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As I mentioned, some of those broader themes will be picked up in the evidence session that we have planned for 31 March.

That brings us to the end of our short evidence session on the report on SEPA. I once again thank Jo Green, acting chief executive of SEPA, Stuart McGregor and David Pirie, who joined us visually and by audio only at points. Thank you very much for the evidence that you have given us, which has been valuable. I also thank Roy Brannen, Helen Nisbet and Kevin Quinlan from the Scottish Government, who also joined us. If there are any points that, on reflection, you feel that it would be useful for us to have, by all means submit them to us in writing—we would receive them gratefully.

I briefly suspend the meeting so that we can have a changeover of witnesses.

Thanks, Mr McGregor. That is helpful.

I want to go back to a point that Jo Green made a few minutes ago. Jo, you told us that the public register is the one service that is not currently available as a result of the cyberattack. For the layperson, will you explain what information is captured in the public register and what we cannot see that we normally would be able to see? When do you expect the public register to come back online?

Okay. Make your opening statement, director general.

Whether they are errors or mistakes, they have been quite long-running errors and mistakes, have they not? That is why there are many aspects of the report that give the committee a good deal of concern.

I think that you said this earlier, Mr Griffin, but for the record could you confirm that you accept the recommendations and the action plan that are set out in the Audit Scotland report?

Is there a reason why it was so late?

Willie Coffey has questions about monitoring and reporting arrangements.

Good morning and welcome to the eighth meeting in 2022 of the Public Audit Committee. Before we begin, I remind the members, witnesses and staff who are present that social distancing rules apply in the committee room, and that they should wear face coverings when entering, leaving or moving around the room.

The first item on our agenda is a decision on whether to take items 3 and 4 in private. Do members agreed to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session on the report, “Planning for Skills”, which Audit Scotland produced earlier this year. I welcome our witnesses, who are all from the Scottish Government. Joining us in the room are Joe Griffin, director general, education and justice, Helena Gray, director, fair work, employability and skills, and Adam Reid, deputy director for skills. Helen Webster, deputy director for reform in the directorate for advanced learning and science, joins us remotely. Willie Coffey, committee member, also joins us remotely.

Director general, before I begin, I will remind us why we are here and reflect on the evidence that was presented to us in the evidence session with the Auditor General for Scotland on 10 February. In his opening statement, the Auditor General said:

“we have found that slow progress has been made since 2017, with anticipated benefits not being realised. The Scottish Government has not provided the necessary leadership or oversight for joint working between SDS and the SFC, and there has been insufficient clarity on what it wanted to achieve and on what success would look like. We also found that progress by SDS and the SFC was impeded by lack of agreement between the two organisations about what skills alignment would involve.”—[Official Report, Public Audit Committee, 10 February 2022; c 2.]

This is a section 22 report, which is a serious report. Therefore, it is extremely disappointing that, only late yesterday afternoon, we received a very dense 30-page document, which, I understand, is the new framework agreement that is being put in place. Part of the story is about leadership and governance; for us, it is about democratic accountability.

I have to say that the very late arrival of an important document, which is entirely pertinent to this morning’s proceedings—a meeting that you have known about for quite some time—is, frankly, unacceptable. In my view, it compounds what is already quite a bad situation, and I hope that, this morning, we can address some of the fundamental criticisms that have been made over a failure that has gone on for five years.

Director general, I invite you to make an opening statement.

Thank you. I will begin by asking you a question that we asked the Auditor General, which is on the opportunity cost of the failure to get a co-ordinated skills alignment strategy together. Has the Scottish Government made any assessment to determine the costs to the public purse and the opportunity costs that have been lost through the failure to progress the skills alignment strategy?

The Audit Scotland report talks about the failure to build any relationship in the shared endeavour between the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland. In fact, in its report, Audit Scotland said that there were “tensions between the agencies”. That has gone on for at least four years between, let us remind ourselves, two major Government-funded organisations. I think that the joint budget for the two is £2 billion of public money a year; yet, because of tensions between the organisations, there has been a failure to deliver. Can you explain that?