Hansard

I am delighted to open the first ever debate sponsored by the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament.

Since 1999, and particularly over the past four years, the committee and its predecessors have played a vital role in holding to account those who are charged with spending taxpayers’ money. Indeed, the role that the committee plays has been recognised by others outside the Parliament.

We have been supported in that work by a tremendous clerking team present and past. On behalf of committee members, I thank the clerks for doing so much to enable us to do our job.

I also pay particular tribute to Audit Scotland and the Auditor General for Scotland for the outstanding reports that they prepare. The quality of those reports has enabled the committee to carry out its work much more effectively and robustly.

Over the past four years, a number of issues have arisen time and again. I will focus on those in my speech but, before I do so, I will highlight two areas of frustration for the committee, which I hope the Parliament will reflect on.

The committee is unable to consider any matter unless it is the subject of a report that the Auditor General or, occasionally and exceptionally, the Parliamentary Bureau lays before the Parliament. Many people believe that we have the power to initiate debates or inquiries, but we do not. To be frank, neither the committee nor Audit Scotland could cope with an unending stream of demands via the committee, but some thought needs to be given to matters of significant public concern that may be worthy of investigation.

The second frustration pertains to local authority-related expenditure. The committee is unable to investigate reports from Audit Scotland or the Accounts Commission that relate to local government issues and cannot investigate situations in which auditors have qualified the accounts of a local authority for a number of years. That is an issue of significant concern involving substantial amounts of money. Given the significance of local government expenditure, which ministers authorise, should a committee of the Parliament not be allowed to investigate publicly stated concerns about the use of public money when auditors have articulated worries? Similarly, the committee was unable to investigate the recent controversy over Strathclyde partnership for transport’s use of funds, because SPT is sponsored by local authorities. Despite significant reporting and worries, we were unable to consider the matter.

The first of the key themes that I want to address is governance or, more to the point, poor governance that has resulted in poor decision taking.

The committee conducted an inquiry into the 2006-07 audit of the Western Isles NHS Board. Our report highlighted a number of issues in relation to governance. At the time of the 2006-07 audit, the board had reported deficits for the previous four years. The committee learned that the board did not have a fully costed clinical strategy, which had a detrimental impact on the board’s finances. We were shocked to discover that the health board, which was short of cash, was paying for three chief executives at one time.

The committee was concerned that there was some evidence in the health service—and possibly the wider civil service—of a culture where poor performance is not addressed. It would appear that, rather than address the problem, the health service can move staff who underperform to other posts at a similarly senior level. The avoidance of hard decisions should not be tolerated. The committee has therefore called for a strengthening of the procedures for tackling poor staff performance. Failure should not be rewarded.

Another example of poor financial forecasting was the introduction of the national concessionary travel scheme, where the cost of electronic ticketing machines rose from £9 million to £42 million. In that case, there was a complete absence of detail as to how the initial £9 million was calculated, which the committee finds worrying and unacceptable.

The need for early intervention by the Scottish Government, particularly where nationally significant projects or policies appear to be going wrong, was also echoed in the committee’s report “Major Capital Projects”. The committee learned that the Government’s chief civil servant was not routinely made aware of developing problems across Government departments. The committee regards that as inadequate and has called on the Scottish Government to consider adopting formal reporting and audit trails based on systematic time and cost reporting. It is astonishing that the Government’s chief civil servant should be unaware of developing financial problems across Government departments.

The committee is not able to issue a formal report on the Edinburgh trams project. We hope that our successor committee will have the opportunity to consider Audit Scotland’s recommendation about Transport Scotland playing a more significant role in the project.

Generally, the committee welcomes the infrastructure projects database, which should help with monitoring the progress of projects with a capital value of more than £5 million.

However, the committee has concerns about how difficulties that public bodies or policies run into are communicated to and between senior Scottish Government staff. The committee believes that governance and accountability relationships between the Scottish Government and public sector partners need to be strengthened to engender a more collaborative approach. With less money available, the Scottish Government and the wider public sector need to work together. That issue was highlighted in the Auditor General’s report “Maintaining Scotland’s roads”.

I turn to the issue of transparency or, often more accurately, the lack of transparency. During the past four years, the committee has not always been able to assure itself that taxpayers’ money has been used wisely and appropriately. Similarly, there have been occasions when the committee has been unable to determine why and how decisions were made.

I have already outlined the inability of civil servants to explain how the original estimate of £9 million for the introduction of ticketing machines was calculated. In our report “The First ScotRail passenger rail franchise”, we said that we were not able to determine what payments had been made to a departing member of staff because of a compromise agreement that had been signed. The committee believed that it was important to be able to investigate the circumstances of that person leaving and how it related to the extension of the franchise, but we could not get to the bottom of that matter.

The committee has welcomed the steps taken at United Kingdom level to publish the names and job titles of senior civil servants with a salary of more than £150,000 a year, but we believe that more should be done, especially in relation to payments to departing staff. There needs to be greater transparency and openness.

The issue of transparency featured in the committee’s recently published report “The Gathering 2009”, which highlighted a failure by the Government to alert partners to a significant loan. There was also a failure by the Government’s chief civil servant to keep a record of discussions with a senior staff member from the City of Edinburgh Council, and the committee heard differing accounts of that meeting. Those issues were part of a wider report that highlighted major concerns about the way in which senior representatives of the City of Edinburgh Council operated. That is something that both Government officials and the City of Edinburgh Council should address.

I turn to data collection and the measuring of quality. The collection of robust and verifiable data is vital to enable the Scottish Government and public bodies to identify where productivity and efficiency savings can be made. The committee is concerned that it has not always been able to determine whether services have been delivered as efficiently and effectively as possible because the data that are collected nationally have not been sufficiently robust. One such example is highlighted in the committee’s report “Overview of mental health services”. A target for reducing the rate of increase in antidepressant prescribing had been set by the Scottish Government, but the committee learned that information on the number of people on antidepressants was not being collected. As a result, the factors that led to the quadrupling of antidepressant prescribing could not be clearly identified, which meant that it was more difficult to identify how to tackle the issue effectively.

The committee welcomes the Scottish Government’s change in focus from tackling prescribing to targeting access to psychological therapies, but we question why a target was set without corresponding work being undertaken to identify how best to measure progress against it. The committee also welcomes the statistics on outcomes and outputs that have been provided on the Scotland performs website. However, until that information can be linked to expenditure, it will be more difficult for service providers to make informed decisions on how best to provide services cost effectively while maintaining service quality.

The next session of the Parliament will bring with it a whole series of financial challenges both for the Parliament and for the Government, irrespective of who is in government and who is elected to the Parliament. The Public Audit Committee is now well established and I hope that the next committee will continue to rigorously seek out and identify areas where savings and efficiencies can be made to ensure that public funds are used properly to deliver high-quality services. In its key themes report, the committee lays down a challenge to the next Government, suggesting ways in which it can assist in ensuring that public funds are used effectively, economically and efficiently.

I thank the Presiding Officer and the Parliament for allowing our committee to do the work that it has done over the past four years. I hope that we have discharged the function that was given to us and that the next committee in the forthcoming session will be able to continue that work.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations contained in the Public Audit Committee’s 1st Report, 2011 (Session 3): Session 3 reports of the Public Audit Committee – key themes (SP Paper 559).

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