 Welcome to the third meeting of the SCPA in 2015. I remind everybody to ensure that all their mobile phones and electronic devices are switched off and then move directly into agenda item 1, which is a decision on taking business in private. That is to decide to take agenda item 3 in private and whether to take our draft report and audit Scotland's budget proposal in private at future meetings. Are members content? Then we move to agenda item 2, which is Audit Scotland's budget proposal for 2016-17. I welcome to the meeting Ian Leitch, the board chair of Audit Scotland, Caroline Gardner, Auditor General, Russell Frith, Assistant Auditor General and Diane McGiffran, chief operating officer at Audit Scotland. I am not sure if Ian or Caroline would like to make an opening statement. Thank you very much for the invitation to come along, chair. This is my first meeting before this committee. I would like to take the opportunity to thank my predecessor John McClane for the sterling work that he did on the board of Audit Scotland. I hope to follow his very good example. You have our budget proposal, chair, for 2016-17. You will see that we intend to deliver real cost reductions in audit fees while maintaining the quality of our work. We have frozen the 2015-16 audit fees in cash terms and we anticipate being able to achieve further average real-terms reductions for the 2016-17 audit year. That continues a period of fee and cost reductions of over 20 per cent in real terms over the past four financial years. If I can turn to the fee strategy very briefly, chair, this is the matter in which you have taken considerable interest, as indeed has the Audit Scotland board. We have indicated in the fee strategy paper that you have before you today that the board has been considering various options in relation to Audit Scotland's review fees. Over the last year, Audit Scotland has been reviewing its funding and fee arrangements in order to ensure that they are fit for purpose. We will be doing more work to look on the basis of refining this, because there have been imbalances in the sectors. This is something that is exercising the mind of the board. We want to look at this and to make further proposals, subject, of course, to consultation with our audit clients. Plainly, they will have to take their view on how matters should proceed. Any further changes would be implemented, hopefully, for the year 2016-17 audit. Before I ask Caroline Gardner in her capacity as the accountable officer to make an opening comment on the budget, I should say to chair, as you will see from our paper on the budget, that we have now moved to our new offices. We have closed two expensive and rather inefficiently operated offices in George Street over to Westport, and we anticipate savings of £2.8 million over 10 years as a result of that move. It has allowed us to be more efficient in the use of technology and much more efficient in the open-plan areas that we are using in that office. It has made a cultural shift in the organisation, and we intend, shortly—I am not going to date yet—to have a formal opening, and we will extend invitation to you and your members to come along and see the new method of operation in the new offices. With that comment, chair, I invite the accountable officer to present. As you will see, the budget for 2016-17 has been prepared in the context of some significant uncertainties for us, including the outcome of the UK spending review and its impact on the Scottish budget, the amount of work that we will need to do to provide support to Parliament for the new financial powers that are coming into effect and the outcome of the audit procurement exercise, which we currently have under way. We know that we are on the brink of further constitutional change in Scotland. That will be the most significant change in financial powers devolved to Scotland since the creation of the Parliament. We are determined to support the Parliament through our work in how to manage and make the best use of those new powers. The change to the volume of our audit work will be known once the wider framework for the new financial powers is established, but that budget includes the starting point for us to resource that work in the longer term. To allow us to plan for the audit implications of further devolution and the new powers, we have added £100,000 to our resource request this time, and we are obviously very happy to talk you through how we intend to use that. Even without those powers, there are significant shifts under way within the bodies that we audit. For example, our budget includes already the impact of the new integrated health and social care authorities, which together will manage over £8 billion when they come into full effect from 1 April next year. As our board chair has indicated, one of the areas that we are reviewing is our fee strategy. We recognise that there are some imbalances in the current system that we want to address. In addition, we are currently carrying out the procurement exercise that will set the prices that we pay to the audit firms, who carry out a significant part of the audit work for me and for the Accounts Commission over the next five years. We do not yet know the size and distribution of any savings that that may generate, but that will be known by the spring of next year, 2016. We have therefore agreed to freeze audit fees for 2015-16 at the 2014-15 levels. In real terms, that represents a 1.6 per cent reduction, and we will be able to model the impact of the procurement exercise on fees for the future in time for our budget submission to you next year. Excluding the impact of new audit work, we have reduced the amount that we ask for from the Scottish Consolidated Fund by 2 per cent. In real terms, again, at 2015-16 prices, that represents a 3.6 per cent reduction. Ian's talked about the further reduction that comes from our investment in property. We are very pleased with the success of that project, which was delivered on time and under budget, and we look forward to being able to roll those savings through in future years. Convener, we are pleased to be able to build on our record of reducing the costs of audit in the past, and we know that there will be new responsibilities for us in future. We are sitting on the cusp of significant change. We have tried to build in the right balance between continuing to build on our record from the past, but also building capacity for the future, and we will be pleased to answer your questions about the submission. As you correctly said, members have some questions on that. I think that I would like to start off with fees, because that has been a recurrent theme with the commission over the past few years. Indeed, in October 2014, we were told that work on the revised fee strategy would be concluded in early 2015. On page 9 of the current fee strategy document, the audit Scotland states that several papers and a presentation have been discussed by the audit Scotland board. We are obviously disappointed that this work is still on-going after all these years, and we have had previous reassurances that this work would be concluded in the early part of 2015. Can you explain what the delay in the review process has been and provide us with some sort of firm date for conclusion? Some of us, when we joined the board, started asking a lot of questions. To some extent, that may have delayed matters, because we have been probing into this whole question of whether there has been each sector paying its full costs and with a series of papers throughout the last year. That has allowed us to look at where the imbalances are occurring and to determine where we are going to go with it. However, bearing in mind that we are having to balance a number of issues—this is a very important point from the point of view of the clients—they want to avoid an excessive volatility. If you get sectoral balance, which we are aiming for, the next question is, should you get individual fees being charged on a basis that means there may be movement and volatility year on year? The informal soundings, as we indicated in the fee strategy paper, particularly from the local government sector, is that they do not want that. We have a balance between openness, transparency and how we do our fees, and I think that it is necessary that we consult. Although there is work still on going, the big thing that I am going for is consultation throughout the next few months with our various audit clients to see how they want us done. Do they want sectoral balance? Do they want to accept pulling within that balance? Or do they want to make sure that individuals pay the full amount, which means that some go up and some go down? Consultation will delay matters a bit, and I apologise for that, but I think that it is necessary to carry our client groups with us as far as we can in relation to that. From what you are saying, I would deduce that we are at the start of a process, rather than moving towards the end of it. No, I would not agree with that. I think that we are fairly well through it, because we have had working papers looking at how these sectoral imbalances have occurred historically and what remedies should we take. We had a discussion a few months ago, and again this is reflected in our budget submission to you, whether we should actually try and reduce some of those imbalances by increasing fees, but taking account that there is the procurement exercise on-going and we anticipate, so I am advised, further savings to come from that round, we decided on a freeze, hold things as they are, see what the procurement round shows, and try and get this whole question of consultation. It is a major exercise to consult with your client groups on what should be done here, but that is the openness and transparency that we are aiming for. The price may be a few extra months on to the timetable for matters, but I think that it is a price paying, because if we tell people what we are proposing, show people how things are done, there will be more acceptance and less complaint, insofar as there is complaint, about fees just being handed down from on high. The mention was made just previously about the possibility of sectoral balance and so on. Now, we obviously welcome a movement towards the closer balance between fees and the related expenditure in each sector, but to what extent will further work on the fee strategy seek to achieve that closer balance between fees and related expenditure in the individual audited bodies within and across sectors? So, for example, will audited bodies with strong track records of governance and control be subject to lower fees than bodies that have higher audit risks? The account of loss will take that one. Thank you, convener. It might be helpful just to remind the commission of the framework that governs our overall funding and fee setting process and the work that has been done so far. There are a couple of areas outstanding that will not be possible to complete until in 2016, because of the procurement exercise. Under the legislation that sets up Audit Scotland, we are entitled to impose charges for the work that we carry out on most of the bodies that we audit, and those costs are required to be set having regard to particular classes of the bodies that we audit or individual bodies and to aim to break even taking one year with another. The papers that the board has reviewed over the last year also have explored what that means in practice and what are the issues that need to be resolved as part of the review, as the chair of the board has said. One of the issues that we have reviewed is whether it is appropriate to continue raising three quarters of our funding through fees and, broadly, the other 25 per cent from the consolidated fund through the oversight of the SCPA. The board's decision was that that is appropriate to do, first of all, but having that fee mechanism helps with the accountability of auditors to the bodies that they audit while still maintaining their independence. The second big area of work that has been done is looking at the way in which the board gets oversight of the balance between the amount raised and the amount spent in each sector, particularly between local government and the bodies in my areas of responsibility and also between central government health, FE and so on, within my areas. As the chair has said, there have been some imbalances in there that have tended to increase over the life of an audit appointment. The latest figures that we reported back to you in June alongside our annual report and accounts showed that we were very broadly imbalanced between local government and the rest, but that health was slightly over-recovering and that between the chargeable and non-chargeable central government work there were some imbalances. The board has taken the decision that fixing those imbalances makes sense when we make the new audit appointments from next October onwards. You talked about the question of individual bodies, and that is one of the issues that the board is still considering. We know from previous consultations that the bodies that we audit do value predictability in their audit fee and are not keen for significant moves year on year. It would also make it difficult for us to manage our finances on a continuing basis to have to bring each body into balance between the amount that it costs and the amount that we charge, given that there are variances. There already is some capacity within the system to reflect the quality of internal controls and governance within a body. You may recall that we set an indicative fee for each body, and the auditor and the audited body have the ability to vary up or down by 10 per cent within the current system. Beyond that, it has to be approved by Audit Scotland. We know that there are imbalances between larger bodies and smaller ones because of the fixed cost if you like of auditing a small body, and we want to review that when we set the indicative fees for the new audit appointments. We have also strengthened the governance of the balance between sectors over the past few months, with the board agreeing a new policy that says very clearly that we think that the interpretation of taking one year with another should be that there would be no more than 10 per cent up or down for each sector in a year, which we would then aim to resolve in the following year. The board will review that annually in a formal way, which gives the board that assurance about where it is going. As the chair says, a lot of work has been done, but there are some parts of the equation that we cannot resolve until we know the costs of the audit procurement exercise and make the new audit appointments next autumn. The references that were made in your papers to the historic decision at the beginning when Audit Scotland was set up, whereby best value audits were broadly met from the costs from the central government. Does that remain valid in your opinion? I will ask Russell to give you a bit more detail if you find it useful. The historical picture is that when local authorities had a legal responsibility of best value imposed in 2003, local government was funded by about £2.5 million at that point through the local government settlement to cover the costs of best value and best value audit. About a million and a half of that was earmarked for audit and it was all distributed to local authorities on a per capita basis. Since then, the audit fee for best value work has been recovered on a per capita basis added to the core audit fee for each local authority. The Accounts Commission has reviewed that as part of the review of the fee strategy that we have described to you and has taken the view that it does remain valid because the pattern of best value audit is not a smooth one across the years and is something that is being reviewed just now, but it is one of the reasons why we think that it is appropriate to review the fee strategy on a regular basis looking ahead. Circumstances do change. Just following on, I am really a wee bit concerned that the promise that was given that the review for a fee strategy would have been completed and I also agree that perhaps we are just embarking on that review now regarding what you say, Mr Leitch. I think that for the committee's comfort, we really need to know for definite when this review is going to be completed. All of a sudden, we are found here and maybe for very, very good reason that we are starting to talk about imbalances and consultation, which is really surprising because I thought that that would be part of the original review that was set up. I think that for the committee's comfort, we probably need a date line as to when this review is going to be completed. That will be completed for the audit appointments next autumn. I cannot speak for the time before I have been on the board, but I have been looking at this issue along with colleagues on the board. Before we embarking on a fee strategy, I wanted to know other imbalances in the sectors. Are some paying too much? Are some paying not enough? If so, how does this come about? We need a sharper pencil in all of this. This work has been done substantially, and some of it was reported to you in June when the imbalances occurred. We now have to consult, and this is a very important thing. We could theoretically impose the fees, but that would be an entirely wrong approach. I think that you have to go to your client groups and we will have to take account of the Accounts Commission view in respect, because, as you know, they have a statutory role and a separate statutory body, although the services are supplied by Audit Scotland. You mentioned best value earlier—I forgive the expression for the farmers amongst us—but the sheep-dip approach, if everybody gets dipped, is that appropriate where you have a situation where a local authority, for example, has a bad report and best value and there has to be recurring reports? Should it be the case that everybody pays the share of that cost, or should it be the producer pays principle? Those are issues that we need to have dialogue with the Accounts Commission with and, indeed, the consumer groups. There are a whole variety of issues to be consulted on here, and that is why, chair, I am determined that we take that additional time and I am giving an assurance that we are going to tie this up this coming year. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. We are aware that the Wales Audit Office has recently reviewed its fee strategy, and in its equivalent document, it has published the hourly rates by grade of staff that is chargeable to audited bodies, thereby enhancing the transparency of fees to audited bodies. Does Audit Scotland envisage publishing similar cost information so that audited bodies can clearly see the make-up of the fees being built, which may in turn provide them with an incentive to improve their governance and control arrangements that will result in lower audit fees? I do not see a reason why not. In principle, that cannot be done after the procurement exercise. Plainly, we do not want to disclose our hand until we have got the prices in from the private sector firms, which we appoint, but beyond that, I do not see why we should not. I may be speaking in error here, but that is my approach to it. One of the things that we will need to finalise after the procurement exercise has been completed is the way in which we recover both the direct costs of audit, which is the cost of the work done in an audited body, whether by one of the firms or by our in-house audit service, and the way in which we recover the indirect costs, which are the performance audit work that is carried out across sectors, the central costs of Audit Scotland, and the costs of providing support to Parliament. One way of doing it would be to take that indirect cost and allocate it across the direct cost to give you an allure rate like that. Another alternative is the approach that we have taken in the past, which is to have a direct cost plus an indirect cost, which comes into the pool to cover our central costs. It is one of the issues that the board will have to consider during 2016. Again, what we will be trying to get right is the balance between something that is straightforward to manage for us and the bodies that we audit, and something that is transparent to you and our wider stakeholders in demonstrating value for money. As Iain says, it is something that we will certainly be considering during 2016, but the board has not yet taken a decision on it. We do have a benchmark audit cost with the Wales Audit Office and the other UK Audit agencies to ensure that we are providing value for money and can demonstrate that to you and to our wider stakeholders. Just to provide assurance, our objective is to deliver public audit in Scotland that promotes transparency, accountability and best value in looking at the transparency question as well as looking at the ways in which our sister organisations across the UK explain fees and costs and so on. We have also been looking more widely and looking at organisations in New Zealand, Australia and public audit agencies across the globe to see how we can make the best of promoting world-class audit and at a very high level of transparency. Over 2016, how we deliver more transparency on fees is a key objective of the project that we are working on. I am pleased to hear that you are looking at good practice elsewhere around the globe. It is good to know that you accept the need for transparency and how fees are compiled. Audit Scotland provides services to both the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, as we know, but the costs of providing those services to clients are not apportioned in Audit Scotland's fee strategy, budget proposals or its annual accounts. Can you tell us about the volume and respective costs of audit work undertaken for the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General? I will ask Russell to come in with the detail of that, if I may, Mr McDonald. In broad terms, as we reported to you back in June, of the total of our costs for 2014-15, our overall income in local government was £11.5 million and the overall expenditure was £11.45 million. The remainder was all in relation to my responsibilities as Auditor General. The Accounts Commission is a £11.5 million Auditor General, and the remainder of our budget. Russell can give you more breakdown on that and a breakdown for the years that we are looking to now. One of the things that we do as part of our budget preparation is to do an allocation of the budget costs across the sectors so that we can start to monitor the extent to which the projected income meets the projected costs. For the annual financial audit, that is relatively straightforward, because it is based on the costs of the individual audits in each sector. For performance audit and best value work, it is an allocation based on the expected programme, and that programme will include pieces of work that are purely for the Accounts Commission, pieces of work that are purely for the Auditor General and a quite significant number that are joint and cross over the remits of both of those bodies. For the 2016-17 financial year, we estimate that 53 per cent of the performance audit and best value work will be done for the Accounts Commission and 47 per cent for the Auditor General. That includes apportioning the joint work between the two. That is how we go about assessing what we then need to recover by way of fees. Is that detailed anywhere in the report about those percentages? Those percentages are not explicitly in the report, but they are in one of our working papers underlying the budget. If the figures could be supplied, the one that you have just now. We can certainly do that, convener. The nearest reference to it in the submission you have is table 2 on page 12, which breaks down the income from charges to audited bodies by sectors. That obviously links very closely to the expenditure analysis and build-up that Russell referred to, but we can let you have that information very hard. I think that what the commission is keen to see is that that portion of the work that is done for the commission and that portion of the work that is done for the Auditor General, how far the costs are actually covered. We understand that entirely, convener. There is no problem letting you have the breakdown and we can certainly build it into the agreement that we have with the clerks of what information you would like in future. John Lennon. Obviously, the commission is keen to explore the potential impact of the Smith commission agreement proposals on Audit Scotland and ensure that Audit Scotland is in a position to deliver its responsibilities in relation to a revenue Scotland, HMRC and delivery of the Scottish rate of income tax. Although the commission appreciates the uncertainty of determining the full extent of the additional work that might be required following the 2015 Scotland ball, can Audit Scotland provide some detail on how the figure of £100,000 was arrived at and why, at this early stage in the process, you believe it to be necessary? Certainly, Mr Pentland. First of all, it is worth being clear with the commission that we are already doing a fair amount of work in relation to the new financial powers. For example, we have published today a report on implementation of the Scotland Act 2012, which looks ahead to the extent to which those arrangements, the establishment of revenue Scotland, the joint working with HMRC, are fit for purpose for the new powers that are coming to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Bill 2015. We are building up our expertise and capacity already in what the issues are. There are some significant uncertainties that will not be known until the Scotland Bill is agreed and the fiscal framework is in place. A lot of that relates to the tax-raising powers to control over all of income tax and the assignment of the first 10 points of VAT to the arrangements that are put in place for the new welfare powers that the Scottish Parliament will have. We simply will not know what audit work is needed for those until we know what the arrangements are that are in place. We are confident that the arrangements that we have in place already for auditing revenue Scotland, the Scottish Government's preparedness and for working with the national audit office around the audit of HMRC's revenue customs will all provide a sound foundation for it. The £100,000 that we have put into our budget proposal is based on building on that experience that we have so far. One of the things that we would like to use it for is to appoint a project manager who will co-ordinate the work that is going on with the National Audit Office and HMRC, with the Scottish Government, with Revenue Scotland, with SEPA and Registers of Scotland to look at what more is needed in the future to be able to do that and to continue the focus that we have on building expertise and capacity within Audit Scotland. We know that one of the challenges within the new powers for us as well as for the Government is that there currently aren't people with a great deal of experience of tax policy or a social security policy in Scotland, so us recruiting new staff is not going to be a good way of building the experience that we need. We have to think creatively about how we build our own capacity through our training programme, through our professional development, to make sure that we have the skills and experience to scope the work that is required and then to decide how best to carry it out. The £100,000 is very specifically about project managing our response and starting to build that expertise and capacity across our staffing more generally so that we are ready to deliver the audit work that we will need to do from 2017 onwards. I would also imagine that it is part of your preparation for delivering your responsibilities in relation to Revenue Scotland, HMRC and the delivery of the Scottish rate of income tax. Can you tell us what assessments you have made to ensure that the Governance and Framework and Management structure of Audit Scotland remains suitable in the face of those changes? We have been keeping the board up to date with regular updates on the progress, first of all, of the Scotland Act 2015. So far, we are not seeing anything as a board which suggests that the structure of Audit Scotland and its governance are not fit for purpose. What we are seeing are developments of the structures that are already in place, more powers for the Scottish Government and a very clear requirement for the Scottish Parliament to be able to exercise oversight of that. I think that the board's view is that our structures are fit for purpose. We clearly need to keep that under review in future and the need to work closely alongside the NAO to make sure that both the UK Parliament and the Scottish Parliament get the assurance that they require is a key one for us as the Scotland Bill comes into place, but that is the position that we are in so far. I am sure that Ian would want to add to that assurance for you as a commission. Yes, the board is very keen to keep a close eye on us. We do get regular reports, as the Auditor General has indicated. We are looking at our own governance arrangements, of course, and we are reviewing that. We are openness and transparency of the buzzwords and we are looking for more of it. A comment was made earlier about additional papers that you want. We are happy to liaise with your support staff, your clerk and your advisers as to what additional information you would find helpful. We give you an advance of any meeting. It is a big challenge for all of us. We have to balance good governance and cost effectiveness. I think that the board is achieving that, and it is penetrating areas that are of interest and of concern to you and indeed to our client groups. Given that HMRC is currently subject to the audit by the National Audit Office, does Audit Scotland envisage any scope to pursue a resource transfer from the National Audit Office to Audit Scotland? Given that, as one might assume, the extent of the NAO's input may decrease for those taxes that will, in future, be raised and administered in Scotland? At the moment, we are not envisaging that there will be any reduction in the audit work that the NAO needs to do in relation to HMRC. As you would expect, we have worked very closely with them over the past two years as the Scotland Act has been implemented, where the Scottish rate of income tax that is due to come into effect on 1 April next year will be collected by HMRC on behalf of the Scottish Government. First of all, the amount of work that the Comptroller and Auditor General in the Westminster Parliament needs to carry out in order to provide his audit opinion on HMRC will not reduce. HMRC is still doing that work, and he will need to carry out the same amount of work. We know, though, that the Scottish Parliament will have its own need for assurance about the Scottish income tax that is collected on its behalf by HMRC, and that will be additional work. The picture is complicated slightly by the fact that I do not have legal powers of access to HMRC for good reasons. What we have discussed with the Public Audit Committee in this Parliament and captured in a memorandum of understanding is a process by which my audit staff work very closely with the NaO's audit staff to plan the scope of what they are doing in relation to the Scottish rate of income tax to take assurance about the quality of the audit work that they are doing and to identify any issues that we think should be drawn to the attention of the Scottish Parliament. When the Comptroller and Auditor General produces his report on the Scottish rate of income tax that is required under the legislation, I produce a parallel report that captures my conclusions in relation to that work, and both are laid in the Scottish Parliament at the same time. The first two of those reports were laid in Parliament within the last three or four weeks, so this is very much an emerging field. The short answer to your question is that we are not envisaging there being any scope for a transfer of resources from the NaO to Audit Scotland to cover this. We are so far managing to cover the work that is required to do that from within our existing audit of the Scottish Government, but it is very much one of the areas that we are keeping under review as this develops and that may change in terms of the volume of resource required for us under the Scotland Bill, as the Scottish Parliament takes control of all of the rates and bans of income tax as well as is assigned the proceeds from the first 10 points of the rate of VAT. Significantly more money involved, potentially more audit work involved, and we are currently building on our experience of the first report to get a sense of what that might look like and therefore what resources we may need to bid for to you to make sure that we can carry out that and provide the Parliament here with the support that it needs. You therefore think that Audit Scotland should have a legitimate role in how there is going to be a lot of money collected through these different powers. Do you think that you should have a legitimate role in that process? I think that we do have a legitimate role. We recognise that absolutely. I think that it is recognised by this Parliament and by the National Audit Office and HMRC in the memorandum of understanding that we have signed. I am very confident that we have the groundwork there. What we do not yet have and will not do until we know more about the implementation of the Scotland Bill and the physical framework that surrounds it is what that means in terms of the amount of audit work that we do. That will become clearer over the next 12 months. The foundation is there, but we will continue to keep you up-to-date with our thinking about how much audit work is needed and what that means in terms of our budget bids to you next year. The Auditor General mentioned the UK spending review in her opening remarks, which, as we know, was announced on 25 November. Audit Scotland has acknowledged that the 2016-17 budget has been prepared with the uncertainty of the outcome of the UK spending review and its impact on the Scottish budget. What adjustments, if any, will be required to the 2016-17 budget proposal following the UK spending review on 25 November? We are not expecting any adjustments to our 2016-17 budget submission, Mr McDonald. The 16-17 budget submission covers two audit years. One is the audit year that is about to start, the 14-15 audit year for the final accounts from 31 March next year, and the other is the financial year that starts after that. All of that is already pretty clear. Once we know the impact of the UK spending review on the Scottish Government budget in January of 2016 and any policy changes that come from it, we will have a clear review of what different audit work may be needed in the years beyond that. For example, any changes to audited bodies or their responsibilities, any reductions in areas of spending, or potentially any significant areas of risk that may require more audit work. We will be keeping all of that under review. We are very conscious that the UK spending review is likely to mean something like a 4 per cent reduction in the Scottish block expenditure by about 2020. We are committed, as the chair has said, to continue applying pressure to our costs to make sure that we are doing our share towards that. Equally, we know that there are significant new responsibilities coming to the Parliament that we will have to support, and that will push our costs in the other direction. Short answer is that we are not expecting changes to the submission that you have before you today, but it will be part of our planning for budget submissions in future, as we look at how best to respond to all of the pressures that are in our environment at the moment. On page 4 of the current fee strategy, you say that you expect to be able to further reduce average audit charges in real terms for the 1617 audits, but the amount of it will depend inter alia on the outcome of the current audit procurement exercise. On page 9 of the budget proposal, you say that you have assumed that the remuneration paid to external firms on average will remain at the levels included in the current contracts. On page 15 of the budget proposals for 1617, you say that the budget assumes for planning purposes that payments to appointed auditors, such as firms, will increase by 1 per cent per annum in line with her payroll assumptions for our own staff's salary scales. Those three statements differ slightly. Can you reconcile them for us? We can, Mr Johnson. You are right that they are complex. The context is that we currently have a live procurement exercise under way, which is due to close next week as we receive the bids from firms. I will ask Russell Frist to talk you through the way those three statements interact with each other. For the purposes of our budget for 1617, we have to make an assumption about what the outcome of the procurement exercise will be. We have made the assumption for that purpose that the amounts bid by the firms would remain at the existing levels. We believe that that is a reasonably conservative assumption. We would expect to achieve at least that. I would be disappointed if we did not achieve at least that level, but we have to make an assumption for the purposes of producing the budget document. The 1 per cent increase that you refer to is for the future years, because once we have received the bids, they are bids as at a point in time for the first year of the new appointments. We expect that the prices will go up over the course of the appointment in line with the increases in our staff salaries. That is the same assumption as we have in the current contracts. We believe that, by doing that, by being clear with the firms how prices are reviewed over the course of the contract, it encourages them to bid as competitively as possible. I hope that that explains the difference. If we could go to page 10 of the budget proposal, I would say that plans to increase its number of whole-time equivalent staff by one in 2016-17. It goes on to page 16 to state that the additional staff member represents an investment in our publication and design resources. Given that the additional staff member has been described as an investment, does Audit Scotland anticipate future savings in outsourced publication and design costs? That is an area that is evolving and changing quite rapidly as the demand for online publication and accessibility and the design that is required to support that expands as we try to make our work accessible and transparent more widely. At the moment, we are not expecting to deliver savings from that particular area because we see that area of work expanding as we try to make our work more available, more easy to access and understand and to support the new website that we recently launched, which creates a much more interactive and dynamic opportunity to look at our work. We are not expecting savings in that particular area at the moment, but we will be looking across the business as a whole, as we always do, to see where we can reallocate resources or generate other efficiencies. When can you expect to see savings in that section? Savings in the Publications section. As I have said, in that particular area, that is an area where we are expanding. There is an expansion of the work to support making our work more accessible. What we will be looking for is to look across the business to see where we can make wider savings and efficiencies. When we enter 2016, we will be starting to look more closely at that and to look at how we can generate savings now that we are in our new office. We have made significant savings in the overall publications and communications budget by making much less use of hard copy-printed documents and much more use of the website. We have made savings there, but they are already captured in the baseline for this budget. On that, almost every publication from Audit Scotland, I end up with three hard copies from various sources. Maybe we have not refined this to the level that we need to yet. That is right away this morning. Appendix 1 operating cost statement trends show that Audit Scotland's expenditure on private firms has decreased marginally year on year from 2013-14 to 2016-17, which proposed budget. In the same period, Audit Scotland's gross administrative costs have marginally increased. Can you explain the reason behind those figures and how they reflect the efficiencies of private firms compared to Audit Scotland's in-house teams? The small decreases in the appointed audit firm costs over that period represent a combination of slightly reduced travel costs that the firms are billing us and changes in the make-up of their portfolios. For example, their portfolios reduced slightly when the police and fire reform took place. None of that reduction relates to the efficiency of the firms in relation to individual audits. That is simply the volume changes in the work and the slightly reduced travel and subsystems costs. It is not down to audit work, it is down to other efficiencies that have been made elsewhere, and you have identified that travel has been one of them. In the case of the firms, that is the factor. How does that balance when you send people out to firms? Can you make any savings in-house by travel and not travelling to audit? Indeed. As the audit teams constantly look at their travel approaches and have travel plans for each of the audits that try to minimise the costs. The other question is that the commission is aware that Audit Scotland pays private sector firms a set fee for an audit appointment and that it is sent for firms to plan and deliver their work within that fee. Obviously, that creates an incentive for those firms to be efficient as possible in order to maximise the profit for that assignment. Can Audits Scotland explain what some of the efficiencies that are sent to them are increased for in-house teams? For example, are local audit teams giving a no-snow monetary budget to which they plan and deliver their audits, or is it just giving them a time in weeks? They are given budgets that are essentially the same as the starting point is that they are the same as if a firm had been appointed to the same audit. They develop the budgets for each individual audit that is based on the risks. We then monitor the cost of the in-house teams delivering audits against what we would have paid a firm for the equivalent audit. Will there be that incentive for private firms to work on that? Can you give us some examples of where that efficiency is delivered in-house? As I just said, we monitor the cost of the in-house teams delivering audits against what we would have paid a firm for the same audit. We have been doing that over a number of years. When you look at the cost of the in-house teams over the period of the past three or four years, you see a constant downward trend, which is the result of us continually looking at our own methodologies, practices and monitoring against what the firms are delivering. There is an incentive for the in-house teams to compare themselves to firms, both in terms of quality and cost. It is a balance of the two. By way of benchmarking, if a private firm has given a fee of, say, £20,000, and they are able to do that in a week or so, there will be a substantial amount of profit in that. If they are then given the same sort of task to an in-house team, would you expect them, given the £20,000 that they have done in a week, to do in a week? We would expect the in-house team to do that for the same cost, yes? No, but I am asking them if they would do it in the week and the same week that the private company had done. Sorry, would we expect them to do it in the same way? Same way. We are talking money and we are talking time. Money has a £20,000 fee. Private firms are able to do that in a week. You are getting an in-house team to do the same job. Would you then expect them to give them £20,000 as the cost? However, would they then do it within the week? How they plan the audit would depend on their assessment of that particular audit. I am trying to know what I am trying to say here, Russell, that it is light for light. Do you have that comparability? Light to light cost is what we concentrate on. I am not talking about the cost, I am talking about the time. I mean, we have already agreed that it is £20,000 set aside. That is the time that I am trying to get to. Would they take a week for the same cost or would they take eight weeks for the same cost? Broadly, they would take close to a week. I would expect it to be similar, not necessarily identical. Do you have any potential examples of that? Can I expand on the answer very briefly, Mr Pentland? As Russell said, our starting point is to monitor the cost of the audit across the different providers that we have, the firms in each sector and the in-house team. Within that, we very deliberately give them room to think about how they carry out the work, how they resource it, the skill mix that they use and the audit methodologies that they use as long as they are meeting the quality standards that all auditors are required to under the international standards on auditing and our own quality requirements in the appointments that we make. We think that there is a benefit in that. It means that we are clear about the costs that we are paying, but we are also getting access to the innovation, creativity and professional expertise of each of the providers that we have, the firms on our own team, and their scopes across learning between them. If one firm or one of our in-house teams were to do the same work for the same cost but in a very different way, we would actually be interested in how they were doing that and seeking to learn from it to get the benefits in terms of both cost and quality. However, we do not measure in detail the time that goes into each input in the way that you are describing, because it feels to us that that is much less important than the cost and the quality outcomes that we get. Surely Caroline, the same private company, is bound by the same criteria and quality that it has got to deliver on. The point that we have emphasised on a number of occasions here is that, if we are using a private company as a benchmark, is that the benchmark that you are able to achieve or are you taking longer to do that for the same job? The cost and the quality are primary benchmarks. As you can imagine, the cost rolls up a lot of the time that is involved as well. Most of the cost of doing an audit is the cost of the people, and that is broken down by how much you pay them and how much time they spend. There are different ways of getting your skill mix in place to do the work. We focus primarily on the cost, but we are also interested in the way that the work is done because there is scope to limit. We are absolutely not supplying different benchmarks to the firms and to our in-house team. As Russell said, the benchmark is the same, the fee that we charge, and we compare that across the life of the audit. In fact, the Audit Scotland board received a report on it fairly recently, which gave that picture of the way in which the in-house audit services team compares across the different sectors with the firms that we use in each sector as part of that assurance process. If I may. This is the document demonstrating base value in the audit services group, which is the in-house team at Mr Pentland. Rightly probes that question. It is a very valid one and one that I have been asking and the board has been asking. The net effect of that is a report on 29 October to look at this whole question, because it is a fair point. If someone has allocated 14 days for a job and there is an incentive in the part of private firms to get in there and do it in 12, what is the incentive for Scotland to do it in 12 if they get 14 days for a similar task? There is a qualification to that, but we do check that firms are not pricing it for 14 days and then trying to get it out in 10 and pocketing the difference, if we forgive the vulgar expression that I am using, of pocketing the difference, because you have to check that the quality of the work is the first high standard. Equally, we insist that the in-house team does not accept that it is cost effective but justifies that it is cost effective. That is why we commissioned us paper to look at it. It shows that there is a comparator there. In one area, of course, it is slightly higher cost and we are looking at that. We are very conscious of the need to make sure that, in the mixed economy of an in-house team with external consultants, there is a benchmark, there is a balance, there is a cost effect on this and there is a qualitative threshold which we would insist has to be maintained to satisfy you and indeed the wider Parliament in the discharge of the responsibilities. Our job in the board is to make sure that the resources and staff are made available to the Auditor General and to the Accounts Commissions, the separate statutory bodies, as you know, one of the Seventy Thedal whole Government Scotland Act. We have to make sure that we do that in a very effective and efficient way. At the long and short of this answer, Mr Pentland, you are on the money in that one in asking that question and we have already looked at that and been supplied with information that gives us some assurance that there is a balance over the piece but there are some adjustments to be required here to look at the question of cost effectiveness. With regard to how you set right, you are taking board, you are hiring somebody from the private sector right. How do you negotiate your contract? Do you say to the private sector firm, here is £20,000, go away and do that job or is it by negotiation that you arrive at the figure? We specify in the tender documents that are out at the moment, we specify what the indicative fee for each audit that is out to tender is. We are specifying what we think the fee should be for that audit and, as we have explained in previous sessions, there is the ability for the auditor and the audited body to agree a slightly higher or lower figure depending on the circumstances that they face in any given year. We set the expected fee for each audit in advance. The firms, as part of the competitive tendering exercise, bid for the discount that they are prepared to offer against that indicative fee and we use that to drive down the average cost of order and then to benchmark against the in-house team. There is a competitive element to it that takes our starting point about what the fee needs to be in a well-managed body that has good internal controls. We apply competitive pressure to that and we use that to benchmark across the piece over the life of the five-year audit appointments to make sure that we are getting the balance between the cost and quality right and the ability to compare across the number of firms that we have involved and our in-house team. On page 7, it says that you make the assumption, as you must when projecting a budget, that there will be no volume changes in the planned programme of national performance audits, but should an urgent priority arise, do you have the capacity or the ability to postpone assignments so that extra work can be taken on or is there an alternative route by which you can fund additional unplanned work? The first of those is exactly how we do it, Mr Johnston. We start off with a plan for the work that we expect to carry out. Most of those will be things that we think are of significant public interest and with real value for money or financial management's implications. If something urgent comes along, we will look at the resources that we have and at how we can reschedule to respond to that quickly as we need to. We also, in the programme, include an allowance, an assumption that there will be three or four audits every year in my area of responsibility and three or four in the Accounts Commission's responsibility, where an issue will come out of the audit that requires us to respond to it. An example that will be very fresh in Mr Beattie's mind at the moment is Cotebridge College, where there was a significant governance failure in relation to severance payments identified through the audit. We had to respond quickly to that to carry out more audit work to produce a section 22 report to lay before the Parliament and the Public Audit Committee. We assume that there will be a number of those each year. We do not know what they will be, but it is a pretty fair bet that there will be some there. We manage the programme as a dynamic thing to make sure that we are focusing on the most urgent things as well as the most important things. A couple of questions. On page 13, Audit Scotland states that the 2016-17 budget has targeted a reduction of £79,000 in audit support external fees. That is against a budget approved for 2015-16. However, the operating cost statement on page 19 shows that the budget line for audit support external fees has increased by £121,000 between 2015-16 and 2016-17. How do you reconcile the targeted reduction of £79,000 with the increased year-on-year budget amount that is shown in the operating cost statement? That is the real challenge that we have with you, convener, about the bi-annual national fraud initiative work. You will recall that that comes in every two years as a UK wide initiative. Our contribution to the cost is £200,000 and 2016-17 is a year when that £200,000 is back in again. If you take that out, you will see the 79,000 reduction that we refer to in the budget submission that you started your question with. I do recall that that has come up before. I am sorry, it comes up every time. On page 19, the costs of the council commission members is budgeted to increase marginally by £3,000. Maybe it is a question for last year's budget proposal, but the costs of the council commission members increased from £148,000 in 2014-15 to £158,000 in 2015-16. What was the reason for the £10,000 increase in the current financial year? There was a marginal increase in the expected number of days that commission members were expected to spend on commission business for which they were remunerated. That was agreed by the Scottish Government, which set the remuneration for commission members. Remind me, how many board members do they have? 12. 12. I have one or two minor questions myself, but maybe I can ask if the other members have got anything that they would like to raise at this point. Probably going back to the very first question about the fee strategy, I think that there was an assumption that the review that has been completed in our hands by now brought my attention to your report, because one of the most common words in the report is to assume or to make assumptions. We know that the meaning of that is supposed to be the case or without proof. Perhaps my question is how much latitude is in your assumptions. In addition to what we assume we will get out of the procurement. Just in general, you know your whole report. Is an odd word that chair, is it not? I think that assumptions are generally made by economists, but for auditors to use them is interesting far less the fact that we don't have cost accountants at our disposal. There is no doubt that certain assumptions have to be made. As for the intractable problem of how one's crystal ball gazing or assumptions, which is a nicer way of putting it, are made, I shall defer to the man who knows the intricacies of this labyrinth and complexity, Russell. Indeed, there are assumptions in any budget where you are looking forward, you will inevitably make assumptions. We make assumptions about pay costs, we make assumptions about the outcome of the procurement exercise, we make assumptions about future pension costs. A lot of budgets and projections are based on assumptions, so that is the word that we would use. In relation to the setting of fees, there are not only influenced by those macro-level assumptions, but there are also allocations to distinguish the word in terms of how we allocate central costs between the different audits. That is as much an art as it is a science. If you have central costs, take property costs as a fairly basic example, we have a number of different audits that we carry out, different types of audits, but we all sit on one floor in one office. We have to make an assumption, an allocation, of that cost between the different lines of activity. In our case, the way that we do most of that is on the basis of staff numbers, as being the one that we have picked. Other organisations might have done it on the basis of trying to estimate the square footage occupied by different groups, because our groups work all together. That is probably not an appropriate one for us, and staff numbers are a more appropriate one. There are many, many examples of that as you build up the budget and, indeed, as you build up the fee strategy. Do any other members have anything additional that they would like to ask? I have one or two fairly trivial questions to clear things in my own mind. On page 4 of the budget proposal under the paragraph New Work, you are talking about Revenue Scotland and the Food Standards Scotland, and you are saying that legislation does not allow us to charge a fee for those audits. Is that under the Public Moray's Act 2014? It is under the Public Finance and Accountability Act 2000. On page 13, you have integrated joint boards. Will you be auditing them all? Between ourselves and the in-house teams and firms, yes, we will. For that, you will not be able to charge a fee. For those, we will be able to charge a fee. You will be able to charge a fee, so it is just these two particular bodies. It is Revenue Scotland and Food Standards Scotland because they have been set up as non-ministerial bodies within the Scottish Administration. The broad principle, convener, is that we cannot charge for bodies that are funded directly from the Scottish Consolidated Fund and it is to save that circular flow of money for audit fees going round. Beyond that, we are able to and we do charge for all of the audits that we carry out. On page 6, I see that we have pensions again, a perennial problem, and the General Assembly has been turning up and reporting on various public bodies on the question of the public pension deficit. This year, it is £2 million, or at least for 2015-16, it is £2 million. The mysteries of this life, when you are looking for £2 million, which is not actual cash, does not affect the cash in your pocket and is an adjustment made between the Treasury and the Scottish Office, which does not affect their overall allocation. I, as a humble solicitor, understand that to be the case. Again, I did say to, before we came here, that this is one of the questions that set me up. If I were sitting your side of the table, I would ask because it is one of these great mysteries when is money not money, when is cash not cash and when is £2 million just something that floats in the ether. If Russell is able to disentangle that particular guardian knot in 30 seconds, he will get a prize. Audit Scotland pays over in hard cash contributions to the Lothian pension fund for its staff based on what the actuary assesses as being the contributions needed. When the actuary makes that assessment, it makes it based on its long-term assumptions about what it will cost to provide pensions. Accountants, unfortunately, do not allow the same assumptions to be used for the purposes of producing accounts. International financial reporting standards require, rather than the long-term assumptions that the actuary uses, they require spot assumptions to be used, i.e. the market rates that apply as at the balance sheet date, on 31 March. In particular, interest rates are at an all-time low, and the actuary assumes that interest rates investment performance will be better over the longer term than spot rates are now. There is a difference, and that difference for us for £15-16 is around £2 million. Yes, you and many other bodies, I'm afraid, are faced with that. Page 8, under pay, you say that pay scales increased by 1 per cent, presumably excluding incremental increases. Have any staff received an excess of that 1 per cent? No, that is our budget proposal going forward, and there is a budget assumption in there. We had a two-year pay deal that ends on 31 March, and it was a flat rate on inflation rate increase applied to all staff, including management team, assistant directors, everyone. On page 16, just curious, co-operation tax payable, where does that come from? Small amount of bank interest under tax law—it doesn't matter that we're a public body—we still have to pay tax on that. That's £5,000, which means that you earn bank interest of probably £20,000-25,000, which means that you had a lot of money in the bank. Presumably, that was related to your premises. No, that relates to the timing differences between us receiving the instalments of charges from audited bodies and making payments to firms and staff. Okay, almost finished. I was just curious. On page 19, miscellaneous income, which in 2013-14 was £164,000, has dropped to zero. Has that been reallocated, or has it gone off? It's generally succumbent income, convener, where we've succonded staff to other bodies and received the cost of their salary back in again. It does vary from year to year anyway, and it's fair to say that, recently, we have found it harder to both succond staff out and succond staff in as the financial pressures are affecting bodies, but that's the bulk of what's in that line, I think. I've got one last question, which is in appendix 2, page 16, in connection with auditors having discretion to agree fees with an arrangement of plus-minus 10 per cent and 20 per cent for small audits. Firstly, what's a small audit? Secondly, why 10 per cent and 20 per cent? Is it simply a notional amount or does it relate to anything? A small audit is one with a fee of, I think, under £20,000. The reason for having figures in there at all is that we are trying to strike a balance between the auditor and the audited body agreeing the appropriate fee for the audit and either party putting undue pressure on the other. The point of having that is to allow us to intervene or review at least the agreement if it is looking to be well outside the expected audit. There may well be a good reason for it, but we want to have some involvement and some say in that, if auditors and audited bodies are agreeing fees outside a parameter, 10 per cent and 20 per cent are the ones that we've always had. I think that originally they were based on similar figures being used by other audit agencies when we brought them in. How often is that discretion used? Below 10 per cent, very rarely. Above 10 per cent, yes, it does happen. It happens where a body has got specific problems that require an audit to do more work. A very recent example would be the police authority. I guess that concludes the public part of our meeting for today. Thank you for attending. Further papers should be required. If we liaise with your clerks and your advisers, we will try to make sure that you have them in plenty of time to inform your discussions. As previously agreed, we now move into private session.