Seòmar agus comataidhean

Roz McCall touched on that in her questions. The report that we have before us from Audit Scotland, which is a recent report, albeit that it is on the previous financial year, recounts that there was a proposal to restructure the staffing in the office that would generate savings of almost half a million pounds—£450,000—but that has been reversed. That sends a signal to us that there was a proposal to scale down quite significantly the operations of the commissioner’s office, maybe in line with the 84 per cent rejection rate. If you could come back on that point, that would be helpful.

We turn to questions from our deputy convener.

The final area that we want to cover before we finish up is the sponsorship of public bodies, which has been the subject of some discussion and evidence gathering at the committee over the past couple of years, in relation to concerns that we had about the Crofting Commission and more broadly.

The Scottish Government gave an undertaking last spring, I think, to have a review and we took evidence in the autumn of last year but it seems as though it is a continuing concern. At one point, you said that there might be an opportunity for a fundamental audit of the sponsorship arrangements. In the context of the work programme discussion, can you tell us where you are on that? It seems to be a recurring theme and we would like progress to be made on it.

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 11th meeting of the Public Audit Committee in 2023.

The first item on our agenda is to agree to take items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, Ian Bruce, on Audit Scotland’s section 22 report on the latest audit of the commissioner’s performance, which was published several weeks ago.

Towards the end of the committee’s previous evidence session on the report, we had some discussion about whether Ian Bruce is the accountable officer as well as the commissioner. For the record, I confirm that you are—that is correct, is it not?

Thank you very much indeed. You mentioned the committee’s priorities, so I am bound to ask this. Last week, we published a report on the construction of ferries 801 and 802. In that report, we made some recommendations on work that we thought that it would be useful to be included in your work programme, recognising that we cannot instruct you to do anything. Those recommendations were about the procurement of the vessels and what we thought would be a useful forensic analysis of the money that was paid over to Ferguson Marine Engineering Ltd. Have you had any time to consider that? How do you plan to give that consideration?

Secondly, on a broader point, something that is not explicitly mentioned in the work programme papers that we have seen is the discussion about the business investment framework that was published last year by the Scottish Government. The committee has some ideas about how that could be improved, and we have had some useful discussions in public evidence sessions with you about that, especially around the Scottish Government’s consolidated accounts.

Could you give us some reflections on those points?

Thank you very much, commissioner. I think that our working list had 22 recommendations, with a breakdown of 10 that had been implemented at the time of the Audit Scotland report’s publication, and 10 being a work in progress. I am sure that during the course of the next hour we will get into some of the detail of the recommendations and the progress that you have made. If you have reconfigured them, maybe we will get to the bottom of that, too.

I go first to Willie Coffey, who has an extremely important question that exercised us very much at our last session with the Auditor General.

I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Bruce, but what is the AAB?

That is very helpful.

I want to take us on to a matter that you have previously spoken about and informed us of. It is one that not only the current committee but our predecessor committee in the previous parliamentary session identified as being extremely important. We get section 22 reports, for example, which contain recommendations, but because, the following year, a follow-up section 22 report is not produced on that organisation or public body, we lose track of what happens to the recommendations.

Therefore, we would value the ability to have oversight and continuity of interest. I recall that you said that you also saw that as being important, and that you were in discussions with the Scottish Government about establishing some kind of framework that would allow that to become a routine outcome of the audit work that you do and the reports that you present. From memory, December 2022 was mentioned as the date by which you hoped to be finalising that process. Could you bring us up to date with where things are with that framework? Are you taking any other steps to address that issue of being able to follow through on and keep track of recommendations that you and your auditors have made, which is, by common consent, a deficiency?

As I mentioned, Roz McCall has questions on particular aspects of some of our longer-term areas of interest.