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With regard to retention, can you tell us briefly about the exit interviews that you carry out? When someone leaves NHS Highland, what do they typically say is their reason for leaving?

That is critical, and the issue appears to be common to other health boards, too. If we are having a recruitment and retention crisis, it is vital that we capture the reasons for people leaving the profession.

What efforts are you putting into the creation of a more sustainable workforce model and dealing with the fact that you are competing all the time with other areas of Scotland that might not have the same rurality or cost of living issues? What more could the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland do to support health boards such as NHS Highland that cannot compete equally with boards in other parts of the country?

Thank you convener, and good morning Mr Boyle. Last week, Mr Boyle, you expressed your frustration that you cannot get to the full facts and the heart of the ferrygate scandal. We are barely a week into our inquiries and I think that some members already share that frustration. Key documents cannot be found or were not prepared. Key witnesses have been gagged. There are reports of possible fraud and corruption. Scotland’s former First Minister has gone as far as saying that we should be calling in the cops. Today, Erik Østergaard, the chairman of the Government’s ferries quango when the deal was done, has said that CMAL was given written confirmation to proceed with awarding the contract to Ferguson Marine, but it was not given any written confirmation of why that was the case. As with all scandals, there is perhaps now some whiff of a cover-up, with people and possibly even Government ministers covering their tracks. We are only one week into our inquiries, and I do share your sense of frustration.

However, we are not alone. Jim McColl, who we should not forget was once a pal of the Scottish National Party—he had the First Minister on speed dial and was one of the Government’s favourite Scottish businessmen—is clearly frustrated; his submission to the committee is stark and points to more than just a fallout among friends in the nationalist movement. He says that the procurement process was driven by a party-political dynamic and was rushed to deliver headlines for the SNP conference; he also says that CMAL’s concerns were not conveyed to him and that not enough time was given to the feasibility of the conceptual design. If that were the case, it would be very serious indeed. In fact, we would be talking about corruption of the procurement process and it would explain why things since then went badly wrong and why ministers potentially have been keen to cover their tracks.

In the absence of any documentary evidence to disprove all that, how concerned should we be about the original process being conducted along such lines? If Mr McColl’s claims are true, does that explain why we have seen such resistance to full and total transparency at a critical point in this process?

I do not want to dwell on the original procurement process, because I recognise that that was a matter for the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee and that your report does not go into it. That said, Parliament still has questions to ask on it and answers should be forthcoming, because there is still something suspect about the scoring of and emphasis in the tendering matrix process.

However, your report covers three critical points in the development of the vessels that I think could be revisited. They are moments when the Government could have got a grip, stemmed the spending and ensured that the ships were properly procured, but, for whatever reason—and possibly to keep covering its tracks—the Government did not go down that route. The first was when Ferguson Marine suddenly announced that it could not offer a full 100 per cent builder’s refund guarantee. In the interests of transparency and fairness, which are critical to any procurement process, should the Government not at that stage through CMAL have reopened the tendering process to the other five bidders or at least informed them that the playing field had changed significantly? Do you know whether that was considered or whether other bidders were informed at that stage of that material change to the procurement contract?

From a COSLA perspective, Nicola Dickie might want to reflect on the financial pressures that local government has experienced recently and what might happen during the interim period, when we might see a significant hollowing out of local government, as social care is moved under ministerial control.

The Auditor General draws attention to that in his briefing. Stakeholders raised concerns not only about extracting adult social care but about the wider scale of the reforms and the impact that they could have on local government.

The financial tension is significant. The other tension is that, during the structural reform process over the next three to five years, the urgent need in social care that the Auditor General identifies in his briefing might somehow be pushed out because of the process that will need to be undertaken.

Caroline Lamb, what assurance can you give the committee that there will be a clear timescale for developing a plan to address the urgent issues in the system? How will it be possible to implement longer-term reform, for example when councils allocate capital budgets or in relation to the reprovisioning of care services? Is there not a real risk that, because of the longer-term structural review, those issues will be pushed off the table even though, in many respects, they are urgent?

I think that we might have lost the connection with Donna.

I have a question about the Scottish Government’s loan payments. It appears that the accelerated payments and loans were a significant cause for concern in relation to FMEL’s cashflow. Through the first loan, the Scottish Government, in effect, secretly loaned the company up to £15 million, and, latterly, a further £30 million was given to keep the company afloat, in positive cashflow terms, so that it could continue to service another part of the Government’s work. There was almost a sort of Ponzi scheme at the heart of this.

The Government claimed that the original £15 million loan was commercially confidential, but that reasoning was dropped when the further £30 million loan was made available. Do you have any understanding of why the Government changed its tune in relation to the commercial confidentiality of the loans?

I have a quick final question. It appears that a significant number of those in FMEL’s senior management were covered by non-disclosure agreements when they left. In your view, when significant sums of public money are involved, is it acceptable for such agreements to be in place? Has that hampered your audit work in any respects?

Earlier, Gill Miller said something about the awarding of the contract and the tender process, which is another missing part of the jigsaw puzzle. I note what you said previously about the scope of your report, but it has been suggested that, although FMEL was the most expensive option and would not be able to give a refund guarantee, there was a view that it could potentially deliver the highest quality and that significant additional points were awarded for quality at some stage in the process. Have you had any sight of the tender scoring, and do you think that it should now be published if it has not been published already?