 Good morning, and welcome to the first meeting of session 6 of the Public Audit Committee. I'm Colin Beattie, MSP from Midlothian North and Musselburn, and as the oldest member of the committee, I have the pleasure of convening this meeting for the first three items of business. I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome all members, and I look forward to working with you in the future in this committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I'd like to remind everyone to switch to the mobile phones to silent. I understand that no apologies have been received, so I'll move first of all to agenda item 1. The agenda item 1 is a decision to take agenda item 6 in private. I'm assuming that everyone agrees unless a member indicates otherwise. Does any member object to taking item 6 in private? Only raise your hand if you object. Members agree to take item 6 in private. I'll move now to agenda item 2, and agenda item 2 is for each of us to declare any interests that we have that are relevant to the work of the committee. Now, background information is provided in the declaration of interest paper, which is paper 1. I will start by declaring my own interests and then I will ask the members in alphabetical order to do similarly. I declare an interest as director trustee of the national mining museum of Scotland in view of the fact that this committee has a remit in tourism. I have no other interests to declare. I call on Willie Coffey. Thank you, convener. I have no additional interests other than those in my register, and those are as our former councillor on East Asia Council. I am a former employee of learning into Scotland, and I own a small number of shares in Comanic Football Club. I own a heritable property and I have no other declaration of interest. I call Craig Hoy. I am an elected member of East Lothian Council and also a board member of the South East Scotland Transport Partnership. Thank you, convener. I do not have any declarable interests, but for the record I would draw people's attention to my voluntary register of interests, which includes financial support, given to my local Labour Party by Unite the Union, the RMT, Unison, CWU, ASLEF and the TSSA trade unions. I will now move straight on to agenda item 3, which is the most important item. The committee's next task is to choose a convener. The procedure is explained in the choice of convener paper, which is paper 2. The Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as convener of this committee. I understand that Richard Leonard MSP is that party's nominee. Is that correct? No seconder is required. Do we agree to choose Richard Leonard MSP as our convener? We are agreed. I congratulate Richard Leonard on his appointment and I will vacate the chair and hand over to him. Thank you, Colin. I am honoured to be elected as convener of this committee. My role will be to work inclusively without fear of favour, to hold power to account, to promote the common good and the public interest, to be a guardian of openness, transparency and democracy and, through evidence and scrutiny, to shine a bright light on public governance, public working practices, investment and outcomes on behalf of the people. Can I turn now to the next item on the agenda, which is the election of a deputy convener? Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party are eligible for nomination for this position. I also understand that Sharon Dowie is the party's nomination for this post. So, do we agree to endorse Sharon Dowie's nomination as our deputy convener? If anybody disagrees, could they put that in the chat? I see no signs of disagreement. So, Sharon, congratulations on your election as the deputy convener of the Public Audit Committee. The next item that we have to consider is the legacy paper, which has been circulated in advance of this morning's meeting. First of all, I ask the committee to place on record our thanks to the session 5 public audit and post-legislative scrutiny committee for its legacy report. I am conscious of the fact that two of our own members in this session were also members of the session 5 committee who played a part in putting together that legacy paper. The legacy paper clearly will be an important part of the consideration that we need to give to our work programme. I would invite any member of the committee if you have any comments or wish to add anything in connection with the legacy paper to indicate whether you want to come in. Willie Coffey, Willie Coffey. Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to be back on the audit committee, particularly with my friend and colleague Colin Beattie. Both of us have been a number of years' service to the audit committee, and I really enjoy the work that we do. I have read through the legacy paper, convener, and there are a number of recurring themes that always seem to be in an audit report from one session to the next. One of those issues is following up on our work that we do at the audit committee to try to engender a spirit of continuous improvement, let's say, within the public sector. I think that the Audit Scotland and our committee did a lot of very good work, but, sometimes, convener, I felt that we did not see the outcome of that in terms of performance improvement and how various public bodies in Scotland embraced it to get that improvement. Sometimes, I felt that the public bodies thought that we were there to punish them, and, in fact, we were an instrument of some torture, but we were not. We were there to provide opportunities for continuous improvement and to help public bodies. I think that a lot of the public bodies need to begin to embrace that. For me, convener, I would like to be able to see at some stage in the work that we do, some evidence of continuing improvement from the bodies that we shine our gaze on. I think that that would be a good development of the work that the committee can do in this session, and I would very much hope to see a little more of that. I know that the legacy paper talks about the defensiveness of accountable officers who come before the committee. I hope that we see a changing approach from those people who are brought before the committee to give evidence. We have a job to do, and we are here to serve the interests of Parliament and the people. We will do whatever is required in order to do that, but it is important that we have an oversight of what happens in the future, not just an issue or even a crisis that has arisen. We need to have that longer-term reach, so that is a really well-made point. I have also got Colin Beattie and Craig Hoy, so I am going to call Colin Beattie first of all. There are really three areas in the legacy document that I would like to look at more closely. One is the audit remit, which repeatedly has come up. Our remit as a public audit committee is less than the remit of the equivalent down in Westminster. We are more passive in the approach that we can take. We are limited to what the Auditor General might put in front of us, whereas I think that a public audit committee should have a more proactive approach instead of a passive approach. We should be able to, if necessary, initiate our own investigations. It is not going to happen often, but where necessary, it should. I know that the Auditor General should be willing to put resources against that if it was required. It is not as if we are going to be launching an investigation every five minutes, but there have been occasions when we have looked at stuff and a more proactive approach from us—more drive, more push—might have got us better results. The second thing is that we are no longer responsible for post-legislative scrutiny, which I think is the correct way forward. It focuses us very tightly on the things that we need to look at, but there is one thing that we did as post-legislative scrutiny that we would like to find some way to bring forward into this session, and that is control of dangerous dogs. There are ways to do that. We took evidence that something like 7,000 people are admitted to A&E every year and require surgical intervention due to dog attacks, and on some occasions children are being killed by dangerous dogs. I have made the point before that if this was drunk and driving, we would have a policeman in every coma, but because it is dogs, we seem to sleep under a carpet. We need to address it. We need to protect good, sensible dog owners, and we need to deal with those who are not controlling their dogs and those who are not fit for the purpose of being a dog owner. The third item was in relation to a specific investigation that we did into Gordon Agallic. I know that the auditor general will bring that back to us, but there is a huge amount in there that still needs to be investigated. I think that there are serious issues in there, and I think that those serious issues continue. I urge the committee to follow up on that and ensure that we get to the bottom of everything and that proper rectification of those issues is put in place. Public money is being spent. It is not clear. It is being spent well. I think that Gordon Agallic is still part of our continuing work programme. There are other public agencies such as the Scottish Police Authority and a couple of NHS boards who are also within scope of our continuing work. It is essential that there is a seamless transition from the last committee to this committee to ensure that nothing slips through the net. I also hear what you are saying about the post legislative function of the committee, which is not part of our remit any more. Perhaps we can have a look at how best that work that has been undertaken can be advanced, whether it is advanced by us or whether it is advanced by another part of the Parliament. We need to examine that. One of the most telling points in the legacy paper that struck me was the continued demand for a power of initiative for this committee. We are not passive players in this, but we have a role to take initiative ourselves. Under the current structure, we can do that, but a more overt power to be able to do that is something that we should seek through the parliamentary opportunities that we have to try to secure as early as possible. I see that Craig Hoy wishes to come in, so Craig over to you. Thank you, Richard. I congratulate you on being elected as convener this morning. Just looking through the report, I picked up what I thought was a sense of frustration from your predecessor as convener, particularly in point 4 in the forward, where they say that we kept seeing the same issues again and again across the public sector. Leadership challenges, poor workforce planning, weak governance arrangements, failed ICT projects and an absence of key data making it impossible to determine whether policies and initiatives were actually making a difference in people's lives. I think that that is one observation that we should keep up and most in our mind as we set out on the work programme today. Just two points in terms of the committee's prior recommendations, which I think might mean that we end this Parliament without that same sense of frustration. One is in point 25, recommendation 25, that the incoming committee may also wish to consider inviting SPICE to prepare a briefing on mechanisms used in other jurisdictions to follow up on audit report recommendations so that we have action beyond the identification of the problems that we will no doubt find. I think that, as has been alluded to by Colin Beattie in relation to point 64 of the recommendations that the committee recommends that the remit of the public audit committee is reviewed with a view to enabling its successor committee to freely initiate its own inquiries. I hope that we can do that. I think that just a third observation really is obviously as we emerge out of Covid with the huge amounts of public monies that have been pumped into the economy, point 56 that was raised in the legacy paper in relation to ensuring that there is scrutiny of public money that has been used to support the economy and its recovery from Covid-19 and to examine what impact that has had on inequalities, including regional inequality in Scotland. I know that we will come to that other work programme later, but I just thought that perhaps those three issues might mean that we do not end this Parliament with that same sense of frustration that I was picking up from our predecessor committee. I think that there is a clear sense that we are going to be in very challenging times, especially for the public sector and organisations from the national health service to the court system. I think that the Auditor General has identified the importance of understanding the pressures that there are going to be, but to ensure that, despite those pressures, good governance, proper working practices, workforce planning and investments that are made are effective ones. That is something that we will return to. I was also struck by the sense that the previous committee understood that we are not just dealing on a case-by-case basis with people that come before us. There are often common themes that run through and, frankly, some systematic failures that need to be tackled. I think that it is important that we have that broader understanding that sometimes we are dealing with some pretty fundamental failings in the way that organisations are approaching their remits. Those can be common across the public sector, so we need to understand that there are common themes that we need to pursue and make sure that lessons are learned not just by the single organisation that may be before us, but by the whole of the public sector. The recommendation that we consider international experience is an important one, too. I am keen that we pursue when we discuss the work programme. I see that Willie Coffey wants to come back in. Willie, I will bring you back in. Thank you very much again, convener. It is basically on the following the public bound agenda that Craig was talking about. We also know that, because of the impact of withdrawing from the European Union, we are not quite clear where the scrutiny gaze will fall. I am hoping that Audit Scotland will give us a little bit of advice, too. Prior to that, we had some ability to see what was happening in terms of monitoring spend in Scotland from European Union structural funds, for example, things like that. However, I am not quite clear if we will have the same ability to look at things such as the UK Government's level on up funds and all the various other funds that may replace those. I think that we need to get a little bit clearer, convener, about what our role is if we do have a role, a scrutiny role at all there, because there will be substantial amounts of money basically being spent, albeit by a different jurisdiction. I hope that we have the ability to shine a light on some of that, too. Thanks, Willie. Again, I think that that point is really well made. There will be new funding instruments to support agriculture, to replace the European Union structural funds, the European Social Fund and so on. Some of the detail of that remains to be seen, but I absolutely think that it should be the job of this committee to scrutinise how that is being applied and whether there are reforms or improvements that can be made. I really think that it is important that we understand that there is a huge change taking place as a result of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union and what that means for the landscape that people are facing. I would like to thank members for those contributions. It is important that we get some of those points on the record as we are in public session. We are going to discuss our work programme in private session, as previously agreed. We are all clear that the legacy paper from the session 5 committee will form an important starting point for us in considering what our work programme is going to be in the short-term and medium-term future. If we are all agreed on that, can I bring this public session of the committee to a close? I thank members for their contribution and look forward to a constructive and productive working relationship in the future.