 I welcome everyone to the second meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2024. The first item on the committee's agenda is for members to agree or not to take agenda items 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed? We are all agreed. I should also note that the Deputy convener Sharon Dowey is joining us online this morning. The principal agenda item that we have before us this morning is consideration of the Audit to Generals section 22 report into the Scottish Government consolidated accounts. I'm particularly pleased to welcome our witnesses this morning, the most senior team from the Scottish Government. We have the Permanent Secretary joining us, John Paul Marx. He is very welcome. The director general economy, Gregor Irwin, is also here. Jackie McAllister, who is the chief finance officer and also joining us is Alison Cumming, who is the director of budget and public spending in the Scottish Government. We've got quite a wide range of questions that we want to put to you this morning, Permanent Secretary, but before we get to those, could I invite you to make a short opening statement? Thank you, convener. Good morning, everyone, and happy new year to you all, another busy year ahead. Firstly, grateful to the Auditor General for his unqualified audit opinion on annual accounts. 22-23 was a year of disruption and external shocks, including high inflation, high interest rates and low growth, and it was managed accordingly with increased financial control, prioritisation and savings exercises. If I may just take the chance, convener, to put on record my appreciation toward Scotland, to Steven and the teams and to my chief finance officer and her teams, leading through this context has been challenging. There's been tough moments and the support collaboration has been greatly appreciated. Overall, these accounts, thankfully, show an underspend, as required. The final outturn against the Treasury budgets will be published soon. The provisional outturn reports an underspend of 0.5% of the total budget, which is £244 million, which has been carried forward openly via the Reserve into this financial year and utilised in full. I'm grateful to Audit Scotland for the support, recognising improving transparency on the Reserve. We'll keep working on that. The budget was balanced via a £1 billion emergency budget review, transparently set out to Parliament. That EBR protected support in a cost of living crisis. That included expansion of the Scottish child payments, operated and now supporting over 320,000 under-16s. That has contributed to the child poverty being 9% points lower in Scotland than would otherwise have been the case. The EBR also enabled pay settlements, agreed, which minimised the impact of industrial action in Scotland's public services. I'm happy to confirm to the committee that we have a path to balance this year too. Budget £24.25 is now being scrutinised by Parliament. I welcome the recommendations in full. I'm happy to confirm that a Government review is under way in the Scottish Government. We've established the Strategic Commercial Assets division. I welcome the recognition from Audit Scotland that that has strengthened the management of financial interventions. Gregor has joined us at DG Economy last year and is with us today and we will keep building that capability as the committee would expect. We have strengthened some other corporate capabilities, freedom of information performance, propriety and ethics, stricter, EPC controls as well. We're developing a long-term public service reform programme across the state, digital, income workforce and shared services to deal with underlying financial pressures. Finally, we will, of course, as Audit Scotland recommend, press on with our corporate transformation programme to ensure our core systems are fit for purpose, responding to Audit Scotland's reported concerns and to realise future efficiencies. Convenor, last year we promised to develop a performance report. That is included in the accounts and it's about establishing mission-led government across equality to reduce poverty, opportunity to grow our economy and achieve net zero by 2045 and community to transform our public services and recover our pandemic backlogs. We've published portfolio mandate letters to transparently set out what each portfolio is to achieve and the statutory review of national outcomes and national performance framework will conclude this year. Finally, convenor, I've written to you on public sector accounts. We've had some initial discussions on the next phase of that work and I'm hopeful we can make good progress on those in the months ahead. I just want to close by thanking colleagues and partners for their resilience and collaboration as our work continues in the year ahead to achieve our goals and, of course, improve our national outcomes wherever we can. We look forward to the committee meeting this morning. Thank you very much indeed, permanent secretary, for that introduction and it covers many of the areas that I think we want to speak to you about this morning. Can I take you back to one of the fundamental key messages from the Auditor General's report on the Scottish Government consolidated accounts, where he says, and I quote, the delivery of public services is not affordable in its current form? How do you react to that? I think, as I set out in my statement, the public services across all four nations have gone through a set of shocks over the last few years. Inflation has impacted the underlying cost base of capital programmes, of resource budgets, and that has affected every part of the public sector, true also voluntary sector and for business. So it's very important, of course, that as these accounts show, we balance the budget, lawful requirement to do so. That's true in these accounts of 2023. As I said, we are on track to do so again this year. To achieve that, savings exercises, prioritisation and reform are all key elements of that. The Deputy First Minister has set out in her budget the choices the Government has made to ensure that next year's budget is indeed balanced also. But we need to, of course, continue to transform our public services to deliver better outcomes, and that's where that long-term public service reform programme, how we can utilise digital enablers, shared services, improve efficiency and productivity, is going to be really essential. Because we want to, of course, balance the budget and improve outcomes. We've got some good examples where that's working well, but we can't deny that the level of pressure the public services are facing because of what's available following the autumn statement envelope, given our tax revenues, given levels of growth, creates a significant challenge. The public service reform programme is set up long-term to try and ensure that we're doing the right things to be fiscally sustainable. Obviously, you are the principal accountable officer in the Government. Is it your view that the Government's policy objects are affordable and sustainable? It is, I think, but it's with a significant challenge. So, you know, if you look at the choices the Government is being faced with, they are clearly significantly complex because of the constraints on public expenditure growth. And it puts a real premium on the need for reform. Long-term fiscal sustainability will be a function of choices that are made in the UK Government around the block grants, what our tax revenues are and what our expenditure is. So, certainly this time last year, when we looked at 2324, there was a real concern around being able to balance the budget, which is why the emergency budget that were occurring savings exercises were necessary to take the choices to do so. We are going to have to continue with that discipline. We're going to have to continue with the discipline of prioritisation, focusing on value for money, doing the very best we can to support chief executives to transform, raise revenue where they have the empowerment to do so. But there's no doubt that the underlying sustainability risk is there. It's one of the key risks at our corporate board. We talk with our audit function regularly. And it's why we're trying to address those underlying reform enablers to support leaders with delivering within their budget allocation. You mentioned the block grant. There's just been a renegotiation of the fiscal framework. Are you satisfied with the outcome of that renegotiation? I am. The fiscal framework changes, I think, are positive. Real credit to the team because given the context we were in, I was slightly surprised that it did get over the line, but I was pleased with it. From Scotland's perspective, the block grant mechanism in terms of being indexed per capita, baselining that assumption is important for us in terms of resource borrowing. We were previously able to borrow up to 300 million to cover forecast error. That is now up to 600 million and indexed to inflation. Similarly, our capital borrowing now indexed to inflation. That creates headroom longer term, which gives us opportunities with regards bond issuance or further borrowing. We've removed the limits on reserve draw down, and the overall reserve limit has been indexed to inflation. So taking all of that together, I think those are improvements to the fiscal framework from Scotland's perspective. Previously, without that operating, our real terms flexibilities were degrading. Now they're not. That's not to say there won't be more conversations on the fiscal framework in the future. In terms of getting that done, coming towards the end of a UK Parliament with the chief secretary and the Deputy First Minister, we were pleased with and think it's a good settlement for devolution. Alison, I don't know if you want to add anything to that, but I think those are the headlines on the changes. I absolutely agree. Those are the headlines. The most significant element for us financially is securing the permanency of the index per capita methodology for block grant adjustments, which the independent report that supported the fiscal framework review estimated could be worth four to five hundred million a year at times to the Scottish budget depending on assumptions on how population growth varies. We were satisfied that within the parameters of the review, it was a good outcome within those parameters. Without paraphrasing too heavily, the Deputy First Minister, when she presented it to Parliament, accepted that there was no fundamental change here. It was a rather modest improvement. Is a review every five years, Alison, coming? Is that how it works? The review was agreed for at this review at the time of the original fiscal framework agreement being reached in 2016. I'm not aware that there's a set five-year commitment for the next review, but it's about keeping it under periodic review and keeping those discussions open with the Treasury. I want to move on to a couple of other areas. Permanent Secretary, you've already referred to the fact that you accept that there needs to be public sector reform and, presumably, one of the other recommendations you would also accept, which is about better workforce planning. Why was there no detail of either of those in the budget recently presented to Parliament? It's quite difficult to summarise at a macro level precisely what needs to happen for every single workforce, and that does need to be done in different sectors. If I take core Scottish Government civil service, when I arrived in 2022, the plans that I was presented with were for growth in the core civil service of up to around 2,000 headcounts. We've actually kept that flat. We've taken around 500 contractors out of our core workforce. We expect to be marginally smaller this year, and given our budget allocation in terms of total operating costs, we'd look to continue with that trend, so our workforce is right-sizing to what we can afford. But it's also making sure we're trying to ensure we've got the right skills and capabilities to deliver our programme, and that thinking, that right-sizing, looking at spans of control, looking at the layers of organisations, making sure we are getting the right professional skills in the right places to deliver optimal value for money. We need every public body doing that, and we need all of our sectors doing that, whether it be health and social care, local governments or the police. The new chief constable has a reform programme around the police. We've put investment into enabling that, and it's quite right that she is empowered to lead that with support and scrutiny from Parliament and the committee. We've set out these are the enablers of public service reform, which I referenced, digital workforce, enabling revenue-raising and income generation and cost recovery, where it's appropriate to do so, commercial value for money programme, and there are others. And then ultimately asking every portfolio, every sponsor team, working with their sectors, working with their public bodies to make sure that they live within their budgets, but also they're optimising their transformation to deliver better outcomes. Gregor, you could say a bit about an example in the economy portfolio we saw from Scottish Enterprise on Monday, setting out their strategy, their missions, how they are delivering to optimise their outcomes given their budget allocation. I think it's right that the chief executive and the board of Scottish Enterprise do that, rather than we try and control that centrally, but of course they have a budget allocation and they need to right size and deliver within that accordingly. Can I just pick you up on your language? You describe it as right sizing, but in the case of Scottish Enterprise isn't it downsizing? Well, so Scottish Enterprise have seen a reduction in their budget, and similarly there are elements of their budget, some of it will be resource, others will be programme spend, and I think it's quite right that where an organisation has scaled up to respond to the challenges, whether that was around pandemic, Brexit, cost of living crisis, we are asking those leaders to look at every line of their budget, obviously live within their allocation and make sure that it's optimised because that's their responsibility to the taxpayer. Every time that we don't do that, we leave that pressure for the taxpayer to pick up, but I think Gregor, do you want to say a bit more about public service reform on Scottish Enterprise in the economy sector? Yes, thank you. So, as permanent secretary has already noted, Scottish Enterprise in Monday set out its new strategy. It's focused on three core missions, energy transition, innovation, investment, three priorities closely aligned with the national strategy for economic transformation. The head count in Scottish Enterprise has decreased, and it will decrease further. It is absolutely right that Scottish Enterprise, like other parts of the public sector, embraces digital forms of delivery. We've seen that, the organisation is keen to move further in that direction. That focus on those core missions is essential for Scottish Enterprise as its contribution to public sector reform, but equally it's important for other parts of the public sector to similarly ensure that they have that focus as well and that they embrace those enabling capability steps in order to be more efficient and ensure value for money. So, when you say similarly, you mean we can expect other public sector organisations to downsize as well? Yes, right. I think that's true. I mean, I don't think we can pretend otherwise, you know, and I think actually the public sector in Scotland, for good reason, we, you know, take a lot of pride of the fact that we've got smaller class sizes, for example, we've got more police per capita, we've got more fire officers per capita, that enables us to, you know, for example, in education, provide more support for those children that need it in a smaller school environment. So our pupil-teacher ratio is just over 13, I think, in Scotland, it's over 18 in England and Wales. But when we look across our whole public sector, back to your point, convener and Audit Scotland's challenge on long-term physical sustainability, we have got to be confident that the resource budget is affordable and that will be a function of the block grant. The fiscal framework helps us with that marginally and our tax revenues. And this budget has set out, and the Deputy First Minister has set out some of the choices necessary to do that. And Public Service Reform absolutely asks every leader of every public body to be confident that they are optimising their outcomes, given what they can afford, and given the impact of inflation, which has been higher than anyone expected for longer, that has eaten into the underlying spending power of our public sector. And so to balance that, given the limitations of what we can achieve through tax revenue and growth, we need to right-size the public sector to be affordable. And that will happen across the systems, but it's absolutely clear that that should be empowered according to the needs of those particular organisations. The Scottish National Investment Bank is very different to Scottish Enterprise, so we don't sit at the centre and tell them precisely what their headcount should be, but we use a level of empowerment and sponsorship to support them in their public sector transformation. Well, if you'll forgive me my reading of what you're saying is that reform equals contraction and right-sizing equals downsizing. I'm going to bring Graham Simpson in a second. I just wanted to just ask one, hopefully, straightforward question which will elicit a quick answer. There isn't currently public sector pay guidelines and that they weren't part and parcel again of the fabric of the budget presented to Parliament. Can we expect to see public sector pay guidelines being issued? Yes, you can expect to see those. We're in January. Those would be from April 24-25. I think last year, if I recall, we published them in the spring. And we've not seen pay guidance yet from other governments on a four nations basis, as I recall. But absolutely, we will need to, of course, set those parameters for 24-25. And what we want to achieve as we have managed to date, of course, is that very positive dialogue with our trade union colleagues so that we can sustain our public services. Some of our public services, just to take your point, take the point about, be brief, but some of our public services are seeing growth and that's necessary to deal with demand. So if I take Social Security Scotland, for example, they are taking on more benefits. They are migrating more benefits from DWP. The volume will rise, so they have been recruiting quite right too, as they've also improved their productivity to support more clients per day. And it is part of an overarching intent to improve outcomes and improve value for money. But yes, pay guidance will follow later this year. OK, thank you very much. Graham Simpson, Graham. Thanks very much, convener. I just want to follow up on what the convener was asking about. So you've been quite clear that you think the number of people employed in the public sector needs to come down. Are you able to put a figure on that? No, I don't think so. I think that was the point that convener was trying to make around could the budget have done that. And I don't think we have a precise planning assumption about what that will mean because it is different for different public bodies. So, as I say, Scottish Enterprise may find themselves being smaller. Scottish National Investment Bank may not. Depends on the position they're in in their trajectory, but that is something that is empowered within the sponsor team with that chief executive with their board, given their budget allocation. It's only for the core civil service. We expect to be marginally smaller. We've reduced our contractors and given our budget allocation, we would expect that to continue. But there are other areas, for example, in our court recovery programme, where we've done an excellent job to bring down the backlog from the pandemic. It was down by over a third compared to where it was from its peak. We need to sustain that because we want to get that backlog down, reduce the demand in the system, also support reduction in the remand population in our prison service, and that will improve outcomes and improve value for money. So, it's not as simple as saying everybody will be smaller and every system will be smaller. It's different according to different systems and the budget allocations reflect those choices that ministers have made. For example, in courts, you've just mentioned courts. You mentioned police earlier. I would presume that we wouldn't be suggesting that we see cuts in those areas, but from what you've just said, there'll be cuts in other areas. When will you be able to set out what is going to happen where? So, as you say, there's two good examples. The police settlement, Alison, will be able to say a bit more on the detail. Working with the chief constable, given our intent, of course, to keep crime low, to protect that investment in our police service so that Police Scotland can continue to do the preventative community work that they're so well recognised for. The investment into our police service, we think, will enable us to maintain our police numbers and to maintain that exceptional service and, actually, to transform some of the technology enablers for that service. Similarly, I talked about courts and the Crown Office, where, again, we want to complete on that recovery. So, by the end of this Parliament, as quickly as possible, we're able to say that the pandemic backlogs are behind us. In terms of when will every public body be able to explain precisely their long-term workforce plan, I think that's something that the public service reform programme wants to, we want to work on. Because, as you know, part of the challenge of the fiscal framework and the way in which our allocation comes through the block grant is annual. What a lot of people would prefer is to have much more multi-year certainty on both resource and capital for longer-term planning purposes, and that would then include long-term strategic workforce plans. It's a bit harder to do that when it's annual budget allocations. Nonetheless, we're asking each portfolio to work with each of their public bodies on their long-term workforce strategies and plans, so that can be included in updates. I think we've committed to six-monthly updates to the FPAC committee. Similarly, if this committee would like regular updates on that programme, how that's going, how different systems are transforming, we'd be very happy to do that, because I think this is the long-term challenge for Scotland, and it answers the convener's fair challenge at the beginning. To be sustainable, we need to be affordable, but we don't want that to be about cuts. We want that to be about reform, so we improve outcomes, improve experiences, improve the efficiency and the productivity of the public sector as we go through that journey. It's not an easy thing to take on, but there are some wonderful examples—disclosure of Scotland, records of Scotland, social security—we can see some very good evidence of productivity improvement. We need to continue with that across the whole system. I think it would be useful if this committee were to have those updates. You mentioned the Crown Office. The Auditor General mentioned in his report the Rangers case. I'm not going to ask you about the Rangers case, but I'm going to ask you about something more topical, and that's around the post office. My question is simply, are you allocating money for potential compensation for people wrongly convicted in that case in Scotland? The Lord Advocate made a statement to Parliament, and the First Minister, I think, was there yesterday, set out the latest, given the response from the Prime Minister with regards to this. Our team is now working closely with the UK Government on the opportunity of that legislative consent motion, which would then enable people to access that compensation scheme. That work is happening rapidly. If there was any provision needed, I'm sure the First Minister, his determination, is very clear that compensation must be accessible, and this process needs to be as swift as possible, which is why he wrote to the Prime Minister immediately and the Prime Minister responded. There isn't a provision in the 24-25 budget specifically for the Crown Office for this, because the intent is to get the consent motion through such that we can access the compensation scheme, but the Crown Office can quite clearly prioritise the budget to ensure that any activity to support that effort is paid forward. The money would have to come from Scotland, wouldn't it? The prosecutions in Scotland were through the Crown Office. The Parliament has already heard from the First Minister and the directions that have been to us as a Scottish Government is that we must make sure that access to compensation is as swift as possible and quite right to you. I'm going to ask you about something else now. This was the electronic procurement card review management report, which has been published fairly recently. Well, actually, the date on it was December 2023. For those who are watching, I think that this came emerged from an FOI possibly from the Labour Party convener, which outlined a whole series of very unusual purchases made through a Scottish Government. I don't know whether there were physical cards or e-cards anyway. People spending taxpayers' money on a whole variety of things, including a number of books. There were six copies of women hold up half the sky. That was the selected speeches of Nicola Sturgeon. I imagine that that would be a fairly slim thing. Nineteen copies of how to run a government so that citizens' benefits and taxpayers don't go crazy. I think that it's probably a bit late for that. One copy of taxation, a very short introduction, which tells us that people adapt their activities in various ways to reduce the impact of taxation. One copy of Marx, a very short introduction. Another book called The Blunders of our Governments, various self-help books, including one on irritable bowel syndrome. There's a copy of Scotland's Future, which was actually a Scottish Government book. I don't know why you're buying your own book. In this report, you say that all these various books and other things, like mid-repellent and a traffic fine, are appropriate. How can these things be appropriate? If we just go back to the beginning a bit on this, there was a Freedom of Information request whereby 58,000 transactions were released, which showed all of the spending using EPC cards over a three-year period. The First Minister then quite rightly commissioned two reviews into what happened here, both in terms of cyber investigations, the data handling, but then also a review that I undertook on the policies and procedures around the use of these cards. As I said in my opening statement, we have put stricter controls in place. There were a number of, as you say, Mr Simpson, a number of transactions which were investigated. I set out in that report, which we published to explain those. There was one transaction which was fraudulent in the system and not authorised by the card holder. That card was deactivated and the expenditure was refunded. For all the others, we have set out on what basis they were used. The purchasing of books for training and personal development used by the library, etc. The stricter controls is being clear that we should hold those. People should borrow them and don't need to purchase multiple copies. We've reduced the single monthly transaction limits. We already published everything quarterly that's over £500, introduced mandatory and refresher training for everyone with EPC responsibilities and set out some further messaging around the importance, of course, of value for money, including away days in, for example, a public sector estate, wherever possible. The committee on 8 January wrote to the convener in terms of the management report and the next steps with regards to that. Again, a bit like the previous conversation, if the committee would appreciate it, we're very happy to provide a further update later this year on the steps being taken to control this and to tighten up the controls further as we go through this year. My concern is, if the view is that all the various purchases, some of which I've read out, are deemed to be appropriate, this kind of nonsense will continue. It cannot be appropriate that you're buying books on titles like how to run a government. That's not appropriate use of taxpayers' money. I think if I recall, excuse me if I might get this wrong, that book is written by the former head of the number 10 implementation unit and actually one of the key things that we have been working on since I became permsec but all governments always working on is how to improve outcomes and how to improve our use of data to transform to be a mission-led government, to learn from the mistakes of the past and translate that into the way we work. But Mr Simpson genuinely, if there is a particular transaction in there in the report for which you have concern, genuinely welcome to write to me and I will write back with further explanation on them. I went through them with my audit team, my commercial team and the guidance does allow teams to purchase books that will support learning and development. Having said that, we have made sure through the refresher training, through the controls that and through the publication transparency of the data that we don't want multiple copies of books being purchased where they can be held by the library and borrowed. But as I say, you're finding a few transactions which were raised in the context of 58,000 over three years. And I think what you'll find if you go and look at similar transactions, similar governments. The purchasing of books for development is not novel. These are not books for development. Some of these books are the things that I might put on my Christmas card list and I would buy them, not the book of Nicola Sturgeon's speeches of course. But they're not about learning and development. A book about Marx is not helping anyone's learning and development unless it's the Green Party. I will, I will write, I'll take you up on that. I will write to you. No, please, because we went through a very comprehensive exercise and Mr Simms, I don't want to, you know, the whole exercise is not comfortable, you know, because clearly we need to, we want to, and I don't know if I can make it more clear to the committee, being custodians of taxpayers' money is something we take very seriously. We want to ensure value for money, efficiency, the very best possible outcomes we can. I won't comment on whether a book by Marx is relevant to anyone's development. I'm sure there's political theorists out there who have a view, a convener looking at me suggesting he might have a view on that. But we went through the transactions one by one to check, were they fraudulent? Were they contrary to the guidance at the time, forgive me, but some of these predated my being here, we've tightened the guidance, changed the limits, reduced the number of cards, refreshed the training annually and have a detailed improvement plan to ensure that whenever we use these cards, we'll be able to do that. We're very clear, it's stationary, it's IT, people were suddenly moved into that working from home environment where these cards were utilized to ensure that they could access what they needed to continue to work through the pandemic. But we want to tighten it up, that's why we did the internal audit report, that's been made available to Audit Scotland as well. As I say, if there's any particular individual transactions you have a concern of, very happy that Nick and I look at them again, provide you with more detail. I will write to your permanent secretary. OK, thank you. Just again for the record, because it's not entirely clear to me in my reading of the accompanying note that goes with the table of purchases made, it refers to the fact that the monthly limit on the UK Government e-card is £10,000 whereas the Scottish Government limit has been £25,000 per month and it talks about realignment or alignment. Can you confirm today whether the Scottish Government monthly limit for the e-card's use is going to come in line with the UK Government level of £10,000? That's my understanding, so immediate changes that we implemented to align included reducing the single and monthly transaction limits to £5,000 and £10,000, which I think is the same as the UK Government's limits. I'll double check that, but that's my understanding as well, so a number of steps that we went through to put those strict controls in place, including that one. When it talks about, again, against these listed items that were purchased with the e-card, it uses the expression out of scope quite a lot. Can you elaborate what that means? Does that mean that the things that Mr Simpson spoke about are still in scope or are they out of scope? Are they out of scope full stop? Are they out of scope for the e-card or are they in scope? I think I'm going to have to look at the sentence you're referring to in terms, because, forgive me, I'm not quite clear exactly. But pretty much every item is categorised, and for example, there's one here, taxation, a very short introduction, and marks, a very short introduction, are both listed as appropriate under current policy recommended to review policy exclusions and out of scope expenditure moving forward. What does that mean? So, taking the point on books, my preference would be if somebody needs to access a book for development or training or research, the library purchases the book and it is available then for people to borrow rather than EPC cards are used for that purpose. So, it is amending the guidance in terms of the scope of what EPC cards can be used for. But, as I say, Nick wrote to the committee on the 8 January confirming the management report and next steps, and if the committee would like, we can ask him to provide further updates, including what was in scope, what's not anymore or won't be going forward, and he can cover any particular transactions where there is still a concern. Thank you. I think that that would be helpful. Can I take us back to the substantive report that we're discussing this morning, which is the Auditor General's section 22 report? And again, just to get your position on the record, Permanent Secretary, paragraph 95, 96 are the conclusion of the report. Paragraph 96 carries with it a series of five very clear recommendations from the Auditor General about a change in approach, a development of approach, and so on, in terms of accessibility of transparency, governance and assurance arrangements, the public sector estate, a roadmap of how the design and delivery of public services, which we've already spoken about this morning, a roadmap of what that looks like and how you will advance that, a timetable for completion as a matter of urgency on the whole government accounts, which we're going to get to shortly. Do you accept the conclusions and recommendations in that paragraph of the report? Yep, we do, and Stephen has sat behind me. We have a lot of conversations very regularly. I think we've got a very good relationship going with our teams. Genuinely commend the work that Audit Scotland have been doing. They're improving value for money, they're improving efficiency in our public sector. We want to do the same. We want to improve transparency. We want to improve the scrutiny so that Parliament, the public, our taxpayers can be confident they're getting optimal value for money and outcomes. I think all those recommendations talk to that. As I said, the governance review is underway. We want to make sure that it's proportionate, streamlined, efficient. When I arrived, we put quite a lot of changes in around the delivery executive, for example, meeting every Thursday focused on performance outcomes and trying to get that golden thread, which I accept Audit Scotland quite right. We've got more to do in the performance report to take that through to the national outcomes, so it's very clear how investment today is having both a short, medium and long term impact to improve outcomes in Scotland. The corporate transformation programme is quite right, responding to previous concerns that Audit Scotland had around systems and processes not being fit for purpose, insufficient investment that is being corrected. We've talked about public service reform. We've come on to whole-government accounts. We've had that report come to our Audit Committee where Audit Scotland attend with our lead non-executives to go through each of those recommendations and we can respond to each of them at this committee either in writing or when we appear next year, as you prefer. That's fine, but you accept the conclusions and again we'll ask questions to get into a bit more of the detail of some aspects of those in the remaining time that we've got. I'm going to bring in Willie Coffey at this point, Willie. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you. Just on the previous conversation there about books, I hope that we are not going down the road where politicians can determine what people can and can't read or should and shouldn't read. I think that people who do make purchases must be able to justify that within whatever framework they have in place. Whoever reaches a position where people are saying that they must not and cannot read something, that's not a direction of travel that I would like to follow. On the issue about the post office that Mr Simpson raised, is it your understanding, permanent secretary, that both the post office and Fujitsu will also be providing a compensation fund for the cases that emerged as a result of the post office scandal? Just on that last point, I think, and forgive me, because obviously this situation is moving very quickly. I think that if the committee would like more detail on precisely how that is all going to work, it's something we can provide in writing. I say that only because the First Minister wrote to the UK Government last week. They only replied this week, and there's a statutory inquiry underway. The inquiry will, of course, conclude with regards some of the points that you've made around the post office, around Fujitsu. As we said earlier, the compensation scheme is there. We want to make sure that consent motions are in place and that anybody who is affected in Scotland can access it. The precise details of how that will all work is being rapidly worked on right now, and I don't have certainty on that. Just on your first point, if I suggested any censorship with regards what people can read, that was not my intent at all, and I'm with you 100 per cent. We want to create an environment where colleagues aren't paralysed into thinking they can't do the right things for their development. We want them to be empowered, and we want them to be supported in doing so, but we also need to make sure that we respond to the concerns that Mr Simpson sets out around transparency, accountability value for money, and I think we're going to get the controls right now, so that will be the case and improve the system. Of course, the committee should quite rightly hold us to account on that, and we'll make sure that it's very visible, but in our responses we'll also make clear that the library should be encouraged to ensure that the diversity of opinion and learning is available to people so that our civil service is the best it can be, and not censored by ministers. Turning back to the consolidated accounts, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions. First, on underspends and borrowing, in your opening remarks, you were talking about the current out-turn position on underspend. When we got to the Auditor General's report, it was round about £500 million, but you mentioned that it was £244 million. Can you just give us a brief explanation of how and why that's moving and changed? If it's okay, I might ask Jackie to do that, because she is far better at it than I am. The accounts that we produce under the PFA Act require us to do so against the budgets that are voted and agreed by the Scottish Parliament. The provisional and final out-turn that we report to Parliament is based on the Treasury, the UK Government budgets and the block grant that we get. There is a difference between the two, so if we look at the annual accounts and the £500 million underspend, those were based on the budget set at the spring budget revision. After the spring budget revision, there were a number of funding adjustments, so final consequentials from the UK Government were known, so we didn't have that at the time of the spring budget revision. Our final borrowing decisions were taken, that's the case in every year. That changed the funding by £187 million, so it reduced the £500 million underspend, if you like. There are a set of adjustments that are in the accounts. The accounts are not just about our spending power. We have budgets for provisions, revaluation adjustments, so there's about £80 million in there that equates to non-cash type variances that we can't spend on anything else. The spending power, if you like, is the underspend against the Treasury budgets that we carry forward through the Scotland reserve, so the Scotland reserve is driven by the fiscal framework. At provisional out-turn, that underspend was £244 million, which is not 0.5 per cent of the budget that we have available. We haven't yet published the final out-turn, because there are some bodies that are being finalised, but we do expect that to be imminent and we don't expect there to be a significant or substantial change from the provisional out-turn figure. That's the £244 million that's carried forward through the Scotland reserve. It's been fully deployed in 23, 24, and absolutely no loss of spending power. What the public usually want to know is to see if that £244 million is the final out-turn position. Does that carry forward into next year's budget or do you lose it? It's already been included in 23, 24, so the Scotland reserve, as the permanent secretary set out within the fiscal framework, we've got an overall cap of £700 million at the moment. Where we are in a position where we are looking to carry forward more than that, there is a potential that we may lose. We have not been in that position. Part of our year-end management and year-end strategy is making sure that we don't, that we maximise the budget in year, accepting that we can't ever overspend our budget. We always have to manage to some level of underspend, but, as I said, that is not 0.5 per cent of the budget and we think that that's modest. Tolerance of what we expect. Thank you very much for that. The permanent secretary wrote to the committee to talk to us about the whole Government account. The committee has always been interested in getting as broad and as wide a view of every penny that is spent by the Government and its agencies that we can get. Also, in your opening remarks, you were telling us a little bit about the progress that you have been making. You described it as phase 1, phase 2, and then in phase 1 you've managed to, as I understand it, include spending from other bodies, non-ministerial bodies, bodies that are funded by the budget. It's really welcome that we can see that, but I wanted to focus your attention on the phase 2 side of it, where you say in your letter that, because of our reliance on the UK Government's whole Government accounts picture, we haven't made the progress that we would want to have made, and you're in discussion with me or at Scotland about how to improve that situation in phase 2. I know that it's a very dry subject, but could you give the committee some flavour of what the problem is with our reliance on UK Government and whole Government accounts and a little flavour of what you're trying to do to help us along that road? I'll bring Jackie in. Jackie met with Audit Scotland last week on phase 2 and the opportunity of a consolidated assets and liabilities report that we hope that we can produce for the committee. Jackie was telling me again a bit before my time, but when this work originally was thought through, that was the original intent of can we have a consolidated view of assets and liabilities for Scotland's public sector, a strategic level with a sufficient detail so we can see what that looks like and then direct scrutiny accordingly. Going back to that original intent and seeing can we get a method that Audit Scotland working with us, we can produce for the committee in a way that gives us data that is sufficiently current that it will hopefully either inform decision making or inform current scrutiny. The problem we've had is to progress on the phase 2 whole Government accounts. We had a dependency on the data that the Treasury and UK Government were pulling together and that has, due to the pandemic and a number of other factors, fallen behind. We haven't been able to draw down and use that to create the phase 2 consolidation, but I think we've got a method to go forward and make progress here back to the intent that the committee had to show us a total view. Jackie, do you want to give us the latest on last week? It will be too optimistic here, but at the same time I'd like us to get to a plan that the committee is content with and is actually deliverable. To an extent, we've been struggling to do something that wasn't feasible. I think that it's fair to say that when we talk about doing a set of accounts there is a requirement on us as the Scottish Government in terms of those, the accounting requirements within those and of Audit Scotland in terms of the audit of those. That's why the original proposal was so reliant on the whole of Government accounts approach, which is a fairly intensive process that the UK Government runs that ensures that the information is consolidated, aggregated, inter-departmental balances, as we call them, are removed. There is a common set of accounts, there's a single set of accounts, so you're reporting an apple alongside an apple, so to speak, and that therefore allows us to meet accounting standards around them but also audit to meet the auditing standards. It's quite a complex process. In the absence of that and the information from the whole of Government accounts being available to us, what we have tried to do is almost take a step back and respond obviously to the committee in terms of where is the interest, where is the public interest in terms of information that is not pulled together in one place at the moment, but that would add value to information that is already existing with an individual account of these public bodies and public sector entities. As the permanent secretary noted, the discussion that we're having with Audit Scotland is whether we can create something that isn't a set of accounts but is additional financial information that consolidates the assets and liabilities of all the public sector bodies within Scotland that are funded through the Scottish Government budget. We can build on that, we can pull out different elements of the information trends over years and we think that it would be of interest and it would provide more than is currently there. It also gives Audit Scotland, because it's not a set of accounts, the opportunity to comment on it without necessarily having to provide an audit opinion. We think that this is a workable way forward. What we want to ensure is that, as we do this, it will meet Audit Scotland's expectations and the committee's expectations, but we are quite positive that we can take forward a pilot of this pretty quickly. OK, I think I'm with you on that explanation that was really detailed, but thank you for that. Do you think that we will get to a position where we can draw down, receive, or whatever the terminology is, UK whole government accounts in order to get to that phase 2 that we had originally planned to get to? Is that going to happen soon or is it unpredictable? There's a really interesting question that we'd be very happy to discuss further with the committee. Would that be the desired way forward? Is it about producing another set of accounts? Is it about having a very detailed document with hundreds of pages? Or is it about providing key financial information that will inform and meet the public interest? Because of the absence of the whole of government accounts information, as my proposal is, we push ahead with this plan, we provide the information to Audit Scotland and to the committee, and then we can take stock and determine when the whole of government accounts information becomes more timely and available, whether that is a direction that we want to revert back to. OK, when would we see that as a committee in the next year? So what we'd like to do, we've got stage 1, we shared with Audit Scotland last year and we're about to share it. We need to wait for the final outturn to do stage 1. Stage 2 we're going to start now and the intention would be that we would share stage 2 based on 2022-23 with Audit Scotland first. We'd work through, hopefully, in quite an agile way. This is the information, this is how we think it could be presented. I suppose at that point we could then decide whether that pilot was something that the committee would be interested in seeing, but we would hope to reach an agreement on that so that when we do 23-24 we run the full process through. What we want to do with stage 1 is next year, we want to link it and align it with the financial outturn reporting, because what the financial outturn reporting is doing is reporting spending against the Treasury budgets, so we want to put alongside that the asset and liability information, not just to spend against the budget. We think that that's a really nice package and really good timing, so that's our intent as we move forward. That sounds very encouraging. I think I'll leave it at that there, convener. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. I mean, just for the avoidance of doubt, this is a request that's long standing from the committee dating back to 2016 and I think the committee at that time was promised it in fairly short order and here we are almost eight years later and there's no sign of it. I think just to be clear, we're not asking for this as a matter of curiosity or some kind of hobbyist interest. We think it's really important and the Auditor General thinks it's really important that we understand what it is we own and what it is we owe. Individual components of the public sector are expected to provide audited accounts, so we can see what they own and what they owe. All that we are requesting is that we get something similar across the whole of the public sector in Scotland. We recognise that there have been obstacles to that and there is a latest series of obstacles out with your control. I think you described it in the letter you sent to us, Permanent Secretary, but I just wanted to reaffirm the store that we set by this and the importance which we attached to it being tackled urgently. I think the language of the Auditor General continues to be about this being a deficiency that needs to be addressed with some urgency. I'm going to invite Colin Beattie to come in at this point. I've got a couple of areas that I'd like to explore, Permanent Secretary. One of them has been somewhat tritted already, and it's about public service reform, work force and service redesign. Would you agree with the statement in the report from the Auditor General that the delivery of public services in their current form is not affordable? Well, we are changing the form, so I suppose the Auditor General's conclusion that without reform there's a significant affordability challenge or it's not affordable is fair. We've just talked about, for example, if I took the core civil service, we started at a point where there was going to be growth of over 2,000 of just that core SG. Actually, it's been flat. We expect it to be marginally lower and we've taken contractors out and will continue to do so wherever we can. So, we're changing the form and the size of what it would have otherwise been, and I agree with the Auditor General if we hadn't done that or other things such that that would have been unaffordable given what the budget sets us on our total operating cost. Ministers, of course, with the Scottish Fiscal Commission, had a budget envelope. That was agreed based on assumptions around growth, tax, the block grant, and then made choices accordingly. So, I referenced some public services like police, like fire, where there's been significant investment and that is to protect those services, protect our low crime to ensure that we can continue to deliver the right preventative community support. But those services are also reforming, and I think that Deputy First Minister set out very clearly to FPAC this week and to Parliament our intent to continue to reform our public services. So, we want to go online and be as digital as we can wherever possible. We've got a portfolio of change with regards to that, with regards to cloud hosting, around payments, around automations into services wherever it's feasible to do so, disclosure of Scotland, records of Scotland, social security are examples where that's working well. We've done some good work on consolidation of public sector estate in Glasgow. The team have more plans to take that out to Perth and Aberdeen and ultimately build a multi-year programme there. Our commercial team, there was a nice article the other day showing how once for Scotland commercial procurement around energy contracts across local government has enabled those councils to affect savings compared to what they would have otherwise paid on the open market. So, these types of changes are necessary for our public services to deliver better outcomes and be affordable. So, I think if we didn't do any of those things, we just carried on without reform, without improvement, without transformation, then there's a significant risk that ultimately wouldn't be affordable. But I suppose in the final analysis, the budget has to add up its requirement based on law. The budget is fixed in terms of has its limited levels of flexibility and therefore we must ensure that it's affordable and the budget balances. The question is can we do it and improve outcomes and experiences at the same time because we transform and improve the way we deliver our public services and that's what the reform programme is all about. I'm going to take that in its totality as being a yes, you agree. Given the fact that clearly there isn't affordability, obviously there is an urgency in which to act. Because the unaffordability is not going to go away, you're providing some mitigating factors. However, most, the emergency budget review, the options in that were really non-recurring and provided short-term relief rather than long-term solution, long-term savings, which is what you need. So you are also time-bound within a period in which you have to make it affordable, otherwise your budget, as you state, is going to go over its limit and we can't do that legally. So you must have a time frame in mind in which to achieve that equilibrium between the budget that's going to be available and the changes that you need to make to make that budget balanced, otherwise you're in trouble. Agreed and the budget that is before Parliament now for scrutiny for 24-25 seeks to do exactly as you just said in the short term. Alison might just say a bit more than around the medium term and the fiscal strategy and the opportunity to set more multi-year envelopes to enable that longer-term planning. The point I'm trying to make is to live within those cash budgets set according to the envelope that the Scottish Fiscal Commission have given us, given our tax choices, given our block grant, given our expectations on any additional income. How we lead through that is the opportunity to transform and deliver better outcomes even when we are facing difficult financial pressures. So a small example on the preventative side, the work on the promise, a long way to go, but we're determined to keep the promise and to support whole family wellbeing. We have seen, take Glasgow as an example, a significant reduction of children who are in the care system there. That is improving outcomes for children, it's keeping children safe with their families and supporting their wellbeing, but it's also of course reducing cost. We want to make sure on prevention wherever possible, so on fair work, supporting more people into work so they can earn more higher earnings in Scotland, higher revenue, our wellbeing economy strategy generating increased revenue compared to if those earnings levels were lower, driving growth, attracting investment, that's what Scottish Enterprise are talking about on Monday. Those are all factors in the long-term strategy along with the service reform, but Alison, you just said a bit on the medium-term sustainability in the next steps. Thanks, permanent secretary. Just to pick up on the point around the imperative for reform, the Barnett funding that's available to the Scottish Government has fallen by 1.2 per cent in real terms since the 22-23 budget. The external conditions are there, there is a clear driver that we need to be doing things differently to maintain and continue to improve services and outcomes. For 22-23, we did have that emergency budget review and just to note very briefly there that in that position where we had that inflationary shock that we did not have funding increasing at the same rate. As those inflationary pressures, the Scottish Government had a very limited set of options available, so you end up having to take the savings that are technically available at that point in the year rather than necessarily the ones that you would have designed at the start of the year and that leads to, in general, them being more likely to be non-recurring savings. What we've sought to do through the 24-25 budget work with portfolios is start looking at where we can be recognising those more, those recurrent savings and where there are opportunities to be reprioritising funding within portfolios towards those areas that have the greatest impact on the Government's missions. We're already looking ahead at the same time to the production of the next medium-term financial strategy, which is expected to be presented to Parliament in May. What that will bring through is our medium-term outlook for the public finances on funding, including tax revenues and on public spending. What we'll see there will be starting strout. What are we expecting the trends to be? What are the drivers of public spending? What are the actions that we're going to be taking to continue to develop and progress the public spending pillar that was in last year's medium-term financial strategy to improve that underlying sustainability of our public spending? That includes the public service reform programme. As we see the programme mature more into the delivery phase, what impact that has on our projections of spend in future years? It seems that much of the changes that you're making are in response to in-year budget needs, as opposed to long-term. I'm not really seeing the long-term radical structural changes to create sustainability over a long period. We're seeing responses to whatever money were allocated in a year and the cuts to that and how we respond to that. How do we deal with both? Sometimes they don't act well together. That's fair challenge. That's the intent of the 10-year public service reform programme to ensure that we keep both the long and the short term in view. I talked at the beginning around the performance report that we've added to the annual accounts based on the feedback from this committee to improve that line of sight. I think we've got more to do there to show short term value for money outcomes and improvement wherever we can towards the medium and long term NPF national outcomes as well. If I take the point I was making earlier, the budget, we think, has done the right things to protect our mission on equality to drive child poverty down in Scotland. It is 9% points lower than what it would have otherwise been. Our investment in devolution of social security is ensuring incomes for families with children is higher than what it otherwise would be. We need to continue with the child poverty delivery plan. There's a lot of elements to that, including the work on employment. We've seen good labour market statistics this week for Scotland. Unemployment is lower than the rest of the UK. In our long term strategy around skills, employment, tackling poverty and childcare, this is about ensuring that the positive destinations that we have from schools, which are already at good high levels, continue to be sustained and are reforms of our systems. We do indeed affect those long term changes, but there are a number of long term reform programmes under way. Social care, for example, in terms of the national care services one, there's a level of reform under way in the justice system two. As I said, I think we're on a good trajectory there in justice in terms of clearing caught back logs, in terms of low crime, the prison population, we need to keep it under its operating capacity, obviously, and there's a challenge there with good work under way. I agree with you. The whole point of the programme is got to balance the budget in the short term and respond to the shocks that we face and the changes that come. More may come in the March budget from the UK Government. More may come after the UK election. But we also need to make sure that we're doing the underlying public service reform, as you say, whether that be across child poverty, across economy, towards net zero, or in our public service recovery plan so that those systems are more resilient for the longer term. We're going to try and bring those things together. As I say, sixth monthly updates to Parliament from the Deputy First Minister, and we'll try and put more definition into that both short and long term so Parliament can see it as clearly as possible. Given the point that I was trying to make around ultimately this has to be empowered into systems and led by the boards of the chief executives and those systems for it to be truly meaningful so they are driving the change with as much enablement and support that we can muster and give them. OK, let me move on to something else, which is about managing financial interventions. The Scottish Government's obviously into being in a number of places over the years, Pacific Airport, Ferguson, Bifar, I suppose, and pretty much all of them have had a fairly significant financial consequence for the Scottish Government. What is the process that's followed by the Government when engaging with these private companies and how the economic analysis behind it supports the decisions that are made? I'll bring Gregor in if that's OK. The section 22 report, Grateful Order Scotland, have worked really well with us and the committee sponsored, challenged that work on the private investment framework. I remember the first time I came here, the sort of challenge of when will you finish it, will you get it published. We did finish it, we did get it published. It is establishing a discipline. We established a new capability in terms of strategic commercial assets division. We've recruited Gregor's, our DG economy, who has spent the last few years of his career working for global council in the private sector. We are trying to ensure that we're bringing the very best disciplines we can to the management of that portfolio to ensure that independent expert analysis is informing those value for money assessments to ensure we get the best return for the taxpayer we can and support those assets on their long-term growth and strategies wherever we can as well. Gregor, do you want to say a bit more about that interaction and anything else you'd like to add? For sure. Permanent Secretary has already suggested the strategic commercial assets division, which was set up in July 2022. That's right at the centre of the model that we have introduced. SCAD provides essentially a management model for those interventions over the entire lifecycle of the interventions. It provides assurance processes for me, for the permanent secretary, for ministers and does so in a way that is consistent with Audit Scotland recommendations, so working very closely with Audit Scotland. Over the course of that 18-month period, we have introduced a new operating model, so we get that relationship right between the Government's, the sponsored teams and the management teams of those individual assets. The elements of that operating model should emphasise that this is a process of continuous improvement, so we're always trying to work to improve this so that we absolutely get that relationship right with those commercial assets, building on Audit Scotland's advice. It includes ensuring right from the start that we have a very clear rationale for any investment, also that we are able to articulate what the exit strategy is. It's about ensuring with the right capacity, the right capability within Government, but also by drawing on external expertise where that's appropriate, so that we can manage that intervention over the course of that lifecycle. That means that we need to have the ability to scale up so that we're able to actually have a surge capacity to work much more closely and intensively on particular elements of the intervention. It absolutely means that we deploy best practice that we learn from what works in one example and that we take lessons from that and we improve our approach to working with other assets. One of the most important developments I would see over the past 18 months is our ability both internally but then also drawing externally on the right expertise so that we are able to ensure that we are fulfilling our sponsorship functions in exactly the right way, advising our ministers in exactly the right way and really providing that sort of technical capability so that we can ensure that we are able to work with other assets. We need to ensure that there's proper budget management, proper risk management and all of those elements that are in place. It requires us to work closely with each of those assets but also to respect the fact that those assets have to operate on a commercial basis and there are some areas where Government quite simply, it's inappropriate for us to get involved. We need to leave the board and the management team the space to make decisions on a purely commercial basis. So how well would you say that's worked with Ferguson? I think Ferguson's, we have improved over the course of time as I said, SCAD was created 21 months ago, a little under 21 months ago and that has brought better risk management, better scrutiny of costs. We have seen cost increases in the case of Ferguson's, obviously those are well known and indeed we continue to scrutinise costs and the whole question of delivery of the vessels in the case of Ferguson's. We're doing that in a way that ensures that we bring in exactly the right sort of commercial and technical expertise so that we can ensure that everything has been done to bear down in costs and also to manage risk in the best possible way. Obviously a big concern is how the decision making happens in terms of taking a decision to intervene and I think there's been questions asked about that in the past as to what that process is. Do you consider that process now to be robust? I do, I don't want to be optimistic and trip up tomorrow so let's try and make sure we don't do that but I do think those lessons have been well learned and Gregor genuinely brings huge expertise to this team and the Auditor-General in the section 22 report recognised that there's been a lot of work to be done. The due diligence that we did on the value for money assessment of 801 802 was robust and that was done in a very comprehensive way consistent with the investment framework that was published and we sought the Ministerial Authority to proceed given our value for money assessment. That's the right process, it's as per the Public Finance Manual, it's what this committee I assume would expect to see us do and the auditors have helped ensure that the rigour of that process was comprehensive. I'm very confident that any intervention in the future would step through the same process because of this division that we've created because the learning has been digested properly and let's be clear when all is said and done here. What we're in the business of trying to do is deliver better outcomes and in this context improve the connectivity and lifeline services for our island communities. The other day confirming the first of our turkey vessels will come into service this year. We have four of those due in this Parliament plus 801 802. It is possible we can complete this Parliament with six additional vessels into our fleets and we have the small vessel replacement programme ahead of us as well. So our objectives here are to get the average age of the fleet down, improve resilience and ultimately recover back to that trend where we were seeing more people using our ferry network than ever before and that's the service we want to ensure is in place. So these decisions really matter. The learning needs to be embedded into the way we work and I think we've made big progress with that but again I'm very happy to commit to the committee to providing regular updates on the work of that division and the consistency of how that framework is applied because like you I want to make sure the lessons of the past are learned and we optimise value for money moving forward. It would be helpful if that took place. Just moving to Prestwick Airport, I mean as early as this morning we were hearing that there's multiple purchasers interested and what's the process for assessing these potential buyers. There's been comments made in the past that there's a danger of asset stripping because of the land and so on attached to Prestwick Airport and the possibility it could be sold off for development purposes. How are you assessing these buyers as to what their approach is, how genuine they are and what the benefit is going to be to the country? There's a robust process for that. Gregor has said it more. Yes, so Scottish ministers have said that we do intend for Prestwick to return to private ownership at the appropriate time. We've also said that any decision of that sort would need to be informed by what is right for the success of the business, also its contribution to local economy. It's also essential when we receive expressions of interest that we pursue those rigorously but also assess the credibility of those expressions of interest. It is important that if we are to return at Prestwick to the private sector that the proposition will be one which ensures the continued success of Prestwick Airport as an aviation business and it has made considerable progress over the course of the past few years. So in that process the board clearly plays a role. Government officials play a clear role in bringing advice to ministers. We also draw on external advice, commercial advice in that process. If necessary, we will conduct due diligence over any parties who have expressed interest to determine their credibility. If it is the case that we get an actual proposal to buy Prestwick Airport that meets those criteria that I've described and of course Parliament would be the Cabinet Secretary, Neil Gray, has already committed that he would inform Parliament and update them at their least possible opportunity. How feasible is it to build into this process some certainty that there won't be simply an asset stripper coming in? The ministerial commitment on that is very clear. We're looking to ensure... The contractual commitments that are needed? The contractual commitments would be reflected in the ministerial decision and a proposition to return Prestwick Airport to the private sector. So the intention would be to ensure that there are conditions within the contract that prevented them simply selling off the bits of the assets and being left with a run-pair port? So the intention would be to ensure the continued success of Prestwick as an aviation business. That's not the same. The means by which that would be done, that would be determined in accordance with the circumstances at the time and advice that we would receive from legal advisers and commercial advisers about the best means to achieve that outcome. But surely it's not in the interests of the country for someone to take it over and just strip its value out. We would agree with that. That is not an outcome that we would want to see. Our ministers are very clear. How are you going to prevent it? We would take commercial and legal advice to ensure the best possible protection against that outcome. The approach would depend on the circumstances that we find ourselves in at the time and the nature of the proposition that the counterparty that we're dealing with. It would be tailored to those circumstances to ensure that outcome. Just a couple of quick questions then. The framework agreement for Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow was due to be finished by December 23. Has it in fact been finalised? The framework agreement is close to being finalised. We expect that to happen within the next month or two, either this month or next month. Perhaps you'd be able to advise this committee when that's happened. Yes, of course. The last thing really is, it's about the due diligence exercise for the MV Glenn Sanex and the MV Glenn Rosa. This supposedly was done in accordance with the requirements of the SPFM. What information can you share on previous due diligence reviews for these vessels? What will be available in terms of the review that's currently on-going? We received the chief executive of Ferguson Marine in front of the Net Zero Energy and Transport Committee of cost increases in September 2022, which were then subjected to due diligence. That was provided by Tenio, supported by other technical consultants, including Woodbank Marine. That, of course, led to the decision to seek written authority and that written authority being provided by our ministers. That was a complex exercise, but actually a really important exercise, given the importance of those decisions that were taken then. It also required us to interrogate some commercially sensitive information. It's because of those commercial sensitivities that were limited in our ability to publish that information. It has been shared with Audit Scotland. The Auditor General has confirmed that Audit Scotland was provided with full access both to officials and to documentation, including the due diligence work that supported that decision to seek written authority. How much can we provide this committee with? We have provided the committee with as much information as we can, given the commercial sensitivities. We get right to the heart of the competitiveness of Ferguson's business and what that means in turn for the future commercial success of Ferguson's, which I'm sure we all have a shared interest in ensuring that we do everything possible to ensure that. Audit Scotland has reviewed the procedure that we followed and the advice that was provided by those third parties. They have confirmed that that was the appropriate approach that we followed leading up to that process of seeking written authority. I think that Graham Simpson wants to come in on a couple of these points and then I've got a couple of questions too. I'm going to ask you about Ferguson and Presswick. If we stick with Ferguson for the time being, what was it about proceeding with the Glen Sanex and Glen Rosa that did not represent value for money? We did the due diligence on those revised cost estimates. The requirement for me as an accountable officer under the Public Finance and Accountability Act is to assess the regularity, propriety and value for money. For any policy of programme, but specifically in this case obviously, we were looking at that programme in the light of those revised cost increases. The conclusion that I reached in the basis of that advice, both from my colleagues within the Scottish Government and also from external advisers, was that the conditions for regularity and propriety were satisfied. In both cases, value for money was satisfied in the case of 801 Glen Sanex. In the case of 802, what we were doing at that moment in time was comparing the estimated cost to complete of 802 Glen Rosa with possible alternatives. When we did that analysis, given various factors that were creating uncertainty including the inflationary environment and the progress of the bills, we concluded at that time that I couldn't gain sufficient assurance on that question of value for money in the case of Glen Rosa 802. Essentially, you arrived at the conclusion that it would be better value for money, cheaper, shall we say, to procure a vessel elsewhere rather than proceed with the Glen Rosa. Based on your right, a narrow value for money calculation and comparison between alternatives, of course our ministers, when providing that written authority, they take into account wider considerations and benefits including the timeliness of delivery of the vessels compared to the alternatives given the lead-in time for that procurement process and wider economic benefits from maintaining shipbuilding and the Clyde, which under the SPFM and the Treasuries Green Book were only able to take into account some of the narrower benefits associated from that. I understand that, of course. Ministers have to consider other things rather than just the cost of the vessel, but in terms of cost of vessel, I think that this question has been answered previously but perhaps you can remind me of what was your estimate of the cost of procuring a new vessel. That information has not been published in part because that is, in itself, draws on commercially sensitive information because if we were to go through another procurement exercise, if we were to release that information, that would put us at a commercial disadvantage in that process. I'll need to check the record, but when I was not a member of this committee and I joined it for a session, I'm pretty sure that Neil Gray did provide an answer to that, but we'll check back on that. We can check that. We absolutely can check. One of the benchmark people sometimes just uses what was the cost of procurement for the vessels that are coming from Turkey, but they are slightly different in terms of scope. Obviously, the history and the service routes and all the rest of it, but let's just double check if it's something that we can provide. I honestly can't see why that should be any big secret. We know that the vessel is in Turkey, of course. If we were to go through a procurement exercise, we'd be looking to minimise the cost of that procurement, and if we were to disclose a figure that basically said, this is the assumption that we make about the cost of that procurement, that would put us at a disadvantage in that process, and that could be costly for us. We're trying to understand why you arrived at a conclusion that it was not value for money to continue with the Glen Rosa, as opposed to another option. Figures are quite important in that. I completely accept that if you were to go out and procure, it might arrive at a different figure, but you've based your assessment on something. We'd based our assessment on the best possible estimate of what the alternative cost would be if we were not to continue with the build of Glen Rosa. If we were then to publish that number, that would then potentially put us at a disadvantage if we were to go through such a procurement exercise, because we would have essentially have published a number, which would indicate the expectation of what we would do. We would expect to pay as part of that process. What was your estimate of the cost to complete the Glen Rosa? That was part of that due diligence exercise, and we have shared that information with Audit Scotland. We've always said that it's for the chief executive of Ferguson's to update Parliament, the NSAC committee and, of course, they come before this committee, if his estimates of the cost to complete the vessel change. The due diligence process that we went through drawing on our commercial advice not only interrogated those numbers, but also looked at questions of contingency. We were doing that on the basis of an examination of the yard's competitiveness and its ability to deliver those vessels at cost according to the timeline that was being set out at that time. It was an interrogation in the sense of the competitiveness of the yard at that moment in time. I ask you for a figure. Are you prepared to give the figure? We haven't published that figure because it's commercially sensitive. I know you haven't published it. I'm asking you for it. The time that the analysis was done, and I don't think anything has changed since then. That's not commercially sensitive, Mr Irwin. The figure is based on an interrogation of the competitiveness of the yards and its credibility of its estimates of the cost to complete that vessel. There is a degree of commercially sensitive information that is inherent within that calculation. It's for that reason that we did not wish to publish and share that information. We are absolutely committed to being as transparent as we can be with this committee and in public, and indeed publishing material where possible. We also have a requirement that we should not put the yards at a competitive disadvantage so that we can do everything that we possibly can to secure a sustainable future for the yards. That wouldn't put the yard at a competitive disadvantage. We only want to know what the estimate of the cost of completing that vessel was. That's not affecting its competitiveness. It shouldn't be a secret. You said that on quarterly updates, didn't you, from the chief executive? What's the answer? The chief executive, as the permanent secretary has indicated, he comes before the net zero in energy and transport committee once a quarter, and he provides any updates to the estimated cost. I'm aware of that, but you're here in front of the Public Audit Committee and you're being asked for a figure and you're trying to hide behind the chief executive. I'm trying to explain that when we commission external due diligence, which interrogates the competitiveness position of the yard and its ability to build vessels and the cost associated with building those vessels. The detail of that is commercially sensitive and that potentially jeopardises our efforts to ensure that the yard enjoys a strong, commercially successful, sustainable future. Have you decided, or has a decision been made yet, on how much the Scottish Government is prepared to invest in the yard in terms of upgrading equipment there? We know that the chief executive has asked for further investment. He was turned down and there is going to be a review. Has that taken place? The yard submits a business plan and an investment plan. Any investment proposition of that sort were legally required to demonstrate that Government support would comply with subsidy control requirements. That includes that we would be acting in a manner that would be consistent with the way in which a commercial market operator would act. We commissioned external due diligence on that and we reached the position where we were unable to be satisfied that we would meet that commercial market operator test on that proposal. What we have been doing with the yard since then is working with them to revise their business plan and the investment plan that is associated with that. We have supported requests from the yards for them to have the budget to hire external advisers to make sure that that investment plan and business plan is as rigorous as it possibly can be. That work is still on-going and we hope to receive a revised business plan and investment plan from the yards soon and we will examine that carefully. If we can find a way to do it in a manner that is consistent with subsidy control, then that is a proposition that we will be able to take to ministers. What happens if you cannot find a way to do it? We absolutely want to do what we can to ensure that we invest in the yards in a way that allows us to secure its commercial future, to provide that pathway to a sustainable commercial future. The exercise that we are going through now is essentially to try and ensure that the plan that emerges from the yards can be consistent with the subsidy control regime. If the proposition that comes back does not do that, then of course we have the option of trying that again. We are bound to comply with the legal regime. We have brought in advisers to support the yards as they develop that plan. You have heard David Tideman here describe his optimism about the potential for the yard to win orders for future business. We need to make sure that we are supporting the yards in the best way that we can but in a manner that is consistent with the legal framework that we have to operate within. In the interest of time, I will go back on to Presswick Airport. I am just trying to understand the process. What happens when somebody approaches the airport with an expression of interest in buying it? It goes first to the board and the board should then tell you that there has been an expression of interest. What happens after that? What happens after that is that our officials will typically work with the boards to examine the credibility of the entity expressing that interest and also to examine the nature of that interest and what the proposition is from that entity. At some point in that, of course, our ministers will be informed of that throughout. At some point during that process, we may conclude that we need to draw on external commercial advice. That may take the form of due diligence concerning the entity that is expressed interest. We need to test whether they are credible purchasers. That is partly a question of the individuals themselves but also the financial strength of that entity, their ability to raise finance if that is what is being proposed, but also their skills and expertise within the aviation sector and the nature of the plan that they have for Presswick Airport as an aviation business. It is a combination of the boards working with officials and drawing on the right sort of external advice at the right moment in the process. Is it the case that you are taking your main advice from the board or is it actually your decision? If the board said, actually, we do not really want to sell, which is my impression of the board, could you potentially take a different view and say to the board, well no, this actually looks okay to us? We are the shareholder. Ultimately, this is a decision for the Scottish Government and our ministers. Our ministers have said that when the moment is right, we want to return Presswick to the private sector. The boards have considerable expertise and we respect that and we draw on that. Of course, as part of our sponsorship function, we need to also rigorously test what we hear from the board as well. External advice can certainly help to support that process because, of course, that external advice is independent. We are a little bit up against the clock, but we have a couple of other areas that we want to ask you about. Just before we move on, can I ask you, Permanent Secretary, what your view is on the fact that the written authority that was sought this year was the first one since 2007? Well, I think the written authority was well done and Audit Scotland have given us that confidence level. But do you think there have been so few concerns about ministerial spending decisions in all that time that it wouldn't have been warranted at any point? I think you might have asked me this question before and it's a bit hard for me to judge since I have been Permanent Secretary that has been the first time where we have judged it was necessary. Of course, I myself, the Chief Finance Officer, work with Gregor on that. It is obviously an exceptional process, which is not routine. My experience in Whitehall was that there were very few and far between, but when they happened, there was an understandable reason. For example, support grants in an environment where fraud and error checks might not be possible, but it's an emergency economic context. I suppose what I can say to the committee is that I'm committed to ensuring the duties, the public duties expected of us as accountable officers, that things are lawful, proper, regular, value for money are tested on a regular basis. Jackie and I stepped through the AO control process on all our expenditure and we're constantly testing that. The vast majority of the time where there is a concern or a doubt with regards to that, there is a dialogue with ministers to ensure that we are delivering value for money because of course that's what they want to do as well. I don't particularly have a commentary on what happened before I was permanent secretary here because I didn't experience it. I don't know the nature of the conversations which meant that those authorities were not required at the time. I'm going to move on to another quick question for you. Strategic commercial assets division. Do you consider the Petroenios Oil Refinery at Grangemouth a strategic commercial asset? Grangemouth is clearly a critical part of Scotland's national infrastructure. In the awesome Petrochina essential partners in business there. Our ministers have been working with Grangemouth in terms of a just transition plan and what's the right thing for our energy transition for many years. I don't know, Gregor, if there's anything more you want to say on the latest interaction there, but we'll continue to do everything we can to make sure that the transition that Grangemouth is going through, people are supported in terms of jobs, but also we're getting the right assurances we need from the UK government which regards our energy security, but Gregor, anything else you want to add? The Petroenios clearly said that they're planning to build import infrastructure. They've also said that they have not yet reached a final decision on the future of refining at Grangemouth. Planning to ensure that whether there is refining continues at Grangemouth or that import capability exists, that will ensure that access to fuel will be continuous and that will be available from the Grangemouth facility for many years to come under different scenarios. That is important from a strategic perspective. It is also the case that there are a number of different companies and operations that make up the Grangemouth cluster. The refinery is one part of that, an important part of that, but there are other companies that make up the Grangemouth cluster. We've been doing work for a while and we continue to do work and it's important to support that cluster as it transitions. We see lots of opportunities and indeed the companies who are involved in that cluster see lots of opportunities from low-carbon hydrogen production, from biorefining, from carbon capture and storage. That work is on-going and clearly it's very important that we do that right. Can I take from that that you do consider the oil refinery to be a strategic commercial asset? Does it fall within the scope of your strategic commercial asset division? It doesn't in the sense that strategic commercial assets, the term strategic commercial assets, refers to assets of the Scottish Government. The strategic commercial assets division is responsible for our interventions and indeed the process that might lead up to an intervention, but that is most definitely a step of last resort. There are other things that we do to support businesses in a range of different circumstances. Well before there's any question of financial intervention, but we've already discussed Ferguson's impressive airports, which are two important assets of the Scottish Government's strategic commercial assets. Okay, let me move on to another industrial intervention, which is contained in the report, and that's the Lucaba aluminium smelter, which brings us into the relationship between the Scottish Government and the GFG Alliance. The words of the Auditor General are again pretty clear this year. Not only has he chosen to include it in his section 22 report into the Scottish Government's consolidated accounts, he says there continues to be uncertainty regarding the financial stability of the GFG Alliance. He goes on to point out the potential liability to the public purse has increased by £21 million since last year, now to an exposure of £135 million. How are you managing that? What's your response to that? Isn't it looking increasingly likely that this whole investment could run into difficulty? It was reported at the weekend that the former chief executive of the Weilands Bank, which again was part of the GFG Alliance, was fined £110,000 by the Bank of England's Prudential Regulatory Authority. There are serious fraud-office investigations into the GFG Alliance. Various House of Commons select committees have cast doubts about the business model of the GFG Alliance. The last time we took evidence from you, they had failed to submit audited accounts. Where is your relationship with the GFG Alliance? What is the current position, as you understand it, given that risk and uncertainty as identified by the Auditor General? The business at Loch Arbor is operating well at the moment. The smelter is generating revenue. The business has strong, important links with the local community. There are 214 jobs currently at the complex. That's 40 more than in 2016. Just last year, seven new graduate apprenticeships were created by Loch Arbor. So far, the Loch Arbor guarantee its meeting, not just its economic objectives, its financial objectives. It generates income for the Scottish Government, as you will have seen from the accounts. We have increased the provision that reflects market developments over the course of the financial year for the accounts. The value of the security has decreased, but we have a strong suite of securities, including the smelter, the hydro and the estates. We have a robust approach to monitoring that and to the relationship with GFG. We have a quarterly guarantee meeting with GFG staff and smelter staff. I've visited the site, I believe that you have as well, permanent secretary. We've heard the investment plans that are being progressed for the site. We now have planning permission for the billet facility there. We have regular engagement at both official level and ministerial level. That work is supported by external commercial advisers. We interrogate carefully everything that we hear from GFG Alliance. We think that it is absolutely important that we are planning for all possible contingencies. As I have said, that suite of securities is a strong one. The provision in the accounts is informed by a technical assessment of a range of credit risk scenarios. Those are provided by independent advisers. It is not a forecast of likely outcomes in respect of the guarantee. The Auditor General has said that our approach is setting that provision against the potential exposure that is a reasonable one. You said that you have met representatives of the GFG Alliance. When was the last time the Scottish Government or one of its representatives met with Sanjeev Gupta? I'm afraid that I couldn't tell you that at the moment, but we could certainly find that out and share that information. What's the latest position on the submission of audited accounts? We have discussed this with GFG. We have emphasised to them the importance of satisfying audit requirements. They have told us that the appointment of auditors in the UK is a priority for them. Clearly, that is something that we think that they should address and it's important that they should address it. We hope that progress will be made there in the near future. I'm going to move us on to the final couple of areas that we wanted to speak to you about. One was around the corporate transformation programme. In the audit report, I think that paragraphs 84 and 85 talk about this. Reminders of the escalation in cost and the slippage in timetable of the new systems for HR and finance. The original cost was estimated to be £22 million. It's now almost doubled. It's gone up to £40 million. The date of implementation was meant to be the middle of last year for the HR system and the end of last year for the finance system. We're now told that it's not going to be until April of this year. Could you provide us with an update on where that is and are you going to meet those revised timetables? You're right, convener. We've got to get this right. Audit Scotland has quite reasonably called for a number of years out the fact that the underlying systems and processes were not fit for purpose. There had been a deficit of investment in these core systems. Of course, it's not just core SG. It's over 30 public bodies who are dependent on these systems, too. You've seen some examples where this has not gone well. I'm very determined that we do it. Make sure that the implementation is as safe and secure as possible. You're quite right. The intent was for the end of this financial year. I think it's going to be this calendar year. I don't think it will be April. I think we need to take a few more months in testing just to conclude on the final business process is necessary to implement this really safely. That doesn't change the cost of the system to the government, but it just I think is the right thing to do. Also to do with year end reconciliation. When we do the cut over, there has to be a freeze on the data and on recruitment, for example, for that short period. We'll finalise that accordingly. As you say, Audit Scotland had access and gone through the revised business case. That has been affected by inflation and those costs, but I'm very determined to keep those costs down within that business case as much as I can, but also to recover or to maximise the benefits from the system change for those public bodies and for the government so we get an improved efficiency longer term. We're working on all of that. Is there an external IT contractor involved? Well, the product is Oracle ERP, so yes, in that regard. We are not configuring our own in that way in terms of it being an in-house agile development or anything like that. It is an off the shelf mainstream service, a software service, and so in that regard it's well tested and has been delivered many times from any other organisations. But it is the most complex internal IT implementation, certainly that I've done in Scotland, so we want to make sure we get it right. I'm very happy to keep the committee updated as those plans progress through the year. With these kind of contracts, is there never any consideration of a fixed price contract being agreed rather than some kind of cost plus evolving ever increasing price tag? I mean, I don't know, Jackie, if you want to say anything more on the commercial strategy that is leading in the finance trend for this, but I'm happy to review that because we obviously want to make sure we get best value for money for the taxpayer. I think really briefly, I would just reinforce some of the points that the permanent secretary made. This is a really complex programme of work. This is not just about replacing the finance and HR systems for core Scottish Government, but it's over 30 public bodies and agencies as well. So this is a really, whilst we are adopting the Oracle Cloud system, there are still specific integrations and data considerations. We just need to get right. The way that we work through those is working through the programme and there has been tremendous progress in terms of working through the programme, but it is inevitable that, due to the overall complexity of the programme, there are things that need to be addressed and that become a pattern as you move through the programme. I'm not an expert on IT contracts, but I would suggest that one of the drawbacks with a fixed price contract is that it would actually constrain you from optimising the implementation of the system and the benefits that come alongside it. As a permanent secretary it alluded to, although we've got 30 bodies at the moment, we are adopting a fairly standardised shared service platform that we would hope would help us drive some of the efficiencies that we want to meet more broadly in the public sector going forward. Just on that last point, because I think it comes back to the conversation that we've had today around efficiency and effectiveness, as Jackie said, if we can establish this platform well, we've seen recently on our energy procurement for contracts with local government. When we do it once for Scotland, we can get a better deal, better outcomes for less cost, so we want to keep putting in place platforms common enablers that all our public sector can utilise to reduce cost and that will support fiscal sustainability. My ignorance, I haven't started reading computer weekly just yet, although it's been in the news quite a lot recently. Oracle, is that the name of the software or is that the name of the company that provides it? Who is the IT provider? What's the name of the commercial outfit that's providing that? Oracle Cloud is the company name. The product is an ERP product for us. If there's a bit more detail on this, it would be helpful for the SRO to keep the committee updated and to provide that to you, if you wish. We do get regular reports on IT projects, so we do get an opportunity to view and review those. As we're on this subject of software, finish up and turn to our resident in-house expert on all these matters, and that's Willie Coffey. Willie, do you want to ask the final couple of questions? Thank you very much for that, convener. Oracle is well-established, trustworthy, and I'm just glad that it's not called Horizon and it's not riddled with bugs that'll end up putting people in jail. I think that's important to put that on the record. Very respected software, so I look forward to seeing the developments with that. I can't let the opportunity pass, convener. Since Preswick was mentioned earlier, I was listening very carefully to what you were saying and what Mr Irwin was saying, and I'm assured by what you said about Preswick and taking into account all the factors that are important for us, particularly in Ayrshire, about supporting the airport. I think that the Government was right to step in in 2013 to save the airport, save thousands of jobs, but it kept the aerospace industry clearly established in that part of Scotland. It's a major strategic industry for Scotland as a whole. One player would have, if we ever do, to think about selling the airport, is to make sure that all that activity is protected and maintained, but also to try to encourage further development of the passenger traffic at Preswick, because a lot of people in my part of the world, convener and Ayrshire, feel compelled to travel to Glasgow or Edinburgh and further a field when they would really prefer to use Preswick if they were to happen to be fortunate enough to fly off. That would be a plea from my constituents, and I'm sure my Ayrshire colleagues that that would be part of any deal. It's nice to finish with that comment, Mr Coffey, because last time we spoke about this, we talked about the wider value for money economic benefits that Preswick has brought. We have got that economic assessment underway as part of that due diligence. Again, I'm very happy to keep the committee updated on that. Certainly my experience from visiting the airport. I was very impressed by the chair. There was a very compelling strategy for growth and to diversify the airport. As Gregor has set out, our ministers are clear that any purchase of the airport must be done in a way that protects that asset. Of course, the voice of the local community would be an essential part of that engagement, too. Ministers share your determination, and we share the view that although I know the portfolio of assets that we've discussed today have a level of novelty about them, it is quite possible that Preswick will continue to make a profit, deliver a good return and be a success story. We'll be doing everything that we can to support them in that endeavour, and we'll do that economic assessment and make it available publicly so that the wider benefits for the supply chain, for jobs, for business, for growth are as clear as they can be. Thank you so much for that. I wasn't quite finished. The final area that I was hoping to cover was on general performance reporting. The Auditor General made some significant comments. A new in your opening remarks mentioned performance reporting has to be mission-led government that transforms services. The Auditor General made some key comments, saying that the Government's approach to public performance reporting needs to improve. He mentioned a whole load of indicators there. Could you just give us a little flavour, finally, of how that is improving and what will the value of the performance reporting framework look like for the public? How would the public be able to see improvements in performance right across the public sector? I think that this is really important for us as a Government, as a Parliament for Devolution. I went on a visit recently to Young Scots and we were talking about how the country is changing. But so much of what we understand in terms of underlying trends was not understood and it wasn't sufficiently visible and explained, which is obviously disappointing. We want to improve that. This committee gave the good challenge of getting the performance report into the accounts. We've made that start. I think that we all accept that it's still a little bit too annual account-ish in terms of its density. We've tried to almost include everything and lost the story. We do want to really make sure that we can refine for the strategic narrative what are the key missions that this Government is seeking to achieve. So on equality, on opportunity, on community. What does that mean in real terms? It means child poverty being lower in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK region's nations. We can evidence that already. Nine percentage points we are determined to meet our statutory targets and get to that relative poverty target by 2030. When we come into the opportunity mission, indicators around foreign direct investment, around exports, around growth, around earnings, fair work. We have a collection of indicators that we can see progress on relative rest of the UK towards that net zero trust transition. Emissions falling towards 2045. Then in that opportunity mission for justice, courts backlog down a third. We want to get rid of those backlogs in this Parliament. Education positive destinations at record highs. How do we make sure on health and social care? We've seen some good improvement and reduction in drug deaths. We want to continue that trend through the years ahead. Plancare backlogs longest wait. So for the key indicators against the key missions showing the data as a trend data, where were we? Where are we? Where are we trying to get to to achieve our national outcomes and have we made progress in the short and medium term? That's what mission led government means. Our governance is constructed to drive that through so people sometimes talk about the implementation gap. We are trying to close that gap and to be clear that the strategy, the change programmes, the capabilities, the investment, the delivery are aligned. And you as a committee in Parliament can hold us to account on that. So those outcomes, the end of this Parliament, the end of the decade are improving. And of course, where that's not the case and we have a challenge, we've had that recently with regards to the prison population. We've been able to set out to Parliament what we're doing about it to mitigate the risk contained to live within our operating capacity. So we'll keep working on the performance report to make sure it tells that strategic narrative aligned with the missions, we're publishing the mandate letters accordingly. I think there's opportunities for more real-time data linked to the NPF so that it's not historic with the gaps that it currently has so that we can show in more real terms are we making progress against the key indicators. That's the journey we're on. I think it's getting better, but I agree we've still got more to do and Audit Scotland are helping with that challenge and we'll keep responding to that as best we can. OK. On that positive note, thank you very much. OK, Willie, thank you very much. I will now draw this morning's proceedings to a close but can I do so and thank the permanent secretary, John Paul Marx, for your time and your willingness to answer the questions that we've had this morning. It's greatly appreciated and also can I thank Greg Irwin, Jackie McAlister and Alison Cumming for also giving us the benefit of their insights into the way that government is working and the reform programme and how that is progressing. I am going to move the committee into private session so I will close the public part of this morning's meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you.