Speeches by Kane.

“Can you expand on the focus and effort part of that? Reminding Departments to do it is one thing, but it is the focus and effort, and the plan. You have been reminding them for a while, but that is not resulting in action that the NAO can evidence. I am more interested in drilling down into what you are doing and how y…”

“Paragraph 1.33 of the NAO Report says, “Departmental annual reports use different definitions of what constitutes consultancy spending, which may or may not be based on the Cabinet Office definition for consultancy”, so the NAO is not assured that this is happening. You have something that you are telling Departments t…”

“I imagine that one of the problems is that there is not a consistent definition of “consultancy” across Government. I know you have said that you are working on a revised definition of “consultancy”. What is stopping that happening? What is stopping one definition of “consultancy” being used across Government?”

“I am going to push this a little more, Cat, in that we have had this conversation before about what technology will do in the future, but we are trying to ensure that we can measure your progress against targets with what you have now. From what we are hearing from Rebecca, it is a bit of a laborious get-together with …”

“Is that the target to reduce the spending, as opposed to the target to adopt a consistent definition? What target are you referring to?”

“That sounds like the future, though, rather than the present. Getting from the current labour-intensive, manual process to the wonderful new world of AI doing it for us requires a journey, so where are we on that journey?”

“Just to bring all that together, the impression I am getting, not being a data specialist, is that the data is not as good as it needs to be, but you have put processes in place to ensure that it is changing. It seems like you are doing it in a very labour-intensive way if you are having all of these check-ins. What ar…”

“I know that my colleague Blake was going to ask you about that, so I will hand over to him now.”

“Just on a point of clarification, Cat, when Sarah Olney asked whether you knew how much you are spending, you said yes and disagreed with the NAO Report. Paragraph 1.33 of the NAO Report says, “The data available on Departments’ consultancy spending are inconsistent and vary from one source to another… This means the G…”

“Just picking up on that point, earlier we were talking about the definition of a consultant and the best way to feed data into the system. It strikes me that your Department within the centre, Cat, must occasionally be quietly screaming into the void when you put this best practice out and permanent secretaries are not…”

“Why?”

“It is carrots and sticks, yes.”

“What you have just described, James, is about expectations and risks, but we have the words “aspiration” and “ambition”, as compared with the word “obligation”. Obligation is the word I would normally expect to hear when it comes to audit. It is a cultural question within the Department or Departments. When you hear th…”

“The words “aspiration” and “ambition” have been used a lot. Ambition and aspiration are normally good words to hear, except when we are talking about an audit function. James, how are you ensuring that the word “aspiration” cannot just be replaced with “sticking my finger in the air and making the best guess I can”? Yo…”

“James, in terms of making the Whole of Government Accounts useful to others and doing that cultural shift—my tongue is slightly in my cheek when I say this—I heard you express an aspiration to make them more useful to more people, but I did not hear a plan for how you were going to do it. I did not hear much about the …”

“But you are not getting it from the Scottish Government.”

“That is really interesting. The question is: can you compel it? Are you exploring that? It strikes me that knowing the answer to what you can compel in a devolved setting is important. Even if you or I do not like the answer, understanding what we can compel is important.”

“But do you accept that, if we are trying to produce something that is the Whole of Government Accounts, devolution and the way that devolved spending works is part of that whole? Do you also accept that in order to do what it says—to give us that complete picture—devolution has to feature in the WGA and has to be done …”

“It is about value for money. Crucially, it is about getting the value for money out of the money that goes from here to the devolved nations. Judging public services is a different thing; this is value for money.”

“I have a couple of questions. One is on resource, which I will come to, but can I talk devolution for a minute, please? In the past year, we have transferred an extra £5 billion-worth of resources up to the Scottish Government. I think that there is about an extra £800 million coming up from the Budget last week. The q…”