Members have in their papers a letter to me from the Minister for Finance and Local Government. I understand that the same letter also went to the convener of the Audit Committee. In a sense, this item is unfinished business as we said last year that we would be happy for the Financial Reporting Advisory Board's remit to be expanded to build in a Scottish context. That appears to have been done. The clerk's note contains an issue that has also been raised by the Audit Committee: that the board should send its annual report not only to the Public Accounts Committee and the Treasury Select Committee in the House of Commons but to this committee and the Audit Committee. I am sure that members will not disagree with that suggestion.
I particularly welcome paragraph 3.2 of the draft terms of reference, which says that the independent chairman of the Financial Reporting Advisory Board will be appointed in agreement with the Scottish ministers. That is important. Perhaps the terms of reference should state also that the independent economist who is nominated by the head of the Government economic service should be appointed after discussion with the Scottish economic service or the Scottish treasury or whatever it is called these days. I am not suggesting that there should necessarily be the same level of agreement that would exist in relation to the appointment of the chairman, but there should at least be an opportunity for discussion.
I am not sure that there is a Scottish equivalent of the Government economic service.
We have a chief economist, but he is a member of the Government economic service. However, why not push for his having an input into the appointment of the independent economist?
Is it agreed that we suggest that addition?
Richard Simpson, do you have an idea of appropriate wording that we could suggest?
The wording should convey the idea that the independent economist who is appointed by the head of the Government economic service should be appointed after discussion with the chief economist in the Scottish Executive.
I would like to raise a related point about statistics. I am sure that all of us have found that there is a huge black hole where there should be Scottish statistics. I am not sure whether we should comment on that or whether that would be being unrealistic. Presumably, the financial statistics are mostly UK figures.
If you remember, Arthur Midwinter highlighted the difficulty of getting information on the Scottish deflator. I suspect that the information we need is not kept separately.
In the chamber, I have raised with several ministers the lack of a central database of many of the statistics upon which the Parliament makes policy. For example, statistics are dealt with at a health board level; no analysis of trends is performed centrally. About a year or so ago, this committee discussed that issue generally. Ministers make welcoming noises in response to my questions, but no action is taken. Perhaps this committee should raise the matter with the Executive on behalf of the Parliament.
We need to know first of all what statistics are kept.
Very few, apparently.
A couple of new statistical publications started up last year, which might be useful. I will check up on them.
A lot of parliamentary questions have been asked about the fact that information that the Parliament would be interested in is not being held centrally.
We will ask the clerks to research what statistics are available. Once that has been done, we can revisit the issue.
Is the fact that the annual report will be sent to this committee included in the document?
Yes.
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