Chamber and committees

Thanks for that.

We now want to spend a bit of time on some of the specific areas that you drill down into in the report. To get us under way on that, I invite Graeme Simpson to put some questions to you.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 24th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2024. Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Yes, please do.

Okay. Thanks for that clarification.

Can I just clarify a couple of things with you, too? I have seen the number of participating bodies in this year’s exercise as being either 110 or 127. Which is the correct number?

Graham Simpson has a quick question.

To what extent is that a resource issue? We are dealing with an environment in which the financial pressures on the health service and health boards are intensifying, and the financial pressures on local councils and across local government are getting greater. Is the reason for the decline that they are unable to find the resources to follow up some of the work?

It is useful that we have finished up on that point this morning, because I was going to ask a broader question that relates to it. A lot of the emphasis in the discussion that we have had this morning has been on individual citizens defrauding the state, but there are also instances of corporations potentially defrauding the state, whether in relation to personal protective equipment or something else.

When we previously took evidence on the national fraud initiative, in September 2022, we were told of instances where people had passed away in care homes but the council was not notified, so it continued to pay fees for those people. Is that still being monitored?

I was going to say that we will draw proceedings to a close on that jolly note, but James Dornan has a final question to put to you.

Thank you very much indeed for providing us with evidence this morning. It has been a very useful session. We are legislators, and at some points we strayed into areas where legislation might need to be amended, so there are certain things that we will need to consider—as well as, perhaps, things that you will consider as a result of this morning’s session.

I thank you both for your time and contributions this morning. You have given us a few things to think about, and your evidence allows us to compare the exercise with the previous one, two years ago, and consider whether we want to suggest some areas that could be covered that are currently not, or some bodies that really ought to be part of the initiative but are currently not.

I now move the committee into private session.

Thank you for setting out that introductory statement and some of the main issues that are contained in the report. We are going to get into quite a bit more detail during the next hour or so. I begin by inviting James Dornan to put some questions to you.