Meeting of the Parliament 04 September 2025
Being the convener of the Public Audit Committee is a privilege, and it is one which I will never take for granted. So I am grateful to be opening this afternoon’s debate on the committee’s findings, on our conclusions, from our extensive scrutiny of the Auditor General’s two section 22 reports following his annual audits of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland between 2022 and 2024. At the very start, let me put on record the thanks of the committee, past and present, to the clerks, past and present, and to the entire support team for the hard work that has gone into the production of this report.
What we have exposed is an extreme example, in the words of the Auditor General, of governance and financial issues falling
“far short of what is expected of a public body”.
And as we gathered evidence over the course of a year, we uncovered a catalogue of failures by WICS, by its former chief executive, by its board and by the Scottish Government. All of them—all of them—failed to meet the core minimum standards that are required of them. And by their action, and by their inaction—conscious choices both—they all contributed to an extraordinary and flagrant misuse of public funds.
Significant sums of public money—our money, the people’s money—were splashed out on expensive training courses for senior staff, on unauthorised Amazon gift vouchers to all staff, and on excessive and unreceipted hospitality claims, or “business entertaining costs”, racked up by the most powerful staff in the organisation. Time after time, the audits uncovered fundamental weaknesses in financial controls, where expenses claims were paid out with missing or non-itemised receipts. At one point at the start of 2023, unbelievably, the limit per head for spend on these “business entertaining costs”, including meals and alcohol, was done away with completely.