“An overview of local government in Scotland 2010”
For item 4 we have before the committee John Baillie, who is the chair of the Accounts Commission. He is joined by Fraser McKinlay and Gordon Smail.
I apologise for the delay in calling this item, but I think that it is important, particularly for new members, to engage in a full discussion with Audit Scotland, both on its programme and on a specific issue. The discussions on both agenda items were very useful, but I apologise for the delay.
Would Mr Baillie like to make an opening contribution?
John Baillie (Accounts Commission)
Yes, please. Thank you, convener.
The Accounts Commission welcomes the opportunity to give this briefing to the committee based on our local government overview report. We particularly welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee at such an early stage in the new session of Parliament. The commission has previously provided briefings to the Public Audit Committee and other committees of the Parliament, and we know that members are interested in hearing about the performance of local government.
I will not refer to the roles and powers of the Accounts Commission in any detail; those matters are covered elsewhere, including in an appendix to the Public Audit Committee’s session 3 legacy paper. We have recently published our annual report, which summarises our work over the past year, and a copy of that report was provided to members of the Scottish Parliament. It stresses that our role is to hold local government to account and to help it to improve.
I will highlight four points that are made in our annual report. First, our work on supporting improvement has been developed by launching a new series of reports, which we are calling “How councils work”—that series of reports was referred to at some point in the previous two evidence sessions. The first report considered how councillors and officers work together in local government. We recently published the second in the series, on arm’s-length external organisations—ALEOs. I know that a question on that issue will come my way in due course this morning. In the earlier discussion today there was reference to the question whether auditors and other inquiry agents can concentrate more on prevention. One of our hopes is that by focusing on improvement and the good practice that we notice around the place, that will contribute to prevention rather than to retrospective criticism.
The second point that I will highlight is that we covered the steps that the commission is taking further to facilitate and co-ordinate the scrutiny of local government, which is the most important area of our activity just now.
Thirdly, we stress the extension of our best value audit work in councils to cover police services and fire and rescue services, in conjunction with the service inspectorates.
Finally, we refer to our continuing work on performance audits, which you have heard much about this morning and which I will not belabour further.
As I said, the commission’s role is to hold local government to account on behalf of the public and to help local government to improve. Central to that, particularly in the current environment, is a focus on governance and financial stewardship. We have strong powers available to us to support us in that work. For example, in cases where problems emerge at individual councils we consider reports by the controller of audit, who is sitting to my right, and we make findings and recommendations and—where we decide that our doing so is appropriate—we hold hearings in public. More generally, we use the independent external auditors that we appoint to ensure that action is taken in councils and we also monitor the outcome of the performance audit work that you have heard much about this morning.
I hope that the brief overview of the commission’s work that I will give is helpful. I will, of course, be pleased to elaborate on any aspect during the discussion today or in correspondence. I stress that we at the Accounts Commission would certainly welcome the opportunity to develop our working relationship with the Public Audit Committee, however formally or informally.
Let me turn briefly to the main business today, which is our overview report on local government, which we published earlier this year. The report sets out the main matters arising from the local government audit work in calendar year 2010. We are now at the stage where the next cycle of that work is about to get under way in the form of the financial auditing, but of course throughout the year there are best value reviews and performance work, too. The current cycle will produce the next report in December.
In the report for 2010 we recognise the significant challenges that councils face in the coming years both from reducing budgets and from growing demands on services. Councils and councillors face extremely difficult decisions in allocating funds and prioritising services. That in itself is not unfamiliar territory for councils, but what is new is the range and scale of the financial pressures that they face. That requires councils to consider more radical changes in services, including the potential for more joint working in partnerships.
We have seen that the councils that are best placed to deal with the challenges are those that have made most progress in embedding strong performance management and establishing clear and robust systems of governance, accountability and scrutiny. Those are the principles that underpin best value. More than ever, it is now essential that councils apply those principles if they are to manage the pressures that they face.
As we say in the report, councillors need the right information at the right time to make sound decisions, ensure value for money, scrutinise performance and understand the effects and consequences—good and bad—of the choices that they make on the communities that they serve.
Our report highlights the importance of councillors’ community-leadership role, which is crucial if they are to retain the support of the public and continue to ensure the success and wellbeing of their areas. In short, councils have taken serious steps to address the pressures that they face and they need to build on the improvements that they have achieved in recent years. For our part, we will continue to hold them to account and to support improvement through our best value and financial work in councils, our work on performance studies and through our key role in co-ordinating scrutiny in local government.
We are happy to take questions.
Thank you for that. I have a few questions. I return to the question that I asked earlier about arm’s-length organisations. I know that there will be an audit function of those organisations. When Audit Scotland produces reports on Government agencies, such as Transport Scotland, it is not only the Government that has to respond—there is an opportunity for Parliament to comment. If concern is expressed about an arm’s-length organisation’s use of money or the way it operates, and the Accounts Commission issues critical comments, is there any way of holding the organisation to account other than internally in the council? Even within local authorities, is there any evidence of robust challenge and scrutiny of the way that such organisations are behaving, particularly in response to reports from organisations such as yours?
I will make four general points first and answer your specific question after that, if I may, so that I can put my answer in context.
The first thing to say is that ALEOs are subject to the same principles of following the public pound, which were published some time ago, so we hold them to account on that basis.
Secondly, an important point is that councillors who act on behalf of the council when they attend board meetings or trustee meetings of ALEOs must remain independent and look after the interests of the council. At the same time, councillors usually have legal obligations as members of boards or as trustees. They have to manage that and be properly advised on their position by the likes of monitoring officers, for example.
Thirdly, of course, there is a general issue about whether councillors on arm’s-length boards should be paid. There has been controversy about that recently, which has been dealt with by announcements of impending legislation from 1 July.
Fourthly, the auditors are appointed by the ALEO’s management, rather than being under the control of the council as such.
To come to your specific question, we regard ALEOs as being within our bailiwick. We will take an interest and we will take action when we see something that needs to be investigated. For example, Strathclyde partnership for transport falls into that category. I ask Fraser McKinlay to comment further on SPT, as it is an example of the concern that you express.
Fraser McKinlay (Audit Scotland)
SPT is a wee bit different but, on the principles, there are a couple of ways in which we can keep an eye on what happens in arm’s-length external organisations. First, when an ALEO is part of the group accounts, our auditors audit those accounts and, in doing so, they will talk to the auditors of the ALEO so that we get assurance on the audit work that happens in it. We recognise that the ALEO, as a company or charity, appoints its own auditors, but we take assurance in that way.
The other key issue, which John Baillie mentioned, is the principle of following the public pound. Our auditors in councils ensure that processes and governance structures are in place to ensure that where public money goes to an arm’s-length external organisation, checks and balances are still in place to ensure that the council is aware of how the money is being spent.
The reason why we published a report on the issue just a few weeks back—Gordon Smail led on that piece of work—is that there are more ALEOs now and they are growing in number. They bring advantages and benefits for councils, including flexibility in services, but there are associated risks. The report talks about things that councils need to do to set up ALEOs properly in the first place and things that we would expect to be in place to monitor their governance. If things in an ALEO were to go horribly wrong, we would still expect that issue to come via the council, particularly if council money is being directed to that ALEO. We can pick up the issues through the audit process in that way.
You give an example of an ALEO that relates to one council, but you also mentioned SPT, which involves several councils. The Parliament was frustrated that we could not comment on what was reported as happening in SPT, because it was outwith our responsibility. To compare, if Audit Scotland produces a critical report on Transport Scotland, we can get senior officials from Transport Scotland, civil servants and ministers in to explain in public exactly what happened and to try to justify their role. With SPT, when the Accounts Commission produces a report, there is no such scrutiny. Do the 12 individual councils, one by one, hold people to account or does SPT do that? There does not seem to be an ability to have independent and rigorous scrutiny of arm’s-length organisations, other than just leaving it to councils’ internal mechanisms. I do not single out any specific council but, frankly, I do not think that that happens.
I will respond specifically on SPT and on other more recognisable forms of ALEOs. We were appointed to hold SPT to account, which is precisely what we did by publishing our findings and severely criticising behaviour as being unacceptable. Since then, various things have happened to improve the set-up, as you well know. In a sense, the Accounts Commission is carrying out for local authorities the role that the Public Audit Committee carries out in everything else.
No, it is not, actually. Your role is analogous to what Audit Scotland does on behalf of the Parliament. You produce a report that is critical in the same way that Audit Scotland or the Auditor General produces a report that is critical of, say, Transport Scotland. The Accounts Commission does not then invite in the key players for public examination.
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We might be talking slightly at cross purposes.
Let us get on the same track, then.
This gives us a helpful opportunity to explain a process that is not necessarily that obvious to people who are not closely involved in it.
As controller of audit, I take reports from auditors and report to the Accounts Commission. The case of SPT does not provide a perfect analogy, as it is a local authority in its own right, but we can use it as an example, anyway. In that case I, as controller of audit, submitted a report to the Accounts Commission, which considered that report and questioned me on the findings in the same way as you would question the Auditor General. On receipt of that report, the Audit Commission has a number of options. For example, it can make findings or it can hold a hearing in public, which has happened a few times in recent years, notably in Aberdeen, West Dunbartonshire and Shetland, which Mr Scott knows well. In the case of SPT, the Audit Commission decided to make findings. It also asked me, as controller of audit, to come back with a progress report, which we will produce later this year.
I am not trying to draw distinctions or similarities; that is how the process is designed. It recognises that councillors are accountable to the public as they are democratically elected by their constituents.
That is an example of the issue that recurs now and again, of central Government democracy and local government democracy. I think that you are all familiar with that debate.
You are saying that Parliament does not have the opportunity to question, in this case, SPT.
That would appear to be the case, other than—
Let me stop for a moment. Is there nothing in the committee’s remit that could have been used to invite SPT to come and join you?
My understanding is that there is nothing that we could have used to do so in relation to that report. Fraser McKinlay said that SPT
“is a local authority in its own right”.
I have not heard that exact phrase used before, but SPT is at least a local authority-related body, and it is because of that fact that we do not have the ability to go into that issue in detail.
The issue that Tavish Scott raised is one that the Accounts Commission and—I think—Audit Scotland have been concerned about for some time. Parliament devotes a big chunk of its money to local authorities. Where is the accounting for that? It is accounted for in several ways, of course. The matter comes back to the issue of parity of esteem, which was agreed to way back as a principle of government in Scotland.
That is a wider policy issue that we could debate all day. However, I am just trying to explore the parliamentary point that the convener is also making. The Local Government and Regeneration Committee can haul in any local government representative or people from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to talk about what a council is doing. However, with specific regard to auditing those third-party bodies, do we have the right to bring them before our committee to question them on issues that have been raised in the context of the Accounts Commission’s work?
I would have to defer to those who are specialists in that area. One way to square what might be a circle would be to ask the Accounts Commission to talk about the matter. That might provide some way into it. I understand the point, which is why I keep expressing the desire on the part of the Accounts Commission to have a closer relationship with the Public Audit Committee.
I am a bit concerned. I was a city councillor and I have never heard SPT referred to as
“a local authority in its own right”.
If we bear it in mind that SPT as an organisation has appointed members who are not councillors and who are not directly elected by the public, SPT’s accountability to the public is a bit woolly there, as well. Because of its status within the whole framework, all money that goes to it is top-sliced and goes straight to SPT. In Renfrewshire Council, we tried to bring SPT to book on certain things, such as what we were getting for our £3 million a year, and it refused to get involved because it said it had an internal process. Who is it accountable to?
In this case, it is accountable to Audit Scotland as the auditors, and then to us, following the controller of audit’s report. Gordon Smail might want to add something.
Gordon Smail (Audit Scotland)
I was involved in putting the SPT report together. What has been explained is how it is. It is covered by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 and as a result, if issues arise from the audit they can be picked up by the controller of audit and reported to the Accounts Commission. That is what happened in this case. The commission will then make a decision about what to do. Fraser McKinlay outlined the powers that are available to the commission. In this case, the commission made findings. If you recall, there was a strongly worded report and a strongly worded conclusion by the controller of audit. The commission’s findings came in behind that and raised very publicly many of the concerns about expenses and other related matters in the operations of SPT.
The discussion about SPT has taken us down a path that is not directly related to the convener’s point about ALEOs. Earlier this year, we did some investigative work up at Highland Council. The council had an ALEO as we understand them, in the sense that it had a company that was set up to deliver a local energy power system. It was a heating and power system that was going to use local businesses to channel heat and power into council houses and other social housing in the area. Our report considered the council’s responsibility for overseeing substantial amounts of public money—in the order of about £10 million—which went from the council to support the company, which in turn attempted to bring the service into being.
Through that report, we looked at the important principle about following the public pound. However, the point that I am trying to make is that that was very much in the context of the council itself; what the council was doing, what the elected members on the council were doing and what senior officials in the council were doing to ensure that the money that was being channelled through the council to the ALEO was being used properly. The principle on following the public pound is that the pound, whether it is spent directly by a council or through an ALEO, is subject to the same scrutiny and should be providing the same value for money to taxpayers.
I appreciate that SPT is not the same as an ALEO, but it is an important point to consider because we have identified a grey area here in relation to SPT.
My first year in Aberdeen City Council was when the Accounts Commission hearing took place, albeit that it was dealing with a report from before, from 2002 to 2006. The Accounts Commission has also held a hearing in West Dunbartonshire and one in Shetland. That is easy to do when there is one identifiable local authority, but a large number of local authorities buy into SPT.
You say that local authorities are directly accountable, which is true, but the problem then is that you could have variations in how local authorities choose to deal with the outcome of the Accounts Commission’s scrutiny of SPT. The question is whether it should be someone’s role to hold the people who are in charge at SPT to account. The approaches that are taken by local authorities could vary. You are right that SPT is not exactly the same as an ALEO, because a number of local authorities are involved. The question is this: how do you effectively audit something when a number of different partners and stakeholders are part of that process?
I will give a quick response and then invite Gordon Smail to develop it. On SPT, it was within our rights to ask for a hearing in public, but we decided not to do that. We decided that there was nothing further to be gained by having a hearing because all the facts were on the table from the controller of audit’s report. We could have had a hearing, however. I am just trying to ensure that there is no confusion between joint work and singular work.
Okay.
Can I just—
I am aware that time is pressing. Members have identified an area of concern. Not all of that is within your gift to resolve. The previous committee’s legacy paper flagged up some related issues. Perhaps you could bear the matter in mind in considering what the input of the committee—or, indeed, the Parliament—might be to any future work that you do.
Can we widen out the discussion? Do members have other questions about local government?
One thing that leapt out at me from the report is the issue of single status. The single status agreement was put in place in 1999, but only now, 12 years later, do all 32 local authorities have single status agreements in place. For me, two things arise from that. The first is to ask how much money has been wasted during that period because of some authorities’ procrastination in not getting a single status agreement in place early. A number of claims will follow from the lack of urgency that was demonstrated.
The second point is that, by and large, the 32 local authorities have 32 different single status agreements and there will be variations between authorities. Is there a risk attached to that, given that there has been no overall examination of single status agreements to ensure that there is parity between local authorities? Do we run the risk of, as Orwell would have put it, some workers being more equal than others as a result of that?
If I can side-step the question about wasted money, the frank answer is that I do not know how much of the total that has been spent has been wasted. We would probably have to debate the definition. I can tell you that the total cost has been about £480 million so far, and there is about £120 million more to come—something like that.
Forgive me—what was the second point?
It was about the 32 different local authorities with 32 different single status agreements, and the variances that exist.
I agree with you. I think that there is a risk. Some of us have debated here and there whether there is a case for some form of audit study to see whether there is a genuine national risk. At the moment, we have decided not to proceed, but it might be worth while to look at that again.
COSLA has had proposals to look at that on the stocks for some time. Now that all 32 schemes are in place, it will be interesting to see how quickly that happens. We are keeping a close eye on it because, as John Baillie said, if it does not happen, we will clearly be interested in it.
A wider issue for me is the extent to which single status has been used in the way in which it was designed to be used, which was to modernise how pay systems work in local government and take the opportunity to modernise the workforce in a wider sense. It would be interesting to look at how councils implemented single status schemes and what they did with the opportunity, which might have been lost. Members of the Local Government and Communities committee were interested in the issue in the past few years and we continue to keep a close eye on it.
I welcome the move to a wider overview, but if the convener will forgive me I will bring the discussion back to ALEOs.
One of my concerns—the issue is mentioned in your report—is about clarity of roles and responsibilities. That gets to the crux of the problem. Leaving aside the SPT issue, there is a deficit in the scrutiny of ALEOs in general because of a lack of understanding of people’s roles and responsibilities when they sit on boards. Terminology is used—such as the term “company directors”—that I find unbelievably unhelpful. I am happy to leave to local government the scrutiny of its own services, and I am sure that council committees hold their officials to account effectively. However, that relationship changes when someone is appointed to the position of a company director, they sit in board meetings outside the council and they have legal advisers telling them that they have a duty to the body of which they are a director. There are issues with the confidentiality of their papers and how the scrutiny is passed back into the council.
That is where there is a role for this Parliament. When bodies move outside the proper democratic governance of a local authority, they need to be scrutinised by someone. That is my concern in the issue. In our discussion about community planning and in the changes we will no doubt see through the Christie commission, in which public services may move outwith the traditional governance structures of local authorities, there needs to be some oversight at the democratic level. Do you agree that terms such as “company director” are not a useful way of thinking about the issue?
12:30
As you have neatly summarised, the problem is the conflict between being a company director, with the raft of responsibilities that that entails, and being a councillor. The current accountability occurs by following the public pound and the council, and we take every opportunity to look at that closely: the minute that we see any hint of a problem on an ALEO, the teams look at it very closely. Indeed, the organisations are all monitored all the time in any case.
Drew Smith has hit on the crux of the issue: roles and responsibilities.
Both we and our colleagues have mentioned a couple of times the “How councils work” series that we are doing. The first report, which we published in August last year, was on the question of roles and responsibilities. As part of that work, we spoke to a sample of councillors from six councils across Scotland. We eased our way into the ALEOs question, and some of the responses that we received, on an anonymised basis through the people who did the work for us, were very revealing. Some people who were placed as a company director or trustee of a trust did not really understand what was expected of them or what the relationship was between being a councillor and a company director or trustee.
We have developed that further in the ALEOs report that we published on 16 June. It is crucial to get that understanding right from the start. It was a crucial issue in the Highland Council case that I mentioned earlier—the tensions between being an elected member and being a company director, how the balance has to shift and where the primacy lies, particularly when things start to go off the rails. That is what I say about the subject when it comes up: these things tend to jog along fine when things are going well; it is when the problems start to emerge in the finances or deliverability of the service that things start to unwind. There are key issues of governance, which should be underpinned by a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities.
That is the long way round of saying that I absolutely agree with Drew Smith.
It would be interesting to see whether it would be competent for this committee, or indeed for another committee, to look at those issues of governance. They drive to the heart of much of what we have discussed. I do not know whether we can do that, but even if we cannot the issue needs to be highlighted for someone else to consider at some point.
Perhaps I should start by declaring an interest as a local councillor.
Pensions are a topical issue at the moment, and I know that a lot of work is being done on them. Looking at the figures in paragraphs 46 to 50, I see an exponential rise in the gap between liabilities that the councils have and the assets that they hold. I know that those gaps move around according to market value, and it is possible only to take a snapshot and say, “That is the position at a particular time.” However, the report states that there has been
“a 53 per cent rise in the estimated cost of future liabilities.”
That is huge. A lot of councils are downsizing and offering early retirement to their older staff, and the change in the demographic profile is also affecting the workforce within councils. I assume that those factors are built into the 53 per cent rise, but I also presume that there is probably more to come that will impact negatively on the gap. Potentially, there is a time bomb that has not been addressed. How much of a worry is it?
As you know, we did a separate joint report on pensions. The 53 per cent rise includes the usual actuarial techniques of valuation that use bond yields to value the liabilities. When bond yields are low, as they are just now, the present value of future liabilities is much higher. That accounts for a significant chunk of the 53 per cent rise. That is not to say that we do not have to worry—of course we do—but the techniques that are used in valuation, rather than liabilities that have to be met today, contributed significantly to that figure. That is a qualification or explanation of the 53 per cent figure. However, I agree entirely that there is potentially a time bomb.
Mr Beattie was absolutely right to talk about a snapshot. That snapshot was taken on 31 March 2010. As Mr Baillie said, one side of the equation is how to value the liabilities at that time; the other side is what the stock market looked like on that particular date.
We must bear in mind, and keep as a contextual issue in the background, that the overall value of assets in the local government pension fund is of the order of £21 billion, but Mr Baillie mentioned the key issue. This is absolutely a sustainability issue. We know what the demographics look like and that the number of people who are working in local government is falling—we know that from other parts of the report, and it has been reported elsewhere. As a consequence, fewer people will make contributions through their month-to-month salaries. Sustainability is therefore a big issue. We saw what the Hutton report said, and there is much more water to go under the bridge to ensure sustainability.
One of my concerns is that there does not seem to be any thought that there might be increased contributions coming down the line. That is certainly the case as far as my council is concerned, and I am sure that it is the case elsewhere. The report refers to the possibility that increased contributions might be required, although their quantification is perhaps a bit speculative. I do not know the extent to which councils are aware of the potential liability that is coming to them.
The triennial valuation is happening at the moment. A revaluation of the scheme is done at a set time. It should be borne in mind, of course, that the local government scheme is a funded scheme, so there are substantial assets underlying it, as I have said. That makes it different from many other schemes that are known colloquially as pay-as-you-go schemes. The triennial valuation should be reported on at around the start of next year, and it will give councils as employers a clear indication of employer contribution rates over the subsequent three years. There is some certainty in that process, and things will become clearer to allow financial planning to be done. The big unknown question is what the underlying position is, and how it will affect employees’ and employers’ contributions that are loaded on top of the triennial valuation that we would expect in the normal series of things. As I have said, much more discussion of the topic, particularly of sustainability, is needed, as the matter is very important to many people in local government.
Page 11 of the report says that, for the first time ever, public-private partnership and private finance initiative projects are on balance sheet. That is a welcome addition. It always seemed a bit odd that such amounts of money left local authorities without anyone getting to see to whom and where they were going. However, the figures are quite concerning. The report mentions
“assets of £3.1 billion and debts of £2.9 billion”.
Is that a finite figure? Will it remain the same or is it just a guesstimate at this stage? I know about PPP schools in Renfrewshire. An amount of £100 million might be involved, but the cost will be £400 million over the period.
We have simply reflected the principle of an accounting change that, as you rightly point out, increases the transparency around what is on balance sheet. As you say, the figures in question were previously off balance sheet. There are valuation techniques that relate to the amount of assets and related liabilities that are brought on. That is how those figures are reflected in council balance sheets. There is a wider issue about the on-going costs that councils have to pay for the services that they acquire through PPP/PFI projects. Those figures are also clear in councils’ accounts. In general, things have become a lot more open and transparent.
Of course, there is a broader question about the use of PPP/PFI and equivalents to fund capital assets. In this part of the report, however, we were trying to draw out shifts in borrowing, particularly the variability in the way councils are funding their capital projects and whether they are using what you might call a traditional borrowing set-up or PPP/PFI.
PPP was popular partly because you did not have to put it on your balance sheet.
When I sold cars, they used to call that contract hire.
Indeed. I also refer members to the succeeding paragraph, which makes the somewhat obvious point that the more you borrow, the less flexible you can be in future.
One unintended consequence of the UK recession is that my council, for one, has been able to make savings in the procurement of some public sector capital projects. Is that relieving at least a wee bit of the pressure on authorities, given the financial position that they are facing?
One problem that we have had with capital projects for perhaps a year or more is that many councils have lost the flexibility that came from being able to realise better asset values and do not have as much promised revenue from the sale of land to fund other things. However, as funding has become more difficult, there has been a slowdown.
We are certainly very interested in the issue. Going back to the committee’s discussion of Audit Scotland’s performance audit programme, I point out that next year there will be a report on managing capital investment in local government. Although we have looked at some big national infrastructure projects, we are also very interested in how these things happen locally. As this report makes clear, capital budgets have taken a big hit, which I am sure has in turn encouraged councils to drive a harder bargain. That has to be a good thing.
Local auditors regularly report on the delivery of capital programmes. As you know, some councils have historically not been very good at delivering such programmes, either because they are being too ambitious or because they are simply not managing them properly. That will no doubt feature again in our overview report and we will have an opportunity in next year’s national performance audit to look at some of those issues in a bit more detail.
As members have no further questions, I thank Mr Baillie, Mr McKinlay and Mr Smail for their evidence. No doubt we will be hearing from you again. We might not do so as regularly as we hear from the Auditor General, but we look forward to your contributions. Thank you very much.
Going back to the first part of today’s discussion, I should say that the Accounts Commission has been concerned about its relationship with the committee and how we might feed into your work more regularly. Obviously it is a matter for members but the committee might wish to pursue other areas that the Accounts Commission gets involved in, whether it be particularly controversial matters such as SPT—I deliberately use that example because I know that the previous Public Audit Committee was concerned about it—or indeed everything that we do.
That would be useful, as certain matters of concern have arisen that members would have liked to have examined but were unable to. Thank you for the offer. We will take advice about what is competent and get back to you.
We are not territorially jealous.
Thank you. I now move the meeting into private session.
12:44
Meeting continued in private until 12:50.