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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 9 July 2025
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Displaying 3298 contributions

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Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

For the next item, I welcome two new witnesses from Audit Scotland, who join the Auditor General. Joining us remotely is Ashleigh Madjitey. If you want to come in at any point you can put an R in the chat function. That would be helpful. My apologies—Carole Grant joins us remotely. She is an audit director in audit services at Audit Scotland. I welcome Carole, and I welcome Ashleigh, who is here with us in the room, to talk about the fuller 2020-21 audit and the subsequent, more recent, briefing on personal protective equipment. We have a series of questions to ask our witnesses. Auditor General, do you want to begin with an opening statement to get us under way?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

I want to go back to part of the discussion that you have just had with Colin Beattie. These are my calculations, so they may not be entirely reliable, but, broadly speaking, and based on the figures that are in the report, the increase in the volume of PPE from 2019-20 to 2020-21 was of the order of 212 per cent, but the cost of shipments increased by 2,100 per cent—by a factor of 10. The price inflation was exorbitant, was it not? Do you have any reflections on that?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

Who would normally issue that guidance? Would it be the Scottish Government or NSS?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

Thank you. I will bring in Willie Coffey.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS National Services Scotland”; and “Personal protective equipment”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

With that, I thank the Auditor General, Ashleigh Madjitey, who is with us in the committee room, and Carole Grant, who joined us remotely, for some robust and illuminating evidence. It is greatly appreciated.

11:16 Meeting continued in private until 11:37.  

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

Thanks. Committee members have a whole suite of questions to ask.

On your previous answer about those who directly represent crofting communities being on the commission, Auditor General, do you—or perhaps Pat Kenny or Graeme Greenhill can answer this—have any sense of the extent to which the issues raised in the report have affected the key services that the commission provides to those communities?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

Did your team look at communications between the sponsor division and the commission, including the board, in order to understand what that relationship was like? Were you able to amass any evidence that pointed to relationships—or lack of relationships—that rang alarm bells?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

In the previous session, the Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee raised concerns about the adequacy of sponsorship arrangements between the Scottish Government and public bodies, especially non-departmental public bodies. I think that those arrangements are set out very clearly in the Scottish public finance manual. Accountable officers in organisations, as well as, I presume, board members in those organisations, should receive some training on, or be led to some understanding of, their roles and responsibilities and what sponsorship arrangements should look like. What is your sense of that? To what extent has that happened in the past and is it happening now?

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

Mr Beattie has a series of questions that will probe governance and the different areas of responsibility.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of the Crofting Commission”

Meeting date: 4 November 2021

Richard Leonard

We are drawing towards the end of the evidence session. I will bring in Sharon Dowey shortly.

Mr Kenny mentioned the hopefulness that comes with the commissioning of an external consultant’s report. However, did I not read that there was a consultant’s report in 2016 that looked into the Crofting Commission? The question that that provokes is to what extent there is a similarity between the findings of the consultants in their 2016 report and what Deloitte uncovered in 2020-21. Is the Crofting Commission just dealing with the same issues? Are you as auditors having to deal with the same issues? Are we as the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament having to deal with the same issues over and over again?