 Mae'r gwaith i ddiweddol, a ddych chi i wneud i gyd o'r newid i'r 24 oes o ddweud o'r Cymru yn y mhwylo 22? Mae'r gwaith ystafell yn y gweithio i'r gweithio, mewn ddigon, mae'n gwneud i'r gwaith ystafell yn yr ymddangos cymdeithasol. Mae'n yn ei wneud i'r gweithio? Mae'n fod yn ei wneud i'r gweithio. The first evidence session that we have this morning is to consider the progress review of the Scottish Government's relationship with public bodies. I am pleased to welcome in the committee room this morning Paul Johnson, who is the director of general communities, Mary McCallan, who is the director of Covid recovery and public service reform, and Katrina McLean, who is the deputy director of public service reform in the Scottish Government. Colin Beattie, the fifth member of the committee, is joining us remotely, but I will bring Colin in shortly. I want to begin, director general, by inviting you to make an opening statement to us. Then we have questions and, of course, we have copies of both the review report that was produced for you and the response that you have given to the recommendations that are contained in the report. I am grateful to you and to the committee for the opportunity to discuss the Scottish Government's relationship with public bodies and the implementation of this report. Public bodies play a vital role in the delivery of public services in Scotland. They make a huge contribution to the delivery of better outcomes for people across this country. They employ approximately 225,000 staff and spend around £22 billion of public money each year. All that emphasises the need for clear and effective engagement between the Scottish Government and our public bodies. In March last year, I commissioned a short review into the Scottish Government's relationships with public bodies. The review report was published alongside the Scottish Government response on 28 February this year. All 14 recommendations were accepted by the Scottish Government and I am happy to update the committee on the progress that is being made with implementation. The permanent secretary attended this committee in February and committed to a session with his executive team on the implementation of the recommendations across the Scottish Government. I can confirm that that meeting has taken place. I was part of it. We discussed and agreed the next steps to secure implementation of the recommendations. Each director general now has responsibility for the relationship with the public bodies in their area. We are all working on the recommendations with our own leadership teams and connecting with the chairs and chief executives of the bodies in our areas with a view to ensuring that the recommendations deliver the progress that is needed, maximising the contribution that our public bodies make to delivering better outcomes. We are taking stock of progress more formally at our quarterly assurance meetings. The recommendations include some that relate to important aspects of procedure, such as clear and up-to-date framework agreements and arrangements for the escalation of risk, but they also relate to important behavioural aspects of the role, the need to build open and trusting relationships, to have regular dialogue and to support our leaders within public bodies to learn, to connect and ultimately to excel in their role. For my part, as portfolio accountable officer for social justice, housing and local government, I have responsibility for the relationship between the Scottish Government and public bodies, such as Social Security Scotland. I am happy to describe the arrangements that are in place to ensure effective engagement between the Scottish Government and what is now a very significant agency that is delivering social security support to people right across Scotland. I am joined today by Mary McCallan, director of Covid Recovery and Public Service Reform and Katrina McLean, deputy director in Mary's area. She leads the team that is focused on implementing the recommendations and providing support to sponsor teams and public bodies across Scotland. I am grateful for the work that Katrina and her team are taking forward in collaboration with sponsor teams and public bodies. It is very much a team effort that is focused on ensuring that our public bodies operate effectively to secure the outcomes that they have been tasked with delivering. We are keen to hear the committee's views today on the implementation of the report and appreciate the committee's focus on this important area. Thank you, director general, for that opening statement. We have quite a number of questions that we want to put to you, which cover much of the ground that you have outlined in your opening, which is helpful. I am going to turn first of all to Craig Hoy. Good morning, Mr Johnson. I have some quite technical questions on governance and accountability, but bearing in mind that the report was quite technical in its nature, there probably are following a theme. From the outset, the review notes that portfolio accountable officers are not responsible for the performance of a public body. However, it does make clear that the Scottish Government will work closely with the body and just use the exact quote, interventions that cross the normal lines of accountability are possible and are made as a formal decision of the portfolio accountable officer. Are there guidelines and criteria on what would trigger such an intervention? Can you perhaps bring to our attention any recent such interventions? The role of the portfolio accountable officer is ultimately set out in the Public Finance and Accountability Scotland Act 2000, so it is absolutely correct, as it is set out in the report, that each body will have its own accountable officer, and that accountable officer will be directly accountable to Parliament for the efficient and effective discharge of their functions. Is the portfolio accountable officer's role to be liaising with the accountable officer and others in the body concerned? What the report that we have in front of us is set out is the need for clear processes and procedures around identification and escalation of risks. Before you get into that, there is a prior need to ensure good engagement between the Scottish Government and the bodies, but what we are doing in implementation of the review is ensuring that there is added rigor around those escalation processes. In particular, we are asking each portfolio accountable officer to ensure that, at the formal quarterly assurance meeting—typically attended by both internal audit, Audit Scotland and non-executive directors—there is a look at all of the bodies in the portfolio and, effectively, an assessment as to where they are all at in terms of performance and delivery. I can confirm in terms of the area for which I have responsibility. That assessment is now under way, and none of the bodies in my area are at a particular point of escalation. The overall process is one that is very much—we are still developing, we are bedding it in, but by the end of the year, as the permanent secretary said, when he was giving evidence, our expectation is that we can confirm that the implementation of all of these recommendations is in hand. Recommendation 1 of the review states that portfolio accountable officers should ensure that sponsored teams work with public bodies and their accountable officers to make sure that the roles and responsibilities are as clear as possible. Can you provide perhaps an update on progress being made in implementing that recommendation throughout the Scottish Government? Yes. That is captured in most cases in the framework document between the body and the Scottish Government. That should always set out the roles and responsibilities, and it should be kept under regular review. Katrina's team has been liaising with portfolios and sponsored teams right across the Scottish Government to share good practice around some of the framework documents that we see, which we think are particularly crisp and clear, all with a view to building up a comprehensive register of all of the framework documents. Where we are at just now is that most of the bodies that require framework documents have got them in good shape. There are some that are still under development. We want to see that being fully comprehensive. Can you give an example of that good practice? What are the things that you are typically looking for? If I can add to what Mr Johnston said, one of the things that we have been very keen to do up till now is that there has been a generic framework document. We have developed framework documents both for the different types of public bodies, including agencies and non-ministerial offices. There was not that nuance before, so we have created some bespoke documentation for them because there are different responsibilities depending on the characteristics of the public body. The framework document is to take the responsibilities that are laid out clearly, as Mr Johnston said, in the public finance manual, and set them out in a way that is clear so that people understand their responsibilities. An example of good practice is that each public body adheres to the model framework document, which they have all had an opportunity—well, to be fair, we are at the final stages of refreshing the framework documents at the moment. However, they are available to public bodies who are actually using the ones that are in draft at the moment, and they should be finalised by the end of this month. In some respects, they have to say why they are not adhering to the framework documents and why they are not doing so, but it is very much that framework document again is an opportunity for sponsor teams and the public body to look at the document, to think about what that means for them in terms of responsibilities and how they interact with each other, and every public body should do that. As Mr Johnston has said, they should be reviewed on a regular basis. Normally, we would anticipate that that would be a roughly three-year cycle. Obviously, the framework document sounds pretty integral to the whole process, but paragraph 4.9 of the review describes examples of where the roles and responsibilities of both parties are not always understood and it identifies that the way that the Scottish Government works with public bodies in practice does not always follow the expected lines of accountability. What steps can portfolio accountable officers take to ensure that what should be happening is actually happening, that the document is actually a living, breathing entity? You asked for some specific examples. There are a number that come to mind. At times, I have to say, the framework documents have been revised and updated when things have not gone so well, in particular in light of some of the scrutiny of the predecessor to this committee. I was in front of your predecessor committee on, for example, Bored and a Gallic. That is an example of a body where the arrangements have been clarified and strengthened. I could point to a very current up-to-date framework document. It has been good to see more recent audit reports recognising the clarity that now exists in terms of the role of the body and the relationships between the body and the Scottish Government. For my area, I could point to, for example, the framework documents that exist between the Scottish Government and Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Housing Regulator. Those are two bodies that are very different, very different sizes and scales. You would not expect the framework documents to be saying the same, but what I am looking for is for real clarity as to what the body is there to do and how the body will interact with the Scottish Government. Recommendation 7 looks at the issue of how regular the contact between sponsorship teams and boards should be. Do you have an inclination as to what level of interaction and engagement that should be in an ideal world? What form should that take and how do you then avoid repeats of, for example, Bored and a Gallic or the Croffthing Commission? We have thought a lot about the issue. I think that the report is quite helpful in that it is not suggesting that there is a one-size-fits-all and that a Scottish Government official should be sitting through every single board meeting. There must be regular contact and dialogue between the sponsor team and the public body. The report recognises that there will be occasions where Scottish Government officials and at times ministers will attend board meetings, perhaps particularly when they are looking at their overall strategy and their forward plan. We need to ensure that we have good engagement but not interference with the important role that bodies have been set up to do. I welcome the conclusion of the report, which is that sponsor teams will not routinely attend every meeting, but it could be a point of escalation if there are concerns about a body that it may be quite appropriate for the sponsor team to be much more present and visible in meetings of the body. There should be clarity as to why that is happening and the duration of it. There is a balance there. Undoubtedly, at points, the Scottish Government has been accused of being too distant when things have been going on in bodies at other times or perhaps being too interventionist. I think that the report is helpful in giving us some guidance as to the balance there. Is there a risk that you perhaps focus on the big organisations? If you look at some of the examples where the wheels have flown off, it is smaller organisations. Are there particular types of intervention that you perhaps need to deploy in relation to smaller organisations where perhaps they are more reliant upon boards rather than service staff? Your observation absolutely resonates with my experience, if I can be candid, because the times that I have been in front of the committee, your predecessor committee has often been in relation to our smaller bodies. I do not think that it follows the amount of effort that the Scottish Government puts in depends on the size of the body, because we know that there are times issues with a body having sufficient skill and capability to cover the whole range of its functions. That is why, indeed, I think that some of the report's recommendations around being quite careful about the creation of further small bodies are useful. I must observe, Mr Johnson, that invariably you are before us and our predecessor committee when things have gone wrong and there have been section 22 reports conducted by the Auditor General. We are keen this morning that, outside of the eye of a crisis, we have an evidence session with you to understand how things are working now. That is why particularly the question about where things are going right is something that we are interested in hearing more about. I am going to bring in Colin Beattie, who joins us online. Colin Beattie. As opposed to looking at this review in the context of many years of governance failures with various bodies of which sponsorship was certainly a significant element in it. That is an area of real concern. Looking at capacity and capability, I was alarmed that the report highlights the significant churn and staffing, the fact that so many staff in sponsorship at the moment are inexperienced and that so many posts are vacant. Whatever good ideas you have for taking this forward, until you fill the posts, until you get people trained who understand sponsorship, take part in the governance process of those bodies. You are going nowhere. I ask you what is the position now, because this is some months ago. With regard to the situation, how significant a challenge to capability do you have at the moment because of the deficiencies that are highlighted? Thank you. Just to respond to what the convener said first, I would be delighted to say more about the successes of our public bodies. I have already referred to Social Security Scotland, which is the biggest body in my area, and I am very proud of the achievement that it is making. It is an example of robust engagement between the Scottish Government and the body concerned. To turn to Mr Beattie's point, we have good capacity in place in the Scottish Government team to ensure effective connection and engagement with what is a very important new agency in the Scottish public sector landscape. However, I recognise the point in this report. There has been a great deal of churn in roles over recent years. The Scottish Government has had to pivot enormous resource towards dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. We have expected staff right across the organisation at times to stop doing what they were doing and move into that emergency response. Even this year, we have moved significant staff around to deal with issues such as the cost of living crisis and our response to the war in Ukraine, both of which have required a lot of movement of staff in the areas that Mary and I have responsibility for. Nonetheless, we are asking each portfolio to ensure that they have teams in place that can perform those sponsorship roles effectively. Part of what we are doing is offering support and training to sponsorship teams. We are finding that sponsorship teams, whether experienced or new—and there is a mix—we are finding that some have got real depth of experience, but we are finding that they are availing themselves of the training offer that Katrina and her team are putting in place. The committee will be very conscious of the resource constraints that we are facing in Government and across the public sector at the moment. One other thing that we are looking at is how we can ensure that in portfolios we have good expertise in sponsorship, but potentially without as many people doing that role as has been the case in the past. Some of my colleagues are looking, for example, at whether we can pull together those sponsorship functions into more of a hub model so that we get deeper expertise in the sponsorship of bodies right across the portfolio. I hope that that helps with the answer, but I want to acknowledge that ensuring that we have enough people with the right skill and capacity is a challenge. You did not answer the question, which was given what was highlighted in the review. That is a year ago now, when staff charn was an issue in experience in sponsorship work, many posts vacant. What is the position now with regard to that specific situation? It was described in the review as a significant challenge to capability. Has that challenge gone away? There is still a challenge in terms of vacant posts because there are issues around the affordability of filling every single post. It is going to vary from portfolio to portfolio, so in my own portfolio I am content that I have people with the right skill and experience to do the sponsorship role well, but my answer—I am sorry if it was not clear enough—I will turn to Katrina in just a moment, but my answer is that it is for us in the central unit to offer support and training, and that is what we are doing as new people come into the role. Katrina, do you want to say a bit more? Yes, just on the support and training, we have introduced lunch and learn sessions for sponsor teams, and we have run eight different sessions focusing on different parts of governance and responsibility. At these sessions, on average, about 77 people have come through that from different sponsor teams. We also run accountable officer training for accountable officers, but also sponsor teams are able to come along to those events. We have initiated a sponsorship roundtable where sponsor teams again can come together to share good practice, and all of those things we feel are supportive of sponsor teams helping them to have better capability and understanding. Overall, the programme of work that we have engaged in this year as we have been developing products to support staff, we have been doing that with sponsor teams, both experienced and inexperienced, and with our public bodies. That whole process itself has been really positive in helping people to understand their roles and responsibilities, and that has been really a positive outcome of engaging with the sponsor teams. If I, more simplistically, compared today with a year ago, where would I see improvements? I could point to a number of examples of where you should see improvements. The two exist in my own area. I would point to the strong engagement that sponsor teams have with the bodies in the social justice housing and local government portfolio, where we have seen that endorsed in audit reports most recently around the performance of Social Security Scotland, its engagement with the Scottish Government, its clarity of purpose, its delivery of benefits for people across Scotland. That would not be possible without really clear and robust sponsor arrangements in place between the Scottish Government team and the agency. There is one very specific example. In other areas, I have already referred to Bordd Nagalic as another example of where improvement was required and where we can point now to clarity as to both the formal processes and procedures and the good relationship between the sponsor team and the body concerned. If I tried to quantify the number of post-vacants, the number of staffs that were experienced in sponsorship, the percentage volume of churn, where would we be today compared to a year ago? That is something that I could take away and try to give the committee more information on that. What I would not expect necessarily—I do not think that you would expect that I would come back and say that we have far more people doing this, because as we set out in the resource spending review earlier this year, we are expecting that the overall size of the Scottish Government will return to pre-Covid levels, and we have expectations around the public sector workforce as a whole. I would expect that overall numbers will not be more. What I am looking for is for capability and skill to be built and enhanced through the programme of work that we are describing today. It takes time to train people. We cannot do it all at once, but we are probably about four-fifths of the way through the sponsorship teams in the Government in terms of training them in the new methods that Catrina was referring to. We will have to see how effective that is. The other thing that is important is that we are in a situation—we have been in a situation of a lot of flux that has just had to be responded to—just inexorable requirements. Where we are now is that we are in a much more—I would not describe it as static, because that sounds as if it is a negative. There is a return to normality, if you like. People are expected to sustain posts for a certain length of time. It has to be said that the requirement to move and, therefore, to some extent, the opportunities to move around in Government are less at the moment because we are responding to the fact that we are in a difficult situation in terms of costs, as all the public sector is, as I am sure you are aware. In combination with the training and the greater length of stay in the areas, together with the fact that we are encouraging sponsor teams to reinforce each other—that is the hub process that Paul was describing—those are all part of the response to that. However, it is not something that you can achieve in a day. We are taking our time to make sure that people are getting the help that they need to be aware of what they need to be aware of. However, we are obviously trying to do that as fast as we can and we are trying to do it comprehensively as we can. Some of the background circumstances in the Government are probably helping us in a way that, possibly in the previous two years, we are not. Just a final question, leaving on from that. Recommendation 8 says that portfolio accountable officers should review the capacity and capability needed in their teams to ensure that relationships are being managed well, etc. The Scottish Government agreed that capacity and capability would be reviewed and that this work was scheduled for 2022. What progress has been made in that? Do we have a date attached to that for delivering? How far are we with portfolio accountable officers reviewing that capability and capacity that is needed in their teams? As Mr Beattie says, we have identified the course of 2022 as the period for implementation. I have done work within the portfolio that I am responsible for on capacity and capability with my team. I am satisfied that we have the capacity and capability that we require, not that staffers are not stretched as they are. We will keep that under review in the quarterly formal assurance process meetings that I have referred to already. I know that my colleague portfolio accountable officers are doing the same, and they have all been asked to do is to complete that initial review of capacity by the end of this year. I will be happy to follow up with the committee as that is done. I know that some are looking at changing the sponsorship model into more of a hub model rather than individual teams, particularly those that have perhaps got a number of bodies with related functions. You can see why, rather than small, disparate teams, a single team that has taken sponsorship as a whole may be a good way to go. I am part of discussions at our executive team on the different models that are being considered for sponsorship. Just to follow up on Colin Beattie's questions, it would be useful for us to understand what the vacancy rate is now and what the vacancy rate was at the time of the report. I am also interested because, again, the report refers to the fact that, or somebody says in the report, I am not sure it is the view of the report, but sponsor roles are not seen as sexy. I am not quite sure what that means, but when I look at the salary range, the people in sponsor roles are in grades A to C, and that starts off at grade A being about 20,000 or early 20,000, but goes up to 74, 75, 76,000 pounds of the salary. Are you having difficulty in attracting people to the higher paid posts, to those lower paid posts? Where is the problem in that spectrum of pay grades? Mary Orkidgen may want to say more about that, but I noticed that comment in the report as well. I would certainly say that the sponsor teams that I am working with recognise how important the role is. I do not think that there is a general issue where we cannot get people to fill sponsor team roles. As Mary has alluded to absolutely, we have had a lot of people moving to perhaps emergency areas over recent years, whereas part of the sponsor team role is that regular, perhaps more patient, persistent, on-going engagement to ensure that public bodies are operating effectively and well-run. I cannot speak for whoever made that comment. Perhaps that was the sort of thing that was in mind. In my own area, I am not seeing difficulty with the recruitment of teams into sponsor roles, either at the A, B or C-band grades, as you will appreciate. There are a number of roles and responsibilities that are relevant to each of those grades, including at the C-band. I expect to see active engagement with the senior leadership teams in the public bodies concerned about the important relationships that can help to get the job done. However, we can absolutely respond to the committee with more granular information about where we are at with vacancies. That would be helpful. I am going to move on to another area now. You said a couple of minutes ago, Mr Johnson, that fewer people are carrying out the role, and it is about how that workload is managed. We also know that, at the same time, new public bodies are being created. I should refer members to my register of interests, but I am interested in the railways, for example. The structure, as I understand it, from 1 April this year, is that there are Scottish ministers acting through Transport Scotland who have oversight of Scottish rail holdings and who, in turn, have oversight of ScotRail trains limited. Who knows that, after this weekend, the Caledonian sleeper will be added to that list. How does that relationship work in practice? I know that it is not your DG, but to understand how, when a new public body is created, how does that sponsor arrangement operate? There should be very close engagement from the outset when a new public body is created between the Scottish Government and that public body. That has been my experience with the bodies that I have had responsibility for in the past and, most recently, Social Security Scotland, which has only been in existence for a small number of years. You could expect to see very close engagement at the outset. It will normally be Scottish Government officials that have a role in that initial round of recruitment that are responsible for drafting a lot of the initial documentation that will govern the relationship between the body and the Scottish Government. In time, as a body matures and becomes more stable, we get into more of a business-as-usual relationship. To your point on new bodies, let me make two points. First, many of the bodies that we are looking at in the Scottish public sector landscape are being put in place by Parliament. We are often responding to what Parliament has deemed appropriate in terms of the public sector landscape. Secondly, I welcome recommendations 2 and 3 in the report. Ultimately, it is a matter for ministers and the Parliament as to whether a body is created. However, as an official and in my own experience, I think that the presumption against new small bodies and the requirement where there is to be a new body to have a full business case and an expectation around shared services is a very sensible one. It is one that we are working on at present to ensure that there is a control framework in the Scottish Government so that, when it is proposed to create a new body, a series of checks and tests must be undertaken to ensure that, for example, alternatives have been considered. Do we need this body or could an existing body undertake the functions? If it is passing that check, does it have to have its own services in terms of finance, for example, HR, IT, or could it share with other bodies? In implementation of the review, we are seeking to ensure that there are a more stringent series of requirements before new bodies can be created. We would be interested to understand that process in relation to the establishment of Scottish rail holdings. Whether that is classed as a small body or not, I do not know how many people it directly employs, for example. There is a tension here, is not it? Something else that I picked up in reading the report was paragraph 411. Somebody encapsulated what they thought was necessary, which at first I was quite attracted to, but then I thought about it a bit more and I have another comment on it. In paragraph 411, someone said that it would be useful to set out what you can expect from us and what we expect from you, which I thought was quite a neat encapsulation of it, although when I reflected on it a bit more, it sounded a bit like a master-servant relationship. It did not sound like a partnership of equals. One of the things that we come across in the section 22 reports is a blurring and a confusion and an unclear sense of where the roles and responsibilities lie. When I also read the report 4.4, we are warned that establishing a separate body and then managing it too closely risks undermining the benefits of separate status. First, do you agree with that analysis that is contained in the report? Secondly, where do you see that in relation to not just ScotRail holdings, but these other bodies that are being created to deliver public services under the auspices of the Scottish Government, at the instigation of the Scottish Parliament? I am sorry that I am not able to provide you with the detail around the establishment of ScotRail holdings. It has not been within my area, but I am very happy to connect in with my director general colleague and ensure that the committee gets further information on that promptly. I am interested in part 4.11 as well. I had highlighted the suggestion that you had also highlighted. I thought that it made sense, but I would go on to highlight halfway through the paragraph what I thought really got to the heart of it. What is important, the report said, is that officials in SGE and each public body have a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities. The report goes on to describe the need for good collaborative work between the Scottish Government and the public body on what that document looks like. It should be a collaboration. It should not be that one is more important than the other or telling the other what to do, but there is clarity as to roles and responsibilities. Where the report gets to is that it is not saying that each framework document must look like, and it goes on to be prescriptive about what each paragraph must say, but rather that each framework document should be the result of that good collaborative engagement, resulting in a crisp and clear description of what the body will do and what the Scottish Government will do. That is what we aim to see more consistently across the piece. I will bring Willie Coffey in shortly. I have just got one final question, and I think that this might be you, Katrina McLean, about the role of—to some extent, you have described the difference between the public body's unit and the public body's hub, which is alluded to in the report and I think is one of the recommendations, so I wonder whether you can comment on where that lies. I am also interested in understanding you have described how you are, was it 80% or 90% of the way through training people in sponsor roles in the Scottish Government. To what extent are you involved in the training of those members of those boards, those people who are in the agencies outwith Central Government that are often times involved in having to make decisions, both operational and strategic, for the NDPBs and the agencies and so on that they are on the boards of? I wonder whether you could tell us a little bit about the extent to which you have got a training programme or any other interaction with them. I will focus on that first. We have a governance hub, which all board members can access, which has modules on different types of governance arrangements, strategic decision making, things like that, how to manage difficult relationships. We are building on that hub, which is available to all board members and to the senior teams in public bodies. We run training courses for new board members. We have just done one about four weeks ago. At that training event, Audit Scotland, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards, Colleagues from Equalities Unit attend to explain the responsibilities as the public bodies unit does to help people to understand their responsibilities as accountable officers. We also run accountable officer events that bring together accountable officers from public bodies. We go through a number of different programmes in that day where they can access information on a wide range of things that they are responsible for. We do have to remember that there is a responsibility that lies with the body itself to ensure that their board members are trained and that they undergo an assessment of their performance. That is also important, but what we try to do is encourage board members to ensure that they are asking their body for training, that they are clear about their responsibilities and that they are not to engage with their chair. We also encourage informal network of buddying for the new board members, and we encourage them to engage with perhaps more seasoned members of their own board or other boards so that they can have some sort of informal mentoring programme. Those are the things that we put in place to give training for our board members who are actually delivering their role in Scotland. In terms of the public bodies unit, my small central team tends to be a co-ordinating and a team that focuses on providing advice and support across Government and also to the public bodies, as I have just described. What we are keen to do, as Mary has also described, is to extend those tendrils to bring in people from across other sponsor teams to share what they have learned and what good practice they have seen out there where things have not gone well. I know that, for example, in education and justice, they bring together their chief executives together to look at section 22s to see where there have been difficulties and how they can learn from those difficulties in a more controlled environment rather than perhaps in the heat of the moment when things have gone wrong. We were conscious that the Auditor General had said that it was difficult to assess relationships when things are going well. It is usually when things are not going well that that is when the stress test occurs. What we have done to respond to that is to create a number of desktop exercises that we can play out in real time with sponsor teams and the senior teams in public bodies so that they can, in a safe environment, test how they would respond to a crisis. We have currently done that with two public bodies and we have taken feedback from them on how they found that experience to refine our process and make that available more broadly across the DG families so that they can implement that with their public bodies. I have other questions in my head, but it might be because of the time constraint that we are under that we could set those out in writing to you to follow up some of those areas to get a bit more, as Mr Johnson described, granularly detail. I think that will be helpful to the committee. I am going to bring in Willie Coffey and Willie. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you. Good morning. Hello again, Paul. Welcome back to the committee. I wanted to broaden out the discussion a wee bit if I may and talk about things like management standards, project management quality standards. The sponsorship arrangements and tool kit, if you could call it, are absolutely crucial when we are talking about that and the importance of it, and it is important that they are clear. That reference that the convener made earlier, one of the sponsor teams is not seen as sexy, but somebody also described it as a black art sponsorship. Usually that is a target that is used when there is a lack of clarity about any process and that only a few people know how things work. I am very hopeful that the work that you are doing here will make it less of a black art and much more visible and usable to people. Alongside the sponsorship tool kit that we have here, surely there is a huge importance that is placed on any of the public bodies that spend all of this money that you mentioned at the set of £22 billion, that they themselves embrace recognised quality and management standards to deliver the thing that they are trying to do. We have had numerous examples over the past at the committee going back many years, Paul. I could remember I6, I could remember Disclosure Scotland, the NHS IT systems, many of the IT systems. The common messaging theme for me and other members of the committee was the lack of embracement and adoption of recognised management standards, but there is a successful story in Selfful Security Scotland that you have mentioned yourself and are quite right that you did so. Can you talk a little bit more about that important aspect that should enhance and complement the sponsorship tool kit? For me, that is the embracement of management standards within the public bodies that serves Scotland. I absolutely agree that that is vital. Sponsorship should not be something mysterious. It should be about ensuring there is clarity as to what a body is there to do and clarity as to whether it is delivering, ensuring there is clarity as to how the body will interact with the Scottish Government. To that extent, it is straightforward, but you are right that it does not cover everything. Like you, I have seen time and again the crucial needs for real rigor and discipline and audit scrutiny and expertise to be secured and brought in when public bodies are embarking on major developments, particularly major digital developments. That is where the successive audit reports that we have seen over recent years have been taken on board and are now ensuring much stronger practice. As the committee will, I am sure, have heard, we, for example, have got real clarity as to the gateways that must go through around digital developments. We have got greater scrutiny and oversight of digital capacity and capability, but I probably cannot do much better than to cite Social Security Scotland in a little bit more detail. I was there in their offices in Glasgow all day yesterday, meeting with a number of their teams and seeing the way in which they are now processing adult disability payments. That has been a huge exercise in agile development that has been undertaken over recent years, drawing on very significant expertise, ensuring regular scrutiny and oversight, including from auditors, and the great thing is that it is now delivering. The applications are flowing in and they are being processed, but that robust underpinning has been absolutely vital. Sponsorship takes part of the way, but to your point it does not take us the whole way. Do you say that Scotland's public bodies have a duty to embrace those standards? I do not think that there is a requirement on them to embrace project management, quality standards, whatever you want to call them, management frameworks. Should we ask them to embrace them? Many do. Some of the smaller organisations probably do not have the capacity to embrace some of those standards, but should we move the bar forward a bit to require public bodies to embrace those standards that I am talking about? In my opinion, if we do not have them in place, there is very little chance that we will deliver anything on time or on budget. What is the view of embracing that and asking the public bodies to embrace those standards? I think that there are a lot of very clear expectations on them around the standards that they must adopt. I would always start with the law and the Public Finance and Accountability Act and the duties on accountable officers to ensure, in the first instance, that money is spent in a way that is effective, that delivers value for money. When you get into value for money, that is where we can see the need to adopt standards that are tried and tested and that will help to ensure that every pound that is spent is spent effectively. Mary, would you want to say more? I was just going to say that the finance manual is a guidebook. Clearly, there is a lot of risk and a lot of concern when large amounts of money are being invested. My experience, which has been mainly in the economic space before this recently, is that the treasury models are utilised. The five business case processes that are recommended in that respect are followed. They might not be followed for a very small investment, but for anything significant, the expectation that that would be the case. For the economic bodies, for example, Scottish Enterprise has its own Audit and Risk Committee. It is well set up to manage those projects. I have not had any experience of managing IT myself. In general, the whole of Government, probably across the whole of the UK, recognises that we need to move more into a very precise management focus when we are dealing with high-risk issues. There is lots of work that has been done in terms of project management, improving people's capacity in that respect, training them properly. My experience, at least for large projects, is that some of them are £70 million of investment in the National Manufacturing Institute. That is a model case that has followed treasury guidance. There is good practice out there, but I suppose that your question is consistent. It should be because the finance manual is there to guide people on how they should approach those things. It is back to Paul's point about portfolio accountable officers, the relationship with the chair of the body concerned and making sure that those processes are being seen through. Even the most optimistic of us, convener, would say that we are unlikely to see another example coming to this committee of a project that has went wrong. Usually, when we open the lid and look in, or the auditor general opens the lid and looks in, we will point out those sponsorship arrangements, but also the project management quality standards arrangements being lacking. I would just like some assurance going forward that the discussion that we are having today and the other suggestion that I have put to you about project management is getting embedded into the thinking of all the organisations in the hope that we do not see a regular recurrence and procession of organisations coming in front of us who have not embraced those standards and processes. What can you assure the committee that that progress has been made towards that? I would be happy to take that one away and to work with my colleague portfolio accountable officers. I do not want to make a commitment today that I cannot absolutely follow through and I want some precision about what it is that we could commit to around standards that would be appropriate across the whole range of bodies. If I may, I could take that one away and respond more formally with what we would be able to commit to around that. I am going to turn finally to the deputy convener of the committee, Sharon Dowie, who has a few questions to ask. Recommendation 13 states that the public bodies unit should ensure that coaching and or mentoring support is offered to the chief executive of every public body, particularly newly appointed chief executives. Those facing challenging situations are intense scrutiny. The Scottish Government's response indicates that it will increase the support that is provided to chief executives as accountable officers, including developing a system network of coaching and mentoring them. Can you provide an update in the progress of that work? I am glad that you referred to that one because I was struck by what the report said about the profound mental health impact that some of the issues that go on in public bodies can have on those involved in roles. We recognise the real duty that we have to do all that we can to provide support. I think that Catriona has referred to many aspects of that support offer, which includes an offer of peer mentoring, but I think that she would like to say a little bit more about it. Yes, I think that that is right. The accountable officer training gives technical training, but it also gives support in terms of mentoring for individuals should they choose to avail themselves of that. We also have the Scottish Leaders Forum, which is providing support in that space, and currently there is a new programme of work for the Scottish Leaders Forum, which again, accountable officers and newly appointed chief executives would be able to access. My unit also provides bespoke training if that is required by individual chief executives, and we do that on an informal basis in discussion with the sponsor teams. It is also a very key element that anyone who is newly appointed to the role of chief executive could expect and would receive support from their portfolio accountable officer, who would be asking them what level of support and assistance they require, and also guiding them towards their chair to ensure that there is a good understanding between chair and chief executive of what support is needed to ensure that that newly appointed person is able to get up to speed as quickly as possible and feels that it is supported in order to deliver their role. They are all fully aware of what help and support is. The final recommendation is number 14. It recommends identifying two experienced team leaders with a good understanding of public body governance issues to take up posts in the public bodies unit. It also recommends what additional staffing would be required to create a public bodies hub to coordinate improvement work and sponsorship in ministerial appointments, and to be a first point of contact to sponsor teams on all public body issues. The Scottish Government responded to say that it recognised the need to resource the delivery of the recommendations from the review and will decide how best to address the recommendation given the current challenging fiscal environment. Can you tell us what progress has been made in respect of appointing two experienced team leaders to the public bodies unit to provide additional capacity for development support and challenge, and the review of the level of additional staffing required for the creation of a public bodies hub? I will recognise that resourcing continues to be constrained, but we have tried to give priority to the work, because we recognise the importance of the theme that we are dealing with today. Catriona Cymru can perhaps give us some specifics as to what the resourcing looks like just now. We have had an uplift in resourcing in the public bodies unit, which has been very helpful and welcomed. In terms of the development of the hub, that is an area where we are focusing on in this final quarter. As we said at the start of the process, it is a year-long programme of work. What we have done is identified people with experience across Government in who are experienced in sponsorship. Our aim in this final quarter is to draw them together into ideally what we would like to have is almost like a rapid response team that would be available as there were issues emerging that other sponsor teams could call on and say, when we go back to the capability issue, that is something that I am not familiar with, has anyone else got any experience, so they become almost like that first point of contact rapid response team. I would say that that is an area that we would be focusing on in this last period, vice convener, so we are really at the beginning of a process here. If I could also say that part of this year has been developing products and processes, and a lot of next year will be around ensuring that those continue to be embedded into the system. However, having the formal accountability process in place is really significant, a significant change in how sponsorship is being assessed. Perhaps in some respects, to answer Mr Coffey's point, we are considering how we measure success. The issue will always be where relationships perform part of a process. There is always going to be unpredictable or unplanned events, and there will be things that we will not be able to anticipate. What we are trying to do in this space is to get upstream and to try to reduce their frequency and their seriousness. In some respects, I hope that you will see less of it in the public space. Much of what my work requires is that it is done behind the scenes so that people do not end up here. That is a huge ambition, and it is not a one-off. This is a continuous process. People will change, circumstances will change and risks will change. Therefore, we always have to keep moving forward on this. As you said, you have an uplift in staff. Are you fully manned in that area? Can you tell me if you have the two team leaders in place? We have dealt with it in a slightly different way. We have augmented the team at the C-band level, but we have two team leaders in place, but we have also looked at the skills and attributes of the team and allocated work in a way that plays to their strengths. That is why I feel confident that we will be delivering all the recommendations by the end of the year, as the permanent secretary gave this committee assurance when he appeared. How long have the team leaders been in position for? They have been in position probably since April or May informally. One has been there for a considerable period of time, and another one since April or May, acting into that position and formally recognised over the past six weeks. I suppose that I am concerned about whether the recommendations hit their deadline. Recommendations 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12 and 13, and obviously 14, so nine out of the 14 all mentioned support needed from the public bodies unit. How confident are you that you are going to hit your target by the end of the year to meet all the recommendations when one of the key things seems to be recommendation 14 and we are having to get that tie down yet? As I have just said, I am confident that we will meet our targets by the calendar year. Thank you. I suppose that the test in the end will be how many section 22 committees are brought before us by the Auditor General and whether, Mr Johnson, you have to come before us as well to defend a situation that arises from failed sponsor arrangements. I think that we have found it really enlightening this morning to hear the work that is being done to try to prevent recurrence. From what I take from the evidence that we have heard, you are looking in some detail at instances where things have gone wrong to learn the lessons from that and build that into the training that you are given to the people responsible for ensuring good relationships between sponsor departments and public agencies and NDPDs and so on. We are out of time. There are some areas where we would like to follow up to get some more information from you. I thank you very much. You have not withheld anything from us, it is just that we have run out of time to get some of that detail that we are looking for. Thank you very much indeed to Mr Johnson, Katrina McLean and Mary McCallan. Thank you very much for your evidence this morning. I am now going to suspend the meeting to allow a change over of witnesses. I welcome people back to this meeting of the Public Audit Committee. In this session, we are taking evidence on the Auditor General's briefing on tackling child poverty in Scotland, which came out on 22 September, so by our standards, it is relatively hot off the press. I am pleased that the Auditor General has joined this morning by Trisha Meldrum, who is a senior manager at Audit Scotland by Corrine Forsyth, who is a senior auditor, performance audit and best value at Audit Scotland. I am particularly pleased to welcome Andrew Burns, who is here as a member of the Accounts Commission because this was a jointly produced report by Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission, so Andrew, we are delighted that you were able to join us this morning. Can I turn first of all Auditor General to you to perhaps give us an introductory statement and then we have a number of questions that we would like to put. Many thanks, convener. Good morning, committee. I am bringing this paper to the committee this morning that, as you know, convener is jointly prepared by Audit Scotland on behalf of myself and the Accounts Commission on tackling child poverty in Scotland. Poverty affects every aspect of a child's wellbeing and life chances, together with wider implications for society. Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health challenges, gain fewer qualifications at school, experience stigma and at higher risk of being care experienced. Ideally, as a society, we want to prevent children from experiencing poverty in the first place. The latest data from 2019-20 reports that 26 per cent 260,000 children in Scotland were living in relative poverty. That is higher than in 2017 when the Scottish Parliament, through the Child Poverty Scotland Act, set ambitious targets to reduce child poverty to 18 per cent by 2023-24 and then 10 per cent by 2030-31. We do not know whether levels of child poverty increased or decreased in 2020-21 because of issues with data collection during the pandemic. The on-going cost of living challenges are likely to push more children and their families into poverty. As well as looking at the impact of poverty on children's lives, that briefing paper focuses on what the Scottish Government, local government and others are doing to reduce and prevent child poverty. To reach the targets to reduce child poverty, the Scottish Government set out actions in two four-year delivery plans. The first ran from 2018 to 2022 and the second from 2022 to 2026. It is not possible to assess the success of the Scottish Government's first four-year plan because it did not set out what impact the plan was expected to have on levels of child poverty. The Scottish Government's second child poverty delivery plan, published in March of this year, sets out a more joined-up approach with local government and other public bodies, the third sector and the private sector. It includes more information on what impacts the Scottish Government expects policies, such as the Scottish child payment, to have on targets to reduce child poverty, but it lacks detail on how and when some of the actions will be delivered. The Scottish Government has not yet shown a clear shift to preventing child poverty with actions more focused on helping children out of poverty and reducing its impact than on long-term measures to prevent it. However, the second delivery plan and some of the Scottish Government's broader actions include some steps towards a more preventative approach. We have made recommendations that the Scottish Government, councils and their partners urgently develop the detail of how they will implement the actions in the new delivery plan and monitor its impact. We also recommend that they work meaningfully with children and their families, with lived experience of poverty as they do that. Lastly, our paper highlights the need to quickly progress planning to meet the third child poverty delivery plan by the target of 2030-31, given the length of time that it can take for some of those measures to take effect. What are Scotland's plans to carry out more work in the future looking at the progress and impact of plans to reduce child poverty? As always, my colleagues and I look forward to answering the committee's questions. I am glad that we are joined by Andrew Burns from the Council's Commission this morning to help us to do that. Thank you very much indeed and just a reminder that Colin Beattie is with us but he is joining us remotely this morning. You have outlined some of the key messages from the report, some of which are quite startling from gaps in data to your assessment that it is not possible to assess the success of the first four-year plan and that there has not been a demonstrable clear shift in the prevention of child poverty. Those are quite important messages. As you have set out, there are areas that you are keen for improvements to be made. However, you also finished there by explaining that you plan to carry out some further work. I wonder whether you could elaborate on that a little bit. Tell us what that further work is likely to be or is already in train. Secondly, could you tell us a little bit about the timetable that you have set yourself for that? As you mentioned, there are a number of themes that I am delighted to elaborate on in terms of the committee's interests this morning. We intend to carry out more work on child poverty. Today's paper is a briefing paper that we use a range of different audit outputs through online publications, briefing papers and then full performance audits. Today's briefing paper is distinct from our performance audit in that we do not make judgments throughout the paper that we do in our performance audit report, and that is where we intend to go next to make a more formal assessment of progress that is being made against the respective delivery plans. What we have not yet done, convener, is set a definitive timescale upon that yet. Given the progress and the place that the Government and its partners are in with the second delivery plan, the availability of data will be key to making some of that assessment. Broadly speaking, and colleagues can keep me right on this, there is a one-year time lag between the availability of data at the end of each year. We will take a view on the quality of the data, the timescales for that before being definitive about when we will next prepare a report. If I may convener, there are a couple of other reports that are already in train on behalf of the council commission myself that will inform progress against some of the wider measures. For example, next year we will be producing performance audit reports on the Government's progress on early learning and childcare expansion, as well as adult mental health arrangements in Scotland. Both of those will inform our future work on child poverty arrangements. Broadly speaking, we can anticipate that it will be within the next couple of years that data and its quality will shape the specifics around that. I think that you mentioned at one point that Covid has had an effect. I guess that there is a committee that we fully appreciate, but we also want to understand whether the foundations are in place to deliver that data, notwithstanding those external factors. We are interested to get your views on the robustness of the data, your views on the time lag, because presumably that makes it exceptionally difficult for policy makers to base their decisions on current evidence. If targets are set, so Parliament has legislated for statutory targets to be met, yet if there is no data to understand what progress is being made or what regress is taking place, it makes it pretty hard, doesn't it, to give any meaning to the targets that have been set. You also mentioned that there are new levels of data on child poverty that are expected to be produced in 2023. Have you got any expectations on whether that data will be any more robust? Will it be better quality? Will it address some of the deficiencies that you have outlined in the briefing? I am happy for you to bring in the other members of the team that you have with you. Thank you, convener. I will absolutely do that. I will bring Corrin in first action on some of the data quality. Andrew, I am sure that we will want to come in on some of that point. Before doing so, convener, I recognise the point that you make. As the committee knows, in some of the discussion that you have just had and through many of the audit reports that we produce, that theme about high-quality data is built into policy development implementation right from the start. Regrettably, we did not see that from the first child poverty delivery plan. Many of the actions that were taken might well anticipate that we will have a positive bearing on reducing child poverty, but it is not possible to track that through with adequate evidence. That leads us to one of the key planks of today's report about the third child poverty reduction plan, which is a key component of it, so that the Government and the partners set out very clearly what individual components are going to reduce child poverty and buy how much. That supports policy makers, as you say, and it supports scrutiny of progress, because there is a long way to go if you are looking at the scale of the ambition that is set out in that plan in order to do so. You are right that there is a time lag in the data. There have been Government's own assessment of the data quality as a result of the pandemic that it was not robust enough to publish and rely upon. I am going to turn to Corinne first of all, who can share with the committee a bit more on some of the data and how that is prepared. The interim targets for child poverty in 2023-24, as Stephen has said, the data on those will not be published until March 2025. The time lag that you have mentioned, the Scottish Government in the second delivery plan, has set out in one of the annexes that they are frustrated by. It does, as you say, an impact on policy makers and how they can respond. In 2020-21, the data for the main child poverty targets comes from the Family Resources Survey, which is a UK-wide survey. Data was published at a UK level, but because of sample sizes it was decided that, at Scotland level, the sample in relation to families in particular was too small to make it overly reliable. At UK level, it was published and reflected in the Scotland figures, even though there were warnings over using them. The levels of child poverty did fall during 2021, but it was seen by commentators as an artificial fall as a result of the increase in the universal credit uplift, which was then reversed after. Median incomes falling had an impact on reducing that level, but it is seen as an artificial low. 2023-24 was not published until 2025. In terms of robustness, the data is a very big UK survey. There are lots of data validation. At that national level, there is a lot of confidence that the information coming out will be robust in 2025, but there is the issue of the time lag. There are other issues with data that sits behind that, but there are four targets for child poverty. We are confident that the data is robust, if not overly timely. I will pick up on that last point. There are four indicators. I will bring Andrew Burns in to help to answer that question. You call in the report for consistency of application, consistency of use of those indicators, which perhaps suggests that they are not currently consistently used. I do not know whether some local authorities, for example with health boards, just rely on one or two of the indicators and not all four. There may be reasons for that, but, as a committee, we are interested in understanding when you call for consistency of application of the suite of indicators, both at Scottish Government level and at local Government level. Does that imply that that is not happening at the moment? I will start with you. I think that that is the judgment that we have made in the report. There is some contextual information that is given the environment that we are in at the moment, whereby not all of the indicators reflect cost of living challenges. The most commonly used indicator of relative child poverty is based on household income, which refers to 60 per cent of average or median income. That does not take account of individual households' costs. The different inflation rates effectively apply to different people in society. Therefore, having an overriding measure of relative child poverty might not be all that helpful in the current circumstances. There is a consistency of application, but picking the right indicator to best describe the circumstances that children and young people are facing on a day-to-day basis. We make that recommendation to the Scottish Government and the public bodies across the piece that they can do that consistently and pick the one that matters most for the circumstances that we are in. I am keen to see that that happens as a follow-through from today's paper. I am going to bring in Andrew Burns. I would just reflect that we are living in quite different times to those of 2017, even when the legislation was drafted. Andrew Burns. I will start by welcoming the committee's willingness to see both the Auditor General and the Cinch Commission as part of your work this morning on looking at joint reporting to child poverty. I am pleased to be here representing the commission. I hope that I can help to amplify some of the key messages as they relate to local government. I will come directly to your point where you have been pressing about data. You have touched on something that is crucial, because within the evidence that we have in the briefing paper, two of the key three barriers that are affecting local government at the moment in terms of addressing child poverty do relate to data, one specifically around gaps in data, which Auditor General has touched on, and the other one around data sharing or, in many cases, the lack of effective data sharing. If I just maybe give one example to illustrate that, convener, it might help just further the discussion. So all councils and health boards probably are aware have to produce an annual joint local child poverty action report. They are all produced, all 32 authorities produce them. There is no national collation or systematic overview of those 32 local government reports in one place, which has come out from the evidence that we have gathered in the briefing, which is quite a significant lack of data sharing across local authorities, and I think is already the Auditor General and others have hinted at that. The evidence clearly indicates that attempts to reduce child poverty could be improved by things such as improved data sharing at that level across all the 32 authorities. Some of those child poverty action reports, again just to try to illustrate the point, are signed off by chief executives at local authority level, which is to be welcomed, obviously. Some of them are not signed off, and I don't mean this in a demeaning way, are not signed off by very senior officers. So there's a lack of consistency as well as a lack of sharing across local government and therefore across the whole of the nation. That's helpful. I think that we've got some questions particularly on that local government health board data collection and reporting mechanism, which we'll come to. I'm going to turn to Sharon Dowey, who's got a few questions to put to you. Good morning. With regard to the actions that I've been taking to reduce child poverty, section 2 of the briefing states that there's not been a sufficient shift to prevention to reduce the disadvantaged cause for child poverty, and you mentioned it in your opening statement as well. Do you have a view on what types of prevention action would be helpful to improve outcomes in the longer term? Good morning, deputy convener. Again, I'm happy to start. I think I'm bringing in Trish at the moment and, of course, I want to say a bit more too. We make a broad statement in the report that most of the actions are designed to lift children and young people out of poverty. Clearly, we're not questioning the appropriateness of that. If there's interventions required, of course you would expect public bodies to do just that. There's also a bit about the preventative nature. Of course, it stops children and young people experiencing poverty in the first place. The scarring nature of poverty, which we've talked about, introduced to remarks about the impact that that has on their life chances, together with the generational impact that poverty can cause. Therefore, looking to public bodies and policy makers to place additional emphasis on what are the preventative measures, the preventative investment that can reduce children and young people experiencing poverty. Trish, I might want to say a bit more about the example that we touched on in the report, which is the Government's early learning and childcare intervention. That has a bearing on the experience that children and young people have through early years. It also has a bearing on their parents about their ability for them to access work. The preventative nature of that policy in the longer term for children and young people who have had better experience at school and nursery and the ability to obtain qualifications and ultimately higher paid employment over the course of that will be the preventative nature. We mentioned that example. We have to look a bit deeper for other longer-term examples. Affordable housing would be one of that order, too. However, it is that balanced deputy convener of looking to see greater emphasis among policy makers and public bodies for the investment in preventative rather than interventionist natures to stop child poverty. I am going to pause. I am sure that Tricia and Andrew will want to say a bit more about that. In relation to early learning and childcare, we have highlighted that as an example of a policy that has worked on multiple levels, if it does as it is intended to do. We have supported the children through their early years as they start school. We know that there is lots of evidence around what difference it makes if you have levelled that gap at the time that a child starts primary school, so that is one of the intentions of the policy. That is a longer term in terms of improving the outcomes for those children and those children who then become parents of the future. It has also got the shorter term aims around supporting the families and supporting the parents into employment or training or whatever. It is intended to work on multiple levels. We are doing audit work on early learning and childcare, as the Auditor General mentioned, which we will publish next year. That is not going to be looking at what impact it has had on those outcomes, because it is too early to say in terms of that expansion to live in 40 hours, but we would plan to further audit work and further down the line when there is better information to tell whether the policy has achieved its ambitions. In terms of that longer term preventative approach, we have also referred to the Scottish attainment challenge around school education, which is again supposed to be helping to live with that playing field, close the attainment gap, which would be intended to improve longer term outcomes for children and young people as they then move through employment, become parents and sales, etc. There are a number of policies that are intended to make a difference longer term, but at the moment the focus is very much around mitigating, supporting and not so much around children at the moment. We are never experiencing poverty, given what a damaging effect it will have on its life chances. I will try to amplify some of those points in relation to how they specifically relate to local government. As the Auditor General has already said, Tricia also indicated that there is an admirable effort across local and national government to help people out of poverty, but less of a rigid focus on initial prevention of allowing people to get into poverty. That is an easy thing to say and a very difficult thing to tackle, but just to give a few examples at a local level, local authorities have five or six key areas where they can assist towards prevention quite significantly. In no particular order, supporting parents into employment and to work, councils can have a very significant role in that arena, and all the evidence that we have gathered indicates that ensuring that parents or carers have consistent paid employment is the most significant way of preventing poverty and not just helping people out of poverty. A second area that I would highlight would be housing. Clearly, everybody in the committee will be aware that local authorities have a key role to play in providing affordable housing. Education, local authorities have a key role in minimising the cost of the school day and administering, for example, the school clothing grant and the free school meal scheme. Childcare is another area in a national level, but the provision of that is delivered at a local level and local authorities provide funding for elderly and childcare places at a local level. That can also greatly assist in prevention as well as helping to lift out of poverty. Transport is often the Cinderella of this clutch of areas, implementing free bus travel and ensuring transport in areas so that people can get to well-paid employment. It is very significant and the responsibility of local authorities. Finally, welfare support. Again, local authorities have a key role increasingly in administering financial and security and hardship funding. All those areas can be crucial in assisting prevention. Obviously, what is to be welcomed is helping to lift people out of poverty, but the prevention, as the Auditor General and Tricia have indicated, would be far preferable if that could be beat into policy making right from the get-go. You actually pre-empted my next question, but it is going to be on publishing further work to the impact of the expansion on funded early learning and childcare. The timetable for that you are expecting to put that out next year. That is correct, actually. We are anticipating publishing that at the end of May, beginning of June 23. The briefing suggests that the Scottish Government did not follow advice from the Poverty and Inequality Commission to ensure that its actions were more clearly linked to targets for reducing child poverty and to be clear about what the impact of each action was expected to be. The briefing goes on to state that, because the Scottish Government did not set out what impact the child poverty development plan was expected to have, it was not possible to make a proper evaluation of whether the delivery plan delivered its aims. Do you know why the Scottish Government did not act on the advice provided by the commission and why it did not take the steps to ensure that the impact of the plan on child poverty could be properly assessed? You are right in your description, Deputy convener, that the Government's advisors Poverty and Inequality Commission did raise concerns about the read across from various steps and the impact that they would have. I will invite colleagues if they have got any additional insight as to why the Government chose not to do that. We recognise that there is a recognition and progress since that first delivery plan, second one, and the recommendation that that is absolutely part of the third delivery plan that policy makers, those who are scrutinising the success, also have access to the intended outcomes from individual steps. That is the main thrust of today's briefing paper, which is that it is absolutely clear what is intended from individual steps. If colleagues have any further insight, they can help me out. Not in relation to why they did not do it for the first one. I think that would be more a question for the Scottish Government, but we have seen things, as the auditor general said, move on quite a lot in relation to the second plan. One of the key differences with the second plan has been the modelling that the Scottish Government did to look at the cumulative impact of the different actions that they were proposing to take and particularly the impact of actions around Scottish child payment and other social security payments and some of the actions around employability. They would be much clearer around what would be the anticipated impact on the levels of child poverty of those actions. That is for both relative child poverty and absolute child poverty. Their modelling indicates that they would anticipate achieving the target for relative child poverty, not for absolute child poverty. As we said, it is the measure that more picks up on the impact of cost-of-living pressures that we are seeing more of now. We have also said in the report rule that there is still more to be done around the second delivery plan, so it is clearer for lots of actions around what impact they are supposed to have, but there is still work to be done around some others. It is not clear how those are intended to impact on child poverty levels, some of the housing actions, for example. It is not been set out how that will impact on child poverty, how that will be targeted, focused, etc. There is still further work to be done, and we have recommended that that needs to be done really quickly because they really need to get moving to be delivering on those actions. I will bring in Colin Beattie after Willie Coffey, but I want to give you the opportunity to put your questions to the panel. Before I get to my first question, I just wanted to ask the auditor general a question that brought to attention in page 3 of your report. You quite clearly say there, auditor general, that the key policy actions in relation to tackling child poverty rest with the UK Government's Scottish Government, councils and partners and so on. It is appropriate to mention on this day that is the anniversary of the removal of the universal credit uplift. Do you feel that you cannot scrutinise, assess or examine the impacts that some of those measures may have on overall child poverty? I am sure that the committee is interested in the widest picture possible about who the key influencers are on the subject. Can you say a little bit about where you see your role and whether you are able to even look at that and scrutinise that side of the process? I am happy to do that. I suspect that Andrew Burns will want to say a bit more about some of the role of local authorities in the contribution that they make here. It is absolutely the case as we set out a key message 3 that the levers to reduce child poverty in Scotland rest with the UK Government, the Scottish Government and other public bodies, principally local authorities in Scotland, to do so. We have not undertaken an assessment of the impact of changes in universal credit in Scotland. To the next step, we do not have powers of authority to do that. We audit responsibilities, cover public bodies in Scotland, share between myself and the Accounts Commission. The basis for making the assessment is not necessarily about one policy change at a patient point in time. As Corin mentioned, the survey material is the primary assessment methodology for forming a view about the number of children and young people who are experiencing poverty in Scotland. There will be a flow through of changes of one policy. There are timelines that we have discussed already this morning, but what we have not done is undertake an assessment for those very reasons on the changes of one individual policy around universal credit. If I may, we have done other components of that. You have heard already this morning about Social Security Scotland. We make assessments of some of the changes of devolved benefits in Scotland. We have reported before some of the recess on the progress that Social Security Scotland is making in the roll-out of its benefits. Mr Coffey, you and the committee will recall that one of the key findings from that report was, again, the need for, as the programme of devolved benefits in Scotland rolls out, is that evaluation now needs to be at the heart of the Government's approach to assess the success of that policy. What clearly matters is that that is also connected into the progress on child poverty reduction targets. Pauli, you have a fairly long answer, Mr Coffey, but there are boundaries that are supposed to our responsibilities, but there will be data that will support the overall impact of that, albeit with some time. If you are content, I may pause and Andrew Burns wants to come in as well. Thanks. I cannot speak further to the issues that are addressed around the funding from the UK Government, but it gives me a chance to focus down on the third key barrier that I mentioned earlier. The two key barriers were lack of data sharing and data gaps. The third one, which I did not get a chance to reference and your question prompts me to do so, is ring fencing. Ring fencing from the viewpoint of local government can be seen as a way of providing funding for multiple small pots. It can be seen as a barrier to reducing child poverty from a local government perspective, so there is something that can be potentially further developed in terms of the relationship between the Scottish Government and the local government. Ring fencing funding clearly helps to support the delivery of Scottish Government policies such as LLN childcare, but it can remove local discretion. It does remove discretion over how some of the aspects of total funding available to councils can be used. Also providing funding in the small pots that I mentioned can make it much more challenging for families and for those helping families access funding to get all the help that is available. There is an area around that third key barrier of ring fencing, which I think might be worth the committee looking at a bit further, and certainly we will be looking at further when we do the additional work that the authority general referred to in his opening comments. Thank you very much for those responses. The briefing that Stephen talked about, the Scottish Government increasing its focus on policies aimed at preventing children from experiencing poverty, and there is mention in the report that increasing the Scottish child payment to £25 a week per child, we hope, could reduce poverty by five percentage points. There is commentary in the report all over the place about not meeting this target or it is one percent shorter. However, how do we know that the ability to reach these targets is not also being driven by the negative impact of something like the universal credit being withdrawn? Who is assessing the impact of that? We know that that directly affected 350,000 households in Scotland, so how do we get the balanced picture here, Stephen, so that we know that all of those influences are having an impact? You are right, Mr Coffey. As we set out in the report, your first question is that the actions of the UK Government, the Scottish Government, other public bodies and the wider economic circumstances that people are facing will all influence the progress towards the ambitious child poverty reduction targets, as the convener mentioned. Some of the targets were set in 2017. Factors that we are currently facing as a society were not envisaged, so whether it is the pandemic or the current cost of living challenges, the war in Ukraine will all have a bearing on households' finances, inflation rates and so forth. While an intervention from the Scottish Government in terms of Scottish child payment had it not been for those factors, it would have expected to reduce child poverty in Scotland, the negative impact of some of those factors will offset that. What we tend not to do in today's briefing paper is to say that the Scottish Government itself is attributable for all the progress. It is a very complex, multifaceted landscape that exists. As we move into the next delivery plan, I will get back to the recommendation that we have in the report, the Government and its partners are clear about the intended impact of individual measures over the course of the next delivery plan. Therefore, as best we can, allowing for the complexity are able to take a judgment about what the impact of that measure was against the child poverty reduction targets, allowing for the complexity that exists for other environmental factors. Thank you very much for that. I have two questions that will roll into one, Richard. That is probably for Andrew. I am trying to find out what evidence the councils need when they are working with their partners in the third sector to help us to come to a conclusion about whether any of that is having the positive impact that we hope works. The evidence base and it leads us into the data gathering solid quality data. What is it that we need to have that we perhaps do not have that would enable us to answer those questions at subsequent meetings of this committee in the future? I may be in colleagues to amplify what I initially said in response to that. I think that it has already been alluded to that the figures regrettably, despite all the efforts of local and national government, are increasing. The current level is sitting at 26 per cent for 2019-20 compared to 24 a few years ago. They play regrettable despite all the efforts and would be worse, as the other general said, if it was not for the actions that local and national government are taking. The key data source that local government depends on at the moment is the improvement service local government benchmarking framework. That suffers exactly from the point that the Auditor General made in his statement, like many of the data sets, at a time lag of 12 to 24 months. I think that I am right in saying that colleagues might want to come in and amplify some of that. I am afraid that I do not have an easy answer to the point that you have raised, because it is a real challenge in finding timely data that does not have that lag, whether it is at a local and or national level. We will never get rid of the time lag issue, I do not think, Andrew, but is there any qualitative data that is currently missing that we should be gathering? One of the specific points that we have raised in the report is that we set out the six priority groups that the Scottish Government has identified as most at risk of children experiencing poverty. However, there is not much data to understand that people will fall into more than one of those groups. That multiplies the risk and multiplies the potential negative impact of poverty. However, there is very little data to understand how many families and children fall into more than one of those groups and what their experience is like. That data does not really exist. One of the things that the Scottish Government is looking at is extending the size of the sample so that it can start to get into more and more subgroup analysis. We have still to see if that happens. That would be a particular gap. One of the areas where it can try to get a better handle on that is by talking to the children and the families in a proper, meaningful engagement and meaningful input from the children and the families who have had experience of poverty. What does it feel like? What works? What does not work? They are best placed to understand what that experience is like and what would make a difference and what does not make a difference. We have recommended that, as they work through the detail of delivering some of the actions that they are doing in partnership with the children and families and, again, that they are involved in monitoring the assessment. Is that actually making a difference? Again, it would highlight that there has been one of the tangible gaps and where there is something that could be done to help to address that. That is really helpful, Lord Cairiw. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed. We have now got some questions from Colin Beattie, who joins us remotely. Colin, over to you. Thank you, convener. I am going to look at spending, but there are a couple of points that I would like to make before that. Obviously, it is really important to know that the kicked resources are being directed towards reducing and, hopefully, eventually eliminating child poverty. However, as my colleague Willie Coffey said, there is no knowledge, really, as to what the impact of UK Government has been on this. I do not know how we get a hold of that, and I do not know how we ensure that the Scottish Government is working in tandem, so to speak, with what the UK Government's initiatives are. They are very varied. The other thing that I was going to ask is—the original has made it very clear, this is a briefing—that some of the sources that are taken for this are different from what his normal investigation and audit would pick up. To what extent does that impact on the quality of the data that you are receiving? Can we rely on that? Good morning, Mr Beattie. First of all, on the impact of UK Government decisions, as Mr Coffey mentioned, there are many variables that exist that will influence the progress towards the child poverty reduction targets. Today's briefing looks to signal the emphasis that, regardless of what decisions or steps were taken previously, as we move into the third delivery plan, it is integral to the intended measurement, long-term planning and outcomes that will come from the plan. Looking at the Scottish child payment, there will be one factor on that. Other measures that the UK Government will influence, as it could be for the Scottish Government, are positive or negative on that, but it is trying to create more segmental understanding of the different drivers behind the reduction targets. On your second point about this briefing paper, what we look to do through a briefing paper, as distinct from a performance audit report, is to signal, in a more general terms, the issues facing public bodies. Does that influence the quality of the data that we receive? I do not think that it does. Our understanding and the evidence that we have drawn from today's briefing is publicly available information through the household, through the survey. It is our intention, as we have mentioned, to undertake further audit work, at a point to be determined. We always need to make the point that there needs to be high-quality data. That shapes our ability to make audit judgments. It also shapes the ability of policy makers and scrutineers, such as yourself, to take a view on the quality of steps that are being taken through those policies. We are keeping that under review as to when that best happens, but we think that that is a complementary introductory piece of work to be supported by further performance audit evidence-based work in the years to come. It is helpful. Paragraph 59 to 62 outline that it is not always clear how the £3.3 billion was spent on tackling child poverty between 2018-19 and 2021-22. The briefing recommends to the Scottish Government to consider how to develop its understanding of the reach of universal spending and the extent to which low-income houses are benefiting. To what extent is it a cause for concern that the £3.3 billion has been spent on tackling child poverty? It is not entirely clear how that spending has impacted on child poverty outcomes. I know that there has been some mention by the Scottish Government that it has mitigated a possible increase in child poverty, but we are looking to see it go the other way. You are right. In section 3 of the paper, we set out the scale of spending of £3.3 billion and the judgment in the briefing paper, but it is not always clear. That is a significant finding from today's paper. In our audit work, the work of the committee and other committees in the Parliament emphasises the importance of having a much clearer relationship between public spending and not just outputs, but outcomes that have been delivered from that spending. In paragraph 61, we looked to give a bit additional context of what some of that £3.3 billion has been spent on—the Scottish child payment, of course, and then some of that support for low-income households as well as some of the Covid funding in place. Drawing a judgment, though, about how successful that spending was in terms of delivering better outcomes or reducing child poverty, is harder. As Mr Coffey mentions, the Scottish child payment is expected to have a 5 per cent reduction on child poverty reduction targets, but more generally, that is challenging. Again, it takes us back to one of the original recommendations or judgments in the report. There needs to be clear expectations as we move into the third child poverty reduction plan about what individual measures will have on the overall targets. I am going to pause that. I think that Corrin wishes to say a bit more about some of the spending and the associated analysis that is behind that. One of the key things that we found when looking at the spending was in relation to universal policies and the inability to be able to look at them and see what proportion benefited low-income households such as early learning and childcare and free school meals for primary 1 to 5. That was a big bit that was missing. We could not come out with a definitive figure overall of what was spent on child poverty above the £3.3 billion, because, obviously, there will be a large part of early learning and childcare that is for everyone that is directed to low-income households. We also tried to look at the three levers of tackling child poverty, income from employment, income from benefits and cost of living, to see what the Scottish Government had spent on those three areas. For reasons that we have described in relation to prevention, it was very difficult to see what had been spent on some areas such as early learning and childcare. It can be cut in different ways, so it was quite difficult to come up with a definitive figure. Perhaps when we do our work, we can look at the spending and drill down in a bit more detail in the future. Do you think that it is possible to extrapolate from spending x number of pounds will result in a reduction in poverty? It does not seem to me that the correlation is there. I am not an economist, Mr Beattie, but I am drawing judgments based on the reliability of some of the associated material that it is possible to make some of that correlation on a reliable basis, especially citing the Scottish child payment, the anticipated impact that that would have on a reduction of child poverty. There are caveats in that, and I think that you can come back to some of this morning's earlier discussion about the range of measures that are in place. We will have a bearing on one measure, but there are other factors about cost of living that will have a detrimental impact the other way. It is a complex picture about the interaction of the different measures, the interventionist and the environmental factors that we will have, but we think that the data is sufficient and reliable to make that assessment. I will see how that develops. My last question is in relation to council spend on tackling child poverty. Maybe Andrew Burns is the best for this. Paragraph 63 says that there are no readily available evidence, and it is difficult to identify across a range of actions in different policy areas how the money was spent. What needs to be done to ensure that we get that evidence, and that it can be provided to support the impact of council spending on tackling child poverty? Again, it is a question of whether councils are key for the key deliverers in that respect. We do not know how much they spend on that, but clearly it is a lot of money. How do we ensure that the money is being well spent and that it is going to the correct area? Colleagues again might want to come into and amplify my initial response. This goes back to my deputy convener when I mentioned the annual council and health board producing annual reports on reductions in child poverty levels. There is no analysis of those in a systematic way across the whole of Scotland. To try and come straight to your point about how to improve the analysis is, by better joined up, a collection of data across local authorities and between local authorities and the Scottish Government. To go back to Willie's point, I absolutely acknowledge between the Scottish Government and the UK Government, so that better co-ordination and consistency of data is not a substitute for raw spend. The Auditor General was referring to a second ago, but it would help to improve the power of that raw spend if the co-ordination was there and was more robust and more systematic, because it is lacking across and between local authorities at the moment. Who should drive that co-ordination? It is a joint responsibility between the Scottish Government and COSLA. It is both a national and a local issue. I do not think that it is going to be solved by one level of government attempting to solve it. It needs proper co-ordination across in Scotland, both significant levels of government, i.e. local and national. As I said a second ago, continuing and better co-operation is up a level between the Scottish and UK Government as well. From your knowledge of the councils and the accounting and so on. I am going to have to move things on. The clock is against us. If there were time, I would bring you back in, but I think that it is very unlikely. Craig Hoy has got some questions on the final section. Thank you. Good morning, Mr Paul. I just want to turn to looking at achieving the child poverty targets, but just in terms of a snapshot in terms of where we are, there are obviously some pretty severe and acute cost of living issues coming towards us. At this point in time, should we be more concerned about the inability to meet the absolute target or the relative target, or are both equally important in public policy terms and objectives? I think that we should be concerned about all the measures, because they all give a rounded assessment of the experience that Scotland's children and young people are dealing with. I am bearing in mind that some of this data relates back to the early stages of the pandemic. I think that we can anticipate that aspects of it will have deteriorated. As we touched on a couple of points this morning, the relative poverty measure itself is hovering around 26 per cent, the most commonly used indicator, but that does not allow for cost of living issues. Looking at the absolute measure, you can still see that that has a significant proportion of Scotland's children and young people experiencing absolute poverty. As all of us, whether we are scrutineers, auditors or policy makers, we are all concerned about that for the impact that it will have on children and young people today and their future life chances. Paragraph 66269, if he looks at whether or not targets will be hit or will be missed, you mentioned key commentators who have noted that there will be policy changes required in order for the Government to achieve its poverty targets. Can you give a flavour of who those commentators are? I saw Fraser Vannander quoted in the report. What are the recommendations for those significant policy changes that might help us to meet those targets? You are right. We cite the Fraser Vannander Institute, Joseph Rennie Foundation, in today's paper, as having produced material commenting on the progress and the likely further interventions that will be required to be made in order to meet the child poverty reduction targets as part of the third plan. I will bring colleagues in a moment to share with the committee some of the detail. Before doing so, I would recognise that the fiscal environment is very challenging. In order for Scotland to deliver upon its child poverty reduction plan towards the end of this decade, it will require some very significant choices if we make the assumption that the overall size of the Scottish budget remains as is. If the focus is on meeting child poverty reduction targets, there is the possibility that it will come at the expense of other parts of public sector delivery. Clearly, those are choices for the Government and the Parliament to make us scrutinise budget choices. In terms of the specifics and the connections that those other commentators have made, I will turn to colleagues so that we can support the committee with any detail. As you have set out, there are various sets of modelling. They all do slightly different things, but they were prepared using different assumptions at different times. As announcements like the Scottish child payment and the changes to that have come in, the modelling has had to be updated. The most up-to-date modelling that we have is the Scottish Government modelling that was done as part of the second child poverty delivery plan back in March. The Fraser of Allander Institute a few months later, after that modelling came out, it redid the modelling and used slightly different assumptions. It came to the conclusion that the Scottish Government modelling is in relation to relative poverty, where the Scottish Government had assessed that at that point in time it was likely that it would meet the interim targets in 2023-24 by reducing relative poverty to 17 per cent, with the target being 18 per cent. The Fraser of Allander Institute redid that modelling and was a bit less optimistic and came back with the difference in the main that the Scottish child payment would make, that it would be probably at that time using the same assumptions would be 19 per cent, so the interim target would be missed. We do not know at the moment when the next lot of modelling is going to be. The Scottish Government did decide to do its own modelling and the main reason being for that was to give it its flexibility in testing different policies before they implemented it and having the capability in-house to do that. That is a wee bit of background on what has been happening with the modelling since March, but it is very likely that the modelling, whether by the Fraser of Allander Institute or others or JRF, it will be redone again, using different assumptions because things have moved on again since the last time, so it is quite hard to compare them like for like. Pargraf 71 mentions the importance of employability in meeting those targets, but also the very long lead time to having any impact. Mr Boyle, have you got any impression from the Scottish Government or the UK Government that it is setting in place those long-term employability and employment policies that would help to reduce and then eradicate child poverty over a longer cycle? We have not undertaken any recent dedicated work on employability schemes, Mr Hoy. However, you will be familiar with the committee's interest on our work on the joint planning from Skills Development Scotland and the important role that it has alongside the Scottish Funding Council, the overall arrangements of those organisations to support longer-term skills planning and the Government's response to provide additional clarity. We are closely monitoring and following that. As we touch on in the paper, we also recognise, in response to some of the fiscal pressures that I mentioned two ago, the Scottish Government's emergency budget statement in respect of employability and the demand-led savings that it is reported that it intends to make against some employability schemes through this year's budget. Like the committee, I am sure that we will be closely monitoring the Government's plans for employability, given that that is a key preventative measure to address longer-term poverty reduction targets, so we are keeping that under review. The briefing recommends that the Scottish Government should set out options and progress actions to meet the targets and that they would have to be put in place or suddenly developed well in advance of 2026. Are you cited on the Government's action or in action in relation to that? Can you provide an update in relation to what has been put in place? I think that the short answer is that I do not think that we have the detail or the Government has not shared with us yet what that means. Yes, we are interested in it, but one of the points that we make in the report is that there needs to be better engagement from Government and their partners with people who have experienced child poverty, who speak to children, young people and their families, so that they too can shape and influence what those policies will look like. A key part of today's paper, Mr Hoy, is that there needs to be stronger engagement with children and young people so that they too can have their voice heard on the measures that will be taken. Just on that last point, you say quite critically in the report that covers the evidence that we have taken this morning in part, not the full extent of the evidence, but you say that gaps in data and not enough involvement of children and families who have lived experience of poverty are hindering the development of sufficiently targeted policies. It is having an effect on the policy making process and therefore the outcomes. It is absolutely critical to the approach that is adopted if we are going to get those things right. The other thing that I am bound to ask is your clarification on the question of employability. I am right, am I not, in thinking that two out of three of the children living in poverty in Scotland that we are talking about live in households with at least one adult in work. It is not because there is a big unemployment problem, it is because people are not being very well paid when they go out to work. I should have the specific data in front of me convener, but that is our understanding too, that low-paid work and direct bearing on household income affects the measures of relative poverty, so there are clear connections. Therefore, it speaks to our other point in the report about preventative measures, longer-term, better-paid work, thereby preventing children and young people from experiencing poverty in the first place. I am now going to have to draw this session to a close, but I thank Andrew Burns, Corrine Forsyth, Trisha Meldrum and Stephen Boyle, for the evidence that you have given this morning. We ran out of road, I am afraid, so it may be that we will come back to you to follow up the oral evidence that you have given, but thank you very much indeed. I am now drawing the public part of this morning's committee to a close.