question. When we discussed the adult concessionary bus travel arrangements earlier, Graham Simpson said that more than 1,000 people have used the bus passes of people who are deceased. For the record, it is fair to say that that was out of 99,600 people. In other words, 99 per cent of the population are entirely honest. Let us get some perspective on that.

However, I wonder about the extent to which you monitor the bus operators, because there are interesting considerations around whether the journeys that are charged for are the journeys that people have actually taken or whether there is a mismatch. For example, when you get off the bus, you are supposed to swipe your card to say, “This is the stop that I’m getting off at.” If you do not do that, what is the default position? Is it that the bus operator charges for a longer journey? I wonder whether that falls within the remit of the national fraud initiative or whether it is looked at somewhere else.

Our main item of business this morning is consideration of the report “National Fraud Initiative in Scotland 2024”. I welcome our witnesses, who join us in the committee room. We have John Cornett, executive director of audit services, Audit Scotland; and Tim Bridle, audit manager, Audit Scotland. We have some questions to put to you about the report but, before we get to that, I invite you to make a short opening statement.

Thanks. That is a useful clarification. We are going to get into some of the specific match areas, but first I have a couple of questions on the broader impact of the initiative. In exhibit 3 in the report, you talk about the wider benefits of the national fraud initiative. You list that it can

“Act as a deterrent to potential fraudsters ... provide assurance that systems are operating well”

and

“identify where system improvements are required”.

Can you tell us more about that? What evidence do you have to support your claims in the report?

To what extent do you see the exercise as being one of catching fraud versus one of preventing fraud?

And to add an element of menace, no doubt.

I will move on to another part of the report, which struck me as being quite an important piece of analysis that you have presented to us. In exhibit 4, you track the performance of various bodies over the past five years in taking action, or having the ability to take action, where errors or fraud are identified.

What is especially striking is the decline in satisfactory performance, particularly in local government and the national health service. Five years ago, the satisfactory performance rate in local government—which I presume relates to how its systems are working—was at around 80 per cent, but it is now down to 60 per cent. In the NHS, broadly speaking, five years ago, it was at 95 per cent, but it is now at 80 per cent. There has been considerable slippage there, has there not? Will you explain a bit more about what lies behind that?

Is the exercise not self-financing? In other words, if I employ three people to follow the work up, on salaries of £50,000 or £60,000 each, will I not get that money back because the work that they do will bring in revenue that was paid out in error or because of fraudulent claims?

Okay. I think that you described it earlier as something that we should view as a one-off exercise or a point-in-time exercise, but I presume that you have—I think that you mention this in the report—an on-going relationship with the bodies that you work with on the national fraud initiative. Can you tell us a little more about the dynamics of that, how it works and what you are doing to monitor the impact of the activity that you undertake in the exercise?