 Good morning, and can I welcome everyone to this, the second meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2022. The first item on our agenda is to agree to take agenda items four and five in private. I'm assuming that everyone agrees unless a member indicates otherwise, so does any member object to taking items four and five in private? I see no objections, so that's agreed. Can I turn now to the second item on our agenda, which is a session of evidence with representatives from the national records of Scotland's office. This follows a section 22 report, which was considered by the committee at its meeting on 9 December with the Auditor General and a team from Audit Scotland. This morning we are joined, I am pleased to say, by Paul Lowe, who is the Registrar General for Scotland and Keeper of the Records of Scotland. Paul is joined this morning by Linda Sinclair, who is the Director of Corporate Services and also the Accountable Officer within the National Records of Scotland office. Ann Slater is the Director of Operations and Customer Service, welcome man, and Peter Whitehouse is the Director of Statistical Services at NRS. I mentioned that Linda is the Accountable Officer, but I want to invite Paul Lowe to give us some opening remarks before I turn the meeting over to the committee to ask questions. Paul Lowe, over to you. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, committee members, and thank you very much for this invitation to attend the session today. I'll dispense with introductions as you've covered that already, convener. Today marks two months to census day on 20 March. I'm pleased to confirm that we are in a strong position to deliver Scotland's census 2022. In a few weeks' time, our public awareness campaign launches, and from 28 February, every household across the country will receive a letter advising how to participate. We only have one opportunity to deliver the census and to get it right. He uniquely asks the same questions of Scotland's population with reference to the same point in time. His insights provide rich data at national and local level, providing benefits for many years after the census collection. It informs the allocation of budgets, the delivery of infrastructure, research activities and the provision of services. However, the census to be effective and extremely high response rate is required is vital that we enable everyone to participate in the census. Following lockdown in March 2020, NRS conducted a comprehensive impact assessment on the risks of the pandemic to the delivery of the census. Through that, we concluded that the only option that secured the high level of response rate and high quality standard was to move the census to 2022. That recommendation was not made lightly. We considered balancing the risks of delivering a poor quality census in 2021 and the long-term impacts that it would have with the impacts of making a delay of a year but with increased confidence of achieving a successful outcome. The census is subject to an extensive programme of external assurance. Those points are high confidence in our readiness. Indeed, the most recent Scottish Government technical assurance review provides a delivery confidence assessment of the programme for amber green, which is a very significant achievement for a programme of this scale and complexity. It is noteworthy that our UK counterparts went live at amber status, reflecting the strong position that Scotland's census is in. Thank you for your attention and I am happy to take questions from the committee. Thank you very much indeed, Paul. If you want to bring in members of your team in order to feel any of the questions, please do that and just let us know who is the appropriate person. I am similarly if members of your team want to come in if they could put an R in the chat box function and make sure that I will call them. I just wanted to put a little bit of context to this morning's session. A section 22 report by Audish Scotland is quite a serious matter. It happens when either there have been or there are still some alarm bells ringing. We just want this morning to probe a little bit into the journey that you have been on and also how things look over the course of the next few weeks. As you say, the census has still to be delivered. I just wanted to start this morning by reflecting on the second paragraph of the Audit Scotland report, which contains this note. I have prepared the report, says the Auditor General, to draw the Scottish Parliament's attention to the challenges facing NRS in the delivery of the census programme. That includes the significant impact that the decision to delay the census until March 2022 has had on NRS's costs. Those are also on-going risks to delivery of the programme, including resourcing and financial pressures, which NRS will need to continue to manage so that the census can be delivered successfully in line with the revised budget and timetable. Members of the committee this morning will return to those themes over the cost of the next hour. I just wanted to reflect on the evidence session that we have with the Auditor General. One of the issues that was brought to our attention was that there had been an options appraisal report, which led you through evidence to the recommendation to ministers for their decision to postpone the census for a year, which was a very big decision to make. We asked Audit Scotland if it had had sight of the options appraisal report. Audit Scotland may have had sight of it, but it was not in a position to offer it to us. I wonder whether it would be possible for us, as a committee, to see in full the options appraisal report. I am happy to do so, convener. I will follow up in writing after this session. Do you want me to say a bit more about the options appraisal at this point? I think that it would be useful if you want to take us through the broad themes of that and why you arrived at the decision to postpone that you came to. As good practice in any programme, it is important to assess risks and issues in the environment that might threaten the delivery. I think that this is an appropriate example of where it has been done in a programme. In the advent of lockdown in March, we started to assess what were the issues that the pandemic and lockdown might present to the delivery of the census programme and achieving success. There are a number of factors that drove that. The first, obviously, was that our staff, virtually overnight, went from working in offices and teams to working from home and working remotely. Our contractors and suppliers were put into the same position. Our health services and others were focused on dealing with a national crisis. What we could start to see were impacts on the ability to collaborate with other organisations, which are very important in the census, productivity in the delivery of the census and great uncertainty about the length and duration and significance of Covid-related disruptions to the programme. At that stage, we were less than 12 months out from delivery. It is not wise if you can avoid it to cancel a programme at the 11th hour. The costs are very significant. People have been advised and informed of the date of the census and how to participate. You have to unwind all that. You need to make decisions with adequate time on these matters to do it in a safe and controlled manner. I mentioned collaboration. When we deliver a census, we have to work very closely with a range of partners. Very significant partners are local government and the NHS. At that point in time, if you will remember, as we all do, the unprecedented pressures that the health and care sector is facing at the time. We had to ask ourselves some questions. Was it appropriate for us to have detailed engagement with them about delivery of the census when they are being abstracted to deal with a very significant national crisis? There were a number of other factors that we took into account. We were also mindful of what conditions would exist in Scotland where a census would be taken in March 2021 and the risks that we could be in lockdown or other equivalent conditions during that time. A significant element of the census collection, even with the digital delivery that we are planning, is a field for teams of staff who will remind or assist people who have not completed the census after the census date. We are very mindful of the public health concerns and the great uncertainty that existed at the time. Obviously, there was no vaccination. There was limited information about how transmissible and what was safe to do at that time. Would it be appropriate and, indeed, would it be within the law to run a field force operation in March 2021? Obviously, that was a risk-based assessment at the time, but events transpired that in March Scotland was in lockdown. England came out of lockdown in early March, but Scotland was in lockdown through March. It was not until into April that Scotland moved to stay local, which was again a significant level of restriction in the country. There is something in our risk assessment around that, which indicated some of the factors around collaboration and our ability to work with organisations. We have to enumerate hospitals, care homes, prisons, hotels and other places. Would that activity be appropriate in the peak of a pandemic and our assessment where there are lots of risks around that? However, we did follow that exercise up because it is a significant step to consider the possibility that action may need to be taken with the census. We undertake a comprehensive risk assessment exercise. We looked at a number of options for delivering the census that would allow us to retain the existing March 21 delivery date. We looked at options that would deliver the census in the way that we anticipated. We would retain the delivery date but reduce the scope of delivery of the census, so we would retain the delivery date but reduce the complexity and the risk around the census and the options that would involve delay. We looked at the three different lenses and the lens of financial impact, risk, feasibility and viability. We then looked at it through a number of different criteria. We can expand on that when we send you the risk assessment document. However, our conclusion was that when we looked at our programme plans and the timescales and the activities that we had to undertake, the disruption from the pandemic would exhaust our contingency time in the programme. We just would not have the time to deliver the activities that we had planned, as you will appreciate. While the census is a programme run over a number of years, the activity in the year leading up to the census is the most intense. In light of that, we looked at different options. We had conversations with colleagues in ONS to see if there were mitigations or steps or support that they could provide. We had very helpful conversations, but we reached conclusions for reasons that I am happy to explain later on, if helpful, that that was not viable. We then looked at a range of different options, which were descoping elements of the census to retain the March 21 delivery date. Those intrinsically had to involve the removal of the field's false element, because that involves a large-scale recruitment of about three and a half to 4,000 people to work across Scotland. There is a mass recruitment, mass training exercise and then a mass deployment exercise, which is a very significant piece of work and would require significant mitigations to be put in place for Covid. Having recognised that we did not have contingency time in the plan left, the way to get us back on track would be to remove that element. I bring us back to quality and the expectation of the census is a very high response rate, a low response rate leads to an ineffective census and one that is not of value. All of those options, we looked at running our digital platform only, we looked at running paper-based form approaches only and we looked at running digital and paper forms simultaneously, which is what we did in our rehearsal. All of those through our modelling indicated that we would get a response level much lower than we would require to get from a census. For clarity, we would expect a needed response rate of in excess of 90 per cent. In 2011, we secured a 94 per cent response rate, and modelling indicated that the different options provided between 60 and 80 per cent response rates are too low to justify the quality threshold of the census. I think that Mr Loh has frozen. I do not know whether we are able to— Predominantly, it was on. Oh, sorry, Mr Loh, you froze. We did not get the last 60 seconds of your rehearsal. I was just saying, convener, that the high quality threshold is really important here. Nationally, we are looking for an in excess of 90 per cent, but we also have to be mindful of response rates at local community levels, because that local data is part of the uniqueness of the census. The final aspect that we considered was also what public appetite would be to interact with field force staff who would participate in the census during a lockdown period. People were obviously very concerned. We had people shielding at that time still. The vaccination programme was going to be very much in its infancy, and at the time we did this assessment, there were no identified vaccines for Covid. I hope that that gives you a bit of a sense of some of the range of factors that we took into account. Yes, thank you. That is helpful. I just want, though, to go back to the fact of the matter, which is that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the census did go ahead in March 2021, and there was a 97 per cent participation rate as I read it. You made the point about the different status that Scotland was in at different points in the month of March 2021, which is clearly a factor. We have also been told that one of the reasons why ONS and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency were able to go ahead was because they had in place access to other sources of administrative data, presumably which would be there for them to rely on to add texture to the returns that they were getting from census day. Can you explain why NRS did not have access to those same sources of administrative data? Just to be clear about the delivery of the census in other parts of the UK, which is relevant, ONS is responsible for the delivery of the census in England and Wales. It also provides most of the capabilities that Northern Ireland uses to deliver the census, so it delivers the online systems and various sources of support, while Northern Ireland delivers a field force and a public information campaign. Most of the delivery of the census across the rest of the UK is delivered by ONS, so it is a massive programme. There are a number of factors about administrative data. The first thing is that there was a bit of confusion about administrative data that perhaps crept in the evidence session that you referenced. Administrative data was not developed as a contingency for ONS's census, but administrative data is a programme of research work that the ONS has been working on for many years as part of its broader functions. In NRS, I am not running a mini office of national statistics. I am running an organisation that is very different. In terms of statistics, I am responsible for demographic statistics, population statistics in Scotland. ONS has a very broader remit, so it undertakes a range of social surveys, it undertakes economic statistics reporting, workforce and various other things. They are not part of the organisation. My organisation has a large number of functions that ONS does not. I am responsible for the registration of birth, deaths and marriages in the country, I am responsible for the national archives, I am responsible for the public records system and various other things. There are quite different functions in the organisation. ONS has been looking for some time at how it might use data that exists in other Government organisations that would assist it in its broader statistical functions. It has a legal gateway to do so through the Statistics and Registration Services Act. There are potentially elements of that legislation that might allow other bits of the UK or the devolved Administrations to enter into discussions with UK Government departments about access to data, but I have to stress the following. Administrative data is experimental statistics. It is not confirmed national statistics. ONS has had a programme over many years of discussions with large Government departments about how they might get access to this data, and those discussions are not yet fully successfully concluded in progress. During their assessment of the impact of Covid on their programme, they reached a view that an option available for them would be to take work from their separate programme on administrative data and potentially fill in gaps in responses if they had a poor response rate to Covid. That gave them sufficient confidence that access to that data would allow them to do so. Having said that, there were risks in that, because administrative data is information sitting on a range of Government systems, often for operational purposes, they would not know until they had run that census whether they had the right data available to them, how current that data was, and there were risks of gaps, but they felt that that provided them with sufficient assurance and are absolutely certain that that was the right call. For the purposes of running data sharing with organisations, I need to have a legal gateway, but I also have to have a purpose. My purpose is to produce demographic statistics, so I need to crudely know three things. How many people are born, die and marry in Scotland? I have that data because I control the registration system, and how many people migrate to Scotland? There is an existing national statistical model that is used across O&S, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland that measures migration, so I do not have an immediate justification to approach the partner work and pensions, such as HMLC and others, and I ask for data that I do not require. Can I check that? We were told in the evidence session with Audit Scotland that you were now planning to access some of those data sharing sources. Are you saying that you have not done that or that you have no legal basis for doing that? That is not happening. What we are doing for the 2022 census convener is that we have been in discussion with Scottish organisations and also data sets that NRS owns to use elements of administrative data to quality assure. It is not being used to fill in data gaps. It is far less broad coverage of administrative data. It is not access to DWP or HMRC case information on individual citizens. It is a very specific purpose, so it is part of our quality assurance arrangements, but it is not how we would deal with a no or a biased response rate. Thank you for clearing that up. I must ask you to try to keep your answers a little bit brief. I suspect that, in the forthcoming sections, you will be able to do that. Again, please feel free to bring in members of your team, Mr Loh, if you think that they can add useful evidence to the gathering of information that we are embarking on. I want to now invite Craig Hoy to ask a number of questions. Thank you, Richard. Good morning, Mr Loh, and welcome to your colleagues. I just want to give you a bit of a flavour on your assessment and what work you did around assessing the impact of the delay of the census on the delivery of public services in Scotland and on the allocation of funding, for example, to councils and other public bodies. Thank you, Mr Hoy. We undertook a range of investigations around that as part of our decision-making. I would state from the start that Professor Sir Ian Diamond, the national statistician and the head of RNS have stated that there are no insurmountable challenges for Scotland bringing the census a year behind other parts of the UK. I hope that I can provide that reassurance to start. The census is an important exercise that gathers data, but it gathers data for a fixed point in time. We then need to use data on population that goes beyond that census year. Each year, ourselves and other parts of the UK generate statistics called mid-year population estimates. We use the last census and we make adjustments. As I explained to the convener earlier, in Scotland, that is about taking the 2011 data. It is about having the data for births and deaths in Scotland, which I have as the registrar general. It is about taking migration data and we have a UK agreed protocol for how that is developed. Each year, we are able to develop statistics based on that census baseline that cover the needs, whether it is allocation of funds to Scotland, whether it is regional allocation of funds by Government, the NHS and local authorities. That is a very robust model. In 2011, the results of the Scottish census that was delivered by the General Register Office of Scotland at the time, the publication of the results from the census were a few months out of sync with England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which meant that Scotland went for an additional year using baseline data from the 2001 census. When the results of the actual census in 2011 were compared with that model data, there was less than 1 per cent difference at population level between the two. We know that that data set is an approach to modelling between years. It is really robust. We also undertook a range of discussions with O&S and other statistical providers. We continue to engage in a productive way with all the different UK statistics bodies. That was quite focused on process. We are now going to be out of sync. You identified that there were challenges but said that they were insurmountable. Could you let us know what some of those challenges are? For the detail of that, I will hand over to Pete Whitehouse, my director of statistical services. The main thing is in the use of funding allocations. That is about using an existing methodology that we use each year between censuses and extending it for one year extra. I do not see the impact as significant, but perhaps we could bring Pete in. One of the fundamental deliveries of the census is to deliver that population figure. Part of that is to drive allocation and inform allocations within the country, but it is also about working with colleagues across the UK to deliver UK population data. As Paul has set out, we work very closely with O&S, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland to bring together our data. The way that one has always looked at population data is to bring the best data that you have. After the 2011 census, there was a gap between when data was made available for the rest of the UK and when Scotland brought its census estimate online. That was managed through the Government's statistical service. It was managed by considering how to look at when retrospective adjustments could be made. Essentially, the work was done with colleagues across the Government to make sure that the allocations were done as they could be and where there was a need to revise when better data was coming on-stream. That was then done. We are working very closely, and Paul mentioned Ian Diamond, who has been very strong in that position, about how we work together as statistical organisations to deliver the quality of data that is required by our users. We do that by looking at our mid-year estimates, by rolling forward from the last census, by bringing on the new census data when it comes online and by working with each other to understand how migration is moving, how, on our births and deaths information, we do that collaboratively. That is also overseen for the office of statistical regulation, who has a very keen interest in how UK statistics and how population data is used and how it is informing our formulas in particular around that allocation. There is a great deal of work that is going on. It will continue to go on, and what we will be delivering is the best available data that we have at the time. Our allocations, as I say, within Scotland, as you probably know, are the health allocations, the local authority allocations that make great use of population data, but they also build on allocations from previous years and have rolled out forward. We feed into that. At all times, we will deliver the best data that we have at the point. It goes very much to Paul's earlier point that we know that the quality of the data is so important that we have to get that right. The challenge is the risk of going with data that does not meet its needs against the obvious downside of being a year later than we might have been. Our conclusion is that being a year later, when we have processes in place, when we have methodological solutions, when we have engagement with our colleagues, it is not as bad an option as producing a census that is not fit for purpose, that does not have coverage, that is biased. I hope that is helpful. When Mr Ball was before us, we talked with him about the potential impact of a further delay in the census. The last 40 hours and the data that is emerged probably means that this is less likely to happen, but I am just wondering if you could perhaps give me a flavour, Mr Low, of what options NRS is considered for the census if lockdown restrictions returned. Have any resources or has any money been committed to contingency planning for that? I think that part of what we have done is that we have used the last year to make sure that we have flexible ways of delivering the census based on a range of different Covid scenarios. We have used the time and used some of that additional money to assist with that. Essentially, we have a range of things that we can do, so our intention would not be, even without the very positive data that has been received in recent days, but things can, of course, get worse in quite a short period of time, sadly, with Covid. The first thing is that we have a headquarters function that directs the operation of the census. We have developed a capability to run that headquarters function remotely if we need to, to reduce the risk of people being taken out of commission by being ill with Covid. We have the capability of running a physical or a remote setup for the headquarters function. We have a contact centre and the vast majority of that contact centre capability will now be delivered by operators working in different locations rather than in large teams in a single site, so that massively reduces the impact on them. We have made some changes to the delivery of the census, so in 2011 we had community hopes where people could go and attend and get help and support and advice. We have taken a decision not to run those community hopes this time, but we have massively increased the size of our contact centre so that we will have staff who are able to speak to people and help them, give them advice, talk to them through it and, if necessary, help them to complete their census return. We have invested in that. We have also invested in a range of other technologies, lots of online advice and lots of help in the online system. The other changes that we have made are in respect of the field force. In the 2011 census, we had 7,000 field force staff and, in prior census exercises, it was higher than that. As part of our digital design, we are moving to a much lower field force staff, so if we think about it, if people complete it online, they do not need to interact with anybody else, they can do it safely in their own home. If they want a paid perform, they can go online and request one or phone and they will be provided with one. It will be posted to them. Nobody will turn up on their doorstep from NRS to hand them a census form at the doorstep. The other thing that technology allows us to do is, rather than sending field force on mass across all of Scotland, target the field force to the places where people have not responded, and we will know that from our systems. That means many fewer interactions on the doorstep and it will be targeted. Finally, we have invested a lot in the training of our field force and the kit and equipment, so the interactions will be at doorstep on a distance. They will be short-term. We are engaging closely with the CMO's office around our protocols and arrangements to ensure that they are content with our plans and proposals. I hope that that helps. I find a question before we move on to the financial impact of the delay, but I just want to put that number out there. The cost of the delay was £21.6 million. Would it be right to say, just listening to that last answer, that even though there is a perception that that money may be lost, you have used it to invest in putting in greater flexibility, agility and efficiency into the system. In a sense, crisis might be the biggest opportunity here. Absolutely, Mr Hoy. I do not think that any of the money that is wasted has been about making sure that the technology that has developed and other things continues to be refined and improved. We have used the time to do additional engagement with users and stakeholders to improve the systems and services. We have used the time to learn lessons from the ONS and NIST rehearsals and censuses as well. As part of that close collaboration peak reference, we have gathered lots of lessons learned in the experience and we have made sure that we have built that into our programme to make it stronger. During lockdown, there has been a significant uptick in cyber security incidents. Anyone who sees the press will have seen the range of global impacts of that, so we have taken the time to do additional testing and strengthen the cyber security arrangements. On that finance figure, I agree that £21.6 million is a significant proportion of the programme cost. We are having to balance the risk of a census that costs £170 million, not delivering versus an additional cost to achieve the benefits of the census. International studies and UK studies indicate that, for every £1 invested in a census, there is between £5 and £6 equivalent return in wider economic value. The ONS, as part of its decision-making not to delay its census, calculated that its cost to delay its census by a year was £360 million. Its cost for delivering the census programme was in the range of £906 million. We are looking at a relative cost of well-in-excess of 35 per cent, so that probably helps to situate the £21.6 million and the 18 per cent increase to show that we have taken that seriously. We have tried to keep the cost of running additional year down, but you cannot be too stringent because you do not get a good quality census data or if you cut too deep in doing so. I hope that that helps. Thanks, Craig. We will return to one of the issues that you raised, Mr Lowe, in your answers to Craig Hoy's questions, which are about the digital dimension. I will come to Willie Coffey to ask some questions on that. Before I do that, I want to continue the theme about the financial implications of the delay to the census. I want to bring in Colin Beattie. I will direct my questions to Paul Lowe and, if it is appropriate, he bounces them on to others. The financial impact at £21.6 million on the phase that it seems is a lot of money. You have mentioned that some of that was used positively in investing into other preparations. I am struggling a bit with that, because what I am seeing is that we are saying that increased supplier costs are £14.4 million, and that is because of extending supplier contracts, as well as an increase in the cost of goods. What were the goods that are so significant that they contribute to that £14.4 million? How is it that we have managed to turn us into a benefit when it is the suppliers that are getting the increased costs? Thanks, Mr Beattie. I will hand over in a second to Linda Sinclair, the Accountable Officer, who can answer that in greater detail. The reschedule allowed us to do a number of things. The census programme, just in the same way that the census programme is in other parts of the UK, uses a hybrid of organisational resources and capability and a chain of contracts and services to deliver the census. There is inevitably, if you extend the duration of the census and increase the suppliers because they have to remain on that contract for a year longer and they have to be involved in the work. However, what I would say, and it is back to the benefit point, is that we used that time well. We increased and used additional testing to make sure that we were in a robust place to deliver the census. We used the opportunity to make some improvements to the census, and those are an element of the supplier costs that are referenced here. However, I will hand over to Linda Sinclair, who can pick up in more detail. Linda, if you want to come in now, that would be great. I think that you are on mute, Linda. There we go. I hope that that is off now. Good morning. The supplier costs did total around £14.4 million of the £21.6 million. We went through two rounds of costing with the suppliers to make sure that we were getting value for money from the different contracts. We have around about 20 separate contracts on the census programme, and a range of those are providing different services to the programme. Within that period of time that we had available, we could then look at what the design was as Paul touched on in terms of the things that we were actually asking our suppliers to provide for us. We were working through the learnings from ONS in Nisra and looking at specific contracts and working through what that would mean in terms of the activities that they were delivering for us. As an example, some of the activities are very much volume and demand-led, so we can then look at within that period from March and April when the census is running live. I am getting a problem with my network, so I am not sure if you can hear me. Can you still hear me? I can hear you perfectly. That is fine, because I got a message up on my screen there. We were looking at, for example, on those contracts, how much we were needing to draw down at different points in different times. For example, with our different suppliers such as APS, I am working through the detail of the activities that they were taking so that we could make sure that we were getting maximum value from each of the individual contracts. I am happy to write with more detail on that, because it is a very complex picture to capture in a short period of time, but it was about looking at the value that we can achieve from the additional costs and the design of what is in those contracts. That changes over the period of time, as we have more learning from the likes of ONS in Nisra. The impression that I got from Paul Lowe was that the actual £21.6 million is mitigated by the benefits that you have been able to achieve in additional experience and being able to loop more closely at the programme and enhance it and so on, but that still does not mitigate the £21.6 million. It is still costing £14.4 million than it would have had the census gone through. It says specifically here that it is due to the cost of extending suppliers contracts. I do not know whether you have negotiated with the suppliers to change the contracts, which would obviously create an additional cost element. It is mentioned that part of it also is the increase in the cost of goods. What are those goods that are so significant? In terms of the extension to the contracts, we had enough flexibility in those that we were extending the time period. The major aspects in terms of the cost drivers are around the continued resourcing. We have an arrangement working with our different suppliers. We were drawing on the resources to work with us to deliver the census. We were allocating that work across the additional year, so there is an additional resource requirement for the suppliers. That was a major part of the cost. Together with continued licensing, we were having to extend our licence costs for some of the digital equipment and the digital licences that we have in place for delivering census. The other aspects are around the hosting and support costs by the suppliers. It was the underpinning costs that the suppliers were delivering for us in terms of allowing us to then deliver the census in a collaborative environment with the suppliers. There are a range of things within the design of that that allowed us to then look at how we get better value out from how we are working and how we are delivering census with our suppliers. Apparently, the better value came across the £14.4 million. I am still struggling a bit about the positivity in that. You had a bit of extra time, which gave you a chance to spend more time enhancing and improving the delivery of that, which presumably had a cost in itself, which I assume is rolled up into that £14.4 million. You still have not answered a question about what are the goods that are so significantly increased in price that they want to mention? In terms of the particular pricing aspects, we have a range of different contracts. Some are based on framework contracts, so we are based on Scottish Government pricing. There are flexibilities in those that increase the pricing of the contracts. For example, changes to royal mail prices will impact our overall pricing on how much it costs us to send out and post out the paper forms. That is one impact that we have had to price into part and parcel of the additional costs. There are other impacts in terms of changes in licensing costs where there are flexibilities under individual contracts as well that we need to put in place. Part of the other costs in terms of the £14.4 million was additional costs for manual coding. As part and parcel of the rehearsal for the programme, we had a look at how we run the manual coding element. There was around £1 million worth of the £14.4 million that were for manual coding and additional activities associated with that from learnings with rehearsal. There are costs in terms of how long it will take to code individual paper forms that come back in. That was based on learning from the rehearsal that it would take slightly longer, so that is also a cost driver. There is a whole range of different cost drivers. It is hard to encapsulate it in one simple response in relation to that. What you are telling me is that the original specifications for delivery of the census in fact were under budgeted because you are saying that some things would have taken longer and you found that out and added that into the cost subsequently. It appears to me that your original costing probably was not accurate. It is the impact of adding an additional year and asking our suppliers to work with us for an additional year and the cost of their resourcing and the cost of the supplier and the hosting cost for that additional year that make up the vast majority. However, it is about the length of time. However, you were talking about the coding of pieces of paper and you raised that specifically, and you said that the exercise that you did showed that it would take longer than you had anticipated, so that must indicate that you would have had a budget overrun had the original census gone ahead. That is one element of the 14.4, so I suppose that there were two elements of additional goods that I drew attention to. One was about the royal mail pricing under a framework contract and the other is in relation to the additional costs around manual coding, which would have been an additional cost that we would have incurred in any case. We have set that out previously. The convener asked for a copy of the options appraisal. Can I confirm that that will contain the details of the additional costs that would have been incurred had the census gone forward in 2021? Yes, we did look in the options appraisals at a range of different aspects had the census gone ahead in 2021. Paul set out the different options in terms of using no field force. We also looked at costings around mitigations associated with not using a field force or going paper-only in terms of how that might impact, for example, manual processing of paper forms, increased postage costs associated with paper forms, et cetera. We looked at a range of the different costings associated with that. Can I confirm that the options appraisal will contain details of the estimated additional expenses that were expected due to Covid mitigations if you have gone ahead with the census in March 2021? There was an element around mitigation costs that would have an impact in relation to Covid, but what we did not price at that point was, for example, if we needed to use PPE equipment and such like it was a difficult position at that point to get a sense around what that exact pricing would be. We can look at what information we had at the time and set that out with you. You said that supplier costs increased, and that is a substantial portion of the increase in the programme. What did you do to mitigate those costs for actions that you take? We went through two rounds of discussions with our suppliers in terms of the overall costs, working through what the impact would be to run forward the programme for an additional year and then interrogate the costs. We had an indicative set of costings from suppliers that we interrogated and went back to suppliers on the detail of that to ensure that there was sufficient contingency in place but equally ensure that there was no cost overruns included in that. We also did a significant resourcing review on the programme, which was the other main driver of costs. We looked at the programme resourcing and ensured that that was sufficient, but it was not overplaying the additional resource requirement for the programme. We scrutinised the detail on that to ensure that we were achieving value for money. You identified financial pressures of £1.5 million in the census earlier in 2021-22. You have reduced that to £0.5 million through implementation of mitigating actions. What are those mitigating actions? We have undertaken a range of different activities this year in terms of the census budget. There is fluidity to the delivery of census, which means that the budgets will change over the period of time. Partly we have gone through a deep dive to prioritise spend and ensured that we are prioritising spend on all the things that we absolutely need. There are not nice-to-haves in there that we can recycle savings on. We have looked at supplier contracts again and we have recycled savings on things like TNS, which have not been required in the Covid environment. A lot of the census delivery is based particularly for March, April and next year on volume metrics. It is volume-based, volume-demand-led, in terms of the numbers of people who will submit a response online versus those who will submit a response on paper, because there are different processing costs associated. We have assumptions built into census that are based on the numbers and the proportions that might work in different ways and how many forms we may need to post out, versus how many we need to process manually. We have taken learning from ONS in Nisra in terms of their numbers. We have reassessed all our volume metrics and assumptions in that very much live period, which crosses the end of the financial year, which means that we need to look carefully on a day-by-day basis when some of those costs will land from an accrual accounting perspective. We have gone through the detail of those volume metrics and we have worked down some of those costs to make sure that we are in a more realistic position. We have looked carefully at the alignment of costings at the year end to ensure that we are not loading large sums of money for postal drops, for example, in the last days of the financial year, and that it is appropriately timed. That has allowed us to bring down the costings. We have also continued to keep a clear and careful view in terms of our overall resourcing costs. There is a strict control regime in relation to resourcing to ensure that we are keeping those managed and affordable over the programme. Can you confirm that you have now achieved financial balance? There are still some uncertainties that we are working through. I mentioned the Royal Mail pricing, for example, so we are waiting for that confirmation to come through from Royal Mail, which is coming through in the past couple of days, and that is being costed out in the programme, so that we can then look at where we sit in the balance around that and whether we have sufficient funding from there. We are very close to that financial balance in terms of—we are confident that we will bring the budget into balance at the end of the financial year. The figure that I saw is £0.5 million still as a gap. It is between balance and £0.5 million. There is a fair number of aspects that are still moving on that. We are going through some detailed resource costings to the end of the financial year. We will have another updated set of numbers coming through, but we are very close to balance, and that is our confident position. One of the main costs is people. I wonder what you are doing to manage the workforce costs and, particularly, temporary staff, the numbers that you have and so on. What are you doing to make sure that you are keeping tight on that? For NRS, census is making up around about 30 to 40 per cent of our current workforce, so we have to grow quite significantly, particularly in the years surrounding the census, to deliver census. It is not sustainable for us to carry that level of permanent staff. We go through a range of different recruitment and resourcing approaches where we look to try to work and bring on board the individuals on the most affordable basis. We have a workforce plan that allows us to forward plan the costs and look through what the financial implications are of the resourcing plan. We also go through a work-based control process to allocate the resources to keep a tight view of our overall costings. We have also gone through regular resource reviews, and we will continue to do so. We have just recently completed another resource review in the back end of last year, and we have one planned for May, June this year, so that we are going through that regular cycle of refreshing the information around our resources. We go on the basis of looking to bring in resources through the most affordable route. That is not always possible because of the nature of very specialised roles that we bring in for census. We are at the mercy of the wider prevailing contract market or the resourcing market, so some of those more specialised digital skills are hard to reach and can be attracted to premium in terms of the activities. However, there are tests all the way through before we agree to go out to the external market to bring in some of those more hard-reaching and higher-cost premium resources. I thank Linda for her answers to those questions and remind Linda that, if you want to put anything further to augment the evidence that you have given us orally in writing, please feel free to do that. That might be useful. I think that you alluded to that at the start of the round of questions. It would also be helpful for the committee if you could give us the updated figure-on-the-balance when you have that. I want to turn now finally to a series of questions on the management of the census programme. I will finish up by inviting Sharon Dowie to come in. Before I do that, I would like to invite Willie Coffey. Willie Coffey, I want to start with you and ask a few questions about the mechanism for getting the census between digital and paper. You talked about it earlier in the session, but could you give us a few more details about how it is going to work? Hither 2, if anybody used to get a paper copy delivered to their house, you could be pretty sure that everyone had it. From what I remember you saying, everybody is going to get a letter and people who are already connected to the digital world can phone us up and get one posted to them and so on, but if they don't do that, how would they know who has just bothered engaging with the process and will you have people in place that can check and determine that and then subsequently deliver it to people? Talk us through how you will manage to get the census into everybody's hands, let's say. Thank you, Mr Coffey. The letter that will go out across Scotland will, as you say, provide a range of information about how to participate. It will include a unique code for that household, which is the key to accessing the online platform and completing the census return online. For those who either don't wish to provide a digital response or who are unable to, paper will still be retained. We have an online platform that people can fill their census out, but we also have systems behind the scene that track how many requests for pay per forms we've received and if we've received them back. When somebody completes a paper form and posts it back to us, those forms are all scanned and information is read off those scanned forms, so we have a record of forms that we've sent out and the forms that have been returned and the data that we've captured from those forms, so we'll be able to use that and generate reports that, if we know that people haven't completed their census either online or in form, they'll then be a chain of reminders, so they'll be reminder letters and, ultimately, if there's no response after a period of time, the field force will attend the address and make contact with the household, hope that helps. If people ignore the invitation to complete it, they will still get a visit with a paper copy and invite them to complete it. That covers that. What did you say earlier, Paul, about your expected likely percentage? You talked about all paper or all digital or mixed paper and digital. Did you say that someone has a drop-off rate if you mix those models of inviting the contributions from people? Does it drop-off, do you think? Sorry, Mr Coffey, if I wasn't clear about that earlier. In the census rehearsal that we ran in 2019, in three local authority areas, we provided people with the opportunity to participate on a voluntary basis with the census. They were given access to the digital system and they were also given the ability to request paper forms. In our assessment of how we might have tried to deliver the census in 2021, one option was basically to replicate the rehearsal and provide paper and digital. Our anticipation is that that would have provided the highest return rate without using a field force. The paper only was likely to be the next highest option and the digital only was likely to be a lower percentage for the reasons that we talked about earlier. I hope that that helps. In terms of the data, if a huge amount of the census is now completed digitally and electronically, who has access to the data when it is submitted and who owns that data and how secure is it? Can you talk us through a little bit about that, please? That is a very important question. NRS owns the data and it has kept confidential for 100 years. Later on this year, we will be publishing the results of the 1921 census, which will be of great interest to historians and genealogists and others. That data has kept confidential. Everyone who works in the census programme signs a confidentiality agreement, but it is also potentially a breach of the criminal law if anyone discloses census data. In terms of protecting the data, we have built very rigorous information governance standards and cybersecurity and data security standards in the organisation. Our online systems have been subject to independent information assurance reviews. They have been conducted by an organisation called Bridewell, which is a national cybersecurity centre accredited assessment organisation. We published our first assessment prior to the rehearsal in 2019. The next one for the census itself will be publishing at the end of January. That will be made public so that anyone can see the robustness around the security arrangements. We have done a lot of work with the National Cybersecurity Centre, Police Scotland, the Scottish Government and others in putting in place robust cybersecurity measures to protect census data and to preserve the online systems. The data that is ultimately submitted by a person in Scotland, either digitally or in paper, that data is not used for any other purpose other than the census purpose. It is not given to double parties. They do not have access to it. They have no rights to it, so it is fairly secure. If you are interested in more detail, Pete can probably help or we could write to follow it up, but there are a range of statistical approaches that are applied to census data, so data is anonymised so that it is not actually possible to identify individuals. We are not interested in individuals and we are interested in the accumulation of the data. A lot of work is done to anonymise the data and various other steps such as disclosure of control and other things, which means that it is not possible if somebody did hack us to extract that kind of individualised data. That is the kind of processing work that goes on after the census data is submitted. No, we do not sell census data that is used to inform the statistics and purposes of the census. In terms of the online submission, Paul, can people do that in little bits and bobs rather than you do not have to complete it all from start to finish, do you? You could pick up a bit of it and do it later on and submit. Do you have to submit the whole thing at the end when it is complete? That is absolutely correct, Mr Copy. When you access the platform, you are able to set up a password and you can complete a bit of the census and then come back to it later on, as long as you remember your password and you have got your code, you can go through and complete it in stages yet. How do you see it developing in the future? I know that we might be 10 years away from the next one, but do you see it continuing with digital pollution and a little bit of mixed digital and paper? Do you think that that will continue in the future? We will use that model. It is very difficult to have a telescope to the future because so much happens in 10 years. If we think about the technology that was around in 2001 as opposed to what is available to us now, part of the work, and Pete and his team are leading on this, is some work to look at what the future options are around delivering the census. It would be hard to anticipate not delivering a census in the future that did not have a significant digital component, but there is still a very recognisable issue with digital exclusion and digital participation, even though that has increased during the pandemic. The other thing that is on the horizon, our colleagues in O&S are looking at, do we get to a world in which we can use other existing surveys and data that exists elsewhere to completely replace the census? They are reporting on that in 2023, and it will be interesting to see the results, but what we are looking at in NRS at a high level is do we deliver a census that is broadly similar to what is being done in 2022 at the next census, or will we use a hybrid of a survey combined with other data sources? There is a lot of work and a lot of investigation that needs to go on in the next few years in relation to that. Okay, that is very helpful and reassuring, Paul. Back to you, convener. Thanks, Willie. I am finally going to turn to Sharon Dowie, who has got a couple of questions before we wind the session up. Sharon. Thank you, convener. Looking at the management of the census programme, the census programme has been subject to a number of reviews over the lifetime of the programme. Challenges first identified in 2018, and in March 2019, the programme status was marked as red. Following the implementation of a recovery plan, the subsequent reviews of noted significant improvements and a review in February 2020 gave the programme a number rating, concluding that the census would have been able to proceed in 2021 if it had not been for the pandemic. The most recent review, at the end of November 2021, gave the programme an amber green rating. I have two questions, and for the interests of time, I will ask them both together. How is NRS managing risks, particularly around finance and resourcing, in the run-up to the census going live, and what further review activity is anticipated over the remainder of the programme? Thank you very much for those questions. In terms of risk, we have a well-developed risk management approach in the programme. We have a dedicated risk group. We manage risk at individual project level, programme level and strategic level. That is reported into our programme board. It is reported into our NRS audit and risk committee. There are deep dive sessions on risk and risk management and current risks and issues in the programme, so we have a well-developed risk management regime. The Auditor General, both in his evidence session and in his section 22 report, recognised that we were doing the right things, but it was that we needed to keep doing them, and I think that that is where we are. In terms of resources, we have the people that we need to deliver the census collection, and, frankly, with a matter of weeks to go, there are not really opportunities to get other people into the programme. We have an understood and managed position for the resources to deliver the census collection. There are obviously other phases of the programme. We then get that data and then we need to do lots of complex statistical work on it. We need to prepare it for releasing the census results, so we will be bringing in some resources to focus on that. Equally, there will be people involved in the collection that, as we move through this year, will no longer be required and will be dropping off the programme as well, so there will be some new people coming in and quite a lot of people leaving at the same time, because they are no longer required for that phase of work. Does that help? Yes, that sounds good. You are quite happy with the processes that you have got in place. We have robust workforce planning arrangements and Linda and myself chair a resources group in NRS, so we keep a very close eye on census resourcing and cost. That is fine. Okay, thanks. Bye to you, convener. Thanks, Sharon. Well, let me just conclude the session by thanking the witnesses for joining us this morning, Paul Lole, Linda Sinclair, Peter Whitehouse and Slater. I do not think that we have heard from you, but I know that you have been on hand to give evidence. Just reflecting on what you said at the beginning, Paul, we understand that you are not the office for national statistics, but you are the body charged with delivering the census in Scotland, and that is what we are concerned about, both its efficiency and effectiveness. We are now exactly two months to the day until the census day on 20 March, so it may well be—it will be for the committee to decide, but it may well be—that we will invite you back after the census later in the year just to reflect on how it went and any other broader lessons that can be learned as well as considering the future. You have mentioned 10 years as a long time. I am not sure whether the next census will be in 10 years' time or 9 years' time, and that is a question that we have not touched on this morning, but I am sure that we can return to it. Just to reiterate, if there are any—we welcome your commitment to give us a copy of the options appraisal. If there are any other aspects of the evidence that you have given this morning that you think would be supported well by any written submissions as a committee, we very much would welcome that. Again, thank you for your time this morning and for the willingness in which you have been able to answer the questions that you have put. I will now bring this session to a close and suspend the meeting whilst we change witnesses. Thank you. I welcome people back to the Public Audit Committee. We are at item 3 on our agenda, which is consideration of the 2020-21 audit of the Scottish Government's consolidated accounts. I am pleased to welcome to give evidence on that report three people from Audit Scotland. First of all, the Auditor General Stephen Boyle. Welcome. This morning, the Auditor General is joined by Michael Olliffant, who is an audit director, and Helen Russell, who is a senior audit manager of audit services at Audit Scotland. We have a series of questions, and we will try to get through them as much of the report as we can, but it makes sense to us that we give the report due consideration and it may be that we will come back again and have a further session of evidence on this important report in the coming weeks. I want to begin, Auditor General, by asking you to make an opening statement. Many thanks, convener. Good morning, committee. I am presenting this report this morning on the 2020-21 audit of the Scottish Government under section 22 of the Public Finance and Accountability Scotland Act 2000. The Scottish Government's annual consolidated accounts are a critical component of its accountability to Parliament and the public. The consolidated accounts cover over 90 per cent of the budget that was approved by the Parliament in 2020-21. The accounts report the amounts that the Government has spent against each of the main budget headings and the reasons for any significant differences. They also show the assets, liabilities and other financial commitments that the Government is carrying forward into future years. My independent auditor's opinion on the consolidated accounts is unqualified, and that means that I am confident that they present a true and fair view of the Government's finances and that they meet legal and accounting requirements. I would like to highlight three areas from my report. The first is the budget performance. The last financial year, of course, was the first in which the Government's spending and funding support the Covid-19 pandemic collected fully in its financial performance. The next spending for the year was £50.1 billion, £580 million less than the approved budget and an underspend of 1.1 per cent. That was £10.7 billion more than the previous year, equivalent to 27 per cent, reflecting the significant additional sums of public money that were committed to the public response to the pandemic. High-level details are provided in the accounts over how much that money was spent during the year. My report highlights the need for the Government to be more proactive in publishing comprehensive Covid-19 financial reporting information that clearly links budgets, funding announcements and funding levels. That will help to increase transparency in areas of significant parliamentary and public interest. The second area is financial management. My report provides an update on the status of the Scottish Government's financial support and guarantees to private companies such as BiFab, Ferguson Marine, Presswick airport and the Lochaber aluminium smelter. Those interventions have not delivered the expected outcomes and are unlikely to deliver value for money. The Scottish Government is taking action, based on my predecessor's recommendations, to develop a framework to outline the principles and approach for future investment decisions for private companies. That should help the Government to provide assurance to the Parliament over its strategic objectives in entering into any future agreements. Thirdly, financial reporting. The Scottish Government is committed to a revised timetable for the development of devolved public sector accounts in Scotland. That will be on a two-stage basis. First stage is expected to be provided for audit this spring, followed by a second stage, which will incorporate local government spending towards the end of this year. I note this commitment, and I urge the Government swiftly to deliver progress on this revised timetable. As ever, Michael Hellenrae, I look forward to answering. Thank you very much indeed. We have a long series of questions to ask. I want to begin straight away by inviting Sharon Dowie, who has some questions on one of the themes that you identified financial management, to come in and ask questions. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everybody. You mentioned in your open speech that you are looking at the tracking of the Covid-19 spend. The Scottish public sector expenditure in 2020-21 changed significantly from the initial plans due to the response to the coronavirus pandemic. In-year changes to budgets were reported via three budget revisions, summer 2020, autumn 2020 and spring 2021, primarily due to the additional Covid-19 funding. The summer 2020 budget revision gave a good level of detail on the allocation of the Covid-19 Barnett consequentials that had been received by that point in time. However, the subsequent autumn and spring budget revisions give much less detail on the allocation of further Covid-19 Barnett consequentials, and it has proved very challenging to track how additional funding relating to the pandemic has been allocated and spent. Three questions. First, when the pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in tracking in-year changes to spending plans, again that has been brought into the Covid, so how could reporting be improved to enable better scrutiny of in-year changes to spending plans, even when those are on a less significant scale than they had in 2020-21? Good morning, Ms Dowdy. I am happy to start. I will invite Michael in a moment, because I want to contribute to this as well. We recognise the sheer volatility, and the scale of the change in spending has really started. There is an additional £10.7 billion or so spent this year on top of the original budget, so it is hugely significant. Some aspects we welcome. I think that the presence of three additional budget changes mechanisms during the year has helped to improve transparency. We would also point to the £300 or so spending announcements that are really unprecedented in scale. Perhaps it is what is the case and what is led us to the conclusion in the report that there needs to be a stronger mechanism to connect the budget to spending announcements. What is reported to spend is that the arrangements in place before the pandemic do not lend themselves to that level of volatility. In-year financial reporting will help that. Ultimately, it is a matter for Government to determine the mechanism with which it wants to report changes, whether they are quarterly statements, in-year accounts and so forth, as a way of allowing that tracking and transparency. I think that the Government has improved aspects of its financial reporting in this set of accounts, so that the performance report includes details of Covid spending. It analyses that by various levels of portfolio, but it is still challenging for us to track the outcomes of Covid spending on the portfolio basis by which Government's accounts are constructed. Perhaps there is scope for Government to look at the mechanisms in which they report on high-level changes, be it Covid-19 or other aspects that may follow. I will pause there for a moment and check with Michael if there is anything that he wishes to add. I think that the Auditor General outlines the key issue. That is the thread that exists between the budget, the in-year spending announcements, the budget revisions, as he pointed out, and the spending against the budget. It can be very difficult to see the amounts moving throughout the year, in particular when we get to the point of looking at the accounts. The accounts are presented in line with the requirements of the budget act and the requirements around the financial reporting manual. There are restrictions with which the Scottish Government has to operate in relation to accounts, but we encourage them to be more proactive in terms of some of the other information that they can provide, particularly as we know that the significant additional sums that have been applied to the budget this year, the significant parliamentary and public interest in Covid spending, I think that that has shown a greater spotlight on it. It is really important that the Parliament and the public are able to see the clear line from budget announcements, in-year spending announcements and what has been spent against the budget that the year ends. Thank you. It has been raised before about trying to get the money out as quickly as possible, and it has actually caused issues getting it out, showing where the money has actually ended up going. It might have been allocated to a department for one thing, but it was used for something else because of the need for urgent action. Going on to the second question, is the Auditor General aware of any plans by the Scottish Government to present a comprehensive report on changes to budgets and final expenditure as a result of the pandemic? If not, would such a report be helpful? When could it be expected? I am not aware of any plans. I will invite Michael or Helen to say if they are cited on any plans that you describe of a comprehensive additional report in over and above the out-term statements that the Cabinet Secretary of State gives to the Parliament and the annual accounts, the consolidated accounts that you have today. To answer your question directly, we always welcome additional transparency, and that is one of the conclusions that we are making in the report. We are reflecting the circumstances that we have seen through the Covid pandemic. Perhaps before that, my predecessor regularly made the point in her reporting that the consolidated accounts really only go so far in helping the reader of the accounts to understand how well the money has been spent and the connections that she has made. I have continued to promote between the national outcomes and the public spending that contributes towards that. It is still too hard to actively track the benefits and value that comes from public spending. As it relates specifically to Covid-19, you will know—as I am familiar with the committee—that Orrit Scotland has produced three tracker reports on Covid-19 over the duration of the pandemic to try and bring some additional clarity and transparency to the scale of spending. Perhaps in an ideal world, the Government itself will gain a position to report publicly on how public money has been spent on that particular aspect as it relates to Covid-19's spending. Ultimately, it is a matter for the Government to decide how best to communicate its spending and what that has delivered over and above the statutory elements of the annual report on accounts. However, we always welcome additional reporting that brings transparency to how well public money has been used. Did you say that someone else was coming in there? No? Apologies. I think that is probably back to you. Right, thank you. Will you provide further assessment on the funds that are committed and spend on the Covid-19 response? Yes, we will. We will be reporting in a few months' time through our section 23 report on the use of Covid monies over the course of the pandemic as part of our plans and reporting. We will continue to report through our annual audit of the Scottish Government and our forward work programme on how well Covid monies have been spent. I guess that one of the things that I would maybe reiterate from some of our previous evidence is that it is going to become harder and harder to differentiate between what is Covid-related spending and what is not Covid spending as the pandemic continues. We have seen in some of the budget statements from elsewhere, for example, in the UK Government budget, that they are no longer making that differentiation. So it will be a matter for the Scottish Government to determine its own choices and how long it wishes to report Covid-related spending. However, for the time being, our work will continue in this area as we look to bring transparency in public spending. Thank you, Sharon. One of the aspects that is highlighted in the report, in and around especially Covid-related payments, is the question of fraud and the risks of fraud. Willie Coffey has got a number of questions on the subject. So, over to you, Willie. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning again. I wanted to just ask some questions relating to the Covid-19 business grant scheme and the commentary within the consolidated accounts relating to fraud, potential fraud, and, otherwise, firstly, could you just give us a little bit of an overview of how you see that, how that process has gone? We know that it was a very, very quick process of trying to distribute funds to be as helpful as possible, but we know that that also brought greater risks with it. Could you just give us a little overview of how you felt that has gone, please? Of course. I think that it has been mentioned a moment or two ago about the pace of money, Mr Coffey, that was passed out by necessity to different parts of the economy. In our report and in the Government's consolidated accounts, we are focusing on two of the large business support schemes. The first is referred to as the business support fund grants, which covered the business support grant and the retail hospitality and leisure grant. The second is the strategic framework business fund, which is also aspects of the hotel, retail hospitality and leisure top-up grant. Both of those schemes in total accounted for about £1.6 billion of public spending. The nature of the pace of the distribution of that money had to be quicker than would normally have been the case for public bodies awarding grants outside of the public sector, just with the sheer pace scale challenges that the pandemic brought. What we have concluded in our report is that by necessity, the Scottish Government has had to accept additional risks around fraud or error in the distribution of that money. At a headline level, the Government has, through its own assessment, said that between 1 and 2 per cent of that spending will be a tribute to fraud and error. Around somewhere between £16 million and £32 million of that is likely to have been spent not in accordance with the associated laws. Just one last thing, I would say that the assessment and the mechanisms are unhappy to say a bit more that the Government and its partners took to mitigate against fraud, but in arriving at that figure of 16 to 32 it requires us as auditors to form a judgment. What does that mean for the accounts? Are they fairly stated? Is there a question about the regularity of that amount? In our judgment, £16 to 32 million of course is a hugely significant amount of public spending that has not been spent properly, but in the overall materiality of the Government's accounts we have already mentioned this morning of £50 billion. We are satisfied that the accounts are fairly stated and there is not a question to be made about me altering my audit opinion on the accounts. That is very helpful. In terms of whether a proportion of that money is even was fraudulently obtained or disbursed in error, is there an attempt at all to recover any of that money? I mean, whether it was fraudulently obtained or not, are we in a process of trying to recover that or is that just one of the casualties of the circumstances that we found ourselves in? There is an attempt to recover it and I will pass to Michael in a moment just to say a bit more about the steps that the Government and other public bodies are taking. Michael might also want to say a bit more about some of the evidence that the Government took in arriving at its judgment about the overall scale of the risks. I think that it is important to say that the mechanisms that the Government and other public bodies had in place to guard against fraud and some of the arrangements that they had in place pre-pandemic served them relatively well. I do carry out that because I wouldn't want to give the committee the impression that up to £30 million of public spending is a positive result, but we are able to protect against other additional frauds. We report that there is probably around £3 million of fraud that was actively prevented because of some of the anti-fraud mechanisms that were in place. We are satisfied, Mr Coffey, that the Government has been clear and transparent on the aspect of the accounts and the anti-fraud mechanisms that were in place. I will invite Michael to say a bit more about some of the steps that the Government took and what they are now taking to recover amounts where there has been an error of fraud in place. I think that there is some key data around some of the application process. I think that first looking at the level of rejected applications across the different schemes between 14 and 30 per cent of applications. That is really important because that suggests that there is a good control framework in operation that stops it immediately. Stephen MacDonald mentioned that there are almost 2,200 cases of detected or suspected fraud across all local authorities in relation to those schemes. That leads to an estimate of likely fraud that has been prevented between £7 million and £11 million, based on average grant amounts. What is also important is that only 100 cases resulted in payments being made, but, as Mr Coffey asked about recoveries, yes, recovery action is under way. At the point of the end of the financial year, just over £1 million had been recovered and we are aware that about 115 other cases of recoveries are under way. Absolutely, there is the expectation that where payments have been made, either as a result of fraud or suspected fraud or an error, then those amounts should be actively recovered. One of the lessons that we have learned as an audit committee over the years, Stephen and Michael, is that local authorities, for example, are involved in a process like this and something is going on, perhaps fraudulent claims to the authority. Are they quick to share that intelligence within and amongst the other authorities so that they can be alerted to possible activities like this? Or do they have time to do that during the pandemic? It seems as though they may have done so and collaborated fairly well to try to minimise the impact of that. Is that the case? That is a fair assessment, Mr Coffey. I guess that there are two components of it. One is that local authorities have well-established networks of anti-fraud arrangements, but Scotland played a part in that as well. There are heads of anti-fraud and internal audit. As you alluded to, the committee's familiarity with the national fraud initiative all set in building blocks in place for strong collaboration to guard against anti-fraud. We witnessed that in real time during the early stages of the pandemic, some of the attempted fraud and where those were intervened to stop, that intelligence was shared across local authorities and others who were distributing grants. I think that it is a reasonable conclusion to make that established arrangements worked well and that they were enhanced during the stage of the pandemic in an attempt to minimise but not prevent entirely some of the fraud numbers that we are reporting. Lastly, Stephen, any new lessons that we learned because of that accelerated process in terms of looking at disbursement of public funds and safeguarding it for the future? Is there any lessons that we can learn going forward to help to offer us more protection? I think that you said that there is a case for more opportunity to learn lessons and collections, no doubt, as we have come best part of two years through the pandemic, that the arrangements in place are now stronger than they were at the early stages. Building on some of those established networks served organisations well. Those bodies that were familiar with distributing grants to other bodies outside the public sector were able to draw on that. It will be a matter for the Government to determine which of the bodies are best placed to distribute funding or whether it is done on a portfolio basis because that is the nature of how money flows through or whether it is done and given to organisations that are familiar with doing so. I think that there is probably scope to think about deploying grants to organisations that that is what they do rather than necessarily saying that it has to follow a portfolio spending pattern. As ever, you would expect us to say, Mr Coffey, that we encourage really lots of reflection and lessons learned, not just by Government but really all public bodies who have been involved in the pandemic. Of course, through our own work, we will look to contribute that as we continue to report. I have mentioned earlier through our next Covid-19 update. I thank both of you for those answers. I thank you very much to you, convener. Thanks, Willie. I know that Craig Hoy wants to come in on this issue broad, so I will invite Craig to come in at this point. I do not want to put you on the spot. I am not sure how good your life tracking is presently in relation to the new round of business support. In December, about £375 million of support for business was announced. The general impression that I am getting through my post bag and talking to hospitality businesses is that it is actually slower in going out the door than it was before. I noted that on Tuesday, the First Minister said, and I will just quote what she said, that we are working with local authorities and other agencies to get the money out of the door and into the bank accounts of those who need it as quickly as possible. However, there are checks and processes that have to be applied to guard against fraud. Do you have any impression as to whether or not it is taking longer to process this current round? Is that because there have been lessons learned and there are further checks and balances put into the process, or could there be other reasons for the delay in this round of disbursements? To be just absolutely clear, I do not have any up-to-date information on the number of £375 million and how well that is going beyond what I have heard the First Minister say in the chamber. There is a balance, if I may just offer the perspective, on continuing to get money as quickly as possible to where it needs to go, together with some form of checks and balance, but that needs to feel proportionate in order to guard against the effective use of public funds but to get it quickly to where it needs to go. I do not have any up-to-date information from local authorities or other public bodies. I will invite, whether Michael or Helen, whether they have anything, they wish to have. Nothing has been added to that. It could well be that the Scottish Government has learned a lot of lessons over the course of the last year on how to deploy those funds quickly but in order to minimise the risk of fraud and error. I think that we saw over the course of the last year, the year in which we looked at that as part of the audit, that the controls and arrangements did improve as they were learning lessons through the course of the year. That could be one element of it but, if we look at it as part of the current year's audit, there is not much more that we can say in relation to that. Thanks, Craig. I do not know whether Colin Beattie wanted to come in on the issue of social security fraud or whether that has been covered already. There are one or two aspects of this that I would like to touch on and the European structural funds. Obviously, there have been concerns in the past about social security payments in Scotland and the risk of fraud. A large part of the expenditure, over £3 billion, is administered by the DWP under our agency arrangements with Scottish ministers. As far as we are concerned, we are probably not able to establish what the levels of fraud and error might be, but, based on the levels of fraud and error reported by the DWP for the benefits that have been paid overall, Scotland has done an estimate that overpayments in Scotland could amount to £65.4 million. That is a lot of money. How is it accounted for? Does it come back to us as a notional loss? How does that work? Good morning, Mr Beattie. Our report today covers the fraud that we talked about through the distribution of Covid funding and the Social Security Scotland accounts that are consolidated into the Scottish Government accounts. That is why we are reporting them here. The numbers that you mentioned are reported in the Social Security Scotland accounts. As you described, there is still a component of two sets of arrangements for how benefits in Scotland are paid out. Some are paid directly by Social Security Scotland and others still remain with the DWP, who act as an agent on behalf of Social Security Scotland. For those components that relate to DWP distributing the benefits, it is estimated that there is a range of fraud or error between one and a half and 5.2 per cent of the total funds. That has helped them to arrive at an estimated error of £65.4 million. One is about the audit perspective and the other is about the recovery component that you asked. The auditor's view is that £65.4 million of public spending is not compliant with the associated laws and regulations and that, therefore, they took the view that that impacted their regularity opinion on the audit and made reference to it. The recovery of the amount is something that the DWP will continue to undertake as people's circumstances change and they are made aware of it. As the committee will be familiar with, the benefits agencies, DWP or Social Security Scotland can make arrangements to recover benefits that have been overpaid, whether due to fraud or error, and that process will continue. I might turn to Michael or indeed Helen, just to say a bit more. This is not a brand-new issue, the level of error. The committee may recall from previous evidence that some of the DWP's estimates dated back about 20 years in terms of arriving at a robust and reliable estimate. That was an initial part of the story as to why there was concerns about the quantification of the fraud and error. If I may invite Michael to update as to where the DWP has reached in terms of a reliable estimate for Scotland of the level of fraud and error. The estimates are more up-to-date now. Previously, where it was very difficult to get an estimate, because I think the data has turned back to the 1990s and 1996s, I seem to recall. Obviously, times have changed and it was not a reliable estimate at the time. Across the range of schemes that are bothered by the DWP, the error rate ranges between 1.5 and 5.2 per cent. That is applied across the different schemes, so carers are loving that. That is about £15.4 million of fraud and error. The first one is probably the highest of that £65.4 million. It is £24.4 million. In an action like any fraudulent or error payments, action will be taken to recover those amounts. The fact is that the only know if an error has happened or a fraud has happened when they identify it. Those are just estimates. Are the figures that we should be concerned about? Are the figures that somehow have to be accounted for? How does this work? I think that you can take confidence as Michael confirms that the figure is more robust. The 1.5 to 5.2 per cent is a range that applies to our different range of benefits. It is not a scale applying to one category of benefits, but there are a number of different benefits within that. As people enter the benefit system and claim it, much of the quality of the information comes from the quality of the disclosure that the person makes. There is not a 100 per cent pre-verification check for when people claim benefits. That always brings an additional level of risk. DWP, before it and now Social Security Scotland, have to accept a level of risk when they award benefits. Perhaps it is also like the payments to businesses, Mr Beattie, that money for the benefit system is an urgency that needs to get to claimants as quickly as possible. Social Security Scotland has stated as part of its ethos, one of compassion, to get money as quickly out to when it is needed. That brings a level of risk. To answer your question directly, I do not think that you should be concerned about it. What matters is that the amounts are correctly disclosed and that where there has been identified of an overpayment of benefits, there are effective, robust arrangements to recover that, most certainly where that is attributable to fraud. Do we have an actual figure as to how much is written off? This is not a write-off figure, it is just an estimate that is based on past experience as to what the losses might be. Do we have an actual write-off figure? Obviously, some are recovered and actions taken, but some are irrecoverable. How do we identify that? I do not have that figure immediately to handle. Again, I invite Michael Hellen to say if they have that number at their fingertips. If they do not, we can quickly come back to the committee in writing us to how much is written off each year. One last time for a turn to colleagues is to say that you are right. This figure here is not a write-off, but this is an estimate of likely fraud. The process of arriving at a write-off takes many, many years of attempts at engagement, recovery terms and trying to locate people. There will always be circumstances where amounts cannot be recovered. Whether it is due to benefit claimants passing away or just leaving the country or whatever or just differential circumstances will never lend themselves to recovering benefits. That is just the nature of those organisations that have to absorb some of that level of risk. Again, I will just pause and invite Michael Hellen to say if they know the number that Social Security Scotland has written off. Thank you. No, it is not a number that I have to hand, but I am sure that if it is available, we can provide that to the committee. As the minister general mentioned, there is a time lag involved in that, because it takes time to identify whether there has been an overpayment in individual cases, whether an investigation is made in error or whether it is a fraudulent claim that requires police action and so on. Sometimes these can be very sensitive cases because of the nature of the payments. Therefore, there is an important aspect about how you would go about recovering that amount, particularly from those that have gone on in society. As I said, if we have a figure to hand, we can provide that to the committee. I would certainly be interested in seeing the figure of the actual write-offs, and I am sure that the committee would, too. Let me stunt a slightly different subject, which is the European structural funds. The European structural funds programmes in suspension are not a new thing. Over the years, the European structural funds programmes have been put in suspension quite frequently. The reclaimed payments are still through the European Commission. There is a risk that the payments might not be able to be reclaimed in full once the suspension is lifted. There is a fairly chunky write-off in 2021 of £16 million and a provision of £28.7 million in relation to future under-recovery payments. I am a bit concerned that the programme is going to end in 2023 as a result of the UK leaving the EU. Can you summarise the issues that led to the European structural fund programme being suspended and what the issues are that remain to be resolved in order for the suspension to be lifted? I am happy to start, Mr W.T.I.C. I invite colleagues to supplement my response. Unfortunately, that is not a new issue in terms of the European structural funds and the Scottish Government's arrangements to comply with the European Commission's guidelines and requirements. My understanding is that it is notoriously difficult to comply with some of its requirements. I think that a lot of countries hit that problem. I think that that is true. I am a former auditor of the common agricultural policy and the requirements to receive European grants were onerous, but they were very clear and specific at the same time. If you wish to receive European grants, you have to follow the European Commission's rules. What the Commission did regularly was to send its own auditors to sample check compliance for the payments, and they found that the Scottish Government, and particularly some of its partners, had a wide network of bodies that were involved in the distribution and claimant for the European structural funds, but they were not following the rules. That led to suspension arrangements. At that point, the Scottish Government took a decision to continue to pay some of its funds out of its own resources, while it took quite significant steps to enhance its arrangements so that it met the Commission's requirements. Following subsequent audits and suspensions being lifted, we reported in our report that there has been a write-off of £16 million and a further provision of £28.7 million of potential under-recovery. Significant amounts of public spending, Mr Beattie, and a won't be recovered or at risk of not being recovered. On top of that, there has been a difficult story for the Scottish Government in terms of its compliance, audit and suspension. We are now looking at the non-recovery of tens of millions of pounds of public spending. Ultimately, there will be a matter now as to what follows next in terms of the community renewal fund and levelling up and the associated arrangements for compliance so that the Government is able to have the arrangements in place to demonstrate that and not bring any further exposure or risk to public spending. Very briefly, Mr Beattie, I invite Michael. He's also been closely involved in this, and then I invite you to assist us. Just a little to add, you mentioned about the problems that are arising in the first place, and it really is the very constrict rules of the European Commission, and they had concerns about the implementation of the management and control system, and whether the expenditure was valid after a number of weaknesses were found in validation checks. The long process has been for the Scottish Government to reassess those claims to ensure that weaknesses are addressed and that validation checks will meet the satisfaction of the European commissioners, auditors and commissioners. Once there is that level of satisfaction, there will be a process to go through for the commission to hopefully lift the remaining fund, the European social fund, out of suspension. The Scottish Government is part of the accounting around that. It needs to be realistic about the likelihood of being able to recover those amounts. That is why the amounts that have been mentioned have been written off or earmarked for future write-off in this year's accounts. From memory, in past circumstances where there has been similar suspensions, it has turned out to be the agency delivering who has failed to comply and that the Scottish Government has left to sort that out. Is that the case again? Yes, that has been a feature of some of the suspensions. The Scottish Government and its partners have been agencies. When the commissioners' auditors have looked at it, they have not confined themselves to the Scottish Government. They have also looked at some of the cases at the agency, and that was part of the story of why they were not satisfied that the rules had been followed sufficiently that led to the suspensions. Yes, there is not just the Government issues. What are the implications of the ESF programme ending in 2023? Does that mean that if the Scottish Government has not been able to clean that up and reclaim any funds that it can, that simply it becomes a dead loss? If so, are there other financial implications behind that? In terms of longer-term implications, I guess that we can only answer so far and it will be for perhaps the Government themselves to better explain their understanding of how the arrangements will end in 2023. However, as they have written off the £16 million so far and also, I think that it is really important that they provide the further £28 million, nearly £29 million, that gives an indication that there is a real level of uncertainty that they will recover those amounts. I look into the future whenever the UK arrangements are in terms of stepping into the space that the structural funds occupied. I am sure that the Government will want to be satisfied that it has got the assurance and compliance arrangements really solidly in place so that they do not fall into the circumstances that they found themselves with the European funds. You touched on my last question—the new UK Government funding programmes. In the past, you have said that there was a lack of clarity about the responsibilities for the replacement funds and that you were in discussions on that. Has there been any progress on that? Do you have a better understanding of what your role will be in monitoring those funds? I am not able to give the committee the precise clarity that you or I would have hoped for at this stage in terms of the roll-out of the successor arrangements. It is also important to note that the UK Government, as part of its arrangements, will be giving grants directly to local authorities and some Scottish local authorities. The associated assurance and audit arrangements are still in discussion, so I do not have an answer that can say that this is how it will operate yet, Mr Beattie. We are still engaging in discussions with both the Government and our other UK Audit agencies to confirm how any associated audit arrangements will work. It is safe to say that the audit regime will not replicate the audit regime that the European Commission sought for the distribution of structural funds and agricultural funding, and perhaps that is an appropriate thing, so there has to be a reasonable level of assurance and audit activity around it, but not necessarily mirroring exactly what went before. Given where we are on timing, given that some funding has already been made, it seems quite inappropriate that we do not have any idea as to what the audit requirements are going to be in connection with that. Do you have any timescale? In terms of my role, as the committee will know, is to audit the funds approved by the Scottish Parliament. Our audit role in terms of European funding was part of a syndicate and agency arrangement on behalf of the national audit office to audit European agricultural funding in Scotland. That was not a statutory component of my role, so I will be led in part by discussions for the distribution of the successor arrangements that takes place between the Scottish Parliament, Westminster and the respective Governments, which I think will probably be the larger driver behind the associated audit and assurance arrangements. We will continue to stay in touch with the other UK audit agencies in terms of whether or not there would be a request of us to undertake audit where the funds are UK-led, but at the moment I do not have precise clarity unfortunately as to how all that will unfold. I would ask you perhaps, that the committee is obviously going to be very interested in this when this is resolved. Perhaps you could note to come back to us when you do have some clarity so that we also understand what's happening. I'm very happy to make that commitment. Thank you, General. Back to you, convener. Thank you, Colin. We've now got some questions on a moving area of governmental roles, responsibilities and policy, and that's about borrowing, both resource borrowing and capital borrowing. I want to bring Craig Hoy in at this point. Thank you, Richard. Hello again, Stephen. I can just start by focusing on capital borrowing. In 2021, the Scottish Government borrowed £200 million against its capability of £450 million, and a similar picture in terms of the utilisation of that leverage was quite similar in 18, 19 and 19, 20. In your view, or as a general, could the Scottish Government make fuller use of its capital borrowing powers in order to help to meet its capital investment priorities? As you know, Mr Hoy, the Government borrowed £200 million against a £450 million cap on an annual basis during the course of the 2021 financial year. Clearly, there was additional headroom left for it to borrow in that year. Ultimately, it is a question for the Government to determine how it wishes to structure its borrowing arrangements. What we noted in the report, and it is consistent with previous reporting, is that it is not immediately clear how the capital borrowing has been used, whether it is identifiable against a particular project or another. Instead, the Government's response is that it is allocated in totality against its capital borrowing arrangements. We note that there are no specific details of how the capital borrowing has been used, but, precisely against your question, there was headroom for Governments in terms of the confines of the fiscal framework borrowing caps, yes. Just to that point that you made in relation to the way that it is accounted for, would it be realistic for the capital borrowing figures to be supported and detailed, either in the consolidated accounts or as part of the major capital projects update? I think that that is a helpful suggestion for Government. We are always advocating additional clarity and transparency on how that money has been used. Michael May wants to say a bit more about that. I am sure that it is not just the disclosures that you see in the consolidated accounts. There are also associated disclosures in the Scottish consolidated fund accounts, which is the mechanism that is used to receive funding from the UK Parliament through the Scotland office and into the Scottish Parliament's approved budget. That also makes some disclosures in terms of the capital borrowing arrangements. There are a couple of places where it is noted, but we are also keen to see some additional disclosures against particular projects. The major capital project is a good idea that you suggest, Mr Roy. Michael May wants to come in if he wants to, for a moment, just about how that works in terms of the consolidated funds. I will adjust the point about both details as it applies to projects. The capital borrowing powers that the Scottish Government has, the rules and framework are outlined in the fiscal framework. As part of that borrowing, the Scottish Government can borrow usually over 10 years, sometimes over a term of 25 years. However, what defines the length of loan and the timescales that are applied are the underlying assets of the projects in that case. We are keen, as we have mentioned in previous reports, to the Scottish Government to give more disclosures around the specific projects that its loan funding is for. Quite often it is close to the end of the financial year that the Scottish Government decides on how much it is going to draw down against its annual limit. That will be a financial management decision based on the amount of traditional capital spending that is going out and the progress of other projects in the capital spending programme and how best to ensure that it achieves the maximum value from the borrowing that it draws down. The end of the day is borrowing and it has to be paid back, so it needs to factor in that side of the equation as well as part of the decision. I have a three-part question about resource borrowing. Stephen, you have a flavour of how effective the Scottish Government has been in utilising its resource borrowing powers. Has the pandemic highlighted any concerns over the scale of those powers? I am just looking back to 2017-18 when there was an overestimate of income tax, which then meant that the Government could borrow for that. At what point does a full casting problem become a structural problem if, a year on year, we find ourselves with the same problem? Do you have any concern that, if we continue to undershoot, you cannot say that, but if we do not meet the income tax receipts that the Government suggests, perhaps the issue about using it to balance any shortfall becomes a structural issue that is not a full casting issue. Do you have any concerns in that respect in relation to income tax? I think that some of the factors that you describe will be, under very close consideration, as part of the review of the fiscal framework arrangements that the two Governments will be undertaking shortly. You mentioned the resource borrowing. This is the first year that the Government has undertaken resource borrowing under the existing fiscal framework. As you suggest, Mr Hoy is to cover for an under-recovery or an off income tax receipts relative to a forecast that was made for the 2017-18 financial year. There has always been to be variability, I think, to say from one year to the next. Especially in some of the earlier years, as through the estimates from the Scottish Fiscal Commission, as those have become refined and even more reliable, we will see perhaps less volatility, but then events happen. A pandemic will change the nature of likely income tax receipts and more volatility in the job market. It is a matter for the Governments and the Parliament to determine the nature of the relative powers of the fiscal framework. As many others have said, and probably my remarks to this are that the fiscal framework was not designed with a pandemic in mind, and the extent to which that translates to more, less or fiscal powers that should stay the same, allotently through discussion as they go through the consultation and review of the fiscal framework. Thank you, Craig. Just before we finish, one of the things that attracted the committee's attention, Auditor General, was your judgment that it was necessary to spotlight the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. In particular, you have identified in the report on the Scottish Government's consolidated accounts special payments that had to be made in the financial year 2020-21 by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to the tune of £40.2 million, £40 million of which were payments made to individuals following legal action against the law advocate in connection with the acquisition and administration of Ranges Football Club. By my calculation, 99.5 per cent of those special payments went to individuals in connection with that case. From an audit perspective, we are interested in finding out whether you think that that represents for you fundamental concerns about the financial position now that the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service find themselves in. I am going to bring Helen in in a moment who wants to say a word or two more about the audit judgments that Audit Scotland colleagues have made in respect of that. I thought that it was necessary to include the financial implications of that in the Scottish Government's section 22 report. For two reasons. One is that it is a significant amount of public spending. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Accounts are consolidated into the Scottish Government's accounts. I have not taken any firm view yet, convener, of whether there will be any dedicated reporting on the matter that I might undertake. The reason I am not really able to form a judgment on that is, as you will know, that there is to be a judge-led inquiry into some of the circumstances surrounding those events and associated payments. However, I thought again that transparency and public awareness committee's interests are not necessary to include them in that set of accounts. On the implications of the case and the scale of it, as it relates to the Crown Office's overall financial position, we note that in part in the report. I will invite Helen to come in just to say a bit more. I want to update you on the position, if that is all right. First of all, the £40 million refers to ready-being-spent plus accruals made in the accounts of the Crown Office, which have been brought into the SGA accounts. If I can just bring you up to date on the fact that there are six cases involved, two of which have been fully closed and completed. A third case has been settled. I am sure that you will have read in the press that a fourth case has in fact been thrown out by the courts. That leaves two cases that remain on-going at this point. In terms of the amount that was spent, it was spent in terms of cash during 2021-24 million. A lot of news has been in the press about that, and there are 16 million of accrued moneys there, which reflect legal costs plus the on-going court cases. That makes up the £40 million altogether. I agree with what has been said earlier. It is a significant amount of money, but the cases continue to be on-going. I hope that that has helped you. I do not know whether you are in a position to give us any estimate, but whether you are in a position to give us any estimate of what you think the outstanding exposure to those litigation cases is in light of what you have said about one being settled, two being closed and others still on-going. Do you have a sense of the value of those cases? No, unfortunately, I am not able to do that. I do not have that kind of detail to hand at court cases, but they continue with the costs that are adding up as the length continues, and they get looked at and worked through the actual court process, maybe trying to make inquiries of the auditor of courts together with the Crown Office if they have more of a thought around the actual cost, if that would help. Y Llywydd, you are right, but I think that it is mentioned that, before some of the more recent developments in the cases, there was a figure of £16 million that was the provision for future costs associated with the case. As ever, it is a bit of an event that is unfolding and that figure will be reliable at a point in time when the accounts signed off late into the autumn of this year. The audit is on-going both through the audit of the Crown Office and also the opportunity through the audit of the Scottish Government to report publicly. We will continue to do that, but, as ever, we are mindful that, given that there is judicial inquiry into the circumstances, when will be the best place to comment further. Thank you. That is understood, but your door is still open to further inquiry from an audit perspective on what has happened here. I think that that is right. In terms of public reporting on that, we will do so without adding value and increasing transparency, and we will keep an open mind on how that progresses. I want to bring this part of our proceedings this morning to a close. I would like to thank Helen Russell, Michael Olifant and Auditor General for giving your evidence this morning. As I mentioned at the start, it is an important piece of work on the audit of the Scottish Government to consolidate the accounts. There are many aspects of it that we have not yet had a chance to speak to you about and put questions to you about. I hope that, with your co-operation, we will be able to do that in the very near future, because there are some very important issues of public concern that are contained in the report. Thank you very much indeed. I will now close the public part of this morning's committee before we go into private session.