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Public Audit Committee 09 March 2016

09 Mar 2016 · S4 · Public Audit Committee

Item of business

Annual Report

Scanlon, Mary Con Highlands and Islands Watch on SPTV

When I came here in 1999, David McLetchie was my leader. He offered me the Health and Community Care Committee. I said, “I don’t know much about it. I go to the doctor once a year—that’s about it.” He said, “What is it that you want to do?” I said, “I would like to go on the Audit Committee.” He said, “That’s just a tick-box exercise. Nobody pays attention to that; it’s just a by-the-way committee. You’d be wasting your time on that committee.” I must say that it is a committee that we have not heard of much until this session of Parliament. I would like to thank Hugh Henry, who gave me the courage to be a bit feistier in committee, and Iain Gray. Most of all, convener, I would like to thank you because you have convened this committee—it is the first one that you have convened—in a thoroughly professional manner. You have taken each and every one of us with you in both the public and the private sessions. This is only my humble opinion, so it is not worth much, but I used to watch Margaret Hodge at Westminster and think, “The Public Accounts Committee is a really good committee—maybe we should be a bit more like that.” Under the convener’s leadership, with the forensic questioning of Tavish Scott and other long-standing committee members such as our resident auditors—Colin Beattie, the convener and me—and with the help of John Doyle and a few other characters along the way, I think that each and every one of us around the table has helped to bring this committee close to being on a level with the Public Accounts Committee at Westminster. I know that people out there looked at John Doyle and thought, “I don’t want to be there.” I think that those people might be paying a bit more attention to the handouts that they take, and that they might even check their contracts with IT systems before signing them. I want to commend the convener for his measured, thoughtful, consensual and thoroughly professional approach. It has been a privilege working with him, and it has been a great privilege working on the committee. Again, I want to thank the Auditor General and her staff. Thank you so much.