Public Audit Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Official Report 491KB pdf

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Section 23 Report

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“Commonwealth Games 2014 progress report 2: Planning for the delivery of the XXth Games”

Item 6 concerns another update from the Scottish Government; this one is on the section 23 progress report on planning for the Commonwealth games. We raised some questions about security. The update tells us, as we probably already knew, that the budget for security has been increased. Does anyone want to raise any issues?

The committee recognised that the security budget would go up and down, so I do not have any concerns about it going up, but an issue that was raised in a debate in the chamber was who would scrutinise the additional spending of £37.7 million that the Government is providing, as that seems to be within the gift of the minister and the First Minister.

Another issue is the fact that all the money in the contingency budget seems to be getting swallowed up by the security budget. Audit Scotland raised concerns about a couple of the aspects of the games that will be running very close to the opening ceremony. If any additional funds are needed there, I have a concern that all the money will have been be swallowed up by the security budget.

Okay. The only thing that we could do would be to write back to the Government and ask those questions. It does not seem unreasonable for us, as the Public Audit Committee, to ask how and by whom the additional security funding will be audited. That seems fair enough.

Mr Griffin also asked what the implications will be for other budgets if the whole contingency budget is devoted to security. Can we agree to write to the Government to get an answer to those questions?

Do we know the size of the contingency budget?

The update says:

“The new budget will be funded by drawing £25.1 million from the ... contingency budget”.

I was not at the debate in question. I do not know whether Mr Griffin knows the size of the contingency budget.

Off the top of my head, I cannot remember.

We can ask what proportion of the contingency budget that amounts to and what the implications are for other budgets. We just want that information.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We now move into private session, so I ask members of the public and official report staff to leave.

11:45 Meeting continued in private until 11:48.