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Chamber and committees

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 13 August 2025
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Displaying 2597 contributions

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Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

Can you briefly indicate what actions the board has taken to review and refine the board risk assurance framework? That question might be for Pamela Dudek or for the chair.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

My focus, which is on two areas, is partly based on some of the comments that you made last week. Some of my questions probably relate to points that fellow members have raised, but I would like to get the sequence right in my mind because it is a bit complicated.

CMAL awarded the contract to build the ferries—it was the body that signed that off. There was no ministerial direction to do so—jump in if I am telling porkies; I am trying to get it right—so there would be no piece of paper for that. Is that correct?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

On the face of it, I would agree. However, as you have said, there is ambiguity. As I said, if I was a Scottish minister receiving the covering email, I would just have looked at the bit that said

“broadly comparable with the tender specification”

and so on, and said, “Right. They seem to have done their job.” However, that is probably for a different discussion.

On FMEL, one of the concerns that I raised last week was about the destination of the money and what has happened to it. We can speculate that the ÂŁ45 million, which was really for working capital, paying salaries and keeping the yard ticking over, was used for that purpose. However, tens of millions of pounds went into the yard and there is no evidence that, at the point of nationalisation, work or equipment of that value was lying there. What happened to it?

You have said that, because FMEL was a private company, Audit Scotland has been unable to carry out proper due diligence. Now that it has been nationalised, do we own that history? Can we look retrospectively at what happened to the money? There must be some record of it some place.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

It seems to me that there was an awful lot of evidence in the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee report. I would have hoped that that might have led you down that road without waiting for the Public Audit Committee.

Public Audit Committee

Section 22 Report: “The 2020/21 audit of NHS Highland”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

On the back of what you have been saying, could you indicate where you believe the healing process is at this point?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

I am coming to that in due sequence, I hope.

CMAL awarded the contract in its capacity as the procuring authority. It expressed concerns about the absence of a full refund guarantee, and it put in place mitigations with regard to that. There is a question about the timing of that. FMEL did not say anything about being unable to comply with the terms of the tender until after the announcement was made, which is a bit odd. You would have thought that, at the time of responding to the tender document, it would have said, “No, we cannot comply with those bits.”

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

When the yard was nationalised, the assets in it must have been valued. Was their value comparable to the money that came in to produce them?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

Is that not an area that it is important for us to look at? One of the key things that this committee does is follow the public pound; here, we have a situation in which tens of millions of pounds have been poured into a project with not that much to show, value-wise, at the end of it.

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

Are you considering doing such a review?

Public Audit Committee

Section 23 Report: “New vessels for the Clyde and Hebrides: Arrangements to deliver vessels 801 and 802”

Meeting date: 28 April 2022

Colin Beattie

Did CMAL give a formal document with detailed concerns that got to ministers? I am asking you that question because I am not sure.