Chamber and committees

There is an inference in what you have said and what is in this letter that, somehow, this Audit Scotland report is slowing things down or making things worse. I do not know how different the clearance report was to the final report, but the letter explicitly says that the clearance report

“will not accelerate pace of change, instead risks slowing the current one.”

In fact, it says that the clearance draft “misses” opportunities

“to drive pace and progress”.

I apologise if I am misunderstanding, but it is not the job of Audit Scotland to drive pace and progress. It is the job of Audit Scotland to comment on pace and progress.

Yes, but that is not what the letter says. It says:

“In short, at worst, the report could derail Scotland’s progress towards keeping the promise.”

That is not welcoming the report or accepting its recommendations, is it?

I am glad that you mentioned that. I received your manifesto asks the other day. It is interesting. You say that it is difficult to quantify how short councils are in terms of their ability to deliver the Promise, but we have specific asks from COSLA, and it is not a small amount of cash that is being sought—it is a £16 billion inflationary uplift to, I presume, the block grant funding. There is £750 million for social care, which COSLA claims would increase the social worker workforce by more than 19,000—I will come on to the workforce in a moment; £844 million for the capital grant; and another nearly £1 billion for affordable housing supply, which may address some of the housing issues.

Mr Rennick, I imagine that you do not have £16 billion sloshing around your coffers at the moment. However, do you see the point? If local councils are not properly funded, there is no way on earth that we will deliver the Promise by 2030.

Let us talk about the whole family wellbeing fund. How much of the £0.5 billion that was promised has been spent?

I would have preferred that you came in and said, “Look, there is stuff in this report we do not like, so I cannot sign up to the report and its recommendations.” If you had been honest with us from the minute that you walked in the door, we would not be having this conversation. I will finish where I started in my supplementary questions—there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with the Auditor General, but be honest about it. That is all we ask for.

That is helpful feedback. Mr Rennick, will you give Mr Anderson more than 15 minutes of your time? This is an extremely important matter.

It is a good example of that. However, David gave a really good example of the oversight group going to ministers and civil servants at the most senior level and saying, “We have a problem here as this policy has been paused”—and nothing happened. That is not the local authority’s fault.

I will move on to COSLA.

We received a letter from COSLA just two days ago, ahead of the session. I appreciate that you did not write the letter but it has your logo on it, so I will ask you about it. It is from Councillor Buchanan, who is your children and young people spokesperson. He made the valid point that local authorities make annual budget decisions within the confines of the funding arrangements that they work to. However, he then went on to say that

“COSLA cannot comment on gaps within each of our 32 councils.”

That leads me to ask what the point of COSLA is in this area. You have a commitment to keep the Promise, but you can talk only about the generality of what local authorities do and are clearly unwilling to criticise individual councils. The impression that I get is that, if there are specific failures in specific parts of Scotland, which we know there are, COSLA seems quite unwilling or reticent to unearth those local failings. Ultimately, it is local delivery that will meet local needs, is it not?

Thank you.

Most of the ground has been covered by those with far more in-depth knowledge of the subject than I have, but one thing that has struck me throughout this evidence-taking session—and indeed in other similar sessions, particularly on NHS boards—is that these are not new issues. These matters that have been raised by Audit Scotland with previous iterations of this committee as well as with this committee and, no doubt, will be raised with future public audit committees.

However, we are not talking about financial auditing here—people are involved. Indeed, the convener opened the session by pointing out that people are suffering, and sometimes self-harming, as a result of inaction. At what point, Auditor General, does what I can only assume is your frustration at the lack of progress turn into something more statutory? After all, we cannot keep producing section 22 reports year after year after year that say the same thing and still see no adequate progress by, or accountability from, these public bodies. What more can we as a Parliament or as a committee do? Indeed, what more can you, with your statutory abilities, do?