 I welcome everyone to this, the 11th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023. The first item on our agenda is to agree to take agenda items 4, 5 and 6 and 7 in private. Are members of the committee content to do that? Yes, we are. Thank you very much. The agenda item 2 is a session with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life, Ian Bruce, who is joining us at the committee this morning. This follows up an Audit Scotland report, which was published several weeks ago, a section 22 report, looking at the audit of the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Lives in Scotland's latest performance. That session, we had some discussion towards the end of the evidence about whether, Ian Bruce, you were the accountable officer as well as the Commissioner. Just for the record, I can confirm that you are. That's correct, isn't it? Yes. Thank you very much indeed. We've obviously got quite a number of questions that we want to put to you this morning, Ian, but before we get to those, could I ask you to make a short opening statement to the committee? Certainly. Thank you, convener, and members of the committee, for the invitation and for the opportunity to talk to you about the work of our office. I will keep that statement brief, as I am sure that you will have a number of questions for me. I trust that you have reviewed our last two annual reports and the two section 22 reports, led by the Auditor General for Scotland, into the work of our office. These will have given you a flavour of the challenges that our organisation has faced since I took up my role as acting commissioner almost two years ago now. I don't plan to rehearse all of those challenges here, although I'll be very happy to respond to any questions that you have for me in relation to those. I felt it may instead be more helpful at this point to bring the committee briefly up to speed on the office's current circumstances and our plans for the future. What is Scotland's section 22 report from January followed up in our office's progress in the usual way, and it reflected positively, I feel, on the work that we have done to rebuild our office and the services that we provide and to restore confidence in the ethical standards framework. However, it also made it clear that more work has to be done to embed the good practices that we have adopted since the last section 22 report was led by the Auditor General. In terms of the progress that we have made, we have included all of the details on our website and, in summary, in our annual report. We will continue to keep the public and our stakeholders updated on our progress. In brief, we have now fully implemented 16 of our Auditor's 26 recommendations. That number may not be familiar, but some of the recommendations were multi-part and we split them up just in order to track our progress appropriately. We have partially implemented the remainder that we are able to, and I will happily provide more detail during the course of this session. We have concentrated on re-establishing our governance, our systems of assurance, our relationships with stakeholders and our staffing levels. On that front, we are in the midst of recruitment to fill roles that were approved by the SPCB in October, with three new staff members now in post and currently going through their induction and four more being brought on board between now and May. We have some assurance that we are making progress. Our internal auditors last year reviewed our systems of governance and our investigations procedures and assessed the controls in place as substantial. They assessed our risk management controls as strong. In terms of my plans for the immediate future, I intend to complete our office recruitment exercise, followed by induction, in order to clear our investigations backlog and in order to process complaints much more quickly in the future. I have also developed a range of new and somewhat dated key performance indicators that we will implement soon and subsequently publicly measure our progress against. That will be on our website. For the longer term, I am due to produce a new strategic plan for the period from 2024 to 2028, which will set out my ambitions for the future. I trust that that is of interest to the committee, and I am no happy to answer any questions that you may have. Commissioner, thank you very much indeed. I think that our working list was 22 recommendations and the breakdown of 10 that have been implemented at the time of the Audit Scotland reports publication and 10 that were working progress. I am sure that during the cost of the next hour we will get into some of the detail of the recommendations and what progress you have made. If you have reconfigured them, we will get to the bottom of that, too. I am going to go first of all to Willie Coffey, who has got an extremely important question that certainly exercised us very much at the last session that we had with the Auditor General. Willie Coffey, thank you very much, convener. Good morning, Ian. It is really about the issue of public confidence and restoring public confidence, and you mentioned it in your remarks. We know that advice has been given to you that you cannot re-visit complaints that were made in the past, and other members have raised this matter with you previously. Do you not think that there is an obligation in terms of natural justice and to restore public confidence that we do reinvestigate complaints that were clearly not handled appropriately? The Auditor General's report in paragraph 19 refers to this that there is a potential feeling of injustice that complaints have not been invested in compliance with the legislation at the time. On balance, do you not feel that greater weight should be attached to that aspect of restoring public confidence, rather than the advice that you may have received to not re-visit those complaints? To be honest, I have struggled with this myself because I have met personally with some of the individuals affected by this, but it is important for the committee to have a full understanding of the situation. The Auditor General's recommendation was not that I re-open and reinvestigate complaints. The recommendation was that we have someone external to the office, come in and independently review my predecessor's decisions. That was the recommendation. In order to establish whether it was possible for me to take forward that recommendation, because it would have required a significant amount of contingency funding from the SPCB, I asked the auditors what advice is based on. Have you sought legal advice in relation to that recommendation? They confirmed that they hadn't, and I felt obliged to seek that legal advice in order to have a proper understanding of what the position was. I am not a lawyer myself, so the advice came as a bit of a surprise to me, but I have a very deep understanding of it now. The legal term for it is functus officio. I do not have much of a grounding in Latin, but members may be familiar with a similar term in relation to criminal justice, and it is the concept of double jeopardy. Functus officio is the equivalent of double jeopardy in relation to the work of public authorities. It means that a public authority having made a decision cannot be revisited. I truly understand what you are saying about how it feels in terms of natural justice for those whose complaints were investigated and no breach found, or in cases in which the commissioner concluded that there was not a breach on the face of the code and, therefore, it was not worthy of investigation. I do understand and empathise with the position of those complainers who feel that they did not receive justice. On the other side, you have a range of councillors and board members who feel that they were exonerated either at the end of an investigation or felt that it was fine that the commissioner's view was that there was not on its face a breach of the code. Having been exonerated in their eyes, how would they feel if two years down the line another commissioner comes in, the same complaint is made to that commissioner, and that commissioner then goes back and overturns the decision of a previous one. The legal advice to me was unequivocal. There are only very narrow circumstances in which a complaint can be revisited or a public authority's decision. It goes further than that. The legal advice was that I would be acting unlawfully if I sought to overturn the decisions of my immediate predecessor. I trust that you will understand that, in the position of a parliamentary office holder, I could not, in good faith, choose to disregard legal advice that I had taken because it would end up potentially with me in a position of having to try to defend a legal case that would involve public money, resources and time, which I would have no reasonable prospect of winning, based on that legal principle. Believe me, when I say that I do struggle with this myself, it has been challenging for me, but, fundamentally, I did not feel that I could act unlawfully in good faith. I will go further, so it was legally privileged advice, but it was shared with the SPCB and the Standards Commission for Scotland because it sought their input prior to making this decision. I would be more than happy to share that advice with the committee in full. I am very transparent about that, but that is the position. That was going to be my next question, whether that advice could be shared in private or public, even with the committee, so it is very much appreciated if that is possible. Iain, but just to emphasise the point that what we are being told here is that that direction overrides the requirement, the duty, to deliver justice to people who have raised complaints. I would like to separate the complaints that were dealt with and perhaps the complainant as unhappy with the outcome compared to complaints that were not properly investigated. How on earth could that direction supersede those? It comes down to the founding legislation in relation to the acquittal of that particular statutory function, which is the 2000 act, so the ethical standards in public life in Scotland act. It makes it clear that there is a section in that that says whether, when and how to conduct an investigation are statutorily matters for the commissioner, those were the decisions that that commissioner made at that time and statutorily those were her decisions to make, and I am not in a position to overturn them because of the legal principle. Again, I truly empathise with some individuals who feel like my complaint should have been investigated, but her decision was no on the basis of what is before me. It is not appropriate to investigate and statutorily those were her decisions to make. Is it possible for people to submit a fresh complaint about those matters? I am happy to talk to the narrow circumstances in which I can revisit public authorities decisions, and they are very narrow. Again, you will find them in the legal advice. There has to have been a fundamental mistake of fact, or there has to have been fraud, or the public authority has not completed its inquiries. If complainers are able to come to me, let us say with fresh evidence that here is something new that your predecessor was not aware of at the time that the decision is made, then there is scope for me to look at that potentially again. Anyone who comes to me, and I feel that I have the leeway to pursue their case in a defensible way, I will do that, but if it is exactly the same complaint that comes and a decision has already been made on it, my hands are tied. I wonder if you could update the committee on progress. It was one of the recommendations that was made about the full investigations manual and so on that came out of that experience. Could you update the committee on what the progress was? By all means. It will not surprise the committee that I am aware of prior sessions. I think that it had been mentioned that it was a bit of a coincidence that the manual came out for consultation not long before the session last year. I think that it was with the SPCB. It is not a coincidence that the full investigations manual was published tomorrow following public consultation last November. I would like to be clear about that as well. It is not a criticism of the auditors, but we put that manual together in November 2021. That is how long we have had an investigations manual in place and how long we have been working to it. It has been a work in progress only to the extent that we have been updating it based on feedback that we have had from people while we have been operating it, but we have been operating it for a very long time. It is now on version 9. We chose to go beyond the auditors' recommendations because they said that we produced this investigation manual. We did. We chose to consult publicly on it. We have spoken about my strong desire to restore public confidence in the work of the office, and that has been about being transparent not just about how we plan to investigate things but seeking people's views. This is how we plan to go about our business. What are your thoughts? There was an extensive consultation period with the Standards Commission and all the local authorities. The monitoring officers in advance of our even publicising it for public consultation. The final version will be published tomorrow, but it will continue to be a living document. It is very well embedded. I think that I mentioned during my opening statement that last year our internal auditors had a look at our investigations procedures and said that you have substantial controls in place in relation to those. Finally, convener, your views to put on the table the lessons that may have been learned from that process of the concluded investigations and so on. What lessons have we learned there that will deliver public confidence and restore public confidence that you have mentioned a few times? Checks and balances are really important in the ethical standards framework. The reality is that my predecessor has a relationship with the Standards Commission for Scotland and broke down and they brought in a set of directions. I think that those, frankly, in and of themselves, can give the public a great deal of confidence. I am working very much in partnership with the Standards Commission, but basically anything that comes to my office, other than in really narrow circumstances, I am statutorily obliged to investigate. I can provide assurance to this committee and Standards Commission and anyone else with an interest that I do investigate anything that may have merit that comes before me is properly investigated. I report on the results of that investigation of the Standards Commission. The Standards Commission is not bound by my decisions, so not justice is absolutely baked into that system now. One of the alarm bell figures that we have seen over the cost of the last couple of years is that statistic about the number of cases complaints that were progressed and those that were not. The contrast is between two years, so we were told that in 2016-17 complaints against councillors and members of public boards, 43 per cent of those complaints were not pursued, i.e., 57 per cent were pursued, but by the time we get to 2020-21, 84 per cent of those complaints were not pursued. That was one of the things that I think sent out a clear signal to people that they had lost confidence in the system and that something was going wrong. There was such a big contrast. You might want to reflect on that, but could you also perhaps tell us what the current figure is of complaints against councillors and public board members? We will take that as the test area to find out what the figures are now. We track that regularly. I can assure the committee that we are back at previous levels. We have gone back to the 27th, so not my immediate predecessor, but prior to that we went back to 2017-18. We are back at previous levels in terms of, well, in fact, just above previous levels in terms of acceptance for investigation, absolutely. I am more than happy, and I might have started by saying this to the committee. Any detail that you want from me at any point in time, not necessarily in a public session, just say the word and I will provide you with all the statistical information that you require because we are across all of that. I mean, if not now, if subsequent to today's session, if you could provide us in writing with the comparable figure for current date, that would be a useful measure for us to understand whether things are back to a level that most people would recognise. I have a table in the office. I will happily send a copy when I get back to the office today, which will show you the last, I think, five, six years. Thank you. No, that would be good. We are a public audit committee. On the one hand, we do not believe in coincidence, and on the other, we like to see statistical evidence to support arguments that are put before us. The other thing, just a very small thing, was I thought when you replied to Willie Coffey, you mentioned, well, you did mention the corporate body of the Parliament. You are, of course, an independent commissioner. Can I just check the legal advice that you sought on whether or not there could be a resurrection of those cases that were dismissed without investigation? Did you pay for that legal advice? Was that your legal advice or was that the Parliament's legal advice? That was my legal advice, yes. I am going to bring in Colin Beattie. Thank you, convener. Ian, I am going to talk about governance, and I will probably refer you to page four, exhibit one of the Audit Scotland report, which seeks to give a wee graph on that. The section 22 report says that the auditor has commented about, and I quote, issues remain where SPCB and the commissioner's office need to work together to address some of the specific governance issues identified. Maybe you can give me a little bit of update on what is happening in that regard, what discussions you are having, what areas of governance issues have been of most concern and maybe have been resolved. Still a work in progress, I would say. As the convener has pointed out, I am a parliamentary office holder, so I do not have a board of governance, and I think that that is an issue. One of the things that I am looking to bake into our system is that I operate with a senior management team, and I have been in regular discussions with them. We have drafted new terms of reference that we want to run through our advisory audit board, which I will come to shortly as well. Included in that is a requirement on them not only to support me in my role as office holder, but they are not executives. We are talking about grade 5 staff, but there is a requirement on them to constructively challenge me in my role as well. I will sign off those terms of reference. That is one thing that we are planning to do internally. I have re-engaged with the advisory audit board, but their role is strictly advisory. They can advise me on issues such as risk management, etc., but they have no challenge function. Potentially, we need to do more in terms of the external validation of the governance that we have in the office. The statutory route for that is the Auditor General for Scotland. We have external audit of the work that we do, and that has resulted in two section 22 reports coming to this committee. That is one aspect of oversight of our governance as well. In terms of discussions with the SPCB, I am sorry if this appears to be muddling, but I have so many reporting lines and that perhaps is one other issue for consideration. They have provided me with terms of reference, terms and conditions of appointment, a framework document, and I also have a range of KPIs that I require to meet. I can be removed from office by the SPCB if they feel that I am not adhering to the terms and conditions of my employment. I am subject to an annual review as well. They are also looking at introducing potentially a code of conduct for all office holders, which I and other office holders are due to meet the SPCB to discuss in due course as well. Nothing necessarily finalised yet. We have also been in discussions with the AAB, and we are going to provide a route for whistleblowing via the chair of the AAB for staff members. Potentially, there could be a route from the AAB to the SPCB as well. We have an advisory audit board, and its members are drawn from the advisory audit board of the SPCB. What is currently in place is a reporting line from our advisory audit board to the advisory audit board of the SPCB, and perhaps that is something that could be considered as well. Given what you are saying about your relationship with the SPCB, we have always been a wee bit vague as to how much authority they have actually got over you. You are obviously an independent function. Could you define the areas in which the SPCB exert governance over your office or support your office? Obviously, they do funding and everything for you. Where could that be improved? Is the SPCB the major governing body that you refer to? Again, there are a number of reporting lines that I will refer to the Standards Commission now, because they were the ones who brought in directions for the office because of concerns about the way in which investigations were handled. That side of the office's work is covered there. Governance is my responsibility as the accountable officer. The SPCB's oversight is to do with the budget and with the staffing levels and whether or not I am adhering again to my terms and conditions. Other checks, I am not sure, to be honest with you. What might be put in place, as I have said, is that, from my perspective, it is audit Scotland and then to this committee. In terms of the Act, the Commissions and Commissioners Act that established my office, it talks about the scope for removal of a commissioner when things are not going well. The SPCB has scope to remove if I am not adhering to my terms and conditions. The other mechanism for removal is much less clear and vaguer. If a commissioner, basically the Parliament loses confidence in the commissioner, I am not sure what the mechanism is for removal there and how it might be taken forward. I think that there is potentially the scope there for the committee to look at that. It is difficult for me to say because recommendations were made for my office that I clearly cannot implement. I have been in discussions with the SPCB but, fundamentally, I think that these are matters for Parliament, which is how do we deal with a situation in which a commissioner starts to disengage. I think that I could highlight a number of red flags that the committee should be aware of for the future and the SPCB should be aware of for the future. I am now fully engaged with our advisory audit board, as I have said, but disengagement from an advisory audit board should be a red flag. Disengagement from stakeholder bodies such as the Standards Commission, such as the SPCB, should be another red flag. I now have an internal audit function, which, historically, our office has never had, but if the internal audit function were to fall away, potentially that would be another red flag. We are introducing new reporting routes for staff or stakeholders who are concerned about potentially the way in which I am operating. Any reports that could be made, for example, to the chief executive of the Parliament, who is accountable overall, given that my budget falls within the Parliament's budget, that could be another red flag. Those are all things that the committee and the SPCB might wish to consider and potentially audit Scotland as well. I know that the focus traditionally is on finance. I know from your work that you will be familiar with the section 22 reports that come before you. It is very rarely financed that section 22 reports are about. It tends to be about failures in governance. Given what you are saying here, there still seems to be a lot of vagueness as to where the support, the oversight and the governance really is. Are you having discussions with the SPCB to seek clarification on that? Everything that I hear is that they are really the closest thing that you have got to a governing body. Would you agree? I am not sure that I would. I would not say a governing body. I would say that they are there to provide oversight of my governance as an independent office holder. Is there any plans to be expecting SPCB to be the organisation that picks those up and does something about them? I think that that would be a matter for the Parliament, frankly. It sounds like there is an awful lot of things that have not yet been clarified. Without that clarification, it seems to me that there could be circumstances in which we end up having problems again. Potentially. I have explained the measures that I have put in place in order to provide assurance, and I am content with what I am doing as an organisation in order to provide assurance, but that is all that I can do for my part. What is unclear to me is where the support for you is in terms of governance and so on, in terms of the oversight that you are talking about. Clearly it failed previously. What I think this committee is trying to ascertain is what are the possibilities of it failing again down the line, not necessarily now, but five, ten years or whatever, and other adequate, as you say, red flags that somebody would pick up and respond to. For my part, I think that Audit Scotland is the one statutory who has that direct oversight role at the granular level of the work that my office does, and they have a reporting. Audit Scotland come and do it in audit, and obviously they produce a report on that, but they do not have a direct responsibility for the day-to-day running and oversight of your office. Nor would I posit, does the Parliament, I am an independent office holder, and I absolutely understand why you are asking these questions. Clearly I do, because I lived through a period in which the governance of the organisation was heading in the wrong direction. I would not want that to be repeated, either in my office or in any other, but it is one of the challenges involved in having an independent office holder who is truly independent of the Scottish Parliament. I understand what you are saying. Is there sufficient in there at the moment in terms of direct oversight of the work of the organisation? What else could be put in place? I do have regular meetings with the SPCB now, and I share any information with them that they wish to see, and that is around providing assurance to them. Equally, clearly, you have a role as a committee in providing oversight, particularly when audit concerns are raised. I have two other subject committees that I provide information to on a very regular basis. For my part, I think that I am providing all that I can. What I do not feel I can do in good faith is to say to this committee that these are the things that the SPCB should be doing in order to provide oversight or assurance that you feel needs to be in place. I do think that ultimately these are matters for the Parliament. Notwithstanding that those recommendations were included in a section 22 report for me, I feel that I am doing all that I can. I have been in discussions with the SPCB. I know that they have given evidence to this committee, and I understand that that work is on-going more widely than just in terms of my office. I am not sure what else I can offer. As far as this committee is concerned, we come in at the end of a problem. What we are looking for is the red flags that you are talking about. Who is alert to them? Who can do something about it and intervene? To me, at the moment, from what I hear, that is not clear. I think that there is more work that needs to be done on that, and I am sure that this committee will follow that through. We are talking about governance and so forth. We obviously have working relationships with the Standards Commission, the SPCB, and you mentioned two committees of the Scottish Parliament that you are primarily involved with. Who are those two committees? In respect of public appointments, MSP complaints about lobbying are the standards, procedures and public appointments committee of the Scottish Parliament. In respect of councillor complaints, it is the local government, housing and planning committee. What do you consider your current relationship with the two subject committees and the Standards Commission, which I will come to in a bit more depth in a second? How do you think that working relationships are with these? Is that working? Yes, very positive. I have a very long standing relationship with the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, because prior to taking up the role as acting commissioner, I have been working in the field of public appointments, which continues to be a passion for me, given its importance. You will understand that, given that it is the work of boards that quite frequently you look at. Since 2005, I have a very good long standing relationship with that committee. It has a proper understanding of me as an individual in the way in which I work and my commitment to transparency. I have organised training for the entire investigatory team with the committee, so they are all coming into the Parliament in April. That will give you an indication of how strong that relationship is. Whenever they have turned over in clerks or potentially members, I am happy to go in and provide training. For example, my relationship with the local government committee is newer, but I have a very productive evidence session with them, relatively recently. It is a good relationship with the clerks, which is something that I plan to build on. In terms of the Standards Commission, one of the first things that I had to do when I became acting commissioner was to meet with a convener and executive director and to say that I truly understand some of the challenges that you have faced working with my immediate predecessor. I am here to reset that relationship. Let me know from your perspective what went wrong, and I will work very hard to address it, and we continue to work. I would say in partnership that we do not always agree, but you would expect that we are both independent and the public would expect that as well. That does not mean that we do not work very closely together. We have fortnightly meetings with the staff, all the staff in our office and their office, just to provide updates and discuss areas of mutual interest. I have biannual meetings with all the members. Most recently, last week, I and colleagues attended workshops for the standards officers of public bodies in Scotland. It was run by the Standards Commission that was based in Cosless HQ, and I was there presenting on the same stage as the members of the commission. That is a completely different relationship. Just one more quick question. You have mentioned the Standards Commission and the statutory directions, which are still in place. What is the latest position on compliance with the statutory directions? We have been complying fully since I was appointed, and the Standards Commission has written to the Parliament in terms. Have you had any discussions with them as to how long these directions might be in place? Yes, we have. They have consulted us on those. It does cause some additional work for the office, but notwithstanding that, as I said in front of the local government committee, it is providing that level of public assurance. Given the uncertainty that there has been, I think clearly that it is worth maintaining so that the public can see that, yes, I make these decisions, but they go somewhere else as well. Is there an opening arrangement at the moment? The first two sets of directions, and I do not know how much detail the committee would like, but I am happy to go into quite a lot, if that would be your preference. However, the first two sets of directions were recently renewed for two years. The first one relates to keeping all parties basically up to date with how an investigation is going. At three monthly intervals, we let every party to a complaint know how the investigation is going. That was the first one. It was renewed for two years last year. The second one is a reporting direction. It requires us to report on the outcome of every investigation to the standards commission. There is no scope for me to not report once an investigation is concluded. It was renewed for two years as well. The third set of directions came in just prior to my predecessor going on a period of leave. For short, that is the eligibility direction, but it is the one that requires me to investigate pretty much everything other than in very narrow circumstances. We discussed that one with the standards commission. It was a constructive dialogue. It concluded that it would be appropriate to review it for six months, but that was on the basis that we have in our investigations manual. The eligibility criteria are written into the manual so that the public can see that these are our procedures. I think that they are probably going to be content that because that is on the face of our investigations procedures and those are subject to internal audit and they know that they can ask for detail on any of it at any given time, which we provide anyway, as I say, on a fortnightly basis. I think that they are going to be content that that one won't need to be renewed because it's now just, you know, it's work as usual for our office. Right, thank you very much indeed. I'm going to move things on now because one of the issues that we've come back to several times this morning, but in previous sessions that we've had with the Auditor General, has been on staffing capacity and performance. I'm going to invite Ross McCall to ask some questions around that issue. Ross. Thank you, convener. Yes, hello, Mr Bruce. Thank you very much indeed for attending. It's the first time I've met you, so nice to see you. The report was excellent and there were some issues coming across regarding capacity for staffing and performance. You're going to be very specific. Paragraph 25 on page eight there is a very pertinent line. Whilst additional recruitment will help, it will take time for this to be completed and for new staff to be trained to a standard requirement required, excuse me. So, as much as I can accept that, I need to know a little bit more about what training will be required, how long do you anticipate that that will take to get the staff up to speed and more really as to how that will help your forward planning? Yes. So, in terms of workforce planning, that was completed last May. I brought it forward because I'd established by that point in time that we weren't getting through the backlog sufficiently quickly. It was an extensive workforce planning exercise. It resulted in a business bid to the SBCB 31 May. I met with the SBCB in October. I think that that was the earliest opportunity and the bid was accepted shortly thereafter. I spent November planning with my senior management team and started recruitment in November. That was for all of the new investigatory roles that we were looking to fill and three of the corporate services roles that we were looking to fill. We are onboarding people at the moment, so I've mentioned that there are three new staff in place. They are all going through their induction. Induction takes roughly a month, but as they're being inducted, they're not only being introduced to their roles but also their own individual action plans for the year ahead. Performance framework was also mentioned in the section 22 report, so that's well established now. We have a strategic plan, a biennial business plan that sits below that, action plans for every section in the office, and then below that action plans for individual staff members. All of that is mapped out, including for the new people. I hope that addresses your question in terms of planning. Roughly a month for induction, training will take a bit longer, and it's simply because of the nature of the work. Although the people I have hired and I'm really delighted with the quality of people who've come forward and that I've been able to appoint all with really good investigatory backgrounds, as with myself, they will now have to get up to speed on two separate pieces of legislation and three separate codes of conduct, and all of the precedent that sits behind that in terms of standards commission for Scotland's prior decisions. It's not a judicial process but it's quasi-judicial, and some of those things are quite specialist. To use a simple example, decisions on planning applications, licensing and so forth, where complaints about that sort of thing arise. I'm not going to call it arcane but it's quite specialist, so even if you've got a really good grounding and investigations, it will take you a while to get up to speed on what can be quite a technical area. We do have a training timetable set out for all the staff who we onboarded previously and also for all of the ones who are coming in, so they will go through training in all of these areas. That's just one area. Another one is investigating cases of bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment. We employ not only our legal advisers in relation to investigating complaints of that nature but we also engage with Rape Crisis Scotland so that people have an understanding of how their interactions for people involved in complaints of that nature should be handled. I would say certainly by this time next year everything will be in place and you will be looking at, well hopefully I will not be in front of the committee this time next year but clearly that's not my decision to make. I certainly anticipate and expect that we will be a really well functioning office by this point next year. Our backlog will be cleared and we will be getting through complaints much more quickly than the office has done. Can I just follow up on that? You've mentioned three new members of staff. I'm glad to hear that. We had anecdotally heard that there was an increase of staff up to 7.4 full-time equivalents, so we're kind of running on half. Is there a move to increase that to the 7.4? Are you still recruiting? Secondly, from the information that you've given me, is it the three new staff that will take approximately this time next year that they'll be up and running or just give a little bit more information? No, by all means. Recruitment so far has been for the corporate services team and for the investigations team. The majority of those are the new posts, so they are of the 7.4. In corporate services, we had no IT support within the office, so we have a new IT officer coming on board next month. Of the three who have come in already, one is a corporate services officer and one is an HR and facilities officer and the other one is an investigations support officer. The four who are due to join us, one is the hearings and investigations officer because we have more hearings than we've had previously and the other two are investigating officers. Public appointments will come later and that's simply because I was the public appointments manager and until such time as we knew who the identity of the new commissioner was going to be because clearly there was no guarantee that it was going to be me, I would have returned to that substantive post. Now I'm not, so I'm now in discussions with who is now the public appointments manager and her public appointments officer about recruitment into public appointments roles. Staffing, as far as I can see, moves towards the medium-term planning of moving forward and there were some gaps also in the report regarding medium-term planning. I'll ask you a wee bit about that if that's okay. The medium-term plan has almost reverted back on itself from the report. It looked like there was going to be some cuts and some savings in finances and that has actually been superseded. So what progress has been made towards completing the medium-term plans and can you give us some information on the financial stability and sustainability over that? Sure, so I think I'd like to separate two issues out. One is strategic and business planning, all of that is in place and I think in fairness to us so our strategic plan which is one of the first things I put together and consulted on did include financial information and projection, so it's not as though those weren't in place to an extent they were because the strategic plan was costed. The recommendation is that we have a medium-term financial plan. We don't have that in place yet and I do understand that it is something that's considered quite important for us. We have been in dialogue with Audit Scotland looking for examples potentially that we could follow. We've looked at a range of organisations' plans but we've found nothing really that's equivalent for a parliamentary office holder and it's because our only funding stream is the SPCB. That's it and our only expenditure really is on staff. We don't have assets, we rent an office. So medium-term financial planning would have to be predicated on the SPCB taking a decision potentially that they're not going to fund us to fulfil our statutory functions, so it is certainly something that we are looking at and that we are happy to look at. In terms of our stability, I've been given no indication that the SPCB anticipates reducing our funding. Clearly, I went to them just last year to look for an uplift in order to resource implementation of the recommendations, staffing up, clearing our backlog, etc. That was just granted, so I've had no indication whatsoever that in the next few years a reduction is possible, although I understand it may be. Workforce planning was very helpful in this regard as well. Certainly, if that is something that comes down the line towards us, I am in a position, as an office holder, to look at all the functions that I fulfil and to determine what I could potentially be in a position to drop while still fulfilling my statutory functions. I've got a certain amount of leeway in some areas, but not a great deal. I'm getting correct that you're in a difficult position and therefore cannot produce a medium-term financial plan, or is one trying to be worked up? Yes, I'm clearly trying to work one up. Whenever an auditor makes a recommendation to me, I take that recommendation very seriously. Equally, Audit Scotland does say that we are in a position to help you with advice and guidance if you're not entirely clear what's anticipated and that's the stage we're in at the moment. So you couldn't give us an indication of how long it would take to get one in place? If we have a clearer indication of what potentially it might look like, it would take no time at all, I don't think. It's a matter of weeks, but it genuinely is. We aren't entirely clear what's anticipated, although I think that we've got the material already in order for us to put something together that would meet the expectation. I think that I would feel comfortable knowing that you've got that information so that we could just see that, but that's great. Thank you very much indeed for your answer. Thank you. I just wanted to turn, and we mentioned at the very beginning about the number of recommendations. I think that you'd subdivided some of the recommendations, so you're working on 26 recommendations. Based on the Audit Scotland breakdown, it was 22 recommendations and the report that we had was that 10 had been implemented, 10 were work in progress and two had been set aside or had been overtaken by events and so on. Could you tell us what progress you are making? Do you accept that breakdown, that analysis that some of them have been implemented, around half of them, but half of them are still work in progress? Is that still a representation that you recognise of where you are as an organisation? Please believe me when I say that I am not trying to fudge this answer. Again, this is something that I track regularly and I am happy to provide the committee with a very full and detailed breakdown of how we are doing against each of those recommendations. I'm happy to provide somebody to you right now if that would be helpful. It's a bit more nuanced than that and in some cases the targets have moved a little, and again I'm not having a go at the auditors about that, they're providing. Yes, I don't recommend that. No, absolutely not, because I am now subject to direct audit by Audit Scotland, which I welcome, but some of them have kind of been moving targets. I'll give you an example. The recommendation was that we conduct workforce planning. I conducted workforce planning last year, but that's still live, as far as audit is concerned, because now I'm going through recruitment and induction. Rosamund Cole touched on that in her questions. Again, in the report that we have before us from Audit Scotland, which is a recent report, albeit on the previous financial year, it recounts that there was a proposal to restructure the staffing in the office and that would generate savings of almost £1.5 million, £450,000 and then that's been revert, which I think sends a signal to us that there was a proposal to scale down quite significantly. The operations of the commissioner's office may be in line with this 84 per cent rejection rate, I don't know. If you could come back to that point, that would help. Yes, absolutely, you've hit the nail on the head, but we had two recommendations in that initial report. One was that we should review the anticipated savings from a restructuring, which actually were two restructurings that were carried out under my predecessor and it had scaled down what was available to the commissioner in order to fulfil the statutory function. That was prior to my time in post and it related to the financial year when my predecessor was still in post and then over and above that, but you should do workforce planning to establish how much staff you actually need. Clearly, in respect of making savings based on the restructuring, actually there was another recommendation that I recruit immediately into vacant posts because I was carrying a good number of agencies, so there was a bit of attention between those things. If the audit had identified that you don't have sufficient staff to fulfil your statutory function, could you also tell us how much you've saved because of the reduction in staff? Clearly, the first savings from the reductions in staff immediately became redundant because the reductions in staff were inappropriate. I've got no other way of putting it. Workforce planning had to be done and it was done but now we're looking at the recruitment exercise but that was one recommendation that I feel that we did fulfil our obligations in respect of that. It's the same with Emanuel. As I said, we've had Emanuel since 2021. The fact that I chose to publicly consult on it before publishing a final version, I see that as something that's been completed some time ago. This is constant work in progress as well, so I'm not saying that there's anything inaccurate in the report that's before you but I've been working really hard alongside a very dedicated team of people for two years to implement all of these recommendations and do more than what was recommended for us. The progress is constant, absolutely constant and the picture changes very regularly. We have monthly senior management team meetings and I'm pushing new things through each and every one of those monthly meetings so we aren't static and the fact that the picture has changed and continues to change, I would hope, should not come as a surprise to the committee. I'm happy to go through the 26 now if you would find that helpful or send it to the committee after today. I think that's a provocative question. No, we don't want you to go through this round. I think that what, as a public audit committee, we are interested in though is if you sat here and said, we've arrived and everything's been done, we would probably question whether that's probable or not, but I think that what we do want to get a sense of is out of your 26 or the 22 as accounted for by the audit, the auditors said that they thought it was about half, half on half. Half had been fully implemented to the credit of you and the people working in the organisation and a half were again quite creditably, I think, work in progress. We recognise that some of these things are moving targets and there are changes. It's a dynamic organisation. I think that you coined the memorable phrase that it's akin to rebuilding a plane in flight, which is a rather good way of putting it, but where then do you think, you know, you don't need to go through each one individually, but is it about half that are still work in progress or is it, you know, have more been implemented? Are more recommendations, ones that can readily be implemented? You say, yes, we've done that now and we can move on to something else. Yes, so of the ones that are categorised as work in progress, and as I say, it's quite nuanced, but let me just pluck one out there. A review of all our policies, so you know that that was one of the recommendations, so we've got 96 policies and procedures sitting on our register. We are currently sitting with seven, so I'm relatively minor in technical ones, so that's one of the recommendations that's not fully implemented, but the policies come before the senior management team every month and then in front of all the staff every month, because we consult on prospective changes to those. Yes, it would appear on its surface that that's not a fully implemented recommendation, but I would suggest that we've made significant progress in that respect. A review of the website, that was a separate project plan and again, you know, that's not currently looking like fully implemented, but far and away the majority of the website has now been reviewed and we've just got, I would suggest, fairly loose ends in relation to a few of the remaining ones. Okay, that's fine. Look, I'm conscious that we are coming towards the end of our session, but I know that the deputy convener Sharon Dowie has got a series of questions that she wants to put, so I'll finish with Sharon. Good morning, Mr Bruce. You've mentioned earlier about the commissioner's office being granted additional funding and you've spoken about workforce planning. You also said that you had three new staff in place when you were answering questions from Rose McAll. Could you tell me a wee bit more about the current progress in recruiting and training to build capacity and how that's helping to address the backlog of cases? Yes. I mean, we have been addressing the backlog anyway, but bringing on board the new staff will see that cleared and then, you know, we'll be back to business as usual. We haven't, other than the grade 2 post that I mentioned earlier, which is the investigation support officer, we haven't yet on boarded the additional investigating officers and the hearings and investigations officer that we require to. So, once they are in post, we will make significant progress in respect of complete handling. Sorry. How many positions is it in total you've still to recruit for? On the investigations front, they're recruited, but they all have periods of notice. So, as I said, we went out, advertised in December, and, you know, we went through all the interviews, et cetera, and the practical tests for people during the course of March. So, we've recruited to all the investigations posts that we require, but they aren't all actually in post yet because they are with current employers serving their notice periods. We'll have completed, so they will all be in post by the end of May. How are you getting on with the backlog? Sure. Maybe some headline figures would help. So, at the start of that, this last financial year, we had roughly 60 cases so complaints sitting at the admissibility stage, which was clearly very challenging for us and for complainers as well. So, we introduced a number of measures. It was sitting at between 50 and 60. I said I brought forward workforce planning because I was like, you know, we aren't moving the needle on this and we absolutely have to recognise we needed more resources, but also recognise that we needed to do something about, you know, the number that we're sitting there as well. We introduced a triage system in the way that that operates. It's about capturing evidence before potentially it becomes aged. Also identifying complaints that we ought to take out a turn because people potentially are at risk of continuing harm, you know, maybe bullying, harassment complaints of that type. So, identifying those that clearly, you know, we couldn't investigate. So, you know, if someone was complaining about council services, that type of thing, nothing to do with ethical conduct. So, identifying those and letting people know as soon as possible will actually, we're not going to take this forward for investigation. All of that's been in place since, sort of, October last year. We're now sitting. So, as I said, start the financial year 60 at that stage and we're now sitting at 22. So, you know, there's been a significant reduction in the number that have been sitting at admissibility during the course of the year. What that leaves us, though, is with a rump of cases that do require investigation. Some of them quite complex. And we're at a record level in terms of investigations and reports to the Standards Commission. We've currently got 30 live investigations under way. That'll give you an idea. Over the course of the last three weeks, we've submitted 11 reports to the Standards Commission. We've got five hearings in the pipeline. So, yes, you know, the backlog's come down, but in terms of live investigations, the numbers are going up and the only will. Can I ask how long does it actually take to deal with a complaint? So, from somebody making the complaint to informing the person that there's a complaint against them, and then to the conclusion, how long, when average is that taken? I think the last time we had a look at that, and we are planning to actually check the averages again quite soon. So, initial assessment, I think we were looking at 13 weeks. That was the average, the last time we looked. The investigation itself, I think, averaged 37 weeks, and we did some benchmarking with our equivalents in England and Wales, and that actually worked out quite well. But, you know, that was based on the workforce as it was. I do hope to bring what I anticipate that I will be bringing those numbers down. And we have just published KPIs in our manual, which is how quickly we say publicly we plan to get through investigations. But, you know, clearly I'm ambitious in that area because I don't like people waiting a year, either complainers or respondents, about the outcome of a complaint. I know that that can be really stressful. I know you said some complaints are obviously more serious than others. Is there support in place for people who make complaints or for people who have had a complaint made against them? No, and that's a matter of concern to me. It is. It's not as though it's not something that I haven't raised with the Government and it's been raised with me and other committees, and I did meet with officials most recently. It's not just me, it's me and the Standards Commission for Scotland, because we both feel that there should be support in place, but I don't think either of our organisations feels that it's appropriate for us to provide that support. I'm the investigator at the end of the day, and clearly I need to be seen to be wholly impartial and separate from the matters that I'm investigating. That's not to say that all the staff aren't trained to be kind and respectful to the people that we deal with, but providing that pastoral support, no. The codes of conduct are brought forward by the Scottish ministers in statute, and we do feel potentially there's a role for the Scottish Government to be thinking about whether support can be provided particularly in those sorts of cases. It's not just for complainers, I think, potentially for respondents, witnesses. We know from our rape crisis Scotland training that we do take a trauma centred approach to cases of that nature and interviewing people can be a triggering event in relation to what they may have witnessed. I think that it has to be wider. For what it's worth, I might as well relay this to the committee now. I've been in touch with the Standards Commission, and I think that our intention is to write to whoever ends up with this particular portfolio. Now that there's been a change in ministers, I'll highlight the issue and see whether they wish to do anything about it. The Auditor also reported some progress in producing a performance management framework tracking progress against the business plan. The commissioners' office plans to introduce performance indicators to track complaints handling by 2023. Could you give us the latest position regarding the performance management framework and performance indicators? I'd mentioned strategic plan, business plan, individual section action plans, individual staff action plans. That is the performance framework. We track business or rather progress against our business plan at every senior management team meeting and every year we publish progress against that last year's business plan, so we'll be doing that shortly. The only missing element was KPIs. We, as I said, are publishing the manual tomorrow, so that will include all the KPIs in relation to time taken for investigations. We've got a range of statutory KPIs that we are obliged to report against in our annual report. I've introduced some new ones as well, and I've mentioned regular SMT meetings. I drafted them last February, and I only managed to get a secure SMT agreement to their implementation yesterday, so they'll come in for this next financial year, but in very general terms we are so complainers and respondents at the end of the process that they've been through. They are going to be able to provide me with anonymous feedback on that process and the extent to which the office works in accordance with our values, and again we'll be publishing our performance in relation to those matters as well. I seek verification from you for one point in that last series of answers that you gave. All of the reports that I've seen is that there is an eight-month wait for an initial assessment of a complaint. Did you tell us that that has now been cut to 13 weeks, which is just over three months? No, so that's the average, and the eight-month, so you're talking about our banners, the outlier case. We are only talking about it, so I think it's one complaint from eight months ago, whereas the others have been cleared, and then after that I think it's one in August and one in October. Again, we discussed the banner yesterday, and it was our decision to put it up. We clearly don't want to put people off, but we did want to be transparent and manage expectations. We are going to revise it again. I mentioned averages, so it may already be changed, but we discussed this yesterday. We're revising it again, and we're going to provide a link for people so that they can see potentially where they are or where we are in relation to MSP complaints, councillor and member complaints, what the average weight is, and we'll have all that as well. It's probably too much information for a banner though. So again, just so I'm clear about it, the eight-month weight figure, you described that as the outlier, but is that what you put up on your website to inform people who might have a complaint that that is the length of time they may have to wait? Yes, yes, but we are revising that. So don't you qualify that by saying the average weight is? I mean, I know you don't want to falsely raise people's expectations, but it can also be a deterrence, can't it? If I think, I've got a complaint about the way I was treated last week, and I'm told that behaviour is not going to be addressed for eight months, what other incidents might happen between now and then to other people that might be in the same position as me? That seems to be an odd decision in my view to take. Yes, we have revisited it yesterday, so you're not the only individual to make that point. It was made relatively recently at the SPPA committee, and also in discussions with the Standards Commission, so we are going to provide a lot more detail so that people have a proper understanding of potentially how long it might be. I think that this also came up at the SPPA committee as well, and you've touched on it this morning. I can safely speak on behalf of the Public Audit Committee to say that we would also be very supportive of support being in place and welfare support being in place for both those people who are respondents, but also particularly those people who have lodged complaints. I think that it seems a little bit unbalanced to have an apparatus in place through which those complaints can be processed without a wraparound support mechanism for people. I think that if you are making those representations, certainly I think that that's something that we would be supportive of. I thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning. It's been very useful. You are right, Mr Bruce. We hope that we don't see you next year either, because that will be an indication of how progress is being made. Nonetheless, it's been a very valuable session for us, and I thank you very much indeed for coming in this morning and giving us the answers to some of the questions that we've been putting before you. I'm grateful for the opportunity. I'll take the time to review the evidence, but it did appear to me that you would require to see a good bit more detail in relation to some of the responses that I gave, so perhaps I'll communicate with the clerks just to ensure that you have everything that you need in order to be reassured about some of what I've said to you earlier. No, we very much appreciate that, and we very much appreciate your response to Willie Coffey's questions about sharing the legal advice as well. I think that that would be because that has been a bit of a bugbear of ours and something that we would really appreciate greater transparency on. Again, thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning. I'm going to suspend the committee at this point to allow for a change over of witnesses. Can I resume the Public Audit Committee's meeting this morning and go to agenda item 3, which is a session where we will take evidence from the Auditor General and his team on the work programme for the next period of time. Can I welcome this morning our witnesses, Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General? Gemma Diamond is joining the Auditor General this morning. Gemma is a director at Audit Scotland. Mark Taylor is also with the Auditor General this morning and Mark Taylor is an Audit Director at Audit Scotland. As usual, we have a series of questions that we would like to put to you, Auditor General, but to begin with also, as usual, could I ask you to make a short opening statement to get us under way? Thank you. Many thanks, convener. I'm delighted to be with you again to discuss and consult with the committee this morning on my forward work programme. In preparing this latest version, I have considered the current context for the delivery of public services in Scotland. Challenges that existed before 2020 have, of course, as we have seen, been made worse by the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Budgets are forecast to tighten further in future years and there is now an urgent need therefore to increase the pace and scale of public sector reform to deliver sustainable public services in future. It remains a volatile time and my work programme needs to respond quickly to emerging issues, risks and challenges. Public audit will focus on supporting public bodies to tackle the biggest social and environmental challenges that they are facing. That means that my programme needs to be flexible and I plan to continue to use a range of audit products and approaches to address and report on those matters. My work programme sets out that I am interested in both what and how public services deliver. Turning first to the what, public services face real short-term challenges in both managing demand and budgetary pressures. I will consider how they are managing those challenges and how they are providing sustainable public services. However, that should not be to the detriment of long-term sustainable outcomes, improved outcomes and financial balance. I know that the committee and I share an interest in whether policy ambitions are making a difference to users of public services. That will continue to be a core part of my work. Scotland's public sector convener is now across roads. Reform has not yet been delivered on the scale that will ensure that public services remain sustainable in the future. We discussed much of this in respect of the NHS at its meeting last week. That is why I will focus on how public bodies are enabling change, both individually and as part of a wider system. That includes how they are embracing key enablers of change, such as empowering people, communities, preventative spend, reducing inequalities, embracing new digital approaches and improving efficiencies. Public audit has a key role to play in supporting improvement and embedding good practice in our public bodies. Equalities have been a consistent priority in my work since I took up post, and it will remain so. I also intend to ensure that our public audit reflects the lived experience of members of the public who use and rely on public services. I will continue to have an interest in climate change, health and social care, public finances and economic growth. I am also interested in how the public sector is managing its workforce so that it has the skills and capacity to deliver services and deliver the scale of change that is required. The discussion today is likely to focus largely on my public reporting or performance audit. However, the committee will be very familiar with that. Each year, I will also prepare reports on the financial audit of public bodies. I discharge that responsibility largely through section 22 reports on public bodies. Those will vary in number, largely depending on the issues that auditors identified during the course of their annual audit activity. Through today's discussion and wider feedback from the Parliament, I want to ensure that my longer term work programme considers the key areas of interest to members of the Scottish Parliament and that it is focusing on the topics that will add greatest value in supporting effective parliamentary scrutiny. I will use the feedback from your committee and committees across the Parliament to finalise my longer term priorities and work programme. Mark Gem and I look forward to engaging with you in answering your questions this morning. You mentioned the committee's priorities. Last week, we published a report into the construction of the ferries 801 and 802. In that report, there were recommendations where we thought that it would be useful to be included in your work programme, recognising that we cannot instruct you to do anything. Those were in areas of the procurement of those vessels and also around what we thought would be a useful forensic analysis of the money that was paid over to FML. My first question that the committee would like to put to you is, have you had any time to consider that and how do you plan to give that consideration? Secondly, on a broader point, something that is not explicitly mentioned—I do not think in the work programme papers that we have seen—is that whole discussion about the business investment framework that was published last year by the Scottish Government. I think that we as a committee have got some views about how that might be improved. I know that you have also—we have had some useful discussions in public evidence sessions with you about that, especially around the Scottish Government's consolidated accounts. I wonder whether, to begin with, you could give us some reflections on those points. Many thanks, convener. I will take those in reverse order. You referred to the Scottish Government section 22 report, or their consolidated accounts, rather, as being the vehicle with which we have reported on the progress that the Government has made with its investment framework up until now. I have not made any definitive decisions on that yet about further audit work. I expect, however, that that will remain the case through the audit of the Scottish Government and the now annual section 22 report that I will continue to update on matters emerging from the audit, plus following up on themes that have arisen in previous years. The auditor has not scoped that report yet in the throes of approaching the financial year end, but it is very likely that that will be the most appropriate vehicle with which to satisfy our shared interests in that that is an effective framework that the lessons, not just from Ferguson's but also from other investments, are being understood and the Government's approach to managing is fair to say that the higher-risk investments that they have undertaken and that the outcomes from those investments are clear, transparent and deliver value for money. I suspect that that will remain the best vehicle to do so. Thank you for your reference to the committee's report on the vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides. I am very clear on the recommendations that the committee has made to me. I am also grateful to you, convener. Referencing the, as you considered in your previous session this morning, the independence of office holders, myself as the auditor general, not directed by the committee, nor by the Government, just for absolute completeness, we are considering carefully the very significant recommendations that the committee has made to me in the report. I will, of course, write back formally to the committee over the next few weeks to set out my intention. There are some life factors that are relevant that will partly inform my work, which is the on-going investigative activity that King's Council is currently undertaking on behalf of Seymill, so we are tracking carefully the progress with that work. We are also taking a bit of time to consider how we might best respond to the recommendation around that forensic analysis that I know the committee has explored and we have discussed on previous evidence sessions. I will set that out very clearly and publicly in writing to the committee. None of the recommendations that you made came as any surprise to me, convener, and we will set that out clearly where we intend to go next. Right. Thank you very much. That is very helpful. I think that you have previously spoken about and informed us of something that I think not just this committee but the committee in the previous session had identified as being extremely important, which is that we get section 22 reports, for example, with recommendations in them, and then maybe the following year there is not a follow-up section 22 report on that organisation, that public body. Therefore, we lose a bit of track about what happens to those recommendations. An oversight and having that continuity of interest is something that we would value. I recall that you said that you also saw that as being important. I think that you were in discussions with the Scottish Government about establishing some kind of framework that would allow that to become a routine part of a routine outcome of the audit work that you do and the reports that you present. From memory December 2022, as mentioned as a date by which you hoped to maybe be around the finalisation of that process, could you perhaps bring us up to date with where things are with that framework? If there are any other steps that you are taking to address, what is by common consent a deficiency that is following through and keeping track of recommendations that you have made and your audits have made? Many thanks, convener. I will bring Jim in in a moment who has been leading much of our work tracking recommendations. More widely, the impact that public audit is looking to have through its audit reporting applies absolutely to section 22 reports and the recommendations that we make in those reports, but also the impact from our wider public reporting, section 23 reports and other outputs. I would say that section 22 reports before handing to Gemma, who can take the committee through the work that we have been undertaking. I think that I have a fairly well established process now in place on section 22s whereby I have typically prepared a follow-up section 22 report on one organisation where there has been significant issues from one to the next. Indeed, I guess that you covered much of that ground this morning in your earlier session. If I do not undertake a follow-up section 22 report, I will write to you, convener, to the committee setting out that wider progress. There is also the availability, publicly, of the annual audit report, which again draws on section 22 reports. Perhaps for a narrower audience, typically for the public body themselves, but it is available through the parliamentary business bulletin. It says that here is the progress that an individual body has made. It is quite narrow, convener, but I think that I am keen for Gemma to set out for the committee that wider impact and follow-up work that we have been doing. Absolutely. We have been doing a huge amount of work to look at how best to monitor and report on the impact of our recommendations and, as Stephen mentioned, our audit work as a whole. What we have been doing is taking forward, essentially, some pilot work to look at how best we do that and how best we gather the information and what resources it takes to look at the implementation of those recommendations and how best we gather the feedback. Some of our recommendations, as you know, go out to all public bodies. How best do we gather that information on a risk-based approach, potentially, so that we have been doing that pilot work to make sure that we can get a framework in place that we know that we can implement and will give us the information that we need. Through that process, we have been talking with the Scottish Government about the arrangements that they have in place for following up on recommendations and how to make sure that the timing of our work and their own work against that work well together within that system and how that helps to strengthen the system as a whole, essentially, looking around about that. We have been learning a lot of lessons as we have been doing that work, so looking again, looking back at some of our recommendations and thinking, well, actually, how can we learn in terms of how best we can phrase our recommendations? Do we sometimes have too many recommendations in our performance audit reports and need to maybe focus down on some key areas of focus? Do we look at putting clear timeframes on our recommendations? We have already been implementing some additional guidance internally in terms of how we write really effective recommendations, how we put procedures in place so that we agree essentially action plans with public bodies on those recommendations, so we give ourselves and the public bodies themselves clarity in terms of exactly when we come back to follow up recommendations what evidence we will be looking for, but, importantly, what we want to set out as well as what is the change that we want to see for those recommendations so that we give the public body of themselves that accountability in terms of exactly how to implement that recommendation, but we are clear in terms of what is the outcome that we are trying to achieve by making that recommendation. Our pilot work is largely coming to a conclusion at the moment. We have a whole lot of information now, and our next step is really to consider in terms of what information would be made available publicly on that, so what information would be reported to yourself as the committee, what information might be put on our website to make full transparency in terms of people interested in looking at recommendations, but we want to do that in a way that makes it really clear in terms of what is the narrative around that, so it is not just around about whether or not a recommendation has been implemented or not, but what is that telling us in terms of the change that has happened in those areas and what does it mean when we bring all that together to look at, because what we want to do is to look at what are some of the themes of recommendations, so is it that some types of recommendations are harder for public bodies to implement than others? What does that mean in terms of our future focus in terms of audit work? We want to make sure that we are clear around about whether single recommendations have been implemented or not, but what does that tell us overalls? We have a much richer picture of information, so hopefully over the course of the next few months and to the end of the summer, we will be clear about the public information that we want to take forward, but it is really important that we are keen to share that with the committee at the right time. We have already alluded to the last evidence session that we had where we discovered that 22 recommendations have become 26, not because four have been added on, but because some of those 22 have been subdivided. Is there interaction with a public body about the formulation of those recommendations quite typically, or are they imposed on that public body? There absolutely is interaction. All reports that go to public body, whether it is from Audit Scotland through a section 22 report or section 23 report, or indeed from auditors that I appoint, go through a clearance process, so they will receive a draft report with the draft recommendations. They get an opportunity to agree for factual accuracy for reasonableness, and then the evidence of whether it has been accepted or otherwise, convener, is in the management response, so that the public body will set out individually on each recommendation what they intend to do, who is responsible for it and what timescale. The auditor will almost never dictate the timescale, so it is for the public body to see within the resources at their disposal how and when they choose to implement that recommendation. It would not be the first time in front of the Public Audit Committee that accountable officers have said that they agree in full all of the recommendations, and then proceed to give evidence that suggests that they do not. Ross McCall has some particular follow-up questions on certain areas, but before I get to Ross, I want to invite Willie Coffey to come in. Thank you, convener. Auditor General, it is truly about that whole area of how we can be assured, the public can be assured, that a difference has been made. It is one thing to deliver recommendations and agree with them and say that you are doing them and then you actually do them, but how does anyone determine whether performance improvement has occurred or a difference has been made in the quality and value of the public services? That has been a recurring issue at the Audit Committee for many years. How do you plan to, if you can, attempt to square that circle in a sense, to show to the public the differences that have been made here and here is how we can evidence it? I think that the first thing that I would recognise is that this is not straightforward territory. If it were, we would have done it collectively ourselves and our predecessors many years ago. Gemma, I want to come back in on this. I think that the thing for us is—we share this, I am sure—we all want to see better public services, whether that is from public bodies themselves doing so or as a result of an audit process with recommendations and then associated implementation and impact that goes with that. Sometimes that is quite straightforward. If an auditor makes a recommendation and that is implemented and that leads to tangible difference in their performance, that is great. You can attribute the change in performance to the audit recommendation. More often than not, Mr Coffey will know that there are many other factors that exist that will influence the performance of a public body. I am keen for Gemma to say a bit more on that. That is what we have tried to recognise through the evaluatory work that we are currently undertaking. What are the drivers that will influence the performance of a public body alongside an audit recommendation and the specifics of it? Where is audit making a difference? How can we be a bit clearer, more helpful, but it is multi-fasted? I am not trying to sit on the fence on that. It is reflecting the sheer complexity with which what are the measures and drivers of public body performance. It absolutely is a complex environment that often we are looking at kind of our audits in areas that have a lot going on. There are a lot of different policy ambitions, a lot of change and that quite often now that we are reporting on things as they are unfolding essentially that our audit does not wait for something to finish and then look back, it is often kind of going alongside things, so a number of things happening. What we are keen to do I think with our impact work is to look over different time frames to understand kind of impact over time. We absolutely have the kind of very immediate impact in terms of what has the public body recognised our key messages, have they accepted the recommendations in that report? Is there a kind of positive acknowledgement of the changes required that then leads into us then following up on those recommendations after a period of time? Normally around about 18 months in terms of kind of follow-up of those recommendations and looking at the evidence that is there to support the kind of implementation of those recommendations, but then also to look in terms of what we are very keen to do is that we also look longer term as well. That is where we are still in development work, but how can we look longer term so that it is not just about individual reports? Quite often what you will see and the committee will recognise is that common themes come up across our reports, so long term financial planning has long been a kind of recommendation that has come through individual audit reports as well as our national performance reports. How can we look over time to see can we see a shift overall in terms of long term financial planning of public bodies not just for individual recommendation by recommendation? I think that the committee will appreciate that quite often the 18 months are not necessarily long enough to know whether what has happened, the change has made a difference or not, that will unfold in a much longer time period. Again, it is very complex, but we are keen to set out as clear as we can in terms of what is the information telling us in the short, medium and where possible in that longer term so that we can use that information to direct in terms of where our work would add best value, but also where we can think about in terms of additional support for public bodies to be able to implement recommendations in the best way. Do you ever see the day when your organisation might say that we looked at that organisation then and have done all those recommendations? It has not made a blind bit of a difference in terms of public performance and outputs and outcomes or spectacular examples of improvements and outcomes. How can you see yourself getting into that territory ultimately and saying that is clearly so that the public can get that information from you? I certainly hope to report on examples of the latter. We will do it transparently, regardless of whether there is more work to be done or whether there is stellar performance. I think that we recognise, to capture some of that in our material today, that our role to support and facilitate improvement in public services does not apply to the body concerned. We want, we expect and we will be honest, our work to be used widely across public bodies, whether it is the body itself, the same sector or really just across the public sector. The themes on our recommendations are generally relevant across the piece, whether it is good governance, financial management, sustainability and other factors. There is one other point that I should have mentioned earlier about the performance of Scotland's public bodies and how Scotland performs. We have a well-established system in the Scottish public sector through the national performance framework setting out the expectations of how public bodies will deliver. The Public Order Committee will recall that there have been a number of occasions in which Audit Scotland has asked for greater clarity and connection between intended outcomes and public spending. Having that overarching system will help to provide clarity and move further for public bodies to understand how their performance should be shaped, where they fit in and how the public audit is part of that framework. I mentioned that Ross McColl had some questions in particular areas around longer-term areas of interest that we have, so I will invite Ross to ask some questions on that. Thank you very much, convener. I honed in entirely on the young children and calms and bits and pieces, so if I could ask a few questions on that, if that is okay. The draft work programme refers to progress that has been made towards implementing recommendations in earlier reports such as the 2018 report on children and young people's mental health, the 22 report on city regions of growth deals and the 21 report on improving outcomes for young people through education. I was wondering if you could give me a brief update on that and on the progress, if that would be possible. What we are looking to do is to signal our interest throughout our proposals today of where we have tangible plans for further work and alongside other areas where we are tracking, monitoring and will shape further work in years to come. I will bring colleagues in and maybe Mark might be the best place to say a bit more about the city deals work in a moment and Gemma, if you want to comment on any of the others too. A firstly on educational outcomes is that report, if I remember, convener, 2021. I think that it was one of the first reports that I brought to the committee. It examined the Government's progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap in Scotland. Our overall judgment was that there was regional variation in Scotland, but there had been limited progress in delivering the Government's overall objective. We know and we have seen that there has been significant investment happening already in terms of the Scottish attainment challenge funding. We are monitoring that at the moment with a view to picking the right time to undertake further work on the ambition to close the attainment gap. It is always a judgment as to when the audit goes back in effectively. We do not want to do it too soon, but equally we want not too late that a policy has been implemented and on to the next thing. We are tracking that as part of our programme, and it is probably one for the next iteration of the work programme that we can be more definitive about when we intend to go further. I will maybe cover, before handing to Mark and Gemma, just on the mental health issues. We have work in progress currently on adult mental health services in Scotland, a joint piece of work for myself and the Accounts Commission. That is intended to be published in the autumn of September to really set out the totality of arrangements, the effectiveness of arrangements to deliver adult mental health services. At the time that the Accounts Commission and I commissioned that work from Audit Scotland, our intent was to review adult services, because we had relatively recently looked at children and adolescent mental health services with the view to, like the educational attainment, follow that up relatively soon. We are tracking that opportunity to be more definitive as we are clearer on progress around the Government's policy intent in those areas. Mark may be able to cover city deals on the Gemma on any other factors. Thank you, Mr General. Quickly on city deals on the Gemma, I want to add a bit more detail on that. We are following up the recommendations that were made in the previous city deals report. That is part of the impact work that Gemma talked about before, and she may want to add a bit more detail on that. To make a broader point about how often we think about those things, and I think that it has reflected on the materials before you today, we are often thinking about how does that audit then fit with what is planned and how that comes on. In that particular area, there is an opportunity to look back at city deals and the mechanisms that we are in and around the way in which those deals were constructed and the wider growth deals outwith cities as well. We are also thinking about how might that fit with the work that we do around the economy in the future and how we link through and all of that. To make that broader point, often when we are thinking about the programme, we are thinking about the particular pieces of audit work, but also how do those build up through time and give you exactly the sort of picture that you are asking about in a more broad sense here about how things change through time and how they link in through the wider system. I will pass on to Gemma if she wants to add anything to that and the broader points. Thanks, Mark. Absolutely. Our work in terms of following up on the city deals report was part of our pilot work for the impact work that I just spoke about. The team went back and looked at the recommendations and looked at how they have been taken forward. As Mark said, very much in a way to inform the changing landscape that is there at the moment, what lessons could potentially be learned from how those recommendations have been applied and in that context to the context now. We will be publishing a very short briefing on that in June. What we will do through our impact work is that we will pull together themes as a whole, as I said, to be transparent and to make that available publicly. However, where we think that there is helpful information for other public bodies from our impact work, we will make that available publicly. The city deals briefing is an example of that. There will also be a short blog on education outcomes on a very specific point within that where we think that there is a public interest and a narrative to tell through that. The committee will see some of that follow-up work, either in the form of a full-section 23 port where we have a series of work going on, but also through individual smaller different products to bring those issues to light. I will go back to something that you said yourself, Mr Boyle, regarding moving towards adult mental health. I noticed that a previous auditor general made comments to things that were taking place with the Royal Hospital of Children, Young People and Departments of Clinical Neuroscience and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in the NHS Lothian. Is there anything that you can give me an update on that? I am fairly clear that we have not included those matters in the scope for this report that is due to be published. I do not have an up-to-date position to this, but I suspect that we do not among us. We can certainly go back and engage with the auditors of NHS Lothian for an up-to-date position and then come back to the committee on writing. Finally, I will bring it back to the slides that were provided, rather than going off-piste a little bit there. I noticed from the slides that there is work in the pipeline for early learning and childcare. Can you give the committee some scope of that work at this early stage? Will you be looking at childcare from the view of a care-experienced context as well? Audit is in progress coming towards a conclusion on early learning and childcare. It is an on-going interest that I myself and the County's commission in Audit Scotland have on the Government's progress in delivering the 1148 hours for children and young people in nursery provision. The publication for that report is upcoming. We anticipate that that will be before the summer recess. We will engage with the clerks about when the briefing for that will take place, as we will set the findings for that report out in detail for the committee very soon. The committee will recall that one of the very significant intentions about delivering 1140 and the expansion of it, especially to two-year-olds children, was to provide parents and carers with more opportunity for economic and building family income. It is fair to say that the Government's evaluation of that aspect of policy implementation will not yet take place reasonably. That was the intention, but that will come at a later stage. Our report looks to cover how the policy has been rolled out and how it has been applied across Scotland. Are the centres now available? We will set that out for the committee. There is an equality component to it. Has it covered care experience people specifically? The answer is that that is wrapped up in a wider consideration. On care experience young people, as a standalone, we referenced that in our previous areas of interest to the committee about potential future work. That remains as a potential for us to consider. We have not scoped out a piece of work particularly. We are course tracking and monitoring the work of the promise and how that has been taken forward. What we have not signalled yet is our intent to do any specific audit work. It remains an area that we are monitoring closely. I turn to the deputy convener, who has a question to put. When we discussed just strategic priorities and work programme in September 2021, we raised the possibility of using section 22 reports to highlight good practice across the public sector where appropriate. Do you have the scope to do that, if you are hoping to do it, if and when the occasion arises? Yes, I have the scope to do that. I will always weigh up the merits of highlighting the performance of particular public body. Either through a section 22 report or other vehicles, some of the work that we are doing around impact is equally a route with which to give profile to where public services are delivering well. As I mentioned earlier, we absolutely recognise and indeed embrace our responsibilities to promote good practice. We do that through a range of vehicles, through formal public reporting, through round tables, through contributions, at speaking events and so forth. Having said all that, it is fair to say that the majority of section 22 reports that the committee considers are in the region of where there is a matter of concern. I expect that the balance will remain in those areas where there are weaknesses that need to be addressed. I should say that section 22 reports bring impact, both in terms of the public body concerned but also the wider sector and, hopefully, the public bodies themselves. It is weighing up which particular vehicle is most appropriate to discharge my public audit interests in the committees. The best example of where I think it is a more balanced opportunity has been the Scottish Government section 22 report. That is now part of the annual architecture of public audit reporting. Because of its systemic importance and the scale of public spending that goes through the Scottish Government consolidated accounts, it is appropriate in my judgment and that of my predecessors that an annual section 22 report is prepared to support public scrutiny and transparency. There are other organisations in that frame, too, that I am considering how best to report publicly. If I may draw attention to one that is in my submission this morning, under the Police and Fire Reform Act 2012, the Auditor General has the ability to undertake best value work in police and fire services. Up until now, neither I nor my predecessor considered that that was a timely thing to do. Committee will recall that your predecessor committee received many section 22 reports on the Scottish Police Authority. Those have subsided. I welcome that, over the past few years, as that organisation has become more stable in delivering its responsibilities. Nonetheless, it still spends billions of pounds of public money each year and delivers a unique public service. Together with the respect of inspectors of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services, discussions about how and when we might have the opportunity to review how those parts of public services are being delivered are being delivered. I would draw that as a—not that I have any expectation that there are material issues of concern there, but rather that it is a matter of interest to the public about how public money and those services are being delivered. That takes me on to a couple of questions on policing. Will the work that is planned for policing include a comprehensive review of governance as recommended by the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee in its legacy paper? I recall this matter well, Deputy convener, and I think that it is perhaps the only area that I have diverged from the interests of the committee in terms of my work programme where I reached a view that what I understood to be the stability, the round table of interests that was taking place in terms of police governance, that I did not consider to be the best time to undertake that work. I should say that I have in my mind that the best value powers at a future date might be an appropriate vehicle to consider policing arrangements, including governance, absolutely in the round. The quality and effectiveness of governance is central to consideration of best value. In the round, the review of governance would be part of that. I do not want to prepare the scope right now, as I am speaking to you, but it is safe to say that governance at a high level will be part of that, whether that extends to the very specifics of which I think may be elements of a legacy of four or five years ago now about how governance in policing was going through challenges. I do not see that to be the case today. Last question. Are you able to provide an update on the Scottish Government's Scottish policing round table, which was established to consider the governance of policing in Scotland? Do you understand that the last minute available online is for the 15 March 2021 meeting? I will do my best to recall where that has reached, but it may be that the Government is the best place to advise the committee on its intentions. Having said that, it is my understanding, and I will correct this if I am wrong, convener, that that round table has concluded its work, and there are no further meetings intended to be held. Okay, right. Thank you very much indeed. I am conscious of the time, and I would encourage both questions and answers to be as concise as possible. I am going to turn to Colin Beattie to ask a couple of questions on digital exclusion. Before I ask that question, I would like to briefly refer back to the convener's remarks at the beginning in connection with the ferries. As you know, the possibility of an investigation there was something that I had raised on a number of occasions over the past months. I am pleased that you are going to be seriously looking at the recommendations and coming back to the committee on that. What I would say, and there is no pressure here, is that I think that I would find it extremely difficult to understand if a decision was made not to carry out some sort of scrutiny on this. There are tens of millions of pounds of public money involved in this, taxpayers' money, and I think that people have the right to know where that goes. Over to you on that decision, and as I say, no pressure. Unless you want, I do not expect a response on that. It was to really just… If I may, Mr Beattie, I am happy to respond. Please be assured that we are considering very carefully the committee's recommendations, especially on that point, because I know that you and the committee's more widely long-standing interest in spending funding that went to Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd and how that money was used. Mark me when I say a word or two about that as well, if he wishes. We are giving that really careful thought about how we might build that into an audit response, but it certainly will respond to the committee formally before long. Just to add very briefly, Mr Beattie, given that consideration, which I absolutely endorse what the Auditor General said about, we are looking very carefully at it at the moment, and part of that is looking at the practicalities around that as well. We understand at a broad level what the situation is. I would anticipate that we will do some early work just to see what is the art of the possible in around that, which will help inform the Auditor General's decision. I understand that the original, to be fair, has already arranged, and tell me if I am wrong here, that the paperwork that is sitting at Ferguson's has been secured, although I understand that it is not in great shape. That is correct, Mr Beattie. The security of those records has been confirmed. I do not have an up-to-date position, but the last briefing that I had was that they were not collated in a way that was readily accessible into useful information at this stage, and that would be part of any subsequent process. I will move quickly on to a couple of questions that I have. Digital exclusion is very important in my constituency, because, about five years ago, OFCOM said to me that 34 per cent of adults in my constituency did not have access to the internet or to smartphones, which is an extraordinary high-level. I hope that it has improved since then. I have not seen a figure, so it is really important that this is looked at. You state, as part of this, that you are taking a human rights-based approach to digital exclusion. What does that mean? I will say a wee bit about the general intent, and I will turn to Gemma to say a bit more about the specifics of the scope of the work and the human rights-based nature of that. I mentioned in my introductory remarks about our long-standing interest in the quality, equity of public services. Alongside that, it is not entirely new territory for us, in terms of digital services. It is perhaps two and a half years since we published a briefing paper on the R100 broadband roll-out arrangements in Scotland. What we are looking to do in this audit is to take a view across the breadth of public services. Using the strength of the Scottish public audit model with myself and the Accounts Commission, how are services being delivered? How is that changing? What is the intent? How well are people being consulted and communicated? The committee has heard many examples of, over the course of the pandemic, how quickly public services have changed. We have often heard of NHS services near me of GP consultations and other examples alongside that. We are looking to go back to my introductory comments. What does that mean for the public? We often hear it from a public body perspective, but how are the public receiving those changes and the services? I might want to develop my answer on that. Are there rights being protected in terms of our public bodies recognising that, as they change the nature of service, they are embracing some of the positives that they expect around efficiency and public sector reform, are they still enshrining some of the fundamentals about how people can access services in a way that is not exacerbating some of the digital exclusion that you mentioned from your constituency? That is part of what Stephen set out at the start of that interest in equalities and broadening that out into human rights and how best we embed that through our audit approach. We recognise that there are certain topics whereby we can take a different approach to the audit with that. For that, we want to start our audit with the actual people and go backwards through the service rather than taking a top down what is the policy, how is that implemented and go that way. We feel that digital exclusion is a really complex area where there is lots of intersectionality of different things happening, which means that people are excluded from public services. It is not just about the technology. There is a wide breadth of other issues, including wider poverty-related issues. What we really want to understand is when we talk to hopefully going to involve service users in this audit, that when we go from that perspective up through, how does that give us a different shine of light on what public services are doing, how they are coming together with potential other services from third sector organisations to help and best support those people who are digitally excluded. It is about us taking quite a different approach to an audit. That is not new territory for us. We have done a lot of service user engagement before, but it is about us taking embedding it in an audit and using that as our lens through the audit process. There are two aspects to this. The first is when you are talking about R100, specifically there are those that are excluded because the physical service has not been made available to them and how that impacts on them, their business and so on, but there are also those that choose not to engage, that choose not to be part of the digital world. There is a surprising number, as I have realised at first hand. Is there a human rights issue there? If they take that choice? Probably not. It is their choice. There are those that may not wish to engage because it can be age, it can be anything. How do you separate out where the genuine human rights issue is to target those that are most needful of ensuring that they get digital inclusion? You are right that both of those factors are relevant. I will bring Mark in in a moment to broadening that out as well. The important thing is that respecting the choices that individuals will make about how access service matters. We have all seen the way that, not just public services but wider services that the public use have changed. We will only need to look at banks in the way that the proliferation of branches, how that has changed on high streets across the country, the extent to which those were planned, the public were engaged. It does not matter for us, but it matters when public bodies make the scale of changes so that people are clear that this is happening. Community empowerment legislation is a relevant factor in that as well. What we look to do—we have a meeting with colleagues tomorrow to begin to consider the scope of the work that people's rights are respected. We can absolutely expect—I think that it is fair to say—that the nature of how public services are going to be delivered will change fundamentally over the course of this decade, but that people's rights and ability to access their service is fair and equitable, regardless of your household income or where you choose to live in Scotland. That is something that we want to evaluate and hopefully make high quality recommendations on the back of it. I will stop and bring Mark in. The physical stuff, infrastructure, broadband connections and the availability of devices is a big part of the audit work. As Auditor General said, we are very much at the scoping stage, but it is also clearly in our sites that relates to the question the skills and confidence. I think that confidence is an important word of individuals to be able to use things. It is one thing to have a device in your hand, and it is another thing to have the skills and confidence to be able to use that device. That is very much in our sites as part of the audit work. There is always a desire to quantify that, to put a figure against it, to put a number against it in terms of exclusion. I guess what I am saying is that there seems to be lots of different wrinkles in that. How are you going to tease those out and ensure that, when we put that number on something, it is the right thing to put the number on? I think that I would refer back to Jemez's answer. Effectively, for this piece of work, I think that it is really appropriate to start with the public. Effectively, you are describing the nuance between somebody who is digitally excluded, either by choice or by the design of others. We are very clear that we need to capture that as part of the judgments that we make about how public services are being delivered and what it means for individuals across Scotland. We are well-sighted on that. Mr Beattie will build it into our scope. OK. Let me move on to the second question that I have got. It is about the state's management. As you know, over the years, we have had a look at figures from colleges and NHS in particular, where there have been backlogs of maintenance and where those backlogs have been categorised from urgent to less so. Are you going to be doing work on this? Are you going to be picking out the college sector and NHS for this and providing some sort of a feel as to where we are going? Is it improving? Is it going down? There is a lot of money involved in this and we need to understand. I absolutely agree. There is a huge amount of public money, both tied up in public assets and money that still needs to be spent to maintain the public sector estate. I am drawing on last year's resource spending review. I am going to talk about the components of public sector reform that the Scottish Government has set out. One of them is the intention to review how public sector services are delivered across the vast array of publicly owned buildings and assets that exist in Scotland. It has also been signalled that that model will change over the course of the decade. I am very much connected to your earlier question about digital services. If working habits have changed for those people who are employed in the public sector, along with the habits of the public about how services are accessed, we can reasonably assume that the public sector estate that we operate needs to be maintained properly will not exist to the scale that it does over the course of the years to come. That transition has to be managed carefully. If we are going to have a smaller footprint of public bodies, that is done in a way that respects community empowerment and gives opportunities to communities and maximises any return to the public sector where there has been disposal of assets. I agree with you absolutely that, historically, as you mentioned colleges and what we talked about last week in the NHS context, that backlog of maintenance is a result of that temptation to prioritise investment in new buildings and assets without maintaining the estate that exists. We have not scoped out our work with any great detail yet, but those are the factors that we are actively considering. I am glad that you used the term public sector, because although I focused on colleges and NHS, which have obviously come before us and big numbers before, there is the wider public sector, is there anything on your radar that would pull the whole thing together so that we could see the whole public sector liability in this regard? It is probably ambitious, but... Mr Beattie, we have been calling for many years now for a whole of Scotland public sector accounts that, as a very helpful starting point, was set out for what Scotland owns and the respective liabilities. Seven years since there has been a clear commitment to do so and we do not have one yet, we, through our work and from the committee's own scrutiny, we hope to see progress on that. I think that Willie Coffey wanted to come back in with a final question. Thanks again, convener. It is just a supplementary on the digital exclusion work that you are going to do, and I am really pleased to hear that that is going ahead. I wanted to ask if the scope of that would extend to looking at the models of interaction that can often cause exclusion to widening. When people try to get information or participate with, for example, an energy, their energy supplier online, it is often a software bot that they talk to a robot that they talk to rather than people, and it is very difficult to negotiate and find your way through that kind of stuff, so would you be able to spend any time looking at those models of engagement that they actually widen exclusion, in my opinion? I am very pleased that you mentioned that. I am happy to take that away to our scoping work, which we are in the throes of at the moment. I recognise that we are all different in how we want to interact with public services. For some people, I read something recently that for many people it is a preference to deal with the chatbot, as opposed to picking up the phone or speaking to somebody face-to-face. From a public sector service perspective, the right costs and efficiency tailor their services, so they avoid the very thing that we are looking to evaluate that people are digitally excluded against their free will, and it is that future proofing service that we are looking to take forward. I am glad that you mentioned that, and we will factor that in. I have just one final area that we wanted to cover before we finished up today, and that was sponsorship of public bodies, which has been something that has been the subject of some discussion and evidence gathering at this committee, certainly over the last couple of years. Whether it is the concerns that we had about what was happening with the Crofting Commission to, I think, more broadly, an undertaking by the Scottish Government last spring to have a review when we took evidence in the autumn of last year, but it seems as though it is still an on-going concern. At one point, you have said that it might be an opportunity for a fundamental audit of sponsorship arrangements. I wonder if you could tell us in the context of the work programme discussion where you are on that, because that seems to be a recurring theme that we would like to see some progress made on. I assure your wish, convener, that there is progress made on that. I listened carefully to the permanent secretary when he gave evidence to the committee a couple of months ago about the progress that they made against the consultant's recommendations, alongside the judgment that I made in section 22 that there are still risks for the Government to implement the recommendations successfully to lead to more effective sponsorship. The vehicle—I have not been definitive on this yet, but I think that it is most likely that I will do that for the time being through the Scottish Government section 22 report. If progress continues to be made, which I hope it is, we will take stock at that point to see whether it requires a more fundamental evaluation of sponsorship and governance arrangements for the Scottish Government bodies. I will take a bit of time over the course of the rest of this year, convener, just to see the progress that the Government makes. It is fair to say that some would argue that the project Neptune outcomes will address this, but we started with the phrase and finished with the phrase. There was some concern about the sponsorship role of Transport Scotland and how that all fits together. It is not something that is just a historical thing. There are still some contemporary concerns that we have as a public audit committee about how, in practice, sponsorship arrangements are working. Yes, that is true. I share those concerns, especially given some of the recent examples. I will also look to see the judgments that the Finance and Public Administration Committee makes as part of its review of how Government in Scotland is working. I think that that will provide very helpful insight that I have drawn to consider as part of future work. I agree with that. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning. I am sorry that we have been a bit short of time and perhaps we should have allocated a bit more time for this, but it is very important for us. I know that this is a first step in a path that you have ahead of you, which is to try to engage with other committees of the Parliament to inform you on what would be the most useful areas of work for you to concentrate on and to pick up some of their empirical insights over the policy areas that they have been dealing with over the cost of the past year, and we are looking forward to dealing with them in the future. I thank you, Auditor General, Gemma Diamond and Mark Taylor, for giving us evidence this morning.