 Good morning and welcome to the 11th meeting of the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny Committee in 2017. Can everyone make sure that they switch off electronic devices or indeed switch them to silent mode so that it does not interrupt the meeting? Agender item 1 invites us to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we agreed? Thank you very much. Item 2 is where we will take oral evidence on the Order to general's report entitled managing new financial powers and update. I welcome to the committee, Caroline Gardner, the Auditor General for Scotland, Mark Taylor, assistant director and Gordon Smaill, senior manager both from Audit Scotland. I invite the Auditor General to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener. The Scottish Parliament's financial powers are changing substantially. The Scotland acts of 2012 and 2016 devolve new responsibilities for taxes, social security and borrowing. Implementing those new financial powers is a huge and complex programme of work. Today's report examines how the Scottish Government, Revenue Scotland and the Scottish Fiscal Commission are implementing or preparing to introduce those new powers. It also looks at how the Scottish Government is developing its public financial management arrangements in this context. My report assesses progress to February this year, since I last reported on the area in December 2015. The Scottish Government has made some good progress by getting the foundations in place for managing the new powers. It's updated its structures for overseeing them, has good programme management processes in place and is establishing arrangements to share data with the relevant bodies. I'm also pleased to report that the transition of the Scottish Fiscal Commission to a statutory body is being managed effectively and Revenue Scotland is making good progress in preparing for further devolved taxes. The scale of the change needed to implement and manage the new financial powers is significant. There will be substantial changes in the type and volume of work that the Scottish Government does, which will have major staffing implications. The Government is currently identifying the staff and skills that it needs, but recruiting enough people with the required skills may well be difficult. At the end of 2015-16, £18.5 million had been spent on programmes to implement the new financial powers, and set-up costs will increase significantly over the next four years as the Government takes on its new social security responsibilities. The Government needs to build a clearer picture of the potential future costs and plan how it will fund them within its budget. Establishing the new social security arrangements is an exceptionally complex task and will require detailed plans. The Government's programme to deliver those arrangements is in its early stages, but once its approach is more established, it should share its proposals publicly. That will help to support scrutiny and provide the public with more information in this key area. Overall, the powers in Scotland at 2016 are moving the public finances into new territory. Once fully implemented, half of what is spent in Scotland will be raised in Scotland, and the budget will be subject to greater uncertainty and volatility than ever before. In this changing environment, a more strategic approach to public financial management and reporting is needed. That includes a medium-term financial strategy based on clear policies and principles. The Scottish Government is developing its approach to financial management, and it now needs to finalise and publish its principles for using the borrowing and reserve powers. It is also taking steps to provide a more comprehensive picture of the public finances. It is important that the Parliament and the public have the information that they will need to understand and scrutinise the Government's financial decisions. Convener, as always, we are happy to answer the committee's questions. Do you have any comments on the Scottish Government's response? I do not think that we have any specific comments at this stage, convener. Thank you. That is helpful. Colin Beattie. Thank you, convener. General, just to clarify one thing in my mind, we talk about new tax-raising powers. The tax-raising element of it is various taxes such as the land tax and all the rest of it. Those are raised in Scotland and we handle that here. There are other larger taxes such as the allocation of VAT and the income tax. It is collected centrally and then allocated back to Scotland on a notional basis according to what it believes that our share is. Is that a correct interpretation? That is right. The devolved taxes, the existing landfill tax and the Scottish building land transactions tax are currently set and raised in Scotland. The new air passenger duty and the aggregates levy will be set and raised in Scotland, but the income tax and the assigned VAT will be set in Scotland. The income tax will be set in Scotland, which is raised by HMRC and VAT, will be an assignment of a share of the VAT that is raised UK-white. It is important to keep that distinction between those that we raised and those that were allocated. One of the things that I am a bit concerned about is the costs of setting that up. There is an allocation of £200 million from the UK Government, but on page 11, paragraph 14 of your report, the belief is that this is going to cost more. Do we have any idea where the pressure points are that are going to result in more? How was the £200 million actually reached? Was it just taken out of the air as being something reasonable or was it based on some calculation? The £200 million is the figure that is contained in the fiscal framework agreement that was reached last spring between the UK and the Scottish Government. I think that it is fair to say that it was simply an agreement between the two Governments of what they thought was reasonable. I will ask Gordon if I may to give you a bit more information about where the Scottish Government is on its planning for the future costs of implementation. That is right to highlight. This is a key element of the new setup and what it is costing and understanding the costs of what it was taking to implement the new powers. The short answer is that there is not a lot of information available and this is one of the key points that we have in the report. We have got a pretty good fix in the spending to date and the amounts that were included in last year's and this year's budget, but in terms of details beyond that, we do not have that available. The Scottish Government has identified the amount, as I say, including the 1718 budget, but at the time of the budget that was produced, there are no underpinning figures to that. We do not know the detail breakdown. One of the key elements of this report is to point out the importance of being cost aware, to identify and to monitor the costs that are being spent, but what we are saying is that, at an individual project and programme level, there is information available but there is less aggregation and so an ability to oversee, if you like, at the highest level what the total spend is. That is one of the recommendations in the report. The £200 million that was set, there was actually nothing behind that. It was just a figure that they decided was reasonable or there must have been a basis. As the old general says, it came out with the negotiations as part of the fiscal framework and I do not have any further information as to the basis of that. Certainly, the Scottish Government at the time was saying that that will not be sufficient and, as we say in the report, that is what we were told by Government as well. Where are the main pinch points going to be on this? I see on page 14, for example, paragraph 23, you talk about additional budget being allocated to develop size and skills of the finance team, one relatively small area. Where is the money going to be spent? Where are we going to see that budget overrun? In terms of where the main area of spend will be, what we have seen today is a build-up over the last couple of years as the devolved taxes have come in to play and as some of the other elements have come in to play. However, the significant areas around the social security arrangements as they start to come in and the bulk of the money that has been set aside in the current year's budget is for social security implementation and the key areas there, as you would expect, are things such as developing IT systems to support the new arrangements and staffing new staff coming in to manage the programmes and then to help formulate policy and, in fact, overall delivery of the new arrangements. The social security side at the moment is looming rather large. Is that going to be completely within the Scottish Government in terms of those elements in terms of systems and management and so on, or is it still delegated down from a central pot? I hope that you made that clear. I understand where you are coming from and Mark may be able to add a bit more detail about social security arrangements themselves. That is an area that, as we point out here, we are saying in the report that it is right that the Scottish Government is taking its time to understand what it is wishing to achieve through this. It has started to give indications of what its proposed models and the options for that might be, but in terms of the detail of what that is going to look like, it is fairly light on the ground at the moment. We are saying in the report that that is a fair position to be in because it is a big complicated job, probably one of the biggest jobs that the Scottish Government will have to do, but in terms of getting the costs, the more that the Government understands what it wishes to achieve, the more it will have better information on what we are saying here in the report, and what we are recommending is that in all areas, including social security, there is a much clearer idea of what costs are going to be. In a difficult area, that is all new to everybody, if you like, but what we are saying is that there is a real need to have a close look at what you think the costs might be, so at least there is a starting off point, a conversation about where the costs and the spending will be, and then a basis to then go back and to monitor that. That is one of the areas of the recommendations. Given the fact that the Government has already said that it is going to overrun the £200 million, it must have a fair idea where those overruns are going to be, because they must have done at least something in the back of an envelope or something to say that we are going to be going over in those areas, so there must be somebody somewhere who must have a grip of that. It is difficult for us to say on the basis of the evidence that it is available to us. We know the amounts that are included in the budget. As I said for 1718, it is set out in the report. What we do not have is a breakdown of the detail of that. I would assume that there will have been some consideration as the Government has put its budget together for 1718, but in terms of the information that is available to us, and indeed the public, it is an important element of that, I think, is the transparency around what the costs might be, so that people can understand the very questions that you are asking of us this morning. You have already mentioned the question of the aggregated costs. Is there anybody in the Scottish Government that has a grip of those aggregated costs? Do you think so, if they have already worked out that they are going to be in excess? There will have been work and calculations to bring forward the amount that is included in the budget. As I said, we do not have details of that. What the report is calling for is that it says at the start that there is an understanding of costs in individual programmes and projects. What we are not seeing or what we see is less evidence of is that aggregation and then oversight by the structures that are set out in the report in terms of the fiscal framework implementation board. Some oversight of the totality of the amounts to be spent, so that questions, you know, there is an understanding amongst everybody what it is going to be caused, but, importantly, people can be held to account for the budgets that have been allocated. Is that a flaw in the process or is it simply inevitable at this stage that we do not have that information? It is more to do with where we are in terms of the programmes. I think that there are good examples of, if you take down into a bit more detail, good information available, for example, about what revenue Scotland has spent in implementing the two devolved taxes that are currently in play. There is something about the evolution and the understanding of the new arrangements. What we are saying here is that, at this stage, we are at a stage now where there needs to be a much better idea of what the costs are going to be, particularly in the big new complicated areas such as social security that allow us for a better more scope for better management of the costs that are incurred and, as I say, oversight and holding to account if and when things happen to go away from budget. Liam Kerr Thank you, convener. Just a very quick matter arising on that. Page 23, paragraph 55, you are talking about the Scottish rate of income tax. I just wanted to clarify my own understanding because you mentioned that HMRC has estimated the annual running costs of SRIT, which I understand are reimbursed by the Scottish Government to HMRC, will increase to around £5 million if the Scottish rate of income tax is different. Can you just explain that for me, please? Yes, I will kick off and Mark may want to give you a bit more detail. As we confirmed in response to Mr Beattie's question, although the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Government have responsibility for setting all of the rates and bans for non-savings, non-dividend income tax, it will continue to be collected as part of the overall HMRC systems. HMRC has been of the very clear view since this was discussed, that the costs of collection will be lower for them if the rates and bans are the same in Scotland as in the rest of the UK than if they are different. If they are different, they will need to make changes to their IT systems in order to collect the correct amount of Scottish income tax from each of the relevant Scottish taxpayers. There may also be additional costs in communication, compliance and the other elements of the costs of HMRC around it. The £5 million is their current estimate of that. We show in the report how the estimates have changed since the Scotland Act 2012 came through, but I think that that is the best current estimate that is available. Is there a deminimus on that, such as how different does the tax rate have to be? Or is it just that if there is any variation whatsoever, then the finance secretary will have to budget an extra £4.5 million? That is the question that you would want to explore with the Scottish Government and HMRC when you take evidence from them. My assessment is that there probably is a level where there is a cost to any change and the more significant the change, the greater the cost may be because of the compliance issues. Obviously, HMRC is going to be a better place to respond to that question. Auditor General on page 13, looking at paragraph 17, just at the bottom of the paragraph, halfway through, it says that the Scottish Government will need to develop more detailed cost estimates and refine them as policy discussions are made about how to implement and deliver certain powers. You give an example. Just for clarity, when would you expect to see that level of detail? Is there any kind of suggested timeline for that? We set out in the report the timeline for the devolution of the new social security powers on exhibit 6, page 26. You will see that there is a phased implementation running up to 2021 with some discretion for the Scottish Government on what it intends to do. To an extent, there is a trade-off between the extent of the changes that it wishes to make and the time it will take to do that. However, 2021 clearly is not very far away from now, so we think that having more clarity soon would be valuable in terms of the Parliament's ability to scrutinise it, but also the quality of the Government's plans themselves. I think that that covers it along with what I was saying to Mr Bety earlier. On page 14, looking at paragraphs 23 and 24, 23 starts with individual directorates and programmes identifying the staff and skills that they need to implement and manage the financial powers in the Scotland Act. In 24, the Scottish Government recognises the significant staffing implications of the new financial powers and the challenges that it faces in recruiting staff for the skills that it needs. First of all, do we have any estimate as to how many staff will be required? In your view, how significant are the challenges for that recruitment? I think that the short answer to the question is that there is no specific estimate of the additional staff that will be required. The Government's approach in the outset is to think about the range of work that it is doing and where its priorities are and how it can allocate and reallocate staff to those priorities. Alongside that is a need in some areas to bring in additional skills, to bring in new skills and to bring in a broader range of skills. Where the Government has got to in that is by commencing that programme of work and progressing that programme of work. That will continue and, as we say in the report, it continues on a kind of project by project department by department basis. As additional needs are identified, a case for that will be considered and made within the Government's overall plans for staffing. One of the key elements of that is related, of course, to the cost question. As decisions are made, as clarity is reached over how individual things will be implemented, a key element of that is who are the people that we need and how do we get them and do we have that capacity at the moment as a Government or do we need to add to that capacity? Overall, in terms of the overall question, we are quite clear of the scale of the task here. One of the key questions for Government is the extent to which that can be absorbed within current resource levels and the extent to which that needs to have additional resources deployed within the civil service for this activity. A key part of that is the model that is adopted for social security and what the resources and requirements around that are, and the Government has made some commitments to announce its plans in that area in the spring this year. There is a statement planned in the House this afternoon, which may or may not give some clarity of that. As those things are decided and as that has worked through, some of the answers to those questions will become clear. What we are clear about in the report is that there is a need to do that and there is a need to have the high-level figures that emerge from that in a cost sense. On page 19, in paragraph 42, it says, one of the biggest challenges facing the transition programme is the recruitment of enough staff with the right skills. Recruitment campaigns that ran from September to December 2016 did not fill all posts on a permanent basis, including the chief executive. Could you explain to me, if you have the detail of it, what the recruitment campaign was and if there is any reason that they were not able to fill the posts that they had hoped they would? I will talk about that. This is a crucial element of course of establishing the new Scottish Physical Commission, which in itself is a very important component of the whole new devolved finances that we have in Scotland. In terms of the staffing side of things, one of the challenges, I think, and picking up on Mark's point, is that there are skillsets that, for example, the physical commission needs that are new to Scotland, things like forecasting and the like. They proceeded with their recruitment campaign. I think that they were quite surprised by the positive response that they got to that when we were speaking to the commissioners themselves and to officials at the Scottish Physical Commission. I think that they set out on the basis that they knew they probably wouldn't get everything that they needed the first time around and therefore they had pretty good contingency plans in place. So taking together what they were able to achieve through the recruitment exercise alongside drawing on officials from Scottish Government were of the view that, as of this month in fact, when they take up their new statutory role, they have what they need to do to perform their function and we will be able to build on that in terms of the transition to its own staff, if you like, in due course. Our sense, based on the evidence that we had, is that they are pretty well placed to be able to deliver on their new activities. I think that there is more work needed in terms of bringing the leadership to the Scottish Physical Commission in terms of establishing a permanent arrangement for chief executive. What they have just now is working well in terms of the transition arrangements in a new deput chief executive. So they have that leadership. It is that balance between having proper leadership, which we believe they have at the moment, and allowing that new person to come in and to do what that new person wishes to do in terms of taking the physical commission forward. In summary, in a good position just now and a bit more work to do to get it fully established into the way that the commissioners would like to see the commission itself. Coming from a region in the north east, where we really do struggle to recruit into the public sector in a variety of areas, not being able to have a full staff complement, especially on something new like this, could really hold you back. How high is the risk, do you think, of not being able to recruit all the necessary posts? I think that, when we were talking to the commissioners themselves, I think that they were quite pleased with the response that they got. I think that they were pleased from the point of view that of the calibre type of people in backgrounds. I think that there is a sense, and we see this in other areas, for example, in Revenue Scotland. There is a feeling amongst people that they would like to be involved from the start in this new area of work. It does not happen very often, obviously, and there is a real desire to be part of that. I think that that confidence as well. We certainly probe that as part of Rodd at Work, because it is such a vital part of the work of the physical commission. In terms of what we were hearing from both officials and commissioners themselves, there was a confidence that they had what they needed to do to be able to deliver the important function that the statue expects of them. In the report, in that same paragraph, it mentions that interim chief executive and appointed interim deputy chief executive, as well. I just know from my counsel experience that when you have someone who is interim or covering, there is usually an additional cost to that. Has there been any additional cost to have somebody filling in interim rather than permanent? I do not have the detail of that to hand, but it is part of the transition. Having gone out and looked for a permanent chief executive and we are not able to do that. It is important that, in those circumstances, you get the right person for the job, but it is not a case of just filling a post that has to be the right person that sets the right tone and provides the right leadership for the organisation. I do not have the detail in terms of the costs, but the fact that they do not have a permanent chief executive in place at the moment suggests that there is budget capacity to be able to support the existing leadership that they have in the physical commission. I appreciate that. I know from counsel that we have directors and we cannot recruit. We have had in Aberdeen just, for example, and you have to pay over the odds for someone from an agency just in order that it is filled, so I was not sure if that was similar to this case. I think that they have been able to find the right people that they need from through existing channels to carry them through the arrangement that is there. The chief executive has come from a civil service background and, as we say in here, they have taken it to a good place to be ready to deliver what it needs to do from April. The last question, which is page 16, is paragraph 31. It said that, ensuring a smooth transition of powers from the UK Parliament to the Scottish Parliament requires officials in the bodies involved to build and maintain effective working relationships, which I agree with, but just out of interest, has there been evidence to suggest that that has not been happening now that it is including your report? I was not sure if you picked up on something that made you say that. I think that we are simply reporting on the arrangements that are in place and their importance going forward, given the interdependencies that are baked into the fiscal framework between the UK Government and the Scottish Government for making good use of the new financial powers. I think that our evidence is that those arrangements are developing well and that issues that have arisen have been resolved, including, for example, the initial block grant adjustments on the two devolved taxes. If I had a comment to make, I think that there is scope for more transparency about the working of the arrangements as we go forward. As we move into a world where Scotland has control or oversight of more than half of the funding that it spends, to have more clarity about what meetings are planned of the joint ministerial committees and of what has been discussed and agreed at them, I think would be a bonus for the Parliament and for Scotland more widely. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to the auditor general and staff. First, I thank you very much for the report that you have given us. It is very helpful, very thorough, and I think that it is very positive in a sense. It provides us with a really useful framework for the scrutiny that is going to be required here. My question relates to the scrutiny landscape and what it might look like going forward. As you have noted in the report, it transfers back to Scotland about £22 million. It is almost two thirds of the current Scottish budget, so it is really important that we understand where the scrutiny will lie. We do know, of course, that the finance committee in the budget review group will be looking at the reporting elements here, and I am delighted to say that it will be part of that process, too. I wonder whether the auditor general could give us a flavour of where he sees the scrutiny taking place and whether it would be this committee alone that would be looking at the bulk of it. I note in page 13 from the chart that is there that there are inter-governmental relationships going on here and that it is clearly the case. Where is the opportunity for yourself as an organisation to participate in that scrutiny process? Where is the opportunity for this committee to oversee and scrutinise what is going on there? You are absolutely right to identify that this really is a very significant change in the Scottish Parliament's financial, public financial management responsibilities from a position very recently where the Parliament's role was really to agree how the budget should be spent to one that is much more about how it should be raised, how it should be raised and what the priorities are for investment for the future, both in capital terms and social investment. I think that that was very much the thinking between the establishment of the budget process review group that was set up between Parliament and the Government. I am pleased to be a member of that and have a chance to play the views here into the deliberations. I think that one of the key focus of the work so far within the group has been how to support parliamentary scrutiny in a way that is workable and practicable for Government as well. I think that we are seeing some thinking developing there that is included in the consultation report that was published back in March for how we can balance what will inevitably be a relatively constrained period for scrutiny of the budget with much wider scrutiny across the financial year of what we are achieving for that and making sure that that is in the context of a longer-term financial strategy as we are describing in this report. I think that that is all real progress and the details will be worked through over the next couple of months running up to the publication of that report and its discussion by Parliament for the future. I think that one of the issues that we have a particular interest in and that this committee does as well is that sort of wavy line of devolution that Mr Beattie referred to earlier, that we are moving from a world where the devolution settlement in the original legislation was very clear if something was not reserved, it was devolved, the Scottish Parliament had oversight of it and I audited it and provided reports to this Parliament to this committee to be able to use in scrutiny, increasingly for large parts of the budget for income tax, for VAT, for some of the social security powers, that responsibility will be shared with the UK Government departments which are and will continue to be audited by the national audit office and my counterpart the controller in order to general and I think it's fair to say we're still working through how those arrangements will work in practice. You might recall from your previous time on this committee that we've got a starting point in place in the arrangements that were agreed for auditing the Scottish rate of income tax, they are a starting point but they're probably not going to be sufficient to cover the whole range of new responsibilities and we then have other areas like the Crown Estate and some of the other areas that are devolved under the 2016 act where we're really just at the starting point of thinking if they're still in a relationship with the UK Government and what that means for this committee. So work in progress but I think an important issue for this committee to stay cited on as those arrangements are developed and indeed to influence. Yeah, I certainly remember of course the discussion about your involvement in the SRIT and the memorandum of understanding that's in place there but did you just say that that will apply that kind of role for yourselves, will apply to all the other, the air departure tax, the VAT component, will you have a definite role in all of these to participate or even scrutinise what's going on between the two Governments? Things that are fully devolved I think they're very straightforward so we know that the air departure tax will be administered by Revenue Scotland. I already audit Revenue Scotland and can report to you about the audit of that body as well as through reports like this on the overall process. For the areas that are a shared responsibility then the arrangements will need to be developed to reflect that shared responsibility and my view is that the arrangements that we have in place around the Scottish rate of income tax provide a useful starting point but they're not the full story they'll need further development. I can see that Gordon is looking to come in here so I'm inviting to add. I'm just going to agree and more what's been done I think. Okay on page 24 in that very useful exhibit 5 it's about SRIT but it gives us a positive breakdown of the costs going forward from the initial estimate of about £45 million down to about £30 million and that's very welcome but you do notice in that colleagues that the IT estimate has doubled from the estimate in 2010 till now is there any? I was looking for some further information in the report about that. Can you give us any information about what the reason for that may be? I think the starting point is to recognise that since this report was prepared the Scottish and UK Governments have prepared a further annual report on their progress in implementing the new powers and that includes some updated figures around what they expected costs are 2017 figures essentially and that indicates IT costs of between 13 and 17 million so they're estimating that those will drop a down a little bit from the 20 million but still above where they initially set off. I think the sense we've got is that at through time there's been more of a focus on this project on making the developing IT system so that it can accommodate the variation in rates that may or may not be decided by the Scottish Parliament and that's where the focus of the work has been and there's been need for less work on some of the staff side and some of the communications side and less decisions to spend less in those areas so it's really about the balance between the input through people and people's time and advice and those sort of things towards spending money on getting the IT to work in a way that supports the new powers. Last question, convener, just in the general scrutiny landscape again, in order to general DC yourself bringing to us our report on the VAT component in one week perhaps and their departure due to the next, it's just so that we can keep a focus on the initial stages of these transfer of powers and revenue raising and so on so that we can clearly see what we're dealing with in terms of the transfer of powers. It may be important to the committee to focus solely on these for some period of time until they bed in perhaps and then we can generally regard them as part of the whole pot that we would ultimately be wanting to scrutinise. Do you see a kind of separation initially so that the members and the committee and the Parliament have clear lines of sight on these particular powers? At the moment, my plan is to continue producing for this committee a report like this about every spring time, just giving you an update on progress with the overall implementation of the 2016 act, plus of course the annual section 22 report on the Scottish Government's accounts that will come to you in the autumn each year. There will be two bites at the cherry on the big picture. Beyond that, there may well be instances where I think it's appropriate to either bring you a report on progress on a specific aspect of the powers, or indeed to come to you with a question about the oversight that the committee and the Parliament want for some of those tricky areas that you asked a couple of questions ago. We know that the Scottish Government and the UK Government have started to think about the accountability in order arrangements for some of that. That thinking is at an early stage, but as it develops, I think it's important that the Parliament should have a chance to express its own views on what it needs and expects in order to be able to provide that oversight and scrutiny of what will be very significant powers and amounts of money in future. One of the recommendations in your report is that the Scottish Government should demonstrate publicly the progress that it is making towards introducing a comprehensive account of Scotland's public finances. You are very helpful. I think that it has positively set out some of the steps that have been taken already. It is pleasing that there is some good progress. I suppose that section 112 in the report onwards covers this. You have said that the Scottish Government does need to be clearer what spending is aiming to achieve and how this contributes to the Scottish Government's overall purpose and specific outputs and outcomes. When you said that, in what way does the Government need to be clearer? Could you expand on that? I should preface it by saying that that is an important part of the work of the budget process review group. It is to look at how the information that Parliament gets can tie the budget proposals more closely to what they are intended to achieve. The starting point is that, for any public organisation, the purpose of raising taxes and spending money is not as for a private company to make a profit. It is to provide services to people and the purpose of those services is to improve the quality of life for the people who work and live here. The Scottish Government was ahead of the pack in agreeing the national performance framework 10 years ago and setting those clear outcomes. What we have not seen since then is a systematic development of plans for reporting. For example, if there is an expected increase in spending on education, health and social care, what are the outcomes that the Government expects to see from that and how will it report progress towards that, given that outcomes often take years or a generation to have an effect? None of us on the budget process review group is saying that that is an easy thing to do, but it feels that it is a very important thing to do in the context of the national performance framework. Particularly as we move into a world where the Government can raise taxes and make other changes or investments with the intention of improving the relative performance of the Scottish economy and use that to really drive outcomes in a much more comprehensive and systematic way than it has been able to in the past. It is about making that link between the way in which money is being raised and spent and what it is intended to achieve. I see that the Scottish Government also intends to publish a tailored for Scotland 2016-17 consolidated account. The report is that that was under consideration and the commitment was taken against by April. I know that your report is covered up to February. Are you able to give us an update on what progress has been made in that area? The update from the Scottish Government gives the most up-to-date commentary on where it feels it has reached to around that. I think that we are comfortable that there is a real commitment to introduce accounts of that nature. I think that we recognise that there are plans in place, but the job is not yet done yet. I think that it is very helpful to read in the Scottish Government's response that, despite some issues around some of the standards around how roads are measured in accounts, that the Government is continuing with those plans and looks to try and implement that. I think that there was a question mark whether that might cause a real difficulty in the Government's plans, but I think that we are really pleased at the commitment that they have given to continue to work towards that. Those things are very important because, increasingly, given all the powers that the Auditor General has talked about and what we have been discussing, the whole picture in Scotland matters. What is the extent of financial risk, what is the extent of the opportunities to use the public finances right across Scotland, and what consolidated public accounts would give one important element of that picture? It does not do the whole job, it is alongside other accounting and other reports, but we think that it is a really important element and we really value the commitments that the Government has made to move towards that. I think that the Government was suggesting a number of trial runs involving other groups and public bodies. Is that a useful way to do it? I think that a key part of that is to get the buy-in. Because that looks to try and bring together information from right across the public sector, a key part of that is to explain what this is for and how that process will work and look to get the buy-in of other bodies to do that. I think that looking to try and pilot that is a good way forward. I think that there is something about how long that takes and that the momentum is maintained to deliver the reporting, the range of financial reporting that is needed now that those new powers are in place. Do we know if those trials are under way or what the timeline is for that? I think that the discussion is about whether it will be possible to do that for the 2016-17 accounts and the Government's indications and the response. It would look to explore that. That is not quite the same as saying that it is going to happen and we would hope that it would happen. Okay, so that would be to be encouraged. It is really important and your report recognises that the public have enough financial information and Willie Coffey talked about scrutiny, which is what we are all here to do, but it is clear from the short time that I have been here in Parliament that this comes up a lot, that people do not think that parliamentary scrutiny is robust enough. I wonder if you can maybe just touch on what you think some of those barriers to scrutiny are and what the scope here is to really change the approach to scrutiny and also to get better information and to assist them to. I will kick off. Mark may want to come in. It is a question, as you can imagine, that has got loads in it. We have been thinking about this for the last three or four years, as it has been clear how the financial powers are changing. In terms of the Parliament itself, I think that there are some straightforward things that you have just been discussing to have a fully consolidated set of accounts for the Scottish public sector, as we have for the UK Government as a whole, which includes everything that the Government owns and owns, what it raises and what it spends in one place, so you can see that big picture. At the moment, most of the information is available, but you have to work quite hard to pull it together and to make sense of it, and it should be much easier for you. Alongside that, we have talked about linking what money is being spent on and what it is achieving. I think that that is a very important picture. In this new world, the longer term view not just of this year but of what is happening over a period of time, looking back and looking forward, and that will also make a difference. All of that is complex and complicated, but it is doable. The budget process review group has seen some great examples from Governments around the world—large and small—that are able to do that, and there is room for making some significant improvements. Some of them are quite short-term, some of them are slightly longer-term to put in place. In terms of the engagement of people and communities, that is a really important strand of that that I think has not had as much attention so far. The budget process review group has been looking at things like the open government partnership to which the Scottish Government has signed up, and some of the other third sector initiatives that are around that are proposing things like citizens budgets that are designed to be simple to understand and to enable people to drill down using IT to find out more if they want to, but to get that big picture and to think about building on the principles that are already in this Government's programme for government around community empowerment, around participatory budgeting and thinking about how some of those things that are designed currently to work at a local level could work at the Scottish level as well. I suspect that some of that will take longer, but you are absolutely right to keep it at the forefront of the thinking about where we need to be going. Thank you. Lastly, what is clear to the Scottish Government is making a commitment to enhance financial transparency. I am just thinking about other recent sessions that people have had at the committee where people say that they are committed to being open and transparent. It does not always materialise that way. Delivery is absolutely key here. Ross Thomson has touched on workforce planning and recruitment issues. Willie Coffey has talked about IT systems and costs there. How confident are you that there will be the right people and the right skills, the right systems and the right approach in place to make sure that we really get very clear financial reporting and increase transparency and help all of us to scrutinise Government spending? I hope that it is clear from my report that we think that reasonable progress is being made in the context of a very significant and challenging programme of work and that there are some real challenges that need to be addressed. I suspect that there are probably questions that are better addressed to the Scottish Government if you decide to take it forward in that way to get under the skin of their confidence and the commitments that they want to make to you for the months that are coming up as we head into these new powers for real. Thank you. One short question. We have seen how HMRC underestimated the number of Scottish taxpayers by about 400,000, which is now being rectified, but it begs a question around some of the reliability of some of the figures. I specifically want to ask about VAT, because VAT-assigned revenues are now going to be such a large proportion of the funding for the Scottish Government. My basic question is how robust is the calculation of what monies should be assigned based on the first 10p of the 20p rate and the first 2.5p of the 5p rate? Is there a danger that we are seeing an underestimate of that money from the UK Government, which would not surprise me? You are absolutely right that that is one of the key questions that needs to be resolved going forward. As with Scottish income tax initially, the information that would be needed to assign VAT on a very accurate basis simply has not been needed in the past. Both Governments have agreed that the overhead of collecting that information would outweigh the likely benefits of it. Therefore, the basis for allocation will be an estimate rather than hard data. The mechanism by which that estimate will be arrived at is still being negotiated. Mark, do you want to say a bit about progress on that? Just to add to that, the preparations for that are at a very early stage. Our understanding, and this is reinforced from the recent progress reported by both Governments, is that a team has been put together and is looking at that. An initial methodology will be worked up later this year, and that will be a basis for developing that and having a more firm basis for going forward. Obviously, that is a key ingredient of the system, and there is a clear timetable for that to be done. The one thing that we know is that that will be on a consumption basis. It is where money is spent rather than where businesses operate, and there has been a decision on the fiscal framework around that. Beyond that, it is about the Governments working together to work up that methodology. As you suggest, that estimate is as firmly based and as well understood as possible. The only thing that I would add to that, Mr Neil, is that that seems to me like a very good example of the sort of area where this committee and the Scottish Parliament will want good audit assurance about the processes that are in place, and we do not yet know how that will work. My immediate supplementary to Mark's contribution is to say that we will have a chance to comment on the methodology before it is adopted by both Governments. I think that we should have. A very good example is that I am a Scottish company operating in Scotland, and I am exporting a significant share of my production, but my exports go via Hull or Dover, for example. Clearly, that could have a major impact on the estimate of a much vat that I actually pay, because, obviously, you do not pay that on exports, but would that be counted as exports, for example? I am not expecting you to answer the question, but it is a highly complicated set of calculations. However, if we get it wrong, we could be severely shortchanged. You are absolutely right that that is an element of the fiscal framework that has still to be agreed and has potentially got significant implications for the Scottish budget. I know that, when the fiscal framework itself was being agreed last spring, the Finance Committee held a number of evidence sessions on progress and on the content of it. I assume that the Parliament will want to do the same as the additional elements that are being developed and taken forward—the way in which the Parliament does that, I think, is a matter for the Parliament itself to decide. However, the interest is a real and genuine one. I think that, convener, the Finance Committee would presumably be the lead committee, but I think that there is an audit element to this to make sure that the methodology is robust. I think that that is our remit. Yes, I agree, and I think that if the clerks could make sure that we do overlap with the Finance Committee but express an interest in that area, I think that that would be helpful to put an early marker down. Anything else, Mr Neil? No, that is all things. Liam Kerr. Thank you, convener. I think that Mr Neil makes important points about the reliability of the figures and talks about the risk of underestimating. I am just concerned about the risk of overestimating. I see at page 9 as a summary, a timeline for new financial powers, with various figures in. There are just two particularly that I wish to focus on, because the first one talks about the land and buildings transaction tax and forecast of revenue for £17.18 million at £507 million. We have obviously seen this week that there has been a study that would question the accuracy with which LBTT receipts have been gauged. I wonder how robust can we assume this figure to be of £507 million, given what we have learned this week? I think that there are two elements to that. The first is that one of the messages that we would like to leave with the committee is that, within the Scottish budget, there will inevitably be more uncertainty and more volatility than there has ever been before. However good the forecasting is, forecasts are not the same as reality and there will be a difference between the forecasts at the budget cycle stage and even more in the medium-term financial strategy that will change over time. The second is that we are at quite an early stage in doing this for all of the new taxes and the taxes themselves are either brand new taxes or are different in subtle ways from what went before. It is to be expected that there will be a difference between the forecasts and the outcomes that are greater than in normal times if there is such a thing anymore. I think that is a point for discussion, simply because they are so new and people are working out how to do it. Gordon, do you want to add more on the specifics of that particular tax? I think that one of the key elements to touch back on in the earlier conversation is the role of the Scottish Fiscal Commission on this. That should provide a bit more assurance around when budgets have been brought forward. As of April this year, the commission has got statutory responsibilities, including preparing forecasts for things like the devolved taxes. That will provide an independent view on what the forecast should be alongside whatever the Government's forecasts are. That is a new part of the process that should help, as I say, to give a bit more assurance in that area. However, I do not think that there is anything more to add other than that, just to replay that thing that we said a number of times in the report. This is a whole new setup with whole new opportunities and risks that are attached to that. The Scottish Government has projected for every departure tax. Do you know what assumption underlies that £326 million figure for 2018-19? Do you understand that forecast to be based on a straight flip from what is currently happening as air passenger duty over a 100 per cent flip to air departure tax? Or does that assume that the 50 per cent cut that the Scottish Government is proposing has been put in play? Straight forward to that answer. That figure is taken from the GERS figures, which was an estimate prepared by the Scottish Government as part of the GERS package to estimate what the current policy would contribute once those monies were devolved to Scotland. The separate process is what decisions are made around the shape of the tax and the forecast that will flow from that will follow once those decisions are made. I understand that. Okay. Odystod, general, thank you very much for your evidence today. Thank you, Mr Taylor and Mr Smyll as well. We now move into private session.