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Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2011

03 Mar 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

“Session 3 reports of the Public Audit Committee—key themes”

Carlaw, Jackson Con West of Scotland Watch on SPTV

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I hope that this will be a relatively brief contribution in any event.

Like others, I begin by acknowledging the role of the Public Audit Committee and in particular the convenership of Hugh Henry, which as others have said has been recognised elsewhere and by Parliament. It is important that that should be so and that the committee should be on form at this time, because the work that it does is crucial in the current climate. David Whitton detailed at some length many of the important contributions that the Public Audit Committee has made.

At this time, when the economy is under the pressure that it is and public expenditure is under the scrutiny that it should be, it is important that the work of the Public Audit Committee is listened to and respected. The concern that it expresses—that it is not always able to assure itself that public funds have been spent efficiently—is something that the Parliament, in this session and the next session, must deal with and determine how to tackle. The report is intended to stimulate that debate and, in his opening speech, Hugh Henry detailed the themes and posed several key questions for Parliament to consider and address.

The report talks about accountability and governance and, indeed, the failure at times to tackle poor governance. I note that the committee

“believes that ... failures, particularly those at a senior level should be more rigorously challenged, rather than people simply being moved to other posts, often in senior positions.”

That is a fault not just in the public sector and in Government but in the private sector, where such a move is very often seen as the easy solution. That said, I suppose that, unlike in the public sector, incompetence in the private sector is not being underwritten by public money and there is a need to address such issues more directly. For example, we have got a bit too used to allowing the NHS to pay out record compensation levels of, say, £35 million without necessarily tackling the causes behind such a payout in the first place or addressing the lack of proper accountability and governance that it represents.

The committee is quite critical of Transport Scotland and the electronic ticketing fiasco. It really beggars belief that something budgeted at £9 million ended up costing £42 million. I am also bewildered at the complete lack of understanding of the whole process that would be involved that the committee managed to establish. Those of us who travel abroad, including, I imagine, everyone in the chamber, are quite used to arriving in other countries and buying a kind of smart card that allows access to buses, trains, the underground—if such a thing exists—and various attractions. The whole operation seems to be run in a perfectly competent way. Then visitors come to Scotland, where we are unable to implement any kind of integrated system or, where we manage to implement a limited system, we do so at a quantifiable and subsequently proven public cost.

I think that the public find all of this confusing. After all, our nation produces more than its fair share of dry and deeply intense chartered accountants, who, in my limited experience, rarely leave their windowless offices other than for the occasional trip to Murrayfield. One would have thought that, with all that expertise, our nation would have been one of those most able to ensure that, when it embarks on public projects, it does so with a degree of accountability and good governance.

Hugh Henry mentioned the possible future implications of the trams and we should, of course, remember what happened with the Parliament building and electronic ticketing. However, as convener of the Forth Crossing Bill Committee, I am concerned about any potential implications if we do not ensure that the Forth crossing project has the very best governance, transparency and accountability. After all, if its budget were to have a similar overrun as that for electronic ticketing, we would be looking not at a £2.1 billion project but at a £10.5 billion project.

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Meeting of the Parliament 03 March 2011

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