 Rhaid o ddweud. Welcome to the 10th meeting of the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny Committee in 2017. At the outset, let me ask everyone to switch off their electronic devices or switch them to silent mode, so that they do not affect the committee's work. Item 1 on our agenda is to welcome to the committee our new members, Willie Coffey and Jackie Bailey. I'd like to, at the outset, invite you both to declare any relevant interests starting with Willie Coffey. No additional interests are most declared on my register of interests. Thank you. And Jackie. No particular interest to declare for this committee, but I would refer people to my register of interests. Thank you. Agenda item 2 is for the committee to appoint an acting convener. The background to this and the procedure is explained in paper 1 to the papers for this meeting. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as acting convener. I therefore invite members of the Scottish Labour Party to nominate a member from their party for the post of acting convener. After a careful consideration, Deputy convener, I wish to nominate Jackie Bailey. Thank you, Monica Lennon. Do members agree to appoint Jackie Bailey as our convener? That's agreed. I congratulate Jackie Bailey on her appointment and I shall suspend the meeting very briefly so that she can assume the chair. Thank colleagues for appointing me as acting convener, even after due consideration. I look forward to working with you all over the coming months. Agenda item 3 invites us to take item 6 and 7 in private. Is that agreed? Thank you very much. We move on to item 4, our first substantive item on the agenda, which is to take further oral evidence on the Auditor General's report, entitled the 2015-16 Audit of the Scottish Police Authority. I welcome to the committee John Foley, chief executive Andrew Flanagan, chair of the board both from the Scottish Police Authority, and Paul Johnson, director general, learning and justice, and Don McGillivray, head of police division, both from the Scottish Government. Obviously, the committee will be aware that evidence was taken on this audit on 2 March, and members discussed a variety of governance issues affecting the SPA, which we also discussed separately with both the SPA and Scottish Government officials. Mr Johnson told the committee at the time that those are matters that will be discussed further between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Police Authority in the coming days, so we are looking forward to hearing the outcome of those discussions. Since then, as set out in the papers for members in the media, various other criticisms as late as today have been expressed about governance at the SPA. No opening statements, I will go straight to questions. Can I address the issue of the letter dated 9 December 2016 from Derek Penman, chief inspector of constabulary, to Andrew Flanagan, the chair of the board, in which he makes quite a number of very substantive points about the governance of the SPA? First of all, this letter was dated 9 December. When was it circulated to the board? I don't think it has been circulated to the board. It hasn't been circulated to the board. This is a letter from the chief inspector of constabulary about the governance of the SPA making very substantial points. He specifically says, I accept that it will be properly a matter for the board to approve the corporate governance framework, but my comments are intended solely to inform members of the board ahead of their decision next week. Five days after this letter was sent, why was it not circulated to the board? I think because the issues themselves had been well-trailed, they had been well known. Derek's position on those matters had been expressed with members of the board, so it was known. I didn't think that it was necessary to circulate the letter itself. It's not within your remit to make a decision like that. Every board member, under the guidelines and under statute, is entitled to know what the chief inspector of constabulary is saying. Those are very substantive points and are very critical of the governance review in many respects. Surely to goodness, this should have gone to every board member before that meeting in December. As I said, the comments that he was expressing, the board members were already aware of. At our meeting on 5 December, this had been discussed, and a number of those things had been covered at that point. I find that very unacceptable indeed. I think that it breaches every rule in the book about the role of a chair, particularly of a public organisation, and about the issues of letters to board members. Every board member should have had a copy of that letter, and it should have been discussed at that December board meeting. This is not the Kremlin you're running. It's supposed to be an open public body accountable, you're accountable to the board members. The chief inspector who has responsibility for those matters, his statutory responsibility, his view should have been in this letter, should clearly have been sent to every board member. The letter was addressed to me, and I believe that the matters had already been covered by the board and they were aware of them. It was addressed to you, but he specifically said that he wanted the letter very clearly to go to every board member because he specifically says that the letter is to inform board members at their meeting next week before they reach any decisions and you took a unilateral decision not to circulate that to board members. Yes, I did. As I said, the contents of it were well known to the board members. That's not the point. The letter should have been circulated. Did Mr Foley know that it wasn't being circulated to the board members? Did you see the letter? I don't recall seeing it at that particular point in time. So the chief executive didn't see the letter either? Well, I may have seen it. You may have seen it. This is a very important letter, Mr Foley. This is from the chief inspector of constabulary. You either saw the letter or you didn't see the letter before the board meeting. Are you telling us yes or no? Did you see the letter before the board meeting? I'm telling you, Mr Neil, I don't recall seeing it. What I do recall is having conversations with Mr Penman around that time and his expression of views to me quite clearly and having seen the letter in red over recent days. That is in accord with a conversation that I had at the time where Mr Penman expressed his views. So you've only seen this letter in recent days? No, I don't recall seeing it at that point in time. I may have done. There are a large number of letters that come through the office. I just don't recall seeing it. I find it hard to believe that the chief executive of the SPA, given the three years of failure at the SPA, did not recall seeing a letter of this importance with these contents and you don't recall whether you saw it or not. I can't tell you. You're the chief executive of the accounting office. I can't tell you, Mr Neil, that I did if I don't recall it and I don't recall it. Presumably, every time you get a letter, it's date-stabbed when you receive it. They usually come in via email. This letter is not addressed to me. What I'm saying is that I may have seen it in a copy. It might have been sent to me. I don't know. I don't recall it. But I didn't see an original letter that came in at that time addressed to the chair. Right. So the chief executive didn't see the letter, doesn't recall seeing the letter. Can I ask Paul Johnson? When did you become aware of this letter, Paul? Again, I cannot give a specific date as to when I was aware of the letter. I have discussions with Derek Penman as chief inspector of constabulary and I've certainly been aware of some of the concerns that he has had and aware of the issues that he has raised with the SPA. And indeed, of course, he's shortly undertaking a full inspection that will cover these matters. Dawn may wish to say more about the sequencing of when Scottish Government received a particular piece of document. I saw the letter at the time. Scottish Government received the letter at the time. We received it as a courtesy side copy and hard copy from Derek on an informal basis. It was passed to me very informally as a hard copy. In from this morning's hurdle, the Scottish Government is a copy of all the board papers before the board meeting. Is that correct? Generally, yes. Generally. So you would have picked up that this wasn't in the board papers? Yes, we would have been aware of that at the time. So did you not perhaps mention to Mr Foley or Mr Flanagan that maybe this should be, this is clearly intended, clearly intended for every board member on the SPA. So did you draw it to the retention that it hadn't been circulated? I think we would have regarded that as a matter for the chair. You would regard that as a matter for the chair? Yes. So you've got an SPA under attack because it has been rightly for the last three years for incompetence after incompetence after incompetence, trying to cover up having forced a board member to resign that would appear. And you didn't think it was important that this letter from the chief inspector wasn't circulated to board members. I'm quite clear that the decision on papers that go to the board of the SPA is a matter for the chair. The decision is, but you and your role as head of police in the Scottish Government, did you not draw it to the attention that this clearly states it should go to board members? You clearly knew it wasn't going to board members because you get the board papers, but you didn't think it was wise maybe to speak to Mr Flanagan or Mr Foley to say, do you not think it would be wise to make sure that this goes to board members? A letter of this importance and with these contents. Again, I wouldn't have seen that as the role of Government at the time I would have seen that as the role of the chair. So why did you get the board papers then? We get the board papers for information primarily. It's simply to make the Government aware of issues that are coming up at the board. And you never comment to the board or the chair or the chief executive of the board papers before they go to the board? We occasionally make comments on the papers, but it's usually on matters of factual accuracy more than anything else, I would suggest. Nobody thought in the civil service that maybe, given the controversies, there might be a good thing for the chief inspector's letter to go to board members. Nobody thought to mention that. Again, I would see it as the difference in the functions between the Government and the body, and I'm pretty clear that in terms of the governance framework that we have between the Government and the body, that is the chair and the chief executive's decision in terms of what papers go to the board. It's very clear in the rules that a letter like this has to go to board members, specifically when it's from the chief inspector asking it to go to board members, and nobody thought to make sure that the rules were kept to. Anyway, we'll move on to the contents of the letter. Can I just go through some of the contents, say, convener? In the second paragraph, the chief inspector says, I understand that the framework has been discussed in private session with members and will be formally agreed at next week's board meeting. Why are these things only discussed in private session and then formally nodded through at a board meeting? That's not what the board is there for. The board is there to hold you to account as the chair, the chief executive to account, and Police Scotland to account, and it's got to be done openly and transparently. It seems to me that this clearly is indicating that a lot of these discussions and decisions are being effectively made in private and nodded through in public, and the public doesn't see what's going on, see what the discussion is or anything like that. I don't think that that's how it works. A draft was circulated to the members' meeting, I believe, at the time. It was discussed, but decisions weren't made at that point. The decisions were made at the board meeting itself. Through the board? Clearly. My understanding is that there's a pre-meeting meeting before the board meetings. Is that right? There's a very short meeting before the board actually starts. Who's at the pre-meeting meeting? The board members. All board members? Yes. Is there a record of what's discussed at the pre-meeting? No. It's only preparatory for the full meeting. Why is there no record of it? As I say, it's only preparatory. Here's the agenda. Is there any comment on any of the papers that we have? Any short updates that there might have been since the papers were issued? What you're saying, Mr Flanagan, is that something as important as the governance arrangements for the SPA were discussed at a short pre-meeting meeting where there's no record taken, and then it went to the board after that discussion to be nodded through. I don't think that the governance arrangements were discussed at the pre-meeting. Well, it says here, I now understand that the framework has been discussed in private session. So if it wasn't a pre-meeting private session, what private session was it? There's a... Oh, John. Perhaps I could come in to be helpful there, Mr Neil. My understanding of reading the content of the letter from Mr Penman is that the framework documentation and associated documents had been discussed in private session, which is a private members meeting. There's a private members meeting which takes place every month. The pre-meeting meeting? Yes, this is an addition to a pre-meeting meeting. When you say a private meeting of members, is that every board member? Yes. Is there a record of that? Yes. So where are the records then? Are they published? The records aren't published for the members' meeting. Why are they not published? Why are they not published? Well, they're never published. Why are they not published? Well, it's regarded as a meeting where members can speak freely about matters of appropriate authority that covers their range. In other words, this is all done behind closed doors. The governance and the recommendations, and the First Minister has said that the Scottish Police Authority has to take heed of the recommendations on governance, the comments on the review, from the chief inspector and from the Auditor General. The First Minister has said that in Parliament. You're having a private meeting with no public, no publication of the minutes, or no public record of the meeting to discuss the very issue, the governance, the main recommendation of which is that it should be opened up, transparent and accountable. You're going ahead with these meetings behind closed doors with no access, not even telling people that these meetings are taking place. You call that open governance and transparency. I have to say, Mr Neil, that those meetings where governance would have been discussed, the governance documentation was very much working draft at that point in time. It doesn't matter. It should be discussed in open session. There has to be an ability for people to get to a position where there's an acceptable governance document that's fit for purpose. We started off in the process a while back, to try and explain it. If I can add some clarity, it may be helpful. The first draft of the governance documentation was probably about this stick, and we had to distill it down to get it into a proper document. So we had to have these discussions amongst the members and other people who were working on it to get to that point. That's the way these discussions operate. Will you now publish the minutes of those private meetings? I'd need to check that they're still available. What? You'll need to check that they're still available? For goodness sake, you're the chief executive. Sure you'll keep a record of every minute taken and every record of every meeting taken. Chair, have you still got your record of these private meetings? I don't hold them, but they will exist. They will exist. So the chief executive says, I don't know if they still exist. Use the chairman, although you don't hold them, you're saying they do still exist. I would expect them to still exist. Which one is it? Who's right? Do they still exist? There will be a record of them, yes. You've just said you didn't know. What I said was I'd need to check if they're still available because they aren't published minutes and so there could be elements of them that aren't there. I haven't checked. I've had no reason to check. Can I say, Jay, strongly convener that this committee asks for a copy of every private session held in regard to governance and any other related matters that should be in the public domain and that in future these private meetings should be opened up in public, unless it's something of obvious import that requires a private meeting such as a terrorist thing or something like that. But something as open as governance, as basic as governance, being decided all behind closed doors in a way that's going to be nodded through by the obviously compliant non-executive members of the SPA without saying a dickie bird about it. We're all supposed to accept that as a good example of open transparent governance. What are you doing about this poll? You're not finding this acceptable, surely? The committee is raising significant issues that I recognise need to be dealt with. Why have you not dealt with them before? Why have you allowed... Were you aware of these private meetings? Well, I'm absolutely aware that there are a range of meetings. Yes or no, were you aware of the private meetings? I am not aware of all of the private meetings that take place within the Scottish Police Authority. Were you aware of this private meeting on governance? No. You weren't aware of that? I do not get a detailed account of every private meeting that is held by SPA members. I would, though, wish to put... I think it is very important that we recognise some of the history here around governance. We know the histories we've gone on for three years. Could I make reference, please, specifically to the governance review in policing that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice asked Andrew Flanagan to undertake shortly after he took office. That was then... So this review of governance is in the public domain, was published around a year ago, and contains 30 recommendations. We know all that. I'm not intrigued. We know all that. That's history. What I want to know is the private meeting on governance. You didn't know it was taking place. Is that right? What I've said is that I do not have an account of all of the private meetings. No, answer my specific question, Pulse. Forget the civil service nonsense. Did you know the private meeting was taking place referred to by Derek Penman in his letter? Did you know in advance that meeting was taking place? No. Did you have the paperwork for that in advance? I do not receive paperwork for SPA's private meetings. Do your colleagues receive it? Don may wish to comment on that. We would have received the agenda for relevant SPA board meetings. Is this a relevant SPA? Did you receive the agenda for this? We would have received the agenda for all SPA board meetings. Does that include these private sessions? Generally, yes. Did you get the papers for this private session referred to? I think almost certainly we would have, yes. Were you in attendance, or any of your representatives? No, we tend not to attend SPA board meetings. Have you got a copy? We haven't the past, but we don't. Have you got a copy of the record of the meeting? I don't recall ever seeing a minute of that private session of the meeting, but that doesn't mean it wasn't sent to the Scottish Government at some point. Right, okay. So we have this secret society inside the board, not even the full board sometimes it would appear, inside Scottish Police Authority deciding on transparency of governance and the whole thing is done without public knowledge, without people out there being able to hold this board to account because this is all done deliberately behind closed doors to undermine the very principles of transparency and accountability that the whole purpose of the review the cabinet secretary set up was designed to address. How is that excusable or defensible? The discussions itself were actually on the detail of how we were going to implement the recommendations in the governance review. So public interest? I think it was at quite a detailed level. It didn't change the recommendations from the review itself, so those were what we actually proceeded to implement. So I'm not sure that it was necessary to discuss that. Well, if I look at the implementation, see the recommendations made by Derek Penman in his letter of the ninth of December? How many of those recommendations have been implemented? Well, we've taken into account what he's said and other stakeholders as well. I said how many have been implemented. They haven't been implemented though. So when are they going to be implemented? They're going to be taking account of the review of the governance arrangements that we scheduled for June this year to see how the existing arrangements were working, the ones that we put through in December. And we will take his account and his views as a central part of that discussion. So this is the chief inspector who's just about, I believe or may already have started now, his inspection of your governance arrangements. He's not started yet? No, he's due to start. Is that right? Later in the year, yes. And for the First Minister, the Auditor General and the chief inspector tell you that the governance arrangements and certain aspects of the recommendations do not find acceptable and need to be amended, and you're not going to consider those in effect at least until June this year. I've had continuing discussions with the chief inspector and we've agreed when he should schedule the work, what he should do in terms of the review that he says that he wants to conduct. His view is that he would like to see our own review of the governance arrangements, taking into account all the evidence and all the views of stakeholders, being revised, being changed in the summer before he conducts that inspection. So how do the board members know that when they don't have this letter of the 9th of December? Is the decisions all being made by you personally, Mr Flanagan? No, I discussed these openly with the board members on a regular basis. But the letter couldn't have been discussed openly because they never got the letter? The contents of it weren't known to them and they were informed of it. The contents were not known. They never got the letter. Did you tell them there was a letter? Yes, and it was actually... No non-executive member asked for a copy of it? No. No board member has asked... Have you told them there was a letter? Did you tell them that at the board meeting in December? I don't recall. Though we don't recall. The memory... There must be something wrong with memory. Around the SPA everybody seems to have a bad memory. So the fact of life is they didn't know about the existence of the letter that would appear at the board meeting in December and even when they've been told no non-executive member has asked for a copy of it. Is that right? It was referenced in the Audit Scotland. The existence of the letter was referenced in the Audit Scotland. Nobody asked for a copy of it? No. That tells you a lot about the board of the SPA. Convener, I think it's quite obvious. This is a shambles. Thank you very much. Mr Neil, can we move on to Monica Lennon? Thank you, convener. I'm still quite stunned about what we're hearing this morning. Can I just be clear with you and Mr Flanagan, or can you be clear with us? Did you give the letter to anyone else? Anyone at all? No, I don't think I did, actually. So you kept this letter to yourself? Yes. Okay. Did the other witnesses find that acceptable? Well, I think what we've heard is that other members were aware of the concerns of the chief inspector of constabulary. My own view, though, is particularly in light of what we're hearing, it would have been... With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better if the committee, if the members of the SPA had had sight of the letter, would be my personal view on this. So you do agree that it's completely unacceptable for the chairman to have kept this letter to himself? It's not acceptable, is it? What I've said to the benefit of hindsight, I think it would have been better for members of the SPA to have seen the letter. But what I would want to emphasise, and I didn't have a chance to finish what I was saying earlier, is that the points that were raised by Mr Penman in his letter related to matters that had been made public in March 2016 in this report. This report, with its 30 recommendations, included all of the points that were subsequently discussed by the SPA board in December. So I do think that it's important to see these particular issues in their context, which is a context where there has been significant publicity around the specific recommendations associated with the governance review over the last 12 months or so. There's a concerning pattern of exclusion, I feel, identified in this letter on the second page, paragraph 4. It is not clear whether you will invite representatives from staff associations and others who may have an interest. It is not clear, even if there would be an invitation for HMICS to attend your committee meetings. That feels like exclusion to me. Can you explain that, Mr Flanagan? I believe that the letter is wrong in those regards. I think that there is a strong history of the SPA and inviting key stakeholders. The chief inspector has a standing invitation to any meeting that he wishes to attend. It may not be explicitly set out in the framework document, but he attends meetings, and he comes to those meetings that staff associations regularly engage with the various committees of the board. I don't... Yes, Mr Foley? Sorry, Ms Lennon, if I could perhaps add some clarity to that. The terms of references that are set out give authority to the chairs of the committees to invite representatives to their committees as they see fit. That could be staff associations, it could be other people, with expert or specialist knowledge. I don't know, Mr Penman, but I can only imagine that it must have taken a lot of frustration to get to the point where I felt I had to put this into a letter and I take the point about standing orders, but it sounds like people don't feel welcome or included, Mr Flanagan. Do you recognise that? No, I don't. OK. John Scott QC, who advises the Scottish Government on policing matters, gave a speech to the Police Federation Conference and in that he talked about the SPA failing to formally recognise the valuable inputs of staff associations and that suggests an inability or unwillingness to listen to comments or criticism. Do you understand why those comments would have been made, Mr Flanagan? No, I don't understand those comments and I'm not aware that John has had involvement with the staff associations and the meetings with the SPA. The staff associations and the trade unions regularly meet with members of the police authority. OK. I think that this is concerning today because when we see Sunday papers say things like, is Scottish policing fit for purpose? We want to come here and get some reassuring answers so that the public at large can feel safe and also reassured. You don't seem to accept that there is a problem, so if you don't recognise the problems, we can't really find the solutions. You're not concerned by anything that anyone is saying about the governance and transparency of the Scottish Police Authority, Mr Flanagan? No, we are concerned and we are listening. A number of representations have been made to us, including from the chief inspector. We set out a process of review of the governance as Mr Johnson has referenced 12 months ago. The reason I was asked to do that review was not because it was perceived that things were working well, but that there were a series of issues that we wanted to address. The governance review set out 30 recommendations of which Derek, as the chief inspector, has concerns over two. I think that a number of the other recommendations have been implemented. We agreed, as recommended in the report initially last March, that we actually review this within 12 months. We're going to review it in June this year. We will listen to the concerns that have been made. It's a work in progress. We're trying to see how it's working, how it's improving. My argument would be that the governance of policing in Scotland has improved over the last 12 months. We've seen the benefits of that. There's a much better relationship between the SPA and Police Scotland. There have been a significant number of pieces of joint working, such as the C3 governance review, the creation of the new strategy, which indicates a much different approach in the last 12 months to what existed previously. Mr Fanaghan, the last time you gave evidence, you said that Moi Alley did not communicate her position at the December board meeting ahead of time. However, since then, Moi Alley has told the committee that she twice made clear my intention to voice concerns about aspects of the governance review to you. Is she right? Would you like to correct your original statement? No, I think she's wrong. She said that on a number of occasions she would support the board, although she disagreed with the two specific recommendations. On a personal level, she said that she would support the board and that is documented in the record of the meeting that we had on 5 December. Mr Fanaghan, it seems to a widely held view that Moi Alley has been treated appallingly by the SPA, which in effect means yourself. Do you feel any regret? Have you apologised to Moi Alley? In my subsequent letter to Moi, I expressed regret about the timing of my letter, which was caught up in the Christmas festive period. However, in terms of the actual challenge that I was putting to Moi, I have no regrets about making that challenge. Mr Fanaghan, you have held information deliberately from your own board. You also sent Moi Alley a private letter. Unfortunately, she got it on Christmas Eve, but that wasn't your intention. You sent her that letter criticising her comments at the disembodd board meeting. When we look at all this together, aren't you concerned that you will be perceived as a control freak? First of all, I don't think that information was withheld. Yes, I agree that the letter wasn't copied, and as Paul has said, perhaps in retrospect, that would have been better to be done. However, the contents of the letter were shared with the board. They were aware of those concerns of the future inspector. Mr Fanaghan, I don't think that this committee is in the mood to play with words. You chose to keep the letter to yourself, an extremely serious letter. Is there no other way to describe that? As I said, the contents of what Derek was raising was known to the board. Again, in the meeting of 5 December, Moi talked about those concerns from the chief inspector. It was known. Mr Fanaghan, how can you possibly be in control of all information that is known to other board members? People can be in a meeting and not fully paying attention. Are you expecting that everyone has the same level of information and you would never think that you had to go back and check that? You are treating the board members like infants. I disagree. Those items were discussed fully and Derek's reservations about the governance review and those two specific points were understood and noted. Paul Johnson, perhaps you can shine some light on this. John Scott QC, who I am sure is known to yourself. What he said in that speech at the police federation is that what has been allowed to develop is extremely unhealthy and must not continue. It appears that it is still continuing, yes? When I was in front of the committee last, I indicated that a number of issues had been raised around governance and we would be working with the Scottish Police Authority to ensure that those issues were addressed and it continues to be the case that it is important that the outstanding issues around governance or the outstanding concerns around governance are addressed. Since we last met, there has been quite a lot of further work done on those issues. The two key issues that I see as being of real interest are firstly the decision that committee meetings will normally be held in private and secondly there is an issue about the timing of papers being made publicly available. The chair wrote to the cabinet secretary after the last session indicating that those matters would be discussed at the public board meeting that took place in March. Of course, there is a record available of that meeting. The issue around the publication of papers has been addressed and those papers are being made available under embargo in advance of the public meetings. The chair could say more about that. The board members had a discussion about whether or not they wished the committee meetings to continue to be held in private. The chair may wish to say more about that, but my understanding is that the conclusion is that some further work should be done on that matter by one specific member of the SPA and that that is now taking place. Perhaps, if the member is agreeable, the chair could say a little bit more about that because we are looking at the action that is being taken to address the concerns that have been raised around governance. Yes, Paul Fryd. We agreed that we would start to put the papers out earlier. That was based on a request from a number of stakeholders who felt that they could better appreciate the proceedings of the board meeting if they had a chance to read the papers in advance. We exceeded that request. They went out under embargo. That worked well and the board agreed to continue with that practice through to June when we were going to do the full review. David Hume, one of our board members who sat on the reference group for the review of governance, has agreed that he will conduct the review in June, but also, in the meantime, will draw up a code or a policy about how we exercise openness and transparency and we will consider that at the meeting. The board committee chairs agreed to look at the schedule of business for the forthcoming meetings and make more explicit their welcome to various stakeholders to come and present evidence to the committees as appropriate. I am certainly pleased to hear that the papers are now available in advance. How much earlier are, in terms of the date of the meeting, how many days before the meetings are the papers circulated? 48 hours before the meeting. 48 hours? When does your meeting normally take place? What day of the week? Sometimes Wednesday is quite often on a Thursday. You think that you are giving people enough time? I think so, and certainly the feedback that we got from the last time was positive. You said that it worked well. Can you say a bit more about that, expand on that? It worked well in terms of the feedback that we got in terms of people being pleased that we were doing it. There were one or two queries raised in advance that we were able to deal with. In terms of the process, that seemed to work as well as we could expect. Lastly, in terms of the media coverage in the Herald today, there have been some comments made by the previous chairman, Brian Barber. I wanted to ask Paul Johnston why does the Scottish Government get draft agendas in advance? The Government has an interest in many of the issues that are being discussed by the police authority. As you will appreciate, it is quite possible that a decision that is made by the authority could attract real interests, media interests and ministers could then be expected to comment on the decision. There is a legitimate role for Government ministers set out under the Police and Fire Reform Act 2012. It is important that the officials supporting ministers have an awareness of the matters that are being considered by the board so that those officials can then brief ministers on any significant issues that may arise at the meeting so that ministers are ready to provide any comment on those matters. That is the reason for having sight of the board papers. Has the Scottish Government ever commented on a draft agenda? There may indeed be comments on... To the best of my knowledge, the comments would be around any issues of factual accuracy, particularly around those issues that are legitimately a matter for Government, such as overall financial settlement, such as budget setting. There will be a range of areas that are of interest to Government. Those will be areas that may be subject to some comment. Dawn may wish to add more to that. In terms of the specific allegation that he makes, the Scottish Government is somehow controlling the agenda and demanding the items be removed from the agenda. Certainly in my time in this post, which is the last 18 months, I cannot recall ever asking the SBA to remove anything from the agenda. I cannot recall ever having an instruction or a suggestion from the Scottish Government that we remove a paper. Mr Barber's statements are factually incorrect when he says that things would just disappear if Government or official didn't want them to see the light of day didn't happen? Mr Barber's time on the board overlapped only for a few months with my time in this post. In my time, which is the last 18 months, I cannot recall ever having asked the SBA to remove items from the agenda. Who would make the ask, Mr McGilvery? Would it be yourself? The day-to-day relationship between the Scottish Government and the SBA operates on the number of levels. I have a regular dialogue with the chief executive, the director who I work to has a regular dialogue with Andrew. There are a number of more working-level contacts as well. I am not aware of anybody who works for me having made such a request in the time I have been there. Certainly I have never received such a request. In my time as chair, I don't think I have even had a conversation with any officials from the Scottish Government about the agenda. I did meet with Mr Barber and just for the record to correct, he was a board member, not the chair. I invited him in to talk to me when I just started, because you are always interested in somebody who has just left and what their views might be. There is an opportunity for people to be very candid in those circumstances. I asked him about his experiences and his reasons for the resignation from the board, and he did not raise that as an issue with me. If you were ever asked to change the agenda by Government officials, you would say no. Absolutely. Unless there was a valid reason for it, which I cannot think off the top of my head, think of what that would mean maybe. OK. Colin Beattie, do you want to come in on this issue? Yes, convener. Still on the basis of governance and so on, obviously this letter is of great concern to the committee, but can perhaps you, Mr Flanagan, give an assurance that no other letters from other relevant sources have also been suppressed or held back from the board? No, I am not aware of anything other than this letter. This is the only occasion on which something that should have been circulated to the board was not circulated? I do not routinely copy all correspondence to me to all members of the board. There is a judgment in terms of that. There are formal reports that come in that are shared with all members, so reports from Perk, for example, would automatically be shared with members. I think that you are rather qualifying that, because obviously you took a judgment that this did not need to be circulated to the board, and you are saying that perhaps there are other things that in your judgment did not need to be circulated to the board. Was there anything of this nature where the board should have been advised, should have been informed, should have been aware of suggestions, criticisms, input? No, I am not aware of anything else of this matter. As I said earlier, the contents of Derek's letter and the points that he raised were well known by the board themselves. In respect to the secret meetings, private meetings, have you ever had any freedom of information requests in respect to them? Yes, we have had some, and they relate to information requests mainly, and we have complied with them if it is appropriate. So you were able to find the information and records in respect to these meetings and comply with the freedom of information? I am not aware of any request, Mr Beattie, that we have not been able to supply information on. All the records are available in fact, so they should be able to be supplied to this committee? They would have been certainly at the time if they were discharging anything under FOI. I am not trying to give an impression that they are not there. I just need to check that everything is actually there. The week would be if it is, but I need to check that. Coming back to the letter from the chief inspector, I notice that the chief inspector talks about a professional advice note. This is on the second page of his letter, the second paragraph up. He issued a professional advice note in relation to the leadership and governance of the authorities' forensic service. Now, he is expressing concern about how the governance issues raised in that advice note will be fully addressed. Could we see a copy of that professional advice note? What has been done to answer the issues that have been raised by the chief inspector? Yes, we absolutely can see a copy of the advice note. We changed the governance arrangements in relation to forensics with the introduction of a forensic services advisory board, which involves members of the authority. That has been in operation for a couple of months now. The chief inspector does not seem to be unclear whether that answers the governance issues. No, the advice note that we received from the chief inspector was suggesting a slightly different structure. It may well be that that is what we adored, but the HMI has recently conducted a review of forensic services. It is not finalised, so it is not published yet, but it will be published, and it will be clearly in the public domain at that point. We would expect to see some reflection of the dialogue that we have had over that inspection. One of the reasons that I am raising is that we seem to be seeing governance issues being raised all the way through. It is a pattern. It does not seem to be just a one-off. Coming back to another point that is raised here in the chief inspector's letter, the last paragraph on the second page, he has expressed reservations over the proposal that committees will not in general have decision-making powers. Are they just talking shops? What do they actually achieve? As was set out in the review of governance, what we wanted to do was try to improve the amount of space where there could be a safe space at discussion between ourselves and Police Scotland. Clearly, when I undertook the review, there was a lack of flow of information from Police Scotland to the SPA. Often, the SPA was hearing things at the 11th hour, or even after the event, you had the issues around stop and search, armed policing, counters, traffic warrants even, which were not being well handled. I suggested in the governance review that we tried to shift the spectrum a little bit to have the committees being in private, or that there was a safe space for people to discuss. In that situation, it would be inappropriate for them to have decision-making powers. Therefore, we shifted the decision-making powers to the full board. The committees, as I set out in the governance review, are more like working groups with board members who have specific skills in those areas, more than the general membership of the board. They can go through and spend more time looking at those issues in detail. Any points that need to be decided upon must come to the full board for full discussion. Do those committees make recommendations? They do. Are those recommendations normally accepted? Not without further discussion and challenge, if necessary. Are they normally accepted? There is no point in having committees to do all this work if their recommendations are not going to be accepted. I can think of some that have not been accepted. There were some ones that came out from the finance committee in terms of properties. One was in Peterhead, one was in Haddington, and we put conditions on the approval. It was a conditional approval that was given, not a full approval. How many committees are there? There are three. Four. Which ones are those? The Audit and Risk Committee, the Finance and Investment Committee, the People Committee and the Police Committee. All of those need to be in private? That was the recommendation in the Governance review. It was an encouragement to try to get better discussion between ourselves and Police Scotland. That has delivered. The relationship with Police Scotland has moved on significantly in the last 12 months. I think that it will be a subject for the discussion in the review in June as to whether or not we need to maintain that. Personally, I am relatively open minded about it now. I am also looking at the third page of this letter, second paragraph down, where the chief inspector comments on whether you have sufficient credibility, confidence among politicians, public stakeholders and staff about the proposal that scrutiny should be conducted in private. Do you believe that you have that? I think that it is work in progress. I think that the SPA and Police Scotland have work to do in this area. It is a continuation of it. I think that we can get to that position. As I said earlier, I am open minded that if the review in the summer concludes that we no longer have to have the committee meetings in private or parts of them can be in public, then I am quite content with that. Given where you are at the moment, do you have any of the stakeholders who are supporting your view that these committees should be reporting in private? We are undertaking that work to talk to all the stakeholders, but at the moment I cannot say yes or no that all stakeholders have. Clearly, the chief inspector has said he has concerns, and we are taking that very seriously. On the question of the chief inspector's inspection, apparently there was to be planning started in March 2017. Have there been discussions already about the inspection and scope of the inspection? We have had discussions about the timetable of it and some aspects of it in terms of scope, but not the full discussion. We haven't had a full planning meeting. Willie Coffey. I wonder if I could ask a further question or two on the letter to Mr Flanagan. You have said on a number of occasions at the committee this morning that members of the board were generally aware of the contents of the letter and that you decided there was no need to distribute that. The letter that I have in front of me here from Mr Penman states in the last paragraph, on the basis of previous discussions, I have decided that it would be timely for HMICS to schedule a statutory inspection. That reads to me as though Mr Penman is making an announcement, a proposal, in this letter. How, therefore, could your board members have been aware of that? The chief inspector has a statutory responsibility to conduct an inspection, so that is clearly at his decision as to when he would want to invoke that inspection. We had a discussion with him previously. He had done, before I started in September 2015, he had conducted an improvement exercise in terms of governance. There was a report. There were a series of recommendations that were set out, that the SPA was working through before I conducted the governance review. The remaining recommendations were overtaken by the governance review itself. Mr Penman came in and did some work to make sure that all the recommendations that he had previously done had been covered either through implementation or through the on-going work on the governance review. The timeliness of his inspection was, one might say, even overdue. We welcome his views. The members knew of that as part of the discussions that we were having with him. I am aware that we all know that he has a statutory duty to inspect, but in that letter he is making a clear announcement that he is going to conduct the inspection. How can your members possibly have known that? They could not possibly because he is making the announcement in the letter. I discussed the contents of the letter. That specific one I cannot remember if I mentioned it or not, but within a week he put out his, I think it was a week or 10 days, he put out his annual report and it was mentioned in that annual report as well. There was also press comment on this as well. That comes to the crux of the matter that was led by Mr Neil and Ms Lennon that you have claimed that the board knew all the contents of this. They quite clearly did not know that Mr Penman had made a decision to carry out the inspection and announced that and asked you to tell the board that he was about to conduct that in the letter in December. They could not have known that, so why didn't you share that with them? I may have done that. I do not remember when we discussed the inspection. You have said that you did not share the letter or it was called? I have acknowledged that I did not circulate the letter, but we have discussed that on a number of occasions about his inspection. In fact, just check my notes here. Ms Alley, at the meeting on the 5th of December, noted that Derek Penman said that he may subject us to an inspection. That was even before that letter was announced. We know that there is a statutory duty and it could always happen at some point, but this is a clear indication to you as the chair that the inspection is going to happen with a clear timetable for it, but you chose not to share that with the board members. As I say, we were aware that he was thinking about it. Okay. If we, as a committee of the Scottish Parliament, write to you as the chair of the board asking you to put certain matters to the board and table that, is it in your opinion and your gift to decide whether you share that request from, say, this committee with your board members? No, it's a question as to what you're asking for and how it needs to be communicated to them. If you say what Mr Penman says, would you please share this and inform your board members? Do you think that you have the right to withhold that if you decide that your board members already know the contents of what we are about to say? I think that I can inform them. I don't think that that equates to necessarily in all cases copying the letter. How do you think that that approach accords with the general principles of openness and accountability? I think that as long as they are informed, it does accord with that. Okay. Before we move on to another subject, I'm aware that thinking about an inspection is quite substantially different to deciding that you're going to have one. I acknowledge the acknowledgement by both the Scottish Government and yourself, Mr Flanagan, that, with the benefit of hindsight, those matters should have been formally reported to the board. I'm aware of what the public guidance given to public members of bodies says, and I wonder on another point whether Mr Johnson would just clear up something for me, because I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the SPA board chair, if I might say so. It's all very well you can debate and disagree at board meetings, at private meetings, at committees. It is only once the board have arrived at a decision following that debate that collective responsibility applies. Would that be a fair interpretation of the Government's guidance? I think that that is a fair interpretation. There are specific provisions on board that explain what collective responsibility entails. In particular, it is set out that if a board member disagrees with a matter in public, then the board member can ask that his or her disagreement is noted in the minutes, but that the concept of collective responsibility means that the board member must then support the decision of the board if he or she is going to continue to be a board member. That's set out in the guidance. Based on that response that we've just heard from Mr Johnson, Mr Flanagan, given your correspondence backwards and forwards with Moe Alley, do you want to reflect on the fact that she at no stage breached collective responsibility? I agree that that was forthcoming after the decision had been made. My main issue had been that up to that point Moe had said that she would support the board's decision and then in the meeting she did not. I think that the board hadn't reached a decision. Actually, there's debate and dissent even at the board meeting. Once the board has reached the decision we've heard quite clearly from Mr Johnson that's when the provisions of collective responsibility would apply. Perhaps I can put as gently as I can. You jumped the gun and misinterpreted the guidance to board members. There was certainly a point to be discussed with Miss Alley following the board meeting and that was what the letter tried to instigame. I was listening very closely to my colleagues questioning you. There does strike me as being a culture of secrecy that exists within the SPA. You mentioned papers being offered in advance to some stakeholders. I'm curious to know what restrictions are put on the circulation of papers in advance. Are they available to the public? Are they published in that manner? Otherwise, you just simply operate a closed list of who gets the papers. There's a fairly wide distribution of the papers from the March meeting. It went to all the staff associations, the trade unions, the chief inspector, the COSLA and the local authorities. I'm quite sure that the Scottish Government gets it at that point. The media gets it at that point. It's a fairly wide distribution, but they're only posted on the SPA website on the morning of the meeting. Given that you send it out to the media in advance, why don't you put it on the website at the same time as you send it out to everybody else? That would be quite open and transparent and fit with the recommendations in your governance review. That's being considered. Before I move on to other areas, a number of members ask for things. Can I just reiterate? I would seek your agreement that you would provide this committee with all of the minutes of private sessions that have been referred to in this meeting and a copy of the chief inspector's advice note on forensic services. Would you agree to do that? Alex Neil? The formal announcement is that we are being made about the forthcoming inspection by Derek Bateman in his letter. Can you give us a copy of the minute where your board is informed of that decision? Not a rumour. Not a discussion. Where is the minute where the board is informed of that decision? Can I get a copy of that minute, please? Are you happy to do that? That's fine. That's very helpful. Can we move on? Liam, you had something to raise. Thank you, convener. Just starting to look forward. In some ways staying in the same area so far as I'm interested in the public trust in the SPA. We have your 10-year strategy, the draft which talks quite a lot about trust. It says communities should influence decisions that affect them and need to trust the decisions that will be taken about the future direction of policing. It also talks about improving public confidence in policing and inspiring trust by being transparent and accountable and acting with integrity, fairness and respect. What input do communities and the public have now and going forward into the SPA board and committee meetings? At the moment the board meetings there are eight, a minimum of eight public meetings which are open to any member of the public to attend. There are also live streams so you can watch it on the internet. I think that that is amongst I think that we are the only public body that live streams its board meetings. The papers are available. There are a number of engagement processes through Police Scotland with local authorities with the scrutiny committees. We engage with the scrutiny committees themselves. One of the things that I think that we need to reflect on is a way of more formally engaging the board with members of the public when we hold our meetings. Therefore we are looking at sessions where we would actually board at different venues around the country and that we would hold engagement events with members of the public at that stage. Thank you. The strategy, the 10-year strategy is still in draft and subject to consultation. Is it likely that the public it's quite a short consultation period I think? I think it's 10 weeks. The consultation for local authorities because of the timing of the local authority elections. They have through to the end of May to come back to us on that. Is it really likely that the public can have any impact on the 10-year strategy in a 10-week consultation period? There's quite a proactive set of sessions in terms of engagements at local level. We're also communicating to the local press. There's been a series of articles that have gone out through Johnson Press with all their local titles that serve a number of communities across the country. We're being pretty proactive in terms of getting out and hearing views. Can those views change the 10-year strategy? Of course, it's a consultation. Clearly we've put a lot of thought into it that we think that the ideas that we're putting forward are sensible ideas about how we take policing forward, but yes, we are open-minded about the consultation that we received. How many responses have you had from current police officers to the consultation? I think we're currently about a thousand responses which are substantially between staff and police officers at this point. Are they broadly supportive? They're supportive in terms of the direction of travel. The questions that are being raised are often about implementation and how that will be brought about rather than about the principle of some of the things that we're talking about in the consultation. Am I right in thinking that there are 12 board members of the SPA at present? With the new... 11 plus the check. 11 plus the check. Sorry, 11 or 12? 11 plus the check. There seems to be some confusion on this. We've just appointed four new ones in the last couple of weeks. One of the board members who's been appointed has not yet started. But only one has served as a police officer. Is that correct? One of the existing members has been a serving police officer. He's been a chief constable. One of the new member that's scheduled to start in June has been a serving police officer. You'll no doubt see where I'm going. Are you comfortable that the board will fully understand and be reflective of the views of serving police officers? Particularly if you're taking an existing chief constable. How certain are you of getting the view from the serving officers? I think that we will want a certain amount of police expertise around the table. As we've talked earlier about engagement with the various staff associations, there's always an opportunity to get further views that doesn't just come through the senior officers of Police Scotland. I think that the opposite is true as well. If we were solely police officers around the board table, I think that there would be a genuine concern about that. Finally for this section in the past month I represent the north-east region and we've had the north and northeast two incidents that would suggest that there's been a negative impact as a result of the centralisation of police forces and control rooms. You'll be aware that one of them saw an air ambulance sent to Shetland instead of Orkney and the other one which is rather close to home saw a police unit sent to a Tesco store in Glasgow instead of Aberdeen. How are you going to re-establish trust in policing? How will you measure that trust going forward? Firstly, I should know that I've asked for reports on both those incidents to come to me directly in terms of what happened and an investigation into the circumstances that gave rise to those situations. We established as part of the control room centralisation a separate working group to review that. The chief inspector of constabulary did mention in his report in January that he felt that the governance of the whole process by the SPA was significantly improved but I think there is work in progress to build public confidence that the move to centralised control rooms is effective and operating properly. I think that these two incidents are worthy of investigation as to what it's telling us about why that happened. My second question was how will you measure that public trust and confidence? That's on-going work as part of the 2026 work as part of where creating a performance framework and out of that we would expect to see specific measures of public confidence and trust. At the moment it's done through public survey. Whether that's enough is a question that we're working through. Existing public confidence measures published by the Scottish Government through the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey which is a very large sample size public survey published periodically. No question. Can I maybe ask you some questions on the budget? I always enjoy following the money. Do you yet know what your final overspend for last year was? Final figures. The estimate was £17 million overrun. That was what was presented to the March board. The year end processes are working just now. I've had no indication that it's going to be different from that £17 million. That's the figure that you're settling on. Subject to rounding. Mr Foley, do you have any other information? No, convener. The figure that the chair gave is correct. The accountants within Police got under working on that at the moment. Of course the figures are subject to audit by the auditor general. You have had, I understand, 18 accountants in three years. Is that right? I thought there might have been a typographical error. There were so many. No, 18 accountants had left Police Scotland since April 2001 to set that into 2013, sorry. To set that into context when there were nine forces effectively there would have been nine finance directors so you had them distilled down to one etc. There were poster left under the early retirement bond for redundancy scheme. Do you have a chief financial officer yet? We interviewed the shortlist candidates last week. Okay, so expected soon expected very soon. Okay, can I take you to if there's a 17.5 million deficit for 1617 you're reporting as part of your account a 47 million deficit for 1718. What dialogue have you had with the Scottish Government about closing that gap? We've had a number of on-going discussions with the Scottish Government. Scottish Government were made aware of it before the budget went to the board meeting in March. There are a series of actions that are placed on Police Scotland to try to bring that down from the 47 million. They may be of a one-off nature but we wanted to acknowledge what the on-going deficit position was and then tried to work that down through a series of actions and I'm hopeful that we can come in under the 47 million. Can I just tease that out a little because you said one-off actions. So there was a suggestion that certainly for this year the 17.5 million will be covered by capital being applied to revenue. Are you suggesting the same for the 47 million? No, we're not. I wonder whether I can ask Paul Johnson. The use of capital, which is a one-off payment to cover for revenue shortfalls that are recurring is genuinely frowned upon across the Scottish Government. I wonder why you consider this acceptable to do in the case of the Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland. This is a matter that was discussed when we were in front of the committee last month. I appreciate that. I shall endeavour to repeat it although our finance lead was present at that point. It was agreed that we had exceptionally allowed the capital to be used to support the overall budgetary situation and my recollection is that that's happened at least for two years. Dawn may be able to correct me on that but it's absolutely the case that we do wish we do not want to see that be the norm and we do want to see in particular the reform budget which has got a mixture of revenue and capital elements but we want to really see that used in order to deliver that sustainability in terms of the budgets on an on-going basis. That's our expectation and work is in hand to ensure that that happens. Just to aid my understanding of the £47 million deficit how much capital will be applied to reducing that deficit. This exceptional payment might roll into a third year. The £47 million is the projection for the year that has just commenced. At present, we are not anticipating that there is any switch of capital to revenue. That is something that has been requested in the past as the year has gone on in response to slippage in capital projects. We are starting this new financial year with the assumption that there will not be movement from capital to revenue this year. We are starting on the basis of a plan to deliver that long-term sustainability as set out in the 2026 documentation. As you have described in the year, you get requests and profile changes. Is it your intention to rule out the use of capital in this way? Given that, using your own words, it is an exceptional thing and therefore running into a third year would not be very good in accounting terms. I would certainly say that I would hope that we do not have to do that again this year. I am loath to rule out, given the early stage that we are at in the financial year and the range of unknowns that may lie ahead of us. We are very clear about our wishes going forward, which is that we do not need to have their alliance on capital to revenue transfers, because there is a sustainable budget rate position going forward, which is exactly what the 2026 proposal will seek to deliver. Alex Neil. Factual supplementary to that poll, the £47 million projection, does that take into account the additional money that Derek Mackay, the finance minister, announced in his budget? After that £25 million has been used, there is still a £47 million deficit projection. That is the projection as at the start of this financial year. Our expectation is that SPA and Police Scotland work to bring that down. I think that it would be the case when you look to previous years where there has been a gap that work has been done to reduce that. We will work with SPA to support their efforts to reduce that in the course of the year. What is the proposed salary of the CFO that you are recruiting? At the moment it would be in the region of around about 115,000. We have not nailed that down but I would anticipate it being around that. It could be less. I do not want to say too much because obviously there is a short list of candidates who would know if they see this. I thought there was transparency in public pay but there you go. That is clearly not the case. There will be a convener as soon as it is announced. We are in negotiations with people at the moment. Interesting. Ross Thompson. Thank you very much convener to go back to what my colleague Liam Kerr was asking about in relation to the SPA's draft 10-year strategy which says that the SPA will continuously improve public confidence in policing and inspire trust by being transparent, accountable and acting with integrity, fairness and respect. Then looking at the letter from Mr Penman where on the fourth paragraph he says that obviously the approach of the SPA seems to be at odds with the key principle of transparency and your commitment that the authority should be open and transparent and operate to the highest standards in sector administration and management in further stating that effective scrutiny of policing in Scotland is essential in maintaining both legitimacy and public confidence. Given what we've heard in this letter, given what we've heard in answers to questions, given the convenient collective ofnesia we've had today SPA is not fit for purpose, is it? No, I don't agree with that. I think we've made a number of substantial movements in the last 12 months based on the governance review. I think we're becoming more effective. I think it's important that we recognise that there is already a high and significant degree of openness through the public board meetings that we have, which are second to none in terms of public bodies in Scotland. I think that in terms of progress, 2026 represents the first time that we have had a clear direction of travel for policing in Scotland. There are a number of steps that will be taken in terms of the performance framework to show exactly what holding the chief constable to account actually means that haven't been there before. I think that we're on a journey. Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect, but I think that in the last 12 months or so there have been significant steps forward. Thank you for your answer. In it you talked about effectiveness and openness of board meetings. Let's look at the evidence and in Mr Penman's letter he states that there is a real risk that proceedings at formal board meetings will become truncated and perceived by some as perfunctory. He later states in my strong view that scrutiny in policing would only be effective. It needs to be seen to be effective. Do you not agree that there is a real risk of eroding further public confidence if you do not work to address the concerns that he's highlighted in his letter? Yes, I think that we have to make sure that the board meetings aren't perfunctory or rubber stamping. I think that we need to have open discussion at those board meetings. I think that there's a number of steps that we've taken in terms of improving the quality of the agendas and that we won't get 200-page reports that nobody can read. I think that we have made a lot of progress in making sure that we're having informed discussion at the board in a much better way than was the case previously. If the SPA isn't functioning and there's deep concern that has been highlighted in this committee and by the inspectorate, who's ultimately responsible for that? Ultimately the board of the SPA is responsible for that. Given that two members of the board have resigned, again we've got evidence in the newspapers today of another. Clearly, I don't want to speak for all members, but there seems to be little confidence expressed by a committee of this Parliament in the SPA. Have you thought about your own position at all? No, I haven't. I was brought in to do a job. I'm subject to annual performance reviews. I've had positive feedback. I've talked to my board about my own performance, and I believe that I'm doing an effective job. Do you agree, Mr Johnson? Yes. As Mr Flanagan has said, the chair is subject to regular performance reviews. That is a responsibility that falls to me. I'm sure this committee wouldn't expect me to be conducting that review in public to any extent, but those right on-going performance reviews will be undertaken by me. Given the letter that I have from Mr Penman, given the second resignation, and given some of the damning comments of this committee, I presume that you'll be acting with some urgency then to address concerns raised. I will absolutely be working closely with the chair and with the police authority on the matters raised. Unappointed state, though, that the media reporting today does not relate to a recent resignation. I'm not sure when Mr Barber resigned, but I think that it was perhaps up to about two years ago. I presume still two resignations from a board would trouble you. We would certainly want to understand the circumstances of all resignations, and if there are lessons to be learned by members who are resigning, I would want to be sure that we are learning those lessons. Just for clarity, can I just say that Mr Barber resigned before I joined his chair? Given your last statement that you would like to get a good understanding of what's behind resignations, I take it you've asked for a debriefing in a meeting with Mo Wally to understand why she resigned. I can confirm that my colleague who is director for safer communities has had engagement with Ms Alley in relation to the circumstances of her resignation. If I'm not undertaking it personally, I would want to ensure that members of my team are having that engagement. Is that already happening? Is that already happening? Dawn is reminding me that discussions took place just shortly before the resignation. I indicated when I was in front of the committee last time that I was very keen that we gave full consideration to the circumstances of the resignation in particular. The matters that Ms Alley has set out and indeed that's what we've been discussing today, particularly the point about both committees meeting in private, that's something which is still subject to very much live consideration, and the points on board that we've already discussed with the convener. Given the convener's earlier point about Ms Alley has totally would appear acted within the rules and yet she appears to have been forced off the board because she wanted to minute her disagreement with the board decision which is perfectly allowable under the rules and yet the chairman in his letter correspondence with Ms Alley said that he thought that was a resigning issue. I suggest in order to aid discussion that perhaps either Mr Johnson or Mr Millgillbury should actually meet Ms Alley directly rather than delegating it to any videos. I was present at the meeting with Moe Alley that took place on 31 January that Paul refers to so it was just in the days immediately prior to her resignation rather than just subsequently is simply the point that I would make. I would just add in terms of what the convener said, of course I am very happy to meet directly with Ms Alley to have a further conversation about the matters that she's set out. I will ensure that... To minute her dissent from a decision. As I have set out on board anticipates a situation where a member can indicate their concern and can ask for their dissent to be minute it. Why then did the chairman basically force her to resign because she did so? The chairman may wish to comment further on that but I do think that there's an issue with the characterisation of the communication. In particular SPA have submitted to the committee a subsequent letter that was sent from the chair to Ms Alley which perhaps the chair would wish to describe. That makes it worse, that reinforces the point that she was driven off the board because she minited her dissent. Makes it absolutely clear, Mr Flanagan's letter makes it absolutely clear she was driven off the board even though she hadn't broken any rules even hints that she leaked information there was absolutely no evidence that she leaked any information whatsoever. She should be very concerned about this point. I take Mr Johnson's commitment to meet with Ms Alley and I think that that is productive in terms of the correspondence that's been going backwards and forward so we are grateful for that. Are there any other questions at all from members? No, on that basis can I thank all the witnesses for appearing this morning. I gather two of you will be staying on so we'll take a short recess to enable the seats to be changed round. Thank you very much. We'll restart the meeting and move to item 5 on the agenda. The committee will now take evidence on the Auditor General for Scotland's report entitled I6A Review and welcome back Mr Foley and Mr Flanagan. Thank you very much for your written response to our numerous questions. On the basis that there's no opening statement we'll move straight to questions and Colin Beattie. At the SBA letter of 13 April 2017 sent to the convener and I'm looking at page 5 the second question and answer in particular during previous session the question was asked whether there actually had been any cost incurred by the cancellation of this system and the assurance was given that no it had not although there was the question of the notional loss of potential savings which would have arisen from that system. However, in the answer given here it says the decision to cancel I6 has resulted in a need to reinvest in maintaining 125 legacy systems that would otherwise have been decommissioned. How much money is being into maintaining 125 legacy systems and were we told incorrect information the last time? Not incorrect information Mr Beattie. No, I think that what I was trying to convey at that point in time was that some of these systems would have carried on for a period of time anyway whilst they were being decommissioned. Not all of those systems incur a cost and some of the cost is in-house so we have programmers and developers and such like But in-house cost is a real cost. It's a real cost but we have a no compulsory redundancy policy as well so it's very difficult to Sorry, how does that feed into this? Some of the people that would have been involved in that work would have been involved in this. Some of the people involved in this work would have been In-house people Would be made redundant? If I6 would have been successful and came in on the basis that it would have been much more efficient than some of the systems that we currently have then you would have expected perhaps some of those posts to be made redundant. That comes under what we spoke about a moment ago which is the notional loss which we understood but it says here specifically a need to reinvest in maintaining 125 legacy systems how much are we spending on that? I would have to come back to you on the answer because that work is carried out within Police Scotland so that information is held there so that I can get I can certainly get the information for you I would appreciate if you could The other thing is I was also told that there had been no integration of systems across the previous eight police forces This is when I6 was cancelled I asked a specific question about that and I was told that there was no integration and that no system had successfully been integrated Now in the second half of that question sorry the answer you're saying that 30 new national applications have been implemented That's prior to I6 That's prior to I6 I6 concluding But the question I asked didn't relate specifically to I6 it was in the wider context of Police Scotland had there been any single system that had been successfully integrated Now you're saying there's 30 new national applications Does that mean that there has been successful integration at any point? There would have been new systems which would be in use across the national force across the legacy areas but there weren't integration of existing systems But you say a significant number of legacy systems have been closed down Yes because they were redundant they were no longer required Replaced by national applications? In some cases perhaps they would have been replaced but in other cases we uncovered some systems when the forces came together that had been unused or used very rarely but there was no impact to policing as a result of that I think what I'm trying to get at is the impression that I got at the previous meeting was that there had been no successful integration of any systems within Police Scotland in that three years That was the impression that I got Is that correct? No If that was the impression that was said There are those systems that were put in over that period of time and there is the custody system which after the failure of I6 was rolled out nationally that was a system that had previously been held in the police I think it would be helpful to understand a little bit more around this as to which systems have been integrated across the police forces because it's a great concern if in three years we have been doing any of this No, there has been work done Mr Beathie and I can certainly furnish that Can we understand that information because it would appear that the information that we received previously said that it does not appear to be correct Coming back to page 3 on that letter at the very bottom here the answer about efficiency savings and I take the point about that You've got to say you talk here about a robust ICT strategy which is nearing completion so that it could be available It should coincide with the launch of 2026 so as we mentioned earlier that's out for consultation so the ICT strategy must support the policing 2026 strategy moving forward so we should come together at the same time I mean this is obviously critical if this committee is looking at the potential savings for the future Yes, it's absolutely vital we need to have the strategy to deliver the savings and the efficiencies in 2026 That's well recognised When will that ICT strategy be available? It should be around about June June, July to coincide with the policing 2026 The consultation period that we referred to earlier finishes at the end of May for local authorities and that's when we start to gather up all the information and comments from the public and stakeholders etc and that will inform the final version of the strategy the ICT strategy absolutely underpins it Looking at coming back to I6 I mean I accept what the Auditor General stated about Police Scotland and SPA apparently did all the right things ticked all the right boxes but it still went wrong What lessons have we learned from that how do you feed back into there's now a a Government body digital body that now co-ordinates all this how do you feed back into that Well in terms of lessons learned I mean clearly there are aspects of that in the Auditor General's report internally looking back there are clear lessons learned for example we would never go into another waterfall type project that's clear I think that we would have more technical expertise on board if we were going into significant IT projects moving forward the I6 project in itself in my personal view didn't have enough ICT experience in relation to that moving forward I believe that we would engage more with the Chief Technology Officer from the Scottish Government in relation to that All of these aspects are important lessons that I think we've learned and we would intend to participate more greatly with a number of public sector bodies to gain the benefit of their knowledge and lessons learned as well and to share our experiences Looking at page 6 of your letter again and looking at the first question and answer I'm looking at the three external expert advisors and how much they were paid now I realise you've got this money back but I'm just looking at how much they were paid including that £46 million I mean, I don't know about anybody else but I find that eye-watering I mean how much was the project again? £45 million and more than 10% is for three external advisors I find that astonishing One of the aspects of it if you take the exception one for example which is indeed the highest one that's because that level of expertise just didn't exist within Police Scotland it wasn't there so that had to be bought in and that's why that's so high and most other organisations you might expect to have a level of expertise that could deal with the technical aspects of that on behalf of the client being Police Scotland but it just didn't exist There was another resources you could tap into within the Scottish Government to get that expertise We did tap into some the resource within the Scottish Government We had the Assistant Chief Technology Officer on the programme board but it was so specialist and so detailed that it was felt that we really needed to have this external advice prior to and during the course of the contract So basically the internal resources did not have the expertise to be able to handle a project of the skill That's my understanding of what happened at the outset I should point out that I wasn't actually here so I'm answering it based on my knowledge that I picked up since I have been here and my understanding is that was why the decision was taken at the beginning and I also understand that a significant amount of the right cost was in relation to managing the procurement process of this again because it was so specialist Managing the procurement process So they were involved throughout the duration of it but they were heavily involved in the procurement of I6 as well So who wrote up the specs for the project? Was that Deloitte? My understanding is that the specs for the project were written up by exception with Deloitte involved as well but exception were the technical we done it I don't know, it still seems an awful lot of money to me, £4.6 million for the size of the project and for what was achieved OK, we got the money back but I'm looking to the future to track the level of external costs I think that looking to the future, Mr Beattie we wouldn't do it this way I think that's clear that the lesson that's been learned from that we would be doing a project like this on a modular basis and we would be slicing it down into small pieces and we would look wherever possible to manage the technical aspects of it in-house under the ICT director in Police Scotland and we would draw in specialist expertise as and when required but I genuinely don't believe that it would be at that level Thank you, convener It feels like Groundhog Day I served in this committee for a number of years and looked at many IT projects and this sounds very much like the same conversation we had five, six, seven years ago Lack of expertise within the organisation to define the requirements of a piece of software and inevitable delays and problems and issues further on in the development programme I wanted to ask and pick up on the point about the requirements that we wished this software to deliver for us and you've said that exception and delight were involved in that but surely to goodness you're the commissioning, you're the client, you're the customer, you know what you want why weren't you at your organisation before front of defining what the requirements were to be rather than relying on an external body to do that for you? Those were the ones that brought the particular expertise to my understanding is that prior to the contract being awarded all through that process that Police Scotland were heavily involved with exception and delight in defining what the requirements were but not the technical aspects but the technical aspects were something else and the operational use of it then my understanding is that Police Scotland were definitely there and defining those requirements the project was under the control of a former deputy chief constable so that was the senior reporting officer on it and all of these consultants and the ISACS programme team reported into the DCC so the policing aspect of it was very much at the forefront because people were able to talk through the duration of it if it was successful it would free up 23% of additional police time because only the police could have an idea of how that would come about exception wouldn't be able to do that because they're technical and delight a consultant so they wouldn't have the knowledge to do that If you're going to design a piece of software it's based on the requirements that you want it to deliver you can't see from the auditor general's report or your answers to the questions in the letters that there was a detailed requirement specification in place it looked to me as though it was based on the Spanish system and that was what was thought to be what we required in Scotland because it says that quite clearly in the report but what I don't see is where the effort and the time went into defining in detail the requirements that the software had to carry out is that inaccurate? My understanding is that that did happen again personally I wasn't here but my understanding is that that's what happened when it was defined and the impression that I would take from attendance at meetings in I6 over the last three years or so would be that the senior officers in Police Scotland knew exactly what they wanted they had gone out to to Seville to see the system out there but they didn't go out with a view of this is what we'll bring back I think my understanding is that they went out to look at it to see is this something that Accenture have delivered successfully in another police organisation in a different country and then there was a view taken as to could some of that be replicated for Police Scotland but it wasn't intended at any point in time that that system in Seville would be used by Police Scotland I can only go in what I've got in front of me the Auditor General's timeline at the back of the report shows quite clearly in June 2013 the full business case was approved and the contract was awarded to Accenture the following month the high level design started I've never seen anything like that in my life I'm a software engineer with 25 years experience there's a bit missing the detailed requirements specification that can take months months and even a year to get right I suggest to committee members and yourselves that that's why this project went wrong you thought you were getting a bus but they delivered a truck because you didn't define what the requirements were and you got what the contractor thought you wanted if you follow the detailed requirements but that's what's been missing in my view from what I can see in this project I don't want to sound as if I'm not taking any responsibility but I wasn't here at that stage so I have to accept that your technical knowledge is greater than mine and if that's how you would see that type of project being designed in I have to accept that that's a valid assumption there's a bit of discussion about Waterfall vs Agile and these are development methodologies and the suggestion is that we would never use that again and we'll use the other one this time but that hides the key part of any software development project not just software it has to have this key component at the beginning of any project to define the requirements if you get that right you usually get what you want and this is another example of the past where public bodies just don't seem to be listening to or learning the lessons from a number of audit Scotland reports in the past relating to IT projects and it's not just in Scotland it seems to happen where at the heart of public bodies like yourself and you've said just a wee minute ago that you didn't have enough technical expertise or IT expertise within the organisation but that seriously has to be addressed so that we don't keep saying this same message year after year and looking at IT projects like this that just don't work because they can work if you do them correctly if you apply proper quality management and development methodologies and embrace them at the outset within your organisation these kinds of things won't happen I would like to give some assurance that in conversations I've had with the ICT director of Police Scotland that's how he approaches things and I'm sure that moving forward that these matters will be addressed Methodologies to the embrace then for software development projects what have you used? Well it's a quality management system that he's got, I don't just know the name of it but you know OK OK, thank you Mr Cofi, Liam Kerr Thank you convener I want to stay on that theme if I may The project has a section entitled contract failure in which the SPA notes at least eight learning points from the failure of I6 but it then goes on to say that there is no failure on the part of Police Scotland or SPA staff to carry out their responsibilities effectively Given the project's failure is that credible to suggest that there were no failings on the part of the SPA Well The project was managed within Police Scotland and as I said earlier there was heavy reliance placed on the contractors particularly from the technical point of view exception with the technical lead on this project and clearly you would expect Accenture as the contractor the deliverer of the software to be extremely technically capable as well Principally from Then the SPA not responsible at all in your view for what's happened to the I6 program Well there has to be some responsibility yes but whether that's a failing of staff who were involved in it is a different matter clearly there is responsibility because the project failed and whose responsibility is that in Police Scotland then Do you take the responsibility The senior officer that was responsible for it was in Police Scotland Deputy Chief Constable who is now retired so that was the responsible officer for the whole project So that's different because you've said in your responses to our questions that Police Scotland and the SPA staff are completely in the clear is that your position Well in terms of the SPA staff there is also involvement in the project in the delivery of the project Is that your position Mr Foley My position is that the majority of the failings that occurred within the project were centred around the technical aspects of it If the majority were centred around the technical aspects the minority were somewhere else Was that within the police I am not aware of anybody within Police Scotland who failed in their duty in relation to this project The project was very tightly managed from a contract point of view Well I'll come back to the contracts because that's interesting Just following on from a couple of the questions that Willie Coffey and Colin Beattie asked you've been the CEO since autumn 2013 Yes You're a chartered accountant to trade Yes former president of SEMA fellow of the institute of directors director of over 40 companies I want to ask And yet at no stage since 2013 did you pick up there's something going massively wrong here Is that correct We picked up when things were going wrong at the user acceptance testing stage Not we, you That's when I picked it up as well When was that? That was in autumn 2016 So between 2013 2015 So between 2013 Yes and 2015 through a contract variation mind You didn't pick up that anything at any point despite all of your experience at no point did you think to say hang on, I think we've got a problem No, there was no indication that we had a problem until the user acceptance testing stage that's where you normally pick these things up There was enough of an issue to do a contract variation The contract variation that was put in place was put in place as a result of some difficulties between Accenture and Police Scotland which surfaced in the summer of 2013 And so the contract variation was an attempt to try and provide some more flexibility on both parties to deliver the product That was the main purpose of the contract variation There had been tensions as the auditor refers to between both parties and there was an attempt to try and alleviate those tensions and improve working relationships between the parties moving forward That was a positive proactive measure which was instigated by the SP at that point in time and so that was delivered and then we carried on with the support from the consultants and as I said earlier we did not have that technical experience which was why exception was being used on her behalf and working with Accenture Let's look at those consultants if we could When we last discussed this on the 16th of March I asked a particular question I said, when I was in professional legal practice I was paid to make sure there was no ambiguity in my client's contracts Does the ambiguity in this contract suggest the failing, or failings lie with the professional advisors who had been engaged You've said in your letter that you were well advised by the advisors and Colin Beatty's quite rightly pointed out at a cost of over £4 million How is that position sustainable when it would appear that there are fundamental flaws in that contractual nexus as Willie Coffey's highlighted The issues came to light on I6 during user acceptance testing which was part of the programme and they were uncovered by exception it was exception who noticed that something was awi and they then challenged Accenture on this and advised Police Scotland and that's when I became aware of it as well and then work started to see if, well first of all by Accenture to establish exactly what the problem was because they weren't fully aware of it at that point so they brought in additional expertise to their part of the programme and they then moved towards a position of what does this look like and then in early 2016 it was obvious that delivery wasn't possible in the way it had originally been set out and so we had to carry out an options appraisal on what we could do moving forward and at that point in time I took charge of that project and led that through to the 1st of July in 2016 but the advice that we got from exception they were the ones that highlighted that was an issue with this that was their job Good on exception, what about back at the start though my point is, Willie Coffey's pointed out you can't go into something of this scale with any ambiguity or any uncertainty in what you're signing up to very quickly this thing starts to unravel that to my mind is a flaw in the contractual nexus that people are going into things not knowing what they're up to now you've paid or the authority seemed to have paid nearly £5 million to external advisers to avoid that situation in your letter you have lauded these external advisers and said they're wonderful but that's clearly not true is it? They didn't fail Who did fail? Accenture? They were delivering the system Is Accenture the only party responsible for the failure of the I6 programme in your view? I would say that the relationships could have been better on the way through and that might have helped perhaps it might have helped to identify matters earlier potentially that's potentially what I don't actually know for definite that would be the case Mr Foley asked you a closed question Is Accenture in your view the only party responsible for the failure of the I6 programme? No So who else is? Well I think that Police Scotland and the authority have to take some responsibility in that as well That's interesting because that's not what you've said in your letter, who in Police Scotland and the SPA should take responsibility? I think that we should take collective responsibility from the fact that a contract that we signed up to back in 2013 didn't work out Didn't someone have misadvised you then? You wouldn't have signed that as an authority collectively if you'd been advised properly Well back in 2013 the contract was signed in June but clearly there was a lot of work that was carried out prior to the contract being signed and my understanding is that a lot of detailed work was carried out principally by Police Scotland with the knowledge of the authority at that time but I wasn't there to actually tell you whether that was of sufficient quality or not but I wasn't but I have no evidence to suggest that was the case Well you have evidence because I'm putting it to you that it's all gone wrong and this is the problem I just want to come back to this that you talk about lessons being learned having been learned and this will not happen again the reality of this committee is that we see it happening time and again and I have absolutely no confidence with respect because what I'm seeing from your responses to our questions is a suggestion that Accenture are to blame for everything you're now accepting that Police Scotland have some role in this you won't accept the external advisers of any role and I just foresee this happening over and over again is that a fair summary in your view? No I don't think it is fair I don't think it would happen in that fashion again because I think that we've learned enough now to know that we would never attempt to have what you might call a big bang approach to these things it just wouldn't happen we've learned from that and we would have more in-house involvement than we had before and if that meant that because we'd be going into smaller installations or implementations moving forward if we needed expertise that we would actually employ rather than contract with that's how we would approach it I'm interested in the point because you're currently adopting a new in-house modular build you're actually in that process at the moment aren't you? Yes there's some of that going on So have you taken those steps that you've just talked about? In part yes but it depends on the project if you were doing something that was highly specialist and it involved a significant contractual arrangement then that's different from carrying out a piece of work largely in-house but with the input from time to time of experts for a week or so at a time it's a different type of arrangement moving forward we would never have this type of arrangement again absolutely not I wonder whether I could pick up some of this and just take it slightly further in August 2014 the Scottish Government conducted a gateway review of the project and they gave it an amber green designation a delivery confidence assessment I think they called it and they said it was all systems go in effect yet at the same time according to the Auditor General's report in August 2014 same month, same year milestone 5 which was the functional design was behind schedule and you withheld the payment of I think 2.6 million I'm curious given the exact overlap of time were the Scottish Government told about this was the information withheld did they understand what was going on with the delays that were already being experienced, identified by the Auditor General yes, Audit Scotland were aware of that there was a programme board which was set up that was chaired by the DCC who was responsible for the project within Police Scotland and the Scottish Government had representation on that programme board and the Scottish Government will go through if I'm right, a separate assessment process themselves to assure themselves that the project is running according to spec and time and they've given it an amber green delivery confidence assessment at the same time as delays were being experienced how do you explain that? I can only explain it by it was perhaps a timing difference because the gateway review would have more than likely been published in the August but the work would have been carried out before but because it was a fairly fast moving contract if people didn't hit a milestone then you could withhold payment and so there could and this is only a possible explanation convener, it could be the case that there was a time lag in the gateway review being published and this fast moving project not hitting a milestone in the same month or later that month I mean I would genuinely be interested if you could reflect on that and maybe come back to the committee on just that timing because it does seem extraordinary that in the same month we're pointing in different directions finally for me and we'll see if there's anything from other committee members recent newspaper report in the Daily Mail on the 18th of April quotes an SPA director as saying that I6 failure has left policing five years behind where it should be and I think it goes on to quote the police federation general secretary saying five years seems a very generous underestimate what would you put it at? I personally would actually believe that we're not five full years behind we are years behind and the ICT strategy when it is made public when it's finalised in a few months time we'll set out just what the time frame is to get to delivery of what we lost in I6 in conversations that I've had with the ICT director in Police Scotland he has suggested to me that it's closer to four years to do that but that's in addition to doing some other installations that he's got planned as well so we are a number of years behind so that clearly has been an opportunity cost we can debate the number of years on that any questions from other members okay can I thank both the witnesses Mr Flanagan didn't get many questions in this session I'm sure he's grateful for that but the committee will write to you with our request for additional information and hopefully they can all be met can I thank you very much for your attendance this morning and the committee moves now into private session