Mr. Robert Watt:

In terms of the CEOs of State bodies, we changed the guidelines as far back as 2010. We responded to the situation that arose where, in effect, contracts were signed with terms which we subsequently thought were overly generous or we did not approve of. We tried to address that as far back as 2010. The revised code sets out very clear enhanced obligations on bodies to adhere to the sorts of suggestions set out in the report to ensure details are published and that we do not enter into confidentiality agreements that make it difficult to look exactly at the costs for the taxpayer. However, ultimately one has to trust, in this case, the boards of those bodies to meet the guidelines and I am sure their governance arrangements do that. One has to ensure the Department is calling those bodies to account.

In our Department there are 310,000 public servants. There are thousands of bodies, despite our efforts to reduce them over recent years, which I have discussed many times here. There are still many bodies and always will be many bodies, offices and Departments, and we cannot police everything. Of course, it would be foolish to try to do that and it would be very wasteful and counterproductive. The committee would have me in complaining that our Department was too powerful and we were trying to control everything. We have to set out guidelines - delegated guidelines - and ensure boards have proper governance in order that they adhere to those guidelines.

Good governance really comes down to having chairpersons of boards, individuals on boards and systems in place. We have issued the code of conduct, which is very detailed and complex. One could argue that it may be too detailed and too complex but we have set it out. We will see how we get on in managing it. At departmental level in the Civil Service, we have issued a new code of conduct for the governance of Departments, which is also very detailed. It is really about getting the policy right, but then it is about governance.

One of the big changes over recent years that does not receive that much attention is the way in which we now appoint people to State boards. We are going out of our way to set out clearly the types of skills, capacities and competence that we need to fill the gaps that may exist, and we advertising for people who may have those skills. We hope that, over time, this will improve the performance of boards of governance. That is really the issue. Of course, there is a role for periodic reviews of the nature of that produced by the Controller and Auditor General. There are reviews that we carry out in our own Department-----