I will bring Willie Coffey in shortly—I just have a final question first. This might be for Catriona Maclean to answer. To some extent, you described the difference between the public bodies unit and the public bodies hub, which is alluded to in the report and on which there is a related recommendation. Can you comment on where that lies?

I am also interested in understanding this: you described how you are 80 or 90 per cent of the way through training people in sponsor roles in the Scottish Government. To what extent are you involved in the training of the members of those boards, and the people in agencies outwith central Government who are oftentimes involved in making operational and strategic decisions for the non-departmental public bodies and agencies and so on that they are on the boards of? Will you tell us a bit about the extent to which you have a training programme or have any other interaction with those people?

Good morning. I welcome everybody to the 24th meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee.

Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take items 4, 5 and 6 in private. Do members agree to do that?

Members indicated agreement.

Colin, I am afraid that we are running out of time, so I will have to move things on. The clock is against us. Thanks for your questions. If there is time, I would bring you back in, but I think that that will be very unlikely.

Craig Hoy has the final area of questioning.

Thank you. I want to give Willie Coffey the opportunity to put his questions to the witnesses now. I will then bring in Colin Beattie.

In our first evidence session this morning, we will consider “Progress Review of Scottish Government Relationships with Public Bodies”. I am pleased to welcome the Scottish Government witnesses in the committee room. Paul Johnston is director general communities; Mary McAllan is director of Covid recovery and public service reform; and Catriona Maclean is deputy director public bodies support unit.

Colin Beattie, who is the fifth member of the committee, is joining us remotely. I will bring him in shortly.

I invite the director general to make an opening statement, after which we will have questions. We have copies of the review report that was produced for you and your response to the recommendations in it.

Thanks. That would be helpful.

I move on to another area. A couple of minutes ago, Mr Johnston, you said that fewer people are carrying out the role and that it is about how that workload is managed. However, at the same time, new public bodies are being created.

I am interested in the railways, for example—I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. As I understand it, under the structure from 1 April this year, Scottish ministers act through Transport Scotland, which has oversight of Scottish Rail Holdings, which in turn has oversight of ScotRail Trains Limited, and—who knows?—after this weekend, maybe the Caledonian sleeper will be added to that list. How does that relationship work in practice? I know that it is not within your directorate, but I want to understand how the sponsor arrangement operates when a new public body is created.

We are living in times that are quite different even from those in 2017, when the legislation was drafted.

It would be interesting to understand the process in relation to the establishment of Scottish Rail Holdings and whether that is classed as a small body. I do not know how many people it directly employs, for example.

There is a tension here, is there not? I picked up something else from reading the report. In paragraph 4.11, an interviewee encapsulated what they thought was necessary, which at first I was quite attracted to, but then I thought about it a bit more and I have another comment on it.

In that paragraph, the interviewee says that it would be useful to set out

“what you can expect from us”

and

“what we expect from you”.

I thought that that was a neat encapsulation of the issue, although when I reflected on that a bit more, I thought that it sounded a bit like a master-servant relationship—it did not sound like a partnership of equals.

One thing that we come across in section 22 reports is a blurring, a confusion and an unclear sense of where roles and responsibilities lie. Paragraph 4.4 warns that

“Establishing a separate body and then managing it too closely risks undermining the benefits of separate status.”

First, do you agree with that analysis? Secondly, how do you see that in relation not only to Scottish Rail Holdings but to other bodies that are being created to deliver public services under the auspices of the Scottish Government and maybe at the instigation of the Scottish Parliament?

On that last point—and this covers part, though not the full extent, of the evidence that we have taken this morning—you say quite critically in the briefing paper:

“Gaps in data and not enough involvement of children and families with lived experience of poverty are hindering the development of sufficiently targeted policies”.

That lack of involvement is actually having an effect on the policy-making process and therefore the outcomes, and it is absolutely critical, is it not, to the approach that is adopted if we are going to get these things right.

There is another issue with regard to employability that I am bound to ask you to clarify. Am I not right in thinking that two out of three children living in poverty in Scotland live in households with at least one adult in work? This situation has come about not because there is a big unemployment problem, but because people are not being very well paid when they go out to work.

Thank you—that is very helpful. I have other questions in my head. However, because of the time constraint that we are under, we could maybe set those out in writing for you to follow up on to get a bit more—as I think that Mr Johnston described it—granular detail on some of those areas. That would be helpful to the committee.