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Okay, but you were in attendance at a board of management meeting on 23 October 2024. The minute on page 8 reads:

“Board Member expressed concern at how quickly the position has moved for the worse since the June Board passed the savings plan, and would not be comfortable passing a Budget”.

As recently as October 2024, at a meeting that you attended, people on the board were expressing that view.

Thank you for your succinctness. Jacqui Brasted, do you accept the findings?

On that more optimistic note, I will draw the session to a close. I thank those of you who have joined us online. We really appreciate you giving up the time. For those of you who have had difficulties with the weather, I hope that it improves for you soon and that you are properly re-engaged. We therefore place on record our thanks to Vicki Nairn, Mike Baxter and Alistair Wylie. We very much appreciate your patience and time, which has been very useful to us, this morning.

I also turn to the witnesses who have managed to make it into Edinburgh. I thank you all for the evidence that you have given us as a committee. It is very much appreciated. Tiffany Ritchie, Jacqui Brasted, Catherine Etri and Lynn Murray, we thank you for your time and for the information that you have been able to give us this morning and the way that you have answered a quite wide-ranging set of questions.

I now suspend the meeting to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Good morning, and welcome back. Agenda item 3 is consideration of the Auditor General’s report “NHS in Scotland 2025: Finance and performance”. I am pleased to welcome to the committee Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, to give evidence on the report. This morning, he is joined by Leigh Johnston, senior manager at Audit Scotland, and Bernie Milligan, audit manager at Audit Scotland.

We have some questions to put to you, but before we get to them, Auditor General, I invite you to make an opening statement.

Graham, I am not sure that the panel can answer that question.

I will move things along and invite the deputy convener to put some questions.

Thank you. Other members of the committee will get into some of those areas in a bit more depth, so I will avoid stepping on their toes and making myself unpopular by moving on and inviting Jamie Greene, the deputy convener, to put some questions to you.

Okay, thank you. Other members of the committee may want to ask questions on that part of the report.

I will move to another area. One comment in the report that jumped out at me was about agency staff. Presumably we cannot name the department or identify the person concerned, but you cite one example of somebody who I think was a former employee of the Scottish Government and who came back on an agency basis, part time over four months, and billed the Government for £85,000 or more. Is that a common occurrence? Was it something that stood out as an isolated incident? What is your take?

Mr Simpson will ask you about Historic Environment Scotland in short order. However, the deep dive took place way back, did it not? I presume that it was after the initial WICS section 22 report.

Okay. The deputy convener, who I will turn to next, has some questions on one of those projects.

My final question for now is about risk management. In paragraph 69, you say:

“Risk management is key to the Scottish Government’s assurance arrangements.”

What evidence have you seen that this is being applied to the relationship with the GFG Alliance?

As we have previously noted, the GFG Alliance is facing litigation because it has failed to lodge accounts with Companies House, including, I think, for Alvance British Aluminium, based at Lochaber. It is facing investigation over suspected fraud, fraudulent trading and money laundering by the Serious Fraud Office. Its auditors, King and King Chartered Accountants, resigned in 2022 following their concerns about the business. Only last week, MHA, which is part of Baker Tilly International, also resigned as auditors from part of the GFG Alliance’s subsidiary arrangements because they, too, were concerned about some intercompany interactions.

In other words, this company is riddled with question marks over its conduct and is facing litigation and investigation. Do you think that the Scottish Government has properly managed the risks and has it understood the implications of its relationship with the GFG Alliance?

Thank you. That exhausts our questions for this morning, but I want to take the opportunity to thank you very much for the evidence that you have given us and for being prepared to talk about the Historic Environment Scotland report, which is only just hot off the press. That has been useful, but we will return to it, I am quite sure, in the future.

For the time being, Carole Grant, Richard Smith and Stephen Boyle, Auditor General, I thank you for your evidence this morning, and I take the opportunity on behalf of the committee to wish you a happy Christmas and a peaceful new year.