Audit Committee, 24 Oct 2007

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Official Report 155KB pdf

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“Dealing with offending by young people”

We move on to item 4. We have received a response from Philip Rycroft, the accountable officer in relation to the Auditor General for Scotland's report "Dealing with offending by young people". Do committee members have any comments to make on the letter?

I have a question of clarification. In the third paragraph, Mr Rycroft says:

"As a first step, they have decided to move on from the problematic persistent offender target and seek a more efficacious approach to measuring the impact of youth justice activities."

What does that mean?

I am showing my age here, but it is redolent of "Lily the Pink".

Is Mr Rycroft really saying that ministers will dump the target and seek a more efficacious approach to measuring the impact? Another bit is just about as vague:

"Locally we will seek to support local arrangements that help agencies to better understand their performance"

and what the local problems are. That is the most convoluted sentence, and it does not take us anywhere.

Not only is it a convoluted sentence, it is an extremely vague response.

I want to comment on the point that Andrew Welsh just made. A target was set to reduce the number of young offenders, but the number actually increased. Call me a cynic, convener, but the reason why the target was problematic was that it was not met. It might be worth probing further whether the reason why ministers consider the target to be problematic is that meeting it is a problem, as opposed to the target itself being problematic. We need more clarity about what the letter means.

It is worrying. As Andrew Welsh pointed out, the letter says:

"Locally we will seek to support local arrangements that help agencies to better understand their performance".

Oh my God—if ministers have to step in to help local agencies to better understand their performance, there is something seriously lacking at the local level. They might want to think about better management and accountability systems, never mind being able to address solutions.

I have a point about procedure. I agree with what has been said about the letter. I presume that we cannot ask Philip Rycroft to come and talk to us?

We could.

Is this not a matter for another committee, for example the Justice Committee?

It might be, in terms of developing a comprehensive investigation of or response to youth offending, but on the response to the letter that the previous convener wrote to Philip Rycroft, we can certainly invite him to come along and give us more detail.

That seems to be the obvious next step, if it is within our remit to do so.

I am happy to go along with that.

There is form here, in that the previous information that we received was just as waffly as the letter. It could be that we are being told about work in progress. If so, why not just tell us that? If we get someone here from the Scottish Government they might just tell us that, when it could be put in writing. It is clear that proposals are being worked on. However, when we ask for specific information, we should get it. If development of the recommendations is a work in progress and the Scottish Government cannot tell us about it right now, it should say so and be much more open with the committee. After all, we are trying to seek out the facts of the situation and the truth of the matter.

Are we agreed that we will invite the accountable officer to the committee to give a further explanation?

Members indicated agreement.