Chamber and committees

Thank you, Auditor General, for the evidence that you have led this morning, along with Leigh Johnston, Eva Thomas-Tudor, and Christine Lester from the Accounts Commission. I thank you all very much for giving us your time and your thoughts and reflections, and for giving us some very useful evidence that we will now consider in deciding what next steps we want to take on this hugely important area.

May I say, Auditor General, that I think that this is one of the strongest reports that you have produced, certainly in my time as the convener of the Public Audit Committee. It is very clearly driven by the evidence and has reached some pretty stark conclusions that I think all of us, as members of the Scottish Parliament, will need to reflect on. Thank you very much indeed.

Maybe—or maybe not. Ultimately, if we are creating these institutions and if Parliament is legislating to set up a way of delivering services, we should expect the leadership that is necessary to drive that forward to be in place. I guess that that is what we, as the Public Audit Committee, expect, too.

Good.

I am conscious of the time, and we still have some important areas to cover. As we are on the topic of local government, I will ask quickly about the Verity house agreement. Auditor General, I will start with you. Can you give us your assessment whether that agreement will make a difference to the delivery of mental health services?

That was helpful.

Turning again to progress towards improving mental health services, can you tell us a bit more about the support that the Scottish Government has been providing to NHS boards to help them meet their psychological therapies waiting time targets, as highlighted in the report?

You mentioned Grampian, but Tayside is also highlighted in the report. Tayside has been the subject of not just local but national interest, because of some tragic cases of people completing suicide, for example. In that case study, you characterise things as making “good progress”. Subsequent to the Strang report, an oversight and assurance group was put together to ensure that the health board was implementing the Strang review recommendations—there were, I think, 51 of them. I read the oversight and assurance group report when it came out in January, and my reading of it was that it echoed some of the points that Strang had made, in that there was an overreporting of progress by NHS Tayside in the area. I think that, on 17 of the 51 recommendations, the group took issue with the health board’s view of how well it was doing. Basically, it said to the board, “You’re not making the progress that you are stating that you are making.”

Do you want to reflect on that issue, given that it is mentioned in the report?

I appreciate that response.

We are pressed for time. I will bring in Willie Coffey, followed by Sharon Dowey, and then I will bring in Graham Simpson if we have time.

The deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has some questions.

I am afraid that I am going to bring us back to the institutional architecture and all that. One of the things that I take from the report is the question of where the IJBs are in all of this. There is a lot of attention on the health boards’ outcomes and the local authorities’ outcomes, but the IJBs are supposed to straddle the work of those bodies and to pull it together and integrate it. Will you say a word or two about the conclusions that you drew from the work that you did on the role of the IJBs?

I think that IJBs were described in Parliament just last week as being quite a mixed bag. I do not know whether you have discerned this from your auditing work, but is it the case that, in some areas, the IJBs are accountable and are working well, whereas in others they are not? You do not need to name any, but do you get the sense that there are different performances in different parts of the country?

We are very tight for time. Graham Simpson, you can have the final question, if it is very quick.