Chamber and committees

What options did the board consider, other than accepting his resignation?

Yes, but you could summarise the options that were open to you, so that we can get to how you came to the decision that you made.

I am sorry, but I will stop you there for a second, because there is a lot in this. Did the Scottish Government approve the business case or not?

So the section 22 report was the trigger for you to have concerns about culture and behaviour at WICS. Did nothing that happened before that raise any red flags?

You are welcome to push back on the cabinet secretary’s comments, but do you accept her comments and agree that you failed to follow due process?

Ms Quinn, are you satisfied with that response?

Thank you for that update. In the interests of time, my final question is to the Scottish Government. Responsibility for public bodies and the oversight of the boards that oversee the public bodies is a matter for the sponsor division, the director general of those directorates and, ultimately, ministers and cabinet secretaries. It sounds like there has been a catalogue and a litany of extreme failures of fiscal governance across a taxpayer-funded body. When did the Scottish Government think that things were going wrong at WICS? When did it get an idea that there were issues? Was it solely the work of Audit Scotland that raised those flags?

Let us go through this in a logical order. That is important, because I am trying to get to the nub of the decision making. After coming to that conclusion, what happened next? Did you seek approval from the Scottish Government, in accordance with the Scottish public finance manual?

Talk me through what happened next. The options were debated, and I understand that the option that was chosen was a settlement agreement. Is that correct?

I would like to close the session by picking up on an issue that I asked about the previous time that we met. Clearly, the optics are difficult. I presume that you would have preferred to have come in today to talk about the positive work that WICS does and the good work that, I am sure, your staff do, for which we should thank them. However, the media coverage and the scrutiny at the highest level—from the Parliament, the Government and the Auditor General—must be uncomfortable and difficult, and rightly so. After all, we are talking about public money.

Do you accept that the optics of all this have created the very unhelpful view that, for those at the highest level of the organisation, it has been something of a gravy train for a considerable time? Although that might have ended, it has happened, which is the problem. People have lost confidence and faith in the governance of this public body.

The second part of my question is about what happens next. Is there a case for a clear separation of the two functions—of the part that oversees a public nationalised industry such as the water industry and has a very important role to play, and the organisation’s more commercial arm, which wants to go out, wine and dine, and travel business class, because that is what commercial companies do in seeking new business opportunities? The problem that we have had until now is that combining the two and trying to pretend to be both has led us to some of these issues, as well as the governance issues, which I have no doubt individuals will have to face the consequences for. What should we do next?