But do you accept the findings and recommendations of the Audit Scotland report?

Given Mr Cook’s response, I note that the evidence that we took from Mr Mackay was that the letter that he signed to Mr McMillan had been prepared by his officials.

Given Mr Wilcock’s point, I note that the request for that information from Transport Scotland was made by the committee in November 2022. It finally saw the light of day in March 2023 following an FOI trawl, not because the department had been sufficiently adept at finding it for us when we first asked for it back in November. That was not a one-off. There was a pattern, which Mr Beattie will speak about shortly.

I do not know whether Graham Simpson has any further questions to put. I he had not, that concludes this morning’s session.

I thank all the witnesses from Transport Scotland and Scottish Canals for their time and evidence. We might want to follow up on some points, and we, as a committee, will need to consider our next steps; for example, whether we need to bring you back in before next year or whether we are not going to see you again for a long time or whatever. All that is not entirely in our hands, you understand.

I thank you again for your time and patience this morning. As I said, we will consider our next steps. There are certainly some points that we might want to follow up with you in writing.

I draw the public part of this morning’s committee to a close.

But what is the Government’s response to it? We did not get a response from Kevin Stewart, so we are asking you this morning.

I go back to the substantive point that a disclaimer has been issued. Again on 29 June, when the Auditor General appeared before the committee, he emphasised that the issuing of a disclaimer is “a serious matter”.

Mr Paterson, you issued a note to accompany the papers today in which you spoke of a “demanding timeframe”—that was your expression. When I look back at the evidence that we took last year, I see that Sarah Jane Hannah confirmed that, even back in the 2012-13 audit—although she was not working in the organisation at that point—Audit Scotland had flagged up the possibility that there might be a requirement to have a fixed asset register. When I look back to November 2019, I see that Scottish Canals looked for a year’s delay at that point, but we are now nearly four years on and the work is still not completed.

Will you comment on that? Why are you still seeking an understanding of the “demanding timeframe” that you face, when it appears to me that you have faced it for quite some time?

Mr Rennick, you will have heard the Auditor General’s evidence to the committee on the report that we are discussing this morning. He said that Victim Support Scotland and Rape Crisis Scotland

“were not used to the extent that we might have expected”.—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 8 June 2023; c 9-10.]

Have you reflected on that over the summer and are you redoubling your efforts to address that shortfall?

Finally, let me turn to another related aspect. The report is quite critical of your approach to considering the equality impact of decisions that you have made and of the transformational change programmes that you have.

At paragraph 79, the Auditor General rightly points out the “unequal impact” of the court backlog. For example, he points to three categories of people. One is young children who are going through a formative experience in life. If they are witnesses or, indeed, victims, those delays will have a disproportionate and potentially devastating impact on them. The Auditor General’s conclusions were that he did not see enough evidence that those issues were being sufficiently taken into account.

Secondly, women disproportionately are caught up in the court backlog system, again as witnesses and, unfortunately, often as victims in the system. What account has been taken of that in addressing where the resources need to go and where the priorities are?

Thirdly, the Auditor General points out—this goes back to earlier questions that we had this morning—the situation that we have with people on remand in our prisons. You described how we have both the highest prison population and the highest proportion of those in the prison population who are on remand of almost anywhere but, even within that, there are great inequalities. The Auditor General points out that 25 per cent of males in prison are on remand, 30 per cent of women in Scottish prisons are on remand and 48 per cent of young people in Scotland’s prisons are on remand.

Why have you not sufficiently built equality impact assessments into decisions on the work that you have been doing, that you are doing and that you will do in the future?

Just so that we are clear, at the end of paragraph 81, the Auditor General concludes:

“we found very limited evidence that equality impact assessments were developed in a timely manner for most of the RRT workstreams and initiatives, with only two equality impact assessments prepared.”

That is a very poor result, is it not?

Is it not the case that equality impact assessments and equality considerations, rather than being some bolt-on at the end to check how you did, should have been built into the foundation of the work that you were doing?

Okay. On that note of agreement, I draw this morning’s evidence session to a close. I thank Mr Rennick, Ms Dalrymple and Mr McQueen for their time. We have quite a lot to consider in the evidence that we have taken. We will certainly consider what our next steps are. Thank you very much once again for being here with us this morning. I will now move the committee out of public session and into private session.