Chamber and committees

That is very helpful.

I want to take us on to a matter that you have previously spoken about and informed us of. It is one that not only the current committee but our predecessor committee in the previous parliamentary session identified as being extremely important. We get section 22 reports, for example, which contain recommendations, but because, the following year, a follow-up section 22 report is not produced on that organisation or public body, we lose track of what happens to the recommendations.

Therefore, we would value the ability to have oversight and continuity of interest. I recall that you said that you also saw that as being important, and that you were in discussions with the Scottish Government about establishing some kind of framework that would allow that to become a routine outcome of the audit work that you do and the reports that you present. From memory, December 2022 was mentioned as the date by which you hoped to be finalising that process. Could you bring us up to date with where things are with that framework? Are you taking any other steps to address that issue of being able to follow through on and keep track of recommendations that you and your auditors have made, which is, by common consent, a deficiency?

As I mentioned, Roz McCall has questions on particular aspects of some of our longer-term areas of interest.

You alluded to our previous evidence session today, during which we discovered that 22 recommendations had become 26, not because four had been added on but because some of those 22 had been subdivided. Is there typically interaction with a public body in formulating recommendations, or are they imposed on it?

Okay. It is fair to say—and some would argue—that the project Neptune outcomes will address that. We started with the ferries and will finish with the ferries. There was some concern about the sponsorship role of Transport Scotland and how that all fits together, so it is not just historical—we as a Public Audit Committee have contemporary concerns about how sponsorship arrangements are working in practice.

Thank you. We obviously want to put quite a number of questions to you, but before we get to those I ask you to make a short opening statement to the committee.

One of the alarm bell figures that we have seen over the past couple of years is the statistic about the numbers of complaints that were or were not progressed. There is a contrast between two years. We were told that, in 2016-17, 43 per cent of complaints against councillors and members of public boards were not pursued—i.e. 57 per cent were pursued—but, by the time that we get to 2020-21, 84 per cent of such complaints were not pursued. That big contrast was one of the things that sent out a clear signal that people had lost confidence in the system and that something was going wrong. You might want to reflect on that, but could you tell us the current figures for complaints against councillors and public board members? We will take that as the test area, to find out what the figures are now.

I think that that is a provocative question that you have put, Mr Bruce. We do not want you to go through all the recommendations now. I will say what we are interested in as the Public Audit Committee. If you sat here and said, “We’ve arrived and everything’s been done”, we would probably question whether that was probable or not, but we want to get a sense of how many of your 26 recommendations—or the 22 as accounted for by the audit—have been implemented. The auditors said that they thought that it was about half and half. Half had been fully implemented, to the credit of you and the people who work in the organisation, and half were—again, quite creditably—work in progress.

We recognise that some of these things are moving targets and that there are changes—it is a dynamic organisation. You coined a memorable phrase when you said that it is akin to rebuilding a plane in flight, which is a rather good way of putting it. You do not need to go through each recommendation individually, but can you say whether about half of the recommendations are still work in progress or whether more have been implemented? Are more of the recommendations ones that can readily be implemented so that you can say, “We’ve done that now and we can move on to something else”?

Okay—that is fine. I am conscious that we are coming towards the end of our session, but I know that the deputy convener, Sharon Dowey, has a series of questions that she wants to put to you, so we will finish with her.

May I seek verification on one point? All the reports that I have seen say that there is an eight-month wait for an initial assessment of a complaint. Did you tell us that that has now been cut to 13 weeks, which is just over three months?

Yes—it would not be the first time that accountable officers have said, in front of the Public Audit Committee, that they have agreed all the recommendations in full, and then proceeded to give evidence that suggested that they did not. [Laughter.]

Roz McCall has follow-up questions on certain areas but, before I get to her, I invite Willie Coffey to come in.