THE Finance Secretary has hit back over criticism of the Scottish Government after a new report found problems with the ways in which Covid-19 funds were awarded.
Kate Forbes said Audit Scotland’s report into Scotland’s financial response to the pandemic was “useful” and encouraged Scots to read the report itself “rather than relying on headlines and opposition rhetoric for the full picture”.
While the report raised criticisms – picked up by Labour and the Conservatives – that it was not possible to account for all funds given as part of the Covid response, it noted that fraud was likely to be as low as one of two percent of payments.
There’s a useful @AuditScotland report today on the financial response to Covid. As always, worth reading the report rather than relying on headlines and opposition rhetoric for the full picture. Here are some of the findings:
— Kate Forbes MSP (@_KateForbes) June 16, 2022
Because the report only covered the period until December 2021, some news stories reported that not all of the Covid funds budget had been spent. Forbes said it “has now”.
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More than 300 spending announcements relating to Covid were made by the Scottish Government between March 2020 and March 2022, Audit Scotland found.
The report said that the Scottish Government’s approach to distributing funds meant cash got to recipients but resulted in auditors lacking the necessary data to “see how some financial decisions were made”.
Large proportions of funds were distributed through councils because they had “existing systems and local knowledge to enable them to spend quickly”.
But this resulted in records of decision-making not being centrally collated or not being made, meaning they were not able to be examined in the report.
In a Twitter thread highlighting key findings from the report, Forbes added: “Urgency and speed were of the essence, so we adapted our schemes to distribute funding as quickly as possible. Of course, pressures on businesses, households and public services were extreme - that’s why we moved at speed.
Audit Scotland said there was “limited” evaluation on the effectiveness of spending, adding: “Such an evaluation will be challenging due to information not always being available or centrally collated.
“Information on how quickly money reached those it was intended to help and the difference it has made is limited.
“It is critical the Scottish Government collect relevant data to understand the difference its interventions have made, and to plan for a recovery that meets its wider national priorities.”
Forbes said that the report’s recommendation that “lessons are learned” about what worked well with the scheme was “very fair” and added that the Government had been “doing that throughout the pandemic”.
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She added: “Now that the acute phase is over, we’re already making substantial changes for example to how businesses can access support.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar seized upon the Audit Scotland report at First Minister’s Questions on Thursday, claiming it exposed the SNP’s “incompetence”.
He accused the Scottish Government of “clipping the wings of Audit Scotland”, in light of anticpated cuts to the independent body’s budget, after this phrase was used by an insider source speaking to the Scottish Sun.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the Audit Scotland budget was set by parliament and said the figures in the spending review, showing a frozen budget for the body were illustrative.
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