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Thank you for clarifying that. That is helpful.

You have inferred this to an extent, but one thing that comes out in the report is that temporary arrangements have had to be put in place for things such as paying staff salaries and paying suppliers. From your auditing perspective, were you satisfied that those temporary financial arrangements were sound?

Thank you, Willie—I will come back to you.

For me, there is a stand-out feature of the report. Over recent weeks, we have looked at section 22 reports on organisations that are quite small and have fairly limited resources, budgets and staffing levels. Here, we have two premier agencies of central Government—Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council—which have a combined budget each year of £2 billion and more of public money. Despite that, the story in the report is that, going back to 2016-17, they have failed to agree, and therefore things have not happened. That is quite staggering.

The report infers that the Scottish Government has failed to provide leadership to address and rectify the situation. There have been a few reheated attempts to set up various committees and bodies to co-ordinate things, all of which—according to the report that has been laid before the committee—seem, largely, to have failed. Why do you think that is, Auditor General?

I turn to the skills alignment actions, which are, as you say, the principal focus of the report that we are considering. The report notes that in 2018-19 the Scottish Government said that it planned to issue the same strategic skills guidance, through letters of guidance, to the boards of Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council in order to support delivery of the enterprise and skills strategic board’s strategic plan, once that was published. Has consistent and complementary guidance ever been issued by the Scottish Government to those agencies?

Thank you very much, Auditor General. We have a large number of questions, but before we go to them, I remind everyone that, to aid broadcasting, it would be helpful if members could direct their questions to a particular member of the team. I also say to Stephen Boyle that if someone on his team other than whoever has been invited to respond wishes to come in and add something to our evidence gathering, they should put an R in the chat function. We will pick that up and bring them in.

Sharon Dowey has a number of questions.

I think that there might be some problem with the cameras for Douglas Black and Gordon Smail—[Interruption.] I now see Gordon—please join us.

I am sure that we will consider that. I will bring Willie Coffey in before we begin the last lap of our evidence.

We have a couple more questions that we wish to ask. I will bring in Craig Hoy in a minute.

First, one of the other substantive areas of the report concerns data sharing. One of the threads that seems to run through the report is a lack of consensus between the two agencies, with a lack of agreement on timescales, measures of success and so on. There also appears to be an inordinate delay in getting a data-sharing agreement into place that addresses the task at hand around skills alignment.

I want to understand why there was such a delay in getting the data-sharing agreement in place. It seems to me that data is fundamental to the planning of future demand in the labour market, given the skills that we are going to need in five years’ time, 10 years’ time and so on. That data and that evidence are absolutely critical. Why did it take so long to get to the point that we have got to? Even now, is that data-sharing agreement fit for purpose? Will it address the challenge that we face?

That was the final question. I thank the Auditor General and his team—Gordon Smail, Douglas Black and Rebecca Seidel—for joining us.

We will have a changeover of witnesses, so I suspend the meeting.

If they think that they have something additional to say and want to come in, I am keen to hear their views. They do not, so I will move on.

I was also particularly struck by the strand of the skills alignment strategy relating to the appointment of a skills alignment director, which was a senior position. I will look again at the chronology—outlined in exhibit 3—after the rather dysfunctional episode with the skills committee. In February 2018, recruitment began for a skills alignment director. There was then a gap from February until October that year, when an interim director was appointed. In March 2019, the interim skills alignment director’s term ended. There was then another gap until August that year, when the permanent position was filled.

I do not know whether Gordon Smail is in a position to explain that or whether the Auditor General wants to have a go. Efficiency and effectiveness are cornerstones of what we are looking at, but the recruitment process, which was seen to be a key strategic part of driving the agenda forward, seems to have been highly inefficient. On top of that, it was decided later, after the permanent skills alignment director had left, that the post was surplus to requirements. Could you explain that for us?

Can you confirm that the position was originally advertised and the recruitment process begun to appoint a permanent skills alignment director in February 2018 but the position was permanently filled only in August the following year? That is a huge gap between the intent to recruit somebody to that critical position at what I presume was a critical time and somebody finally being permanently recruited.