Item 5 is the committee's work programme from Easter until the summer recess. As a result of the meeting of the Parliament in Aberdeen in May, the committee's scheduled meeting on 28 May will be lost. Therefore, to ensure that the committee has enough time to complete its work programme before the summer recess, the clerks have provisionally scheduled a meeting for the afternoon of Wednesday 22 May.
The work programme seems fine. Under the heading "Other Items", the programme mentions a
I asked for a meeting of the conveners of the audit committees of the Assemblies and the two Parliaments. That meeting was held in London last week. I hope that that meeting will be part of continuing consultation and communication. I will produce a report for the committee on the meeting. When the Parliament started, I wanted to find out whether the committee could learn any lessons from the Public Accounts Committee. The convener of the Audit Committee of the National Assembly for Wales also wanted to participate. From that came the useful idea of meeting to exchange ideas and to ensure that we learn from one another for our mutual benefit. I hope that the meetings will continue on an ad hoc basis. That is the basis of the possible report.
That is fine.
I ask the Auditor General to comment on the work programme.
I simply draw members' attention to two novel items in the programme. The first is the presentation on community care on 30 April. Members might recall that when we talked about the longer-term work programme we discussed the likelihood that, during the next few years, there will be a programme of studies on community care and joint futures. It is appropriate to give an informal presentation to the committee on the overall community care system and where our studies fit into it. That is the reason for that suggestion for the work programme.
Are we moving into new territory in openness and accountability in government?
In the grand scheme of things—including the Scottish Parliament—that is true. I modestly suggest that the committee and Audit Scotland contribute to that. We discussed the proposal for the introductory report informally with the Executive, which agreed to lend us support to ensure that the information that we receive is up to date, accurate and appropriate.
On 1 April, there will be significant changes in the delivery of community care and there will be further changes on 1 July. Will the presentation on community care incorporate those changes?
It is rather early to say. We will certainly do our best to take into account those developments and to indicate to the committee some of the areas to which we might turn our attention during the next year.
Is the Auditor General suggesting that there is an opportunity to review the areas of activity of Audit Scotland and the committee?
I am sorry, I do not fully understand the question.
Are we laying out areas where we have not trod in the past but where we might want to tread?
I do not think that that was the intent of my question.
The report would not imply that we should head in that direction. The context report on how central Government manages accountability and performance would be helpful to us when we are considering our work programme over the next few years.
I am sorry, but my question was based on your comments in response to Margaret Jamieson's question about community care. Community care is going to be delivered by areas where the remits on audit are different. Are we now going to consider new areas and possibly propose a remit to those who design our fate?
Forgive me for misunderstanding the question. It is true that I envisage that the forward programme of studies will contain one or two cross-cutting studies each year. There is a study on youth justice in the pipeline. We undertook a study in the run-up to devolution that considered residential and nursing home care. There was a recent report on home care for the elderly. Increasingly, such studies involve local government and the NHS and sometimes the private and voluntary sectors.
I ask the Auditor General for information on the further study on hospital-acquired infections. Audit Scotland published a report in 2001 called "A clean bill of health?" When will the next part of that investigation be published? I ask that because the Health and Community Care Committee will consider hospital-acquired infections tomorrow.
We produced a baseline report on hospital cleaning. That report did not name bodies but considered the range of performance that we found. The report was accompanied by some guidance to management on what seemed to work best. At that time, I gave an undertaking that we would report back to the committee in due course. It is in our work programme to make a further report to the committee in the autumn.
As there are no further questions, I thank the Auditor General for his comments.
Meeting continued in private until 14:49.