National Assembly for Wales

Papers to note. As always happens in the first meeting back, we had a lot of correspondence over the summer. I’d like to note these papers if Members are in agreement. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much.

If we can move now to item 3 on our agenda this morning, and the first of our evidence sessions today. It’s with Audit Wales, and it’s lovely to see our witnesses here.

This session is the committee's annual scrutiny of Audit Wales, and it always, as we know, takes two parts. Today’s session is related to the annual report and accounts for 2024-25, and the audit findings report and the annual plan. The estimate and the interim report will be looked at on 5 November. Let’s start with some introductions. If you’d like to introduce yourselves for the record. Thank you.

Certainly. Diolch, Cadeirydd. Adrian Crompton, I’m the Auditor General for Wales and chief executive.

Kevin Thomas, executive director of corporate services at Audit Wales. 

Ann-Marie Harkin, executive director for audit services at Audit Wales. 

Fantastic. Thank you very much. As I can see from my pack here, we’ve got your reports, so we’ll go through them in some detail, hopefully, now, over the next hour or so.

I’d just like to start by understanding how the annual report and accounts were prepared. I’ll ask a general question: have you delivered the priorities set out in the 2024-25 plan?

Yes. 

That was easy. [Laughter.] I wonder if you want to elaborate just a little bit more on that and give an overview. Thank you. 

I’m sure we’ll go into more detail, and you’ll want to explore the key performance indicators and other issues. But if I just start with a sort of general overview from my perspective, I think last year was a fantastic year for the organisation. You’ll be aware that over the last few years, post the pandemic, we’ve had our share of challenges, but we’ve made huge progress in-year.

When you look at the annual report and accounts, as I did again this morning, just to refresh my memory, it’s, I think, an incredibly impressive record of achievement for the organisation. A huge volume of work to begin with, so catching up against those backlogs that we’ve had for a few years, but also the quality and impact of our work I’m delighted with, and you see that illustrated in some of the case studies that we draw out—some really impactful and important topics covered that have had genuine impact across the public service.

Internally, I’m delighted, too, with the evolving culture of the organisation. It now feels like a really energised and positive environment, and that's reflected in our people survey scores and elsewhere.

Finally, just in terms of our delivery last year, you'll see we missed one of our KPI targets, which is to be within 2 per cent of our budget. We undershot that considerably, so it's bad news in a sense, because we've got a non-green KPI. Why that is, though, is because we massively over-delivered on income. We exceeded our ambit for income for the year, and so returned that additional funding to the public purse, while simultaneously having some underspends on our staffing in non-fee-earning areas. So, put all that together, and, as I say, it feels like a really positive year for the organisation, and, yes, we have delivered what we set out to deliver at the start.

I think in the report for 2023-24, you did put a narrative like that at the beginning, but the last two years you haven't. Is there a reason for that, then, just as a precis, or is it just—?

Nothing sinister, I assure you—just an evolution of the text, trying to refresh it, perhaps. I think, if I recall correctly, we started, during the pandemic years, to put a very overt statement in our report and accounts about the degree to which we felt we delivered our statutory duties, because, of course, everything was so disrupted during that period. So, it may be that that text remained for a few years, but we've moved away from it. But there's nothing particular about it—just a change of presentation style.

Thank you, and thank you for that precis of that, and we'll probably delve into quite a bit of that detail now as we go through. Sam, I'll bring you in.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for your time this morning—really appreciated. Just looking at some of the KPIs in your report, they suggest you've achieved 10 out of your 18 KPIs for the year. Which are you most proud of?

Our No. 1 KPI and annual plan priority for the last few years, as I mentioned, has been to address the backlog of work that we've carried since COVID, and the first of those relates to our statutory work, which is primarily the audit of accounts of the public service. We've made huge progress on that front over the last few years, and probably more progress more rapidly than, if truth be told, I anticipated. So, we're now back to the position, if you look across the three big sectors in which we work—. In the NHS, we are bang on target with the sector and bringing deadlines forward for audited accounts. In the central Government sector, everything is being delivered to statutory deadlines. In the local government sector, where organisations are able to submit their accounts in reasonable quality to us by agreed deadlines, we too are able to play our part. That said, that's the one area where I have a degree of ongoing concern, because it seems potentially a growing number of bodies in that sector are not able to provide us with their accounts in a timely fashion. So, we can explore that, if you wish, in more detail to explain what we're doing about that. But, from our perspective, to your question, I think that's one of the areas that I'm most proud of, because that has been a huge challenge for the organisation, which we've met really rapidly.

The other area that I would point to is around our internal culture, as measured through our people survey. So, last year, in our annual staff survey, we saw improvements across the board in every single area that we questioned: so, in leadership, in how we handle change, in how we focus on learning and development, in how teams operate together—so, really encouraging. It's encapsulated in our overall staff engagement score of 71 per cent. To put that in perspective, that's the highest engagement score that our organisation has ever recorded in its history, and, if you compare us with 100 plus organisations in the public service across the UK who measure engagement in the same way, that puts us in the top 10. So, those two areas I'm particularly proud of.

Great, thank you. Just to touch on the backlog a little further—and I can understand why you're proud of the fact that much that has been dealt with—there is still, of course, a backlog to be dealt with. Can you give us an idea of or quantify the scale of that backlog?

Yes. If I can kick off, Sam, and I'll hand over to Ann-Marie, who is more over the numbers than I am. Where we still have a significant backlog of work to address is not in that accounts audit space so much now but it's in our performance audit work and, in particular, the local performance audit work that we deliver to individual audited bodies. We've made some progress in that area, as you can see, but we've a way to go. And that's probably our primary focus for the year that we're in. But, Ann-Marie, could you flesh it out, perhaps, with some detail of the scale of the progress that we've made?

Absolutely. So, as Adrian says, really, on the accounts side, I think that we're comfortable that we're in a good place. We invested quite considerably, as you may recall, at the beginning of 2024-25, actually, to get more staff into the accounts space, and I think that that has now paid dividends in terms of our delivery, and I'm really grateful to the staff, who've worked incredibly hard. I think that where we have got the challenge is on the local performance audit side, and you'll see that, in the KPIs, we're showing an 81 per cent achievement for the delivery of other key audit products. It's nonetheless an improvement from the previous year—a 5 per cent increase—but it has still meant that we've missed the KPI target. The main reason for this was a decision, really, that we took to divert resource—suitably qualified resource—on to our accounts work, the statutory work—statutory accounts work, I should say—to actually get that completed. We did, though, nonetheless, during 2024-25, make significant inroads into the local performance audit backlog, and we've reduced the number of outstanding days by around half. So, with a fair wind, you would hope that we could catch up on the remaining backlog over the remaining year of this three-year objective, really, which is to get back on track by the end of 2026.

So, our objective as an organisation is to get all of our local government performance audit work completed by 30 June and back on track by 30 June 2026, and our local NHS work by 31 March 2026. I'm confident that we're going to achieve that, certainly on the local government side, interestingly, for performance audit work. On the NHS side, we have had some significant levels of sickness this year. There aren't as many staff available in the marketplace, really, for us to bring in as relief contractors—so, a little bit more worried about that area, but hopeful that we can get there. 

Thank you for the extra detail. So, I guess it goes to the 'so what?' question, in that, with that backlog, have you seen any difference in terms of some of the outcomes that some of these organisations—? Obviously, an important part of audit is to help improve performance, so do you think that you can point to evidence where, because of the backlog, areas of the public sector are not performing as well?

If I can take it in two parts, if we start first with that performance audit programme, we know from engagement with our stakeholders that the timeliness of delivery on that front is superimportant, to the point you raise. So, if we identify a topic at an individual organisation that we are going to focus on, we've done that because we perceive that it's a particular area of risk or there's value for that organisation in our insight. If we then fail to deliver that in a timely way, then clearly we're missing the mark. So, that's, fundamentally, the driver for why we need to improve the timeliness of delivery. I wouldn't say that we've seen direct failure or weakness as a result of an absence of our work, but we know from conversations and engagement with our stakeholders that that is something that matters to them and they'd like to see us improve.

On the accounts side, I think we need only look across the border into England. In the last few years, the state of the audit market in the local space, in local government in England, has been appalling. Many local authorities have seen a backlog in audited financial statements of several years, and the numbers into many hundreds. At one point, I think over 1,000 sets of accounts were outstanding. We've been determined that we will never get into that position here, and that's why we've focused so heavily on that first KPI, and why I'm so pleased with the progress we've made. But, back to the comment I made right at the start around that group in the local authority space—which isn't just local authorities themselves, it's things like fire authorities, the parks, pension funds and so forth—we can't afford to let that minority remain or to grow. Because this is not about us meeting our KPIs: why does the public sector need high-quality, timely audited accounts? It's so that the public and yourselves are able to scrutinise how money is being used, the true state of the finances of the public service, and also that bodies can take well-informed, good decisions on the basis of solid numbers. And we've seen, going back to England, some disastrous examples where that has gone wrong, in part because of the weaknesses in the market. So, forgive me, Sam, to go back to your question: no, I don't think I would point to areas of failure or weakness directly because we've failed to deliver, but we're ultra aware of the risks associated unless we can address these backlogs.

Okay, thank you for that. And Ann-Marie, you pointed to some of the sickness levels perhaps causing concern, and it's moved from 3.3 per cent up to 3.9 per cent. I wonder, from the chair's point of view, as a board, do you have any concerns around the management of sickness as a reason, perhaps, for that sickness level increase at all?

I know there's a question a bit later on, I think, probably, about sickness management. I think, as a board, we're assured that sickness is managed. Long-term sickness, I think—. In a smallish organisation, a few long-term sicknesses can actually skew the data, and I think that has been the case. But I know our remuneration and staffing committee are content that it's being managed. I know we're looking at 2024-25, but by now it's much better, in 2025-26, but that's outside today's discussion. So, yes, we are content that—. Concerned—we were concerned at the time, especially on the impact on staff, clearly, and the impact on the work—but content that the leadership were doing what they could to manage it and put in mitigating actions.

Okay, thank you.

To add a little to that, so, as Ian said, our more recent numbers are definitely trending in the right direction, and that's because, I'm pleased to say, that a small number of long-term absences have come to an end, and that, as Ian says, was skewing the numbers very considerably. The impact of sickness absence that Ann-Marie was referencing is not large in volume, but what we're talking about in the local performance audit teams are relatively small teams. So, if you lose two or three colleagues through sickness absence, maternities, whatever, it can have a disproportionate impact on the capability of a small team to deliver their programmes. So, I'm less concerned about the sheer volume or sickness absence as an issue across the organisation—those numbers look really good—but, at a localised level, it can have a significant impact sometimes.

Yes, and I certainly appreciate that. Obviously, the most important thing, as you said, is that it's great when individuals who have been off long-term sick are able to come back and get back to work as best as possible.

Just going back to my opening question to you about the things you're most proud of, the second thing you mentioned was the internal culture of the organisation. What we've seen, though, also among the KPIs, is the proportion of stakeholders that consider you to be independent has dropped, which I get is something that may concern you. Is there anything, from a cultural perspective as an organisation, that you think is driving that perception of the organisation from stakeholders?

No. So, to separate the two issues, you'll see from the report and accounts that those numbers around the stakeholder survey responses, I'm pretty confident, are, unfortunately, a reflection of the way that we've gathered the data, rather than a genuine change in sentiment amongst our stakeholders. If I could just take a couple of minutes to expand on that, would that be okay? The committee may be aware that, historically, what we have done is, every other year, through an independent survey organisation, gather stakeholder feedback to try to gather it in a truly independent way so that people aren't speaking to their auditors about what they think about them. But to manage costs, what we did was do that every other year, but that led to a break in comparability year on year. Understandably, the committee asked us to reconsider that last year, and our board did as well. So, the approach we took last year was to split our stakeholders into two groups; we'd survey half one year, half the other. We felt that that would still deliver reliable results. So, we went to over 200 individuals, we went to all Senedd Members as well, but unfortunately, the response rate was low, and we heard back from just over 40 individuals, which means that all of those numbers are really susceptible to fluctuation.

To drill into that, to find out whether there's anything genuine that's driving that rather than just a statistical anomaly, we took a closer look at the numbers, and the numbers were particularly low in the NHS sector, which came as a surprise, because that certainly wasn't reflective of our sense of our relationship with the sector. We therefore worked with the directors of governance in every NHS body, who co-ordinated fuller responses from their colleagues in the organisation, so chief executives, health board chairs, directors of finance, senior officers, and so forth. I'm pleased to say that's delivered a much larger number of responses, painting a much more positive picture—100 per cent against the first key performance indicator and well above 80 per cent against the other two. So, that gave me some assurance that there's not something fundamental underlying or changing stakeholder sentiment, but we've got an issue with how we gather that data.

Moving forward, what I would like us to do for the next round, which will be early next year, is again to use that independent approach, so we're confident that it's truly independent of us, to survey all of our stakeholders, including all Senedd Members, again, because, unfortunately, we didn't get very many responses from Members. And we as Audit Wales will throw the kitchen sink at trying to increase awareness and engagement to explain the importance of that, so that yourselves or your successor committee, the board and my successor have a reliable baseline from which to work. And moving forward after that, if I were around, my recommendation would be not to attempt to replicate that on an annual basis, to find another lighter-touch way to sense-check that year on year, and perhaps run that bigger exercise once or twice in a Senedd term.

I see that Mike wants to come in. Mike.

Not a question—an attempt to be helpful. If you're going to try and get a reply from Senedd Members, can I suggest you go via the group offices, as well as directly to them?

Thank you, Mike, we'll definitely do that. Thank you.

That's what other organisations do, and it does get a better response. Not a great response, but a better response. [Laughter.]

Thank you for the response. It is an interesting dilemma, isn't it? Because with my old normal job hat on, if I was doing a staff survey, for example, my main measure in terms of engagement would be in terms of just response rate. So, I guess it is a concern, a 20 per cent response rate. If you were surveying your staff, you'd be devastated if a 20 per cent response rate was in place. So, whilst there may be techniques and practicalities, such as Mike pointed out, in terms of the best routes to go down, it is still a concern, I guess, that that response rate is so low. That's just a comment, I suppose.

Yes, it's spot on. And just anecdotally from one or two colleagues in the NHS when we went back to them, they said, ‘You know, we would have responded, but we missed it.’ And it's a bit of a paradox, which is why I think by us trying to keep out of it so that it's independent of us, it became another thing in people's inboxes—you know, maybe they didn't prioritise it. So, as I said, we'll try to strike a different balance where—. I mean, we have such great lines of engagement with all our audited bodies, and we should be able to make them aware, raise awareness and really encourage participation next time without interfering in their responses.

Thank you. Chair, I'm conscious of time—I've got other questions, but I'm happy to bring them at the end if there is time.

Okay. I'll bring Mike in now, and then we might come back to Sam at the end.

I'll start off with how your annual report notes you exceeded £400,000 of non-pay savings in 2024-25. Can you, for the record, outline how these savings are generated, and do they relate to things you’d planned but have elected not to do or activity that has been delivered more efficiently?

Thanks, Mike. Kev, can you pick that up?

Sure. Thanks, Mike. We have a financial sustainability review group. It's been in place for a couple of years now, and we look to identify and drive out efficiencies and savings through our work. This past year, we identified just over £400,000-worth of savings. They covered quite a wide range of areas. Probably the main ones were in terms of reductions in IT costs; secondly, in terms of reductions to our accommodation and estates costs, very much building on savings we've reported to this committee in previous years following the move of our three main offices; and also some reductions in travel and subsistence. As such, they probably relate to all of those categories, Mike—some things where we've done things more efficiently and/or cost-effectively, as well as where we've reduced things that are not necessary, like some of the levels of travel and subsistence that we did previously, although as you'll see from our KPIs on our environmental performance, there is more work to do in that space.

I think it's important to point out that these savings are kind of recurring savings, so they are things that we can carry forward into future years as we continually look for ways to drive efficiency and savings through our operating model. I think it's important to say that any money that was saved wasn't spent. It was returned in full to the consolidated fund at year end, and you'll see from the accounts there was an underspend of around £850,000 in total.

Thank you very much. The annual report and accounts note a newly developed management information dashboard. Can you expand on how you're using the dashboard and what improvements have been identified for your financial reporting?

If I can make a few comments on the development of the dashboard, over the past 15 months or so, we've undertaken quite a big piece of work internally that cuts across the performance of the whole organisation, and now we have the dashboard that includes themes like delivery of financial audit, delivery of performance audit, finance, people, KPI performance, risks and annual plan priorities, and the ELT review that dashboard formally on a monthly basis—

ELT?

The executive leadership team—

Sorry, apologies. The executive team. 

The executive team review the dashboard formally monthly, and it's also available to all board members as well. What it does, really, is it provides us with summary information, the key information, and it finesses that, but also allows us to drill down if we want to find more detail, and so that's a really useful thing, so we can see the key metrics of performance in the organisation, and also, if we so wish, to get a bit detailed, we can drill all the way down through the dashboard. So, it's really a very, very helpful management tool.

Thank you very much—

Mike, I think Sam wants to just come in on—

Just briefly on that point—I assume that's an internal dashboard only.

Yes.

Have there ever been conversations about making any of that available publicly?

There haven't. Some of it is reflected in the report and accounts. I'd have to take a closer look, there might be some elements of it that were not suitable for publication, but, in principle, I certainly don't think there's any reason why we shouldn't be more transparent. We certainly try to publish our people survey results for everyone to see, and we have made a number of changes to our website in recent years to try to be more timely and open across our audit programme, so that folk can see what we're delivering and how it's progressing.

Thanks. Thank you, Chair.

Mike.

Moving on to something different, what's your risk appetite, and what are the most significant risks you face, and how will you mitigate them?

Our risk appetite—you probably won't be surprised to hear, Mike, that, generally speaking, as an organisation, we're not particularly risk hungry; we're fairly cautious, given who we are and what we do. Though, in recent years, I think perhaps that had been holding us back and it meant that we weren't taking full advantage of opportunities that did exist. So, our approach now, which you'll see in our annual plan, is that we set a risk appetite ranging in score from one, which is the most cautious, to four, which is more open to risk. We set that score across half a dozen key areas of focus for the organisation, so things like our approach to leadership, our approach to our workforce and capabilities, our reputation, our use of technology, and so forth. And what we do now is set a range of appetite. So, to give you an illustration of that, if you look at our risk appetite in relation to technology, that will range from one to three. That's because when it comes to personal information, the data that we hold, our approach to cyber security, we are ultra risk averse. But we want to be more open to experimentation when it comes to, for example, the use of technology and artificial intelligence in applying that to our work. So, over the last couple of years, we’ve tried to finesse our risk appetite setting in that way so that it helps us manage our risks in a more appropriate and proportionate fashion.

I think the second part of your question was about the major risks that we perceive. Back to 2024-25, the annual report and accounts there, at the start of the year, there was the changeover of chair, which you'll be familiar with. Clearly, that's no longer an issue for us. We had fairly standard areas of risk around our long-term financial sustainability and the management of some change and succession planning at a senior level in the organisation. Looking forward to the year we're in, a particular area of risk that we're focused on remains around that change at a high level. So, my departure but also some further change that we anticipate at a senior level in the organisation—we need to manage that effectively. But also change in the Senedd. That's going to be an enormous change for us. So, we're very keen to try to engage with, clearly, all of the parties represented, but potentially new parties that may be represented in the reformed Senedd, so that there's a good understanding of us and our work and how we can contribute.

Before you go on, Mike, where on that risk mitigation is staffing, because Ann-Marie talked about moving staff around from performance to the other aspects of audit and moving people back, but trying to attract people suitably qualified to be able to do some of the higher, more complex audit work? Where does that sit? And just musing, I suppose, on some of the comments you were making about colleagues over the border in England—if they're under a lot of pressure, are they looking for somewhere that's a bit more stable to come and work? Is there an opportunity to be able to attract people of good quality to be able to come and enhance some of your ranks?

Yes, that's a great question. It's like you've been sitting in with us. A couple of years ago, as you know, recruitment and retention was a massive issue for us. In part thanks to the support that you've given in this committee, we've addressed that. So, we are now comfortably at a high level of establishment. The fields we're attracting to—our apprentice and trainee schemes are super strong and we're—

So, you're building your own pipeline, basically.

We're building a pipeline of qualified staff, which is great. So, that issue of recruitment and retention, I'm not complacent about it, but it's no longer the headache that it was. England is an interesting example. I don't think we're seeing an influx of people desperate to exit. Further down the line, there is a potential risk to us there, because the UK Government is now starting to address the issues in England, and bluntly, it will do that, in part, by putting money into the sector. There's a new office likely to be established called 'the local audit office', which will be doing, essentially, what we do at a local level in England. But it will be much bigger than us, and they will need staff, and we potentially will look like a fabulous source for that. So, we're very aware of that. Short term, there are real opportunities for us, and Ann-Marie is involved directly in the conversations around the establishment and set-up of that office; we're trying to assist. There will be opportunities for us, but, as we say, potentially further down the line a risk that we'll have to manage as well.

Okay. Thank you for that. Mike. 

Following its self-assessment, the board developed an action plan to address the key areas identified for improvement. Without drifting into this year, which I desperately want to do, is this improvement continuing and are you continuing to address it up until the last day of the year this report is about?

Up until the last day. Okay. Thanks for the question, Mike. Yes, we did have an action plan following the self-assessment. The assessment was positive as a whole, but as a board and as the chair, I'm very keen to continue to develop us into a high-performing board. Some of the matters that arose: one was the diversity of the board. I'm very much aware that the appointment of non-executive board members is the responsibility of the Finance Committee, and I was very pleased to be invited to be part of recent appointment processes, but we still need to diversify board membership in terms of skills, backgrounds and experience. So, that's one thing.

As a result of the action plan, we've taken more of a data-driven basis for decisions, and the management information dashboard I mentioned a few moments ago has been a great help on that, and also looking at how best we run meetings, so we concentrate on the main issues, so we're developing agendas. So, they are matters we've developed. Hand in hand with that, we have a development plan—a learning/development plan—for board members and non-executives, which involves strategic sessions, workshop sessions, online training as well, statutory training, which we undertake, and hopefully that will better equip and inform members.

One of the things we've done as well, which I think is really important, as a result of that, was I placed a great emphasis on visibility of board members. We're currently going through a round of executive team or leadership roadshows for all staff, and at all those sessions there'll be board members present and board members inputting and listening to what staff are saying, and that's really important. And also, board members will visit offices—I visit offices as often as I can—and also attend GPX, which are the good practice exchange sessions, as well. So that continues, Mike. In 12 months' time, we can talk to you about how that has developed, but I've done it up to the last day.

We've no idea who's going to be here in 12 months' time.

Well, that's a big question.

Your internal auditors issued nine internal audit reports during the year, four of which were rated 'reasonable assurance'. What issues did they identify and what activities are you undertaking to mitigate the matters identified?

Thanks, Mike. As you say, we had nine internal audit reports. One was an advisory, so there was no assurance rating. Four got a 'substantial assurance' rating, and the other four had that 'reasonable assurance'. Just to put that in context, our auditors define 'reasonable assurance' as where they've seen something where controls are generally adequate and operating effectively, but there's some scope for further improvement to mitigate risk and better achieve objectives. They also classify their recommendations into three categories: they've got urgent, important and routine. So, in those reports there were no urgent recommendations, all recommendations fell into the other categories.

Just briefly, the review areas covered, firstly, our IT infrastructure. They just had three routine recommendations in that paper, including things like the need to update our document and records management policy. We delivered all of those recommendations by the end of last year, by December 2024. We had a review of our learning and development activity, where they identified the opportunity for more joined-up and efficient working between the two teams responsible for the delivery of the majority of that work. That's our human resources team, as you'd expect, and also our audit development and guidance team. Since the audit, we've identified a number of great opportunities for that closer working. Probably, the most significant one is that the two teams are now working on something to strengthen continuing professional development for our staff.

The third review, which I think you'd be particularly interested in, Mike, is around the use of Copilot for Web. It was a review where we piloted that; it's the free AI tool that Microsoft offers. I think the auditors concluded that we were managing the risks really effectively, but they suggested we did more to evaluate and quantify the benefits from the use of AI. In terms of addressing that recommendation, we've taken that forward in a new pilot, which has been going for about three or four months, and that's on the use of Copilot 365. That's the paid-for version, which is more sophisticated. Just a couple of weeks ago, at our exec team, we had an interim report from the pilot, which did exactly what the auditors suggested: quantifying some of the benefits from the use of that technology.

Finally, we had a review on staff manager responsibilities. There was one important recommendation relating to the need to develop a formal training programme for new line managers; that's going to be in place from next month. Then there was a routine recommendation around the need to test and evaluate line manager skills and capabilities as part of assessment centres and interviews, and that will be in place from January of next year.

Thank you very much. As somebody who was involved in the last major industrial revolution, when IT became used extensively in the early to mid-1980s—as a very young man, I hasten to add—it really did make a difference, so I'm glad that you're making progress on that.

My final question: the annual report and accounts includes a link to the hospitality and expenses information on your website. However, when it was accessed on 11 September this year, the most recently available information was July to September 2022. Has it now been updated?

It has, Mike. I'm really grateful that the clerks gave us forewarning of this issue. The error was on our part, I'm afraid. We used to have a process in place. I think there was a changeover of personnel, and it's just something that fell between the cracks, unfortunately. But we've put that process back in place, so it'll be good to go from now on. If the data aren't there as yet, they will be there by the end of today, I promise.

Thank you very much.

Diolch, Mike. If we could now just look at the financial position of Audit Wales during the year, including staff and remuneration in particular. The financial statements report an excess income of nearly £1 million—so, £961,000—for 2024-25. You touched on it earlier, but what impact will that have, if at all, on your planning for 2025-26?

Thank you. If I may, I'll defer to my more expert colleague to my right on this. 

That’s brilliant, thanks. Thank you, Chair, for the question. As you say, there was nearly £1 million worth of additional income in 2024-25, and this was related to, as Adrian referred to at the beginning, this higher-than-anticipated delivery of the backlog. We recruited more staff towards the latter part of the financial year, and that meant that we were able to clear the backlog faster than we were anticipating, which resulted in additional audit fee income. So, really, it’s a very, very good-news story.

In terms of our impact for 2025-26, we have consequently set ourselves a higher income target, as we are recognising the fact that we are continuing to push through that backlog at a faster-than-anticipated rate. So, expected income for this year is £18.6 million. Compared to last year, I think we were anticipating initially £17.5 million, even though we did overdeliver. So, this year's estimate—or the amount that we're anticipating this year—is about what we delivered last year, which is where I would be expecting us to be. 

So, you've rebaselined it, effectively. 

Yes, we have, absolutely.

Just to be clear, Chair, you won't see that reflected in a £1 million less ask of the Welsh consolidated fund, because—

Because of the way you're funded. Because of the way that the income is split.

Exactly.

You talked there about staffing as well, and obviously you've recruited more staff. Your analysis of the net resource outturn shows that the staff costs for 2024-25 increased by £2.3 million compared to 2023-24, but were £1 million below the budget for the year. So, can you square that circle for me?

Absolutely. That's obviously the organisational picture—so, not just audit services, which is where the income is mainly delivered. The reason that we were able to overdeliver on, I suppose, vacancy savings was because most of the vacancies that we had were in non-fee income-generating roles, so they would be other staff, maybe, say, in our technical team, or maybe in other non-fee-generating roles.

Also, the vacancies at the beginning of 2024-25 were mainly in the trainee and apprentice grades, and because of the heavy amount of training that they undertake when they first join us, they're not terribly chargeable anyway in those first few months. So, the impact on us was pretty low—you'd expect less staff at points in the year, less income. It didn't work out quite that way because of where the vacancies were.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to touch on a point here, and I know we're in a public session, so you might not be able to go into too much detail, but there was one severance payment in-year, compared to three during the previous year. Did you invite applications for voluntary severance, or could you talk about what you can talk about within that? 

Sure. Our approach to voluntary exit is not one where we open windows and invite applications. Staff are free to apply for voluntary exit at any point in the year, and, indeed, in 2024-25, we did have a small number of applications. Those were considered, but none were supported, so there were no voluntary exits from the organisation in-year.

The case that is referenced in the report and accounts was different. It was not a VE, but it followed a very extended and sensitive personnel case that was investigated by an external expert. The end result of that was that we agreed the best solution was to agree a managed exit from the organisation, which resulted in a relatively small payment, which is referenced in the accounts.

And with that person's responsibilities, did other things have to be moved around, or had they already been covered because of the nature of that?

In year, it would have been part of what we've been discussing in terms of our staffing position. The reality is we've replaced that person like-for-like. As I say, it wasn't a voluntary exit where ordinarily you would look for payback or opportunity to restructure and so forth. This was a role we need at the grade it was at previously, so we've replaced like-for-like.

Thank you. You've talked about sickness absences and that average coming down. Have those long-term people who have been off sick moved on, or have they come back into the business in general? How has it been managed, effectively?

With the one exception that we've just touched on, colleagues on long-term absence have come back into the business. We take, as you'd expect, a sensitive approach to that, to gradually reintegrate colleagues, depending on their position and length of absence and so forth. But we've made progress. We're talking about a small number of cases here. But, yes, by and large, these are colleagues that return to work.

Have there been any learnings as to the reasons they were potentially off sick? Were they work related or otherwise? Have you managed to make sure it doesn't happen again for those individuals, but also for anybody else in the business?

Of course, yes. Kevin.

We always take a proactive approach to managing any form of sickness, be it long or short term. We have a number of measures and mechanisms in place to support staff. Internally there's support from human resources and the line manager, and externally we have an employee assistance programme, we have occupational health.

One of the things that we're really keen to do, though, is to identify trends and issues with sickness absence. About 18 months ago, we started recording particular types of absence that lend themselves to this as being either work related or non-work related; so, for example, something like stress-related absence. And of those long-term cases that Adrian's referred to, I think just one was a work-related absence. The others were for a variety of personal issues. So, I suppose in that sense there are no particular themes or issues that we've identified. Certainly, the feedback from staff in terms of the well-being activity and the other support we provide has been positive, but we are always looking for ways to strengthen that.

We do have a health and safety committee, which regularly reviews our sickness absence statistics. It looks at [correction: It also looks at] anonymised data back from our employee assistance programme, so that we are on the front foot and being proactive in terms of whether there are work-related issues that need to be dealt with.

Okay, thank you very much. In the last 10 minutes or so now, if we could consider the annual plan for 2025-26. So, Mike, we can look forward now, and we might have a question or two here as well. But in your annual plan, you say you've taken several steps. It's taken several years to bring your work programme back to pre-pandemic timescales. When do you expect to get there, and what specific steps are you taking in 2025-26 now to bridge that gap? 

Sure. I've been pretty clear with everybody. Ian referenced the leadership roadshows that we're currently undertaking. I keep banging on to staff about this, I'm afraid—they must be sick to the back teeth of hearing me say it—but I'm determined that these backlogs are eliminated by the time that I move out of the role. So, that means in 2026-27. I want to hand over to my successor a clean slate on this front, so they haven't got that headache to worry about.

As we've discussed, I think we're essentially there on the audit of accounts front, with the exception of that worrying area in the local government sector, so we're very much focused on that this year. We're running two of our good practice sessions in a couple of months, directly focused on that issue, so we'll get colleagues from the sector in to share our advice on accounts preparation, what we're looking for, and share good practice from those colleagues who are able to deliver as necessary. So, we're very focused in that space in that way this year.

And turning to the other major area around the local performance programmes, that's more of our focus this year. So, we will be taking a range of steps. We've talked a lot about the resourcing position and how, in the last couple of years, we’ve shifted staff into the statutory space and out of these areas. Well, we're trying to be doing a little of the reverse of that this year. We're trying to recruit to any vacancies more rapidly. We're using our pool of contractors as fully as we possibly can and providing staff with all of the support that they identify that they need.

So, that's my headache at the moment, but as I say, I'm confident that we will have delivered that certainly in 2026-27. By the time that I go, we will have made significant progress towards achieving it.

And you talked about your KPIs, and reviewing your KPIs in line with what's currently going on, and your current levels of performance and appropriate external benchmarks. It's always a concern for this committee if KPIs change from year to year to year to year because we need to see what's going on year on year. What has that exercise done, and what will this committee see from your reporting, effectively, to make sure that we're able to track some of those key KPIs?

It is a conundrum, isn't it? There are a number of our KPIs—I spoke about the stakeholder survey one, for instance—where I genuinely think we just need to break the continuity and do something different. Others, you will see in the list, are around our social media presence. That feels to me like something where potentially we might need to revisit, because the world of social media has changed, bluntly, and we're seeing that reflected in our reach, also how proactively we engage with platforms like X. So, in that kind of space, yes, we can look at other platforms, so keep the target the same, but potentially we might want to look at different ways to encapsulate our reach and impact. For instance, it's really important to me how our work is used by you in the Senedd, by committees, by Members on the floor, and so forth, and there may be ways that we can capture that as an alternative.

The emissions target space is another one where there's potentially a real tension between our desire to drive our emissions down, but at the same time wanting our staff to be out and about and face to face in audited bodies, more than they have been post pandemic, and obviously that comes with a degree of travel, which has a negative impact against that indicator. So, we're looking closely at that one. We won't change it lightly, but we want to be realistic about the sort of target that we can aspire to.

Okay, thank you very much. Did you want to—?

Can I ask a question, Chair?

Yes, of course. 

I've just been sat here thinking about next May, which I quite often do, sadly. There's likely to be a significant number of new faces in the Senedd through the combination of the 36 new Members as your starting point, the number of Members who have already indicated they're not going to stand again, and then natural democratic attrition. Have you thought about how you're going to engage with what could potentially be two thirds of Members in this place being brand new next May, and many of which I would expect to have little to no experience of bodies like yours?

Sure, yes. It's a topic of conversation all the time at the moment. So, it's two pronged. As I mentioned earlier, Ian and I in particular are very keen before the end of this calendar year to engage with all of the parties, and any support or advice that you could offer in facilitating that we'd be grateful for. I'm assuming that most parties in the Senedd do know who we are or have some understanding, but it would be helpful, I suspect, to refresh that.

But, genuinely, our work throws up some issues that parties might want to consider in manifesto formulation, or their thinking about priorities for post election. So, that's part of what we intend to do in the immediate future. Post election, it is something that we've had to do after every election. So, we certainly liaise closely with colleagues in the Senedd Commission, who will have their own significant programme of Member induction and engagement, which we will try to replicate from our perspective.

It's always a challenge, as I know from my previous role here, a challenge as to how and on what topic you engage Members who are brand new to the institution, because there's so much to take in and a lot of it in the early days is extremely practical rather than policy focused. So, we'll try to find the right point in time there.

From my perspective, it's the Members understanding the treasure trove of information that sits within your reports, which may not always, correctly so, jump out to people and particularly the types of language that auditors may use, which sometimes is much more subtle than politicians may use. So, it's that sort of insight that I think is very helpful for new Members to be aware of, I suppose.

That's great to hear, and we will certainly—. As I say, if you can—. Out of committee, if there's anything that you could suggest that we could do to facilitate that, I'd be delighted to hear.

Just on that point about the subtle language that we use, we're actually trying to become a little less subtle. So, this year we've undertaken a big review of our reporting and writing style, so that our messages are rather punchier and clearer for you and for all our stakeholders. That's not universally popular amongst some of our stakeholders, but it is something, I think, that is the right thing to do.

Could I just add a few words on that? As you mentioned, the change in the Senedd, the change of auditor general, the board are very keen to be that continuity factor of the organisation, that we ensure continuity. As Adrian has mentioned, we want to go out and be on the front foot with parties and really—. And, as with the roadshows, I've been telling staff that we're very keen to impress the importance of public audit in Wales on all parties, whatever colour, whatever name, et cetera. I think that's an important role we have, and we will take that on actively.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much. That brings us to time this morning. Thank you so much for your time here and for answering our questions, and it'll form part of our report now coming forward. So, there will be a transcript available for you to check for accuracy after this meeting.

I'll now go to item 4, which is:

We'll go into private. Thank you very much.

Hang on. There we go.

I haven't got a registrable interest, but I think, for the sake of completeness, I should report that my sister's profoundly deaf. She is a user of BSL, and I've worked closely with Mark regarding this Bill.

We'll now move on. I'd like to welcome our witnesses this afternoon. I wonder if you could introduce yourselves for the record, please.

I'm Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Trefnydd and Chief Whip.

Hello. I'm Amira Evans, and I'm head of equalities in Welsh Government.

Hello. I'm Bethany Thomas, and I'm BSL policy manager at the Welsh Government.

Fantastic. Thank you very much for your attendance here this afternoon. As you'll be aware, obviously, as the Finance Committee, we'll be looking at the financial resolution and the financial aspect of this Bill. We'd just like to start by understanding what engagement you've had with the Member in charge. So, could you describe the engagement you've had with the Member in charge of this Bill regarding the costs associated with the legislation, and what support have you been able to provide during that process? 

Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. Well, I have to say it's been a great pleasure to have been able to be very involved with Mark Isherwood in relation to his BSL Bill. I'm really pleased to have been able to offer support and collaborate with Mark on this because it is about facilitating and promoting the use of BSL in Wales. It's so great to see we've got a BSL interpreter as well today. This is the way forward, isn't it?

So, how we've worked together, obviously this is something where Mark sought to work with me, and I responded very positively on this to try and make sure that we could get a robust Bill that we could get support for and get onto the statute book. Obviously that was crucially important in terms of helping to ensure that Mark could develop a Bill with a regulatory impact assessment, which, of course, lies with him—the RIA lies with him—but that we could help in terms of developing that draft Bill.

So, what we did is we worked with not just myself, but also the Counsel General Julie James, cross party. They were political meetings to see how he could achieve his legislative goals. Of course that really is in terms of costs, and your particular interest as the Finance Committee. Although of course the RIA is his responsibility, it was just to explore with him the costs and recognise that this was something where—. You know that I actually made a statement in response to his oral statement in July, that I made a commitment from the Welsh Government about meeting the costs in the first year.

So, it's been a strong collaboration, and, in fact, we helped with drafting the Bill as a Welsh Government. But, of course, the Bill and its contents remain a Member Bill. 

Of course. And you alluded to it there, and in your support of the Bill in that debate, about the financial aspect of it. Obviously, the Bill intends to promote and facilitate the use of BSL through the development of a national strategy and the BSL plans. Having looked at the RIA that Mark has produced for this, how reasonable are the costs within it?

I know you'll be meeting Mark shortly, and you'll be able to discuss specific details of course, in terms of the—. It's the benefits of the Bill that are crucial in terms of the costs and expenditure that are going to be put into the Bill. So, yes, it is a framework Bill. It puts in place the planning and reporting framework for promoting and facilitating BSL through the development of a national BSL strategy and BSL plans. And we are working on a national BSL—. We're working already with the BSL community on a route-map. We've already got a very strong working relationship as a result of the team taking the lead on this, with our BSL policy team and advisory group. 

But I think the question and the important point for scrutiny is whether the Bill will result in benefits to the deaf community across Wales in terms of the national BSL strategy, and will it result in benefits as a result of promoting and facilitating BSL. Because we're not there yet with a national BSL strategy, and BSL plans aren't yet known. So, we can't fully assess the Bill's overall impact or its full cost-benefits. But, I think it is important—and you'll talk more, I'm sure, to the Member about this—that the Member's RIA sets out costs over a 10-year period, and it will be important to consider the benefits of the legislation over this timescale and beyond. 

Yes, as you said earlier, you've committed the costs for the first year, so you've obviously looked at the RIA and assessed that. So, are the costs reasonable?

We feel that they’re reasonable. We looked at this in terms of our assessment of it. I think that’s why we were also very keen to be engaged in helping to draft the Bill for—. And it's for and with; this is a collaboration to make sure that it's cost-effective, provides value for money, in line with our development of BSL policy in the Welsh Government, but actually now, moving this forward to a statutory duty and a place that will really promote and facilitate BSL.

Okay. Thank you very much. Mike Hedges. 

Talking Hands brought a petition few years ago, because they realised just how important this was for the deaf community. Do you believe it's going to be cost-effective, and do you think it will represent value for money? And do you see the savings from people actually being able to use BSL rather than the length of time and difficulties when people can't?

Yes. So, thank you, Mike Hedges, for your engagement with this as well, and I know that was very much appreciated by the Member as we were moving forward to develop. And there's great cross-party support, of course, for this.

But I think the fact is—. And I've already mentioned how the national BSL strategy, which is the proposal, of course, in the Bill, and the BSL plans, how they do—. We believe they are cost-effective and represent value for money. But I think one of the things we've got to recognise is that the action in relation to BSL is very cross-governmental. Each policy area, such as education, health and social care, allocates resources to deliver against Government objectives. And we have our BSL team represented here today within the equality and human rights division, which was set up last year. 

I just wanted to perhaps bring in Amira here at this point, as head of equalities, just to say something, if that's helpful, about what work we're doing at the moment, which is very much aligned and in tandem with this Bill, and to say something about developing the BSL route-map, if that would be helpful, Chair. Amira.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. So, as the Cabinet Secretary said, in 2024-25, the Welsh Government established a BSL policy team within our equality and human rights division, and half the team are presented here today. The Cabinet Secretary announced in November 2024 that we would set up a BSL stakeholder group—it was a task and finish group—and that we would also develop a BSL route-map. So, the main purpose of that stakeholder group was to provide recommendations to Welsh Government on the actions that could be taken in the short term and in the long term to promote and facilitate BSL. So, that group has been really successful. It has now provided its recommendations to the Cabinet Secretary, and we will be publishing those on the Welsh Government website. They are currently with translation. And lots of the recommendations that that group have given to us have aligned with lots of the things that we see in the Bill: so, the recommendation of an adviser, an assisting panel, a strategy. So, there is lots of complementary need from the BSL community. And the route-map is really going to represent those short-term actions in the next 18 months that Welsh Government can take to support and improve, to almost lay the groundwork, for improving outcomes for deaf BSL signers in Wales. So, that's the work that we are currently taking forward.

There are a range of unknowns associated with the Bill, but we've had experience of a Bill like this before, haven't we? We had the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011. So, you've got experience of the costs and the effect it has and the benefit it brings to a community.

Yes. As you say, we've been here before. Many of us have been here and have been through this with other legislation, with other Bills. The scope can't take into account some of those unknown costs. What is reflected in the RIA—. There are going to be actions to be delivered, aren't there, in the national BSL strategy, which will remain outside the scope. It may be that Mark Isherwood will share some of his thoughts with you on how these additional costs might be managed over time.

Of course, this is about also having a national BSL strategy and BSL guidance, which we very much influenced and co-produced with the communities that we and Mark have been working with. So, I think it will be for a future incoming Government to develop and cost the national BSL strategy and BSL guidance, and it will be a future Government. And of course, as I said earlier on, we have ensured that we've got the funding for the first year. It's a single year in terms of budget considerations anyway. Just to put on the record again, I confirm that the Welsh Government will provide costs for the first year in full for 2026-27 of £214,300, based on the figures in the Member's RIA. But unknown costs are difficult to quantify at this stage, of course.

And unknown savings are also difficult to quantify.

Difficult, yes. I was just going to say that of course we do anticipate that there could be savings in terms of the fact that this is going to be about prevention, engagement and good delivery of services.

You can do it, set it for next year, because you will set next year's budget. You can't set it for future years. And that's no different to the Welsh language Act, which has no guarantee of income beyond next year. I would think there would be a lot of people very upset if it wasn't funded after next year, but it's got no guarantee of funding, as for a whole range of things the Welsh Government does. So, I'm fairly relaxed about it not being planned in for beyond next year, because traditionally, once something is in a budget, it's very difficult to get it out. The difficult thing is getting it in a budget in the first place. So, I have to say, I look forward to it. Do you agree that future funding would have to be provided by the next Government and by the next finance Minister and any Minister covering the areas that you cover?

Yes, I can only wholeheartedly agree with that, Mike. You mentioned the Welsh language Act; this approach was taken through Scotland with the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015, but it's also very similar to the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015, and we were part of the Senedd that took that through. So, I think it's—. Because, in this sixth Senedd, from the cross-party support that we got in the Senedd, we've got ourselves in a good place for the budget for next year, which, of course, has yet to be taken through, but this is an element that I think we would all agree on. This is a key part of next year's budget, and then we will see how a future Government will then, as the BSL national strategy is developed, meet those costs.

I think that what's really important—. It goes back to the fact that there is such support anyway from the BSL community to get this on the statute book. They will have a very strong influence, I hope, on a future Government as well as the elected representatives in the Senedd.

Diolch yn fawr. Before we move on to Sam, just picking up on something that you were saying earlier, you're developing the strategy and the road map, and then you've got the Bill going through as a private Member's Bill now. Where does it differ? Where are the conflicts within it, and do those have any financial implications at all?

I don't think that there are any conflicts, because, in a sense, as Amira says—and you may want to say more—this was a route-map. This is a route-map; it's a short-term route-map. And, as you know, it's co-chaired by a BSL signer in the Welsh Government and the British Deaf Association and all of the stakeholders. But, actually, it's really good in preparation for the Bill, I'd say. It's paving the way. We haven't seen any conflicts, have we, Amira?

No conflicts. I think it's just important to highlight that the work that we are currently undertaking is time limited. So, the BSL stakeholder group, their task and finish has concluded and we are in the process of publishing their recommendations. Obviously, stakeholder engagement is really important, and so we've recently refreshed the terms of reference for the group, and they are continuing for a further 18 months, and they will then come to an end. And that is in terms of the time frame of what it might take, if this Bill gets Royal Assent, to implement the first set of requirements. It's the same with the BSL route-map. So, that is time limited. When that gets published, which, hopefully, will be in the spring—not in spring, in the autumn; I'm confused about my—. It will be in the autumn. It will be actions that must be completed within 18 months, so there are no long-term conflicts or crossing of different policies. It should just pave the way, I think, for—

So, does it mean then that the Bill would then become an Act and supersede and move through? Right. Okay. Just for me to get it clear in my head. I'll bring Sam Rowlands in.

Thanks, Chair, and thanks, Cabinet Secretary, for being here today with your team; it's appreciated. You referenced in your response to Mike Hedges a few moments ago some of the use of previous legislation to help inform the regulatory impact assessment in terms of some of the costs associated with this particular Bill. I'm just wondering if you'd like to expand on why you think it's been appropriate to use that previous legislation as a way of informing some of the costs in this RIA.

Well, we have looked to other legislation. I think, principally, we've looked at other BSL legislation. I think that we must remember and record and reflect again today that there is a BSL Act for the UK Government, for England, and in Scotland, and going through in Northern Ireland as well. So, we have worked together. Our officials have worked very closely with Scotland, the Scottish Government, and the UK Government on this, just to look at how they've taken forward their legislation, and then looked at our own. Mike's mentioned the Welsh language Act, and I've mentioned VAWDASV. I think, because it is a framework Bill, as I said, we have looked to get—. And we've worked with our lawyers and the Senedd Commission, and Mark's advisers, to get this into a fit state, including his RIA, which, of course, he got support and advice on from the Senedd, to ensure—. And that learning from the other legislation, I think, has been very valuable—it's the way we work in the Senedd, isn't it?

Okay. So, you think the previous legislation that has been referenced has been appropriately used to support some of the cost estimate in this RIA, and you think that that is an appropriate methodology—is that right?

Yes, absolutely, and I think one of the benefits of the way that we've worked with Mark Isherwood has been that it's not been just myself as Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, but we brought in the Counsel General and our legal teams in Welsh Government to advise us on this and to support Mark in enabling him to get the Bill into a state where we were very clear that the Welsh Government could support this. What we didn't want to happen is that there was a Bill that the Welsh Government couldn't support because it didn't have provisions that would be manageable, in terms of not just the financial costs et cetera, but also that it wasn't counteracting—on the Chair's very good point—what we're already doing. We had to make our decisions, as a Welsh Government, to say, 'Yes, we believe that this is a continuum of development of BSL policy.' As you said at the outset, Cadeirydd, this is a language that we respect—we've already acknowledged BSL as a language in its own right—and we wanted to make sure that this was deliverable and that we could support it and we'd help Mark get it onto the statute book.

So, during that process, just for us to understand, what has been left behind? So, in those discussions, obviously, you've decided to go down this route. What was, maybe, left on the cutting room floor, for want of a better analogy, that Mark would have wanted to do, but Welsh Government have said, 'It's probably not going to work' in that sense? Are there any major bits that you would have liked to do, if you had the financial aspect to be able to do it, or would the Government have taken a different tack on, rather than what Mark has been suggesting?

Well, I think you'd have to ask Mark that question as well, in terms of that he was very much guided by stakeholders, as we were. We were also guided, and guided him, I'm sure, hopefully helpfully, about both the legal implications and also the financial implications. But we were also very much—both of us, together—guided by the legislation that is already on the statute book: the UK Government's UK legislation and the Scottish Act. So, we've actually got provisions, and I am just trying to think what—. I think we've got provisions that aren't in that legislation. Just remind me, is it particularly relating to the—?

The BSL adviser.

The adviser. The BSL adviser, of course, is unique for us here in Wales, but, for that, we were very much—and Mark was very much—looking to the set-up that we've got with the VAWDASV legislation, with a national adviser appointed, and our national advisers for VAWDASV play a very important independent role. So, the outcome of all of this is, I think, very robust, but, actually, moving on, a bit more progressive than, perhaps, the BSL legislation that’s already on the statute book in the UK.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks for that response, Cabinet Secretary. You touched on the point of that within the legislation is the role of the adviser, and, in the RIA, the cost of the adviser is shown there, over the 10-year period, at just over £1.1 million. Are you convinced within yourself that that role is absolutely essential? And also, if it is essential, is it able to provide the value for money that you as a Government would want to see?

Thank you, Sam, for that question, because I probably just touched on it in terms of why we moved towards—why Mark moved towards—a BSL adviser role as being key, really, key to his legislation, but also because this has come out of discussions with stakeholders, and we've already talked about the BSL stakeholder task and finish group that we set up. That group, of course, already produced recommendations before the latest ones that will come forward, but we will be publishing the latest ones very shortly, and they had recommendations, of course, relating to the development of a BSL advisory panel, a BSL adviser and BSL national strategy. I think Mark has been a great proponent of co-production, as we know, so I can say this is absolutely aligned with those recommendations. So, we do believe this will provide value for money. It does align with our expenditure. We have already got proof of the effectiveness of a national adviser role in VAWDASV, and we do believe that this publicly appointed BSL adviser—and assisting panel, which is crucial; it’s not just vested in one person—will really empower deaf leadership and strengthen collaboration and engagement between Welsh Government and the deaf BSL signing community. If that’s the case—. We’ll get policy right if that’s the case, and that has to be value for money and good government.

Thank you for that, and, yes, you’re absolutely right—the assisting panel role as well, and the consideration of value for money for them as well, is absolutely needed to be assured of, and I’m glad to hear that you seem to have that assurance.

In the RIA, of course, Mark Isherwood has estimated—. And I must pay credit to Mark Isherwood, and his support that he has had, for pulling together the RIA that has been pulled together. But the total Bill costs in there are around £4 million, and it’s been broken down in terms of the elements that make up that. Are there any elements that make you nervous as a Government, around the estimation of them? Have you been satisfied that the RIA breakdown is about as accurate as it could be?

I think we are confident. We’ve referred to other legislation, learning from the development of RIAs for other legislation, and I think we’re confident that, the way the RIA has been developed, it is estimating costs on known experience, which we’ve already referred to, not just the legislation I’ve mentioned, but also, I think, other legislation like the Food (Wales) Bill, the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Bill, comparable, actually—. Interestingly, that Bill includes the development and reporting of a strategy and guidance documents. So, you could say that that’s another example of a Bill where you’re developing a national strategy, and, in this case, BSL guidance.

So, I think we’re learning from Welsh legislation, and the Bill team supporting Mark is also looking to that experience. So, it is consistent, we believe, in terms of that standardised approach to estimating costs. We have to look to, as we've said already, future Governments, and also those public bodies who will be implementing the Act in terms of their allocation of budgets to deliver this.

Just to perhaps expand slightly on the question that the Chair asked earlier about the BSL route-map and perhaps any potential crossover with existing work, in the RIA there's been an estimate for the cost to produce the national BSL strategy and guidance, that's £106,000. When that's compared with other strategies, for example you mentioned earlier, Cabinet Secretary, the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill, in which there was a strategy, that just had an £11,000 administration cost, nearly just 10 per cent of what this Bill is saying. Looking at others, with the BSL Scotland Bill, to prepare, consult and publish their plan, they said it would be between £40,000 and £80,000. So, what's been estimated here in this RIA is significantly higher compared with other similar plans or strategies. Is that something that you think is justified? Should there be any reconsideration of that, do you think, within this, or, again, are you satisfied that, due to perhaps the extent of work that might need to be done, that's a fair estimation of the cost?

I think these are obviously questions for Mark Isherwood, in terms of how they developed this approach and the costings. But also, we're doing a bit more than, for example, the Scottish Bill, in terms of its provisions, because of the BSL adviser and panel. I think that is what is reflected in terms of that cost estimate.

We provided Mark Isherwood's Bill team with the figures for what it takes currently to provide the leadership and the cross-Government work for the BSL stakeholder group that we have, and the development of the BSL route-map. Obviously, there are additional costs in this in relation to interpretation and translation, which won't be reflected in other legislation. I think it's important just to note as well that the costings in the RIA are based on a place of Welsh Government not doing anything as well. So, we talked about savings, this is likely to be an area where that could be potentially in the future, in terms of the leadership and bringing together that BSL plan.

Just to be clear on that—. That makes some sense. So, there's existing work being undertaken, which has a cost to it. There is future work proposed in this, which has a cost, but because there will be a level of some sort of, whether it's experience or expertise-type crossover, that this—. As you said, the options within this Bill are to do nothing or to introduce the Bill, which isn't necessarily that nothing is happening—. Sorry, it's not as if nothing is happening at the moment is what I'm trying to say. So, there will be a potential—I'm not saying it very well, but it's clear in my head, not what I'm saying out loud—that there is an element of crossover in terms of the cost—

It is where I was going as well, yes.

Can you help me out, Chair? It might be a question now.

I suppose the question is more beyond this Bill itself. It's how Member Bills are different from Government Bills, because Government is potentially doing work already, and therefore, when it comes to producing figures for this committee and for Bills, it makes the assumption that that baseline work is still going on. Whereas, for a Member Bill, you supply everything and anything, because it effectively has to stand on its own two feet, rather than lean into other work that's happening in Government.

I suppose there's a question there as to how Member Bills have support from Government to cost them in an appropriate way. In this instance, obviously, there’s a lot of cross-party support and support from every party, whereas if a Government was being disingenuous, they would load a load of cost, if asked, into a Member Bill to say, ‘Well, it's unaffordable’. So, is there a little bit of something for us to think about around how Government works with private Members on their Bills as to producing reasonable RIAs for the future? Because with this, technically, it's 10 times more expensive to do it than anything else, whereas in actual fact, it'll wash through and probably won't cost that much because you're already doing the work.

I guess it may not be a question for the Cabinet Secretary today.

Not today, but it's something to muse upon.

I think it's an interesting case study for us, isn't it, really, in that we have succeeded to get one or two Member Bills through onto the statute book by Government coming in and agreeing to work with the Member. So, there has been some expertise and learning developed from that. And also, we very, very clearly wanted this to succeed. So, I mean, there is learning for that for Member Bills for the seventh Senedd and onwards. We were just discussing those issues this morning in the Business Committee.

I think what's very important and hasn't happened before in the same way is the fact that the Welsh Government has committed, based on the RIA, to the costs for the first year of implementation of the Bill. That is quite unique, really. We're not binding future Governments and neither can the Member, obviously, identify what all those costs will be for the future, but it's important that in his RIA, he has given that range, in terms of the listed public bodies, of costs. BSL guidance will have an impact on that in terms of what administrative and implementation costs are likely to be.

I think there are ways in which, for example, local government work very closely together. There's probably partnership work that could be done on this under existing duties of public bodies, because they have a whole range of duties of this kind. I hope that clarifies those points that you've made, Sam. We met with the Member's team, as Amira said, as they were drafting the RIA, and we gave those staff costs for current delivery of BSL policy only. We shared as much as we could with them. I think that's the guidance that he needed. But we could certainly give you a bit more detail if you needed that in terms of staff time, et cetera. But I don't know if—

It could be interesting. Or we'll discuss it with Mark when—

Yes, if you need to, you can ask us about that—how we develop the costings.

I'm sure it would be the Member in charge who would need to respond to that. 

I'm fine with that, Chair.

Great. Thank you very much. As we've been talking about staffing and resourcing for the administration of the policy and the listed public bodies as well, the RIA notes that it's not possible to estimate the current staffing resource going into the administration. We've just been talking about that slightly there, in order to estimate that status quo cost. How much communication was there between you and the Member in charge about staffing structures and the costs, and whether or not you had any input into talking to, as you've mentioned, local government and other stakeholders? How was that done and how did you develop that in a co-production way to make sure that these costs are as accurate as they can be?

I don't think we got as far as—. We certainly weren't engaged with those. It's not for us, really, that this stage to engage with local government. I've reflected on the fact that there are ways in which we could think that local government might be able to work together in partnership to be ready for this new legislation. As I've said, I think it's very important that we'd established that BSL policy team, and Bethany, of course, leads. You haven't contributed yet, Bethany, but it's a really important team; everything has worked in developing this.

If you do need any more costings, we can give them to you. But as we've already said, and we don't want to repeat what we've said, we've allocated £270,000 annually on posts that support BSL policy work, and that's distinct from our disability rights policy team. But I think what's important, and it's something that hasn't been said really, but has been implied, we are recognising the specific linguistic status and policy considerations relevant to deaf BSL signers in Wales. We've talked a lot about that—recognising BSL as a language—but we're now, actually, and with the Bill, properly responding and making public services accessible to deaf BSL signers in Wales. So, it's leadership, it's administrative support from the team, and the costs, as I said, laid out in the RIA, are in line with estimates of current costs advised by my officials. It is very hand in glove. 

Thank you for that. The reporting aspect of the Bill and the costs of preparing and reporting the BSL plans could be as high as £1.5 million for all listed public bodies. From an overall budget point of view, how are you expecting public bodies to be able to find that money within their budgets, or are you going to be looking at how you fund the cost for those public bodies? 

I think this is again for—. It will be for future Governments, won't it? But it is important that you scrutinise it now, in preparation for that. A future Government will have to start considering costs for the following financial year—for 2027-28—in line with BSL guidance. In the first year, in which we have given that security of the budget, there will be a lot of development going on in terms of what the guidance would be. But I think, at that stage, once this is on the statute book, a future incoming government will need to be working with all listed public bodies to agree—led by the BSL advisory panel—the guidance and cost implications.

I think there will be a lot of responsibility on the BSL advisory panel, as far as this is concerned, to demonstrate that this new duty will actually deliver the best services, acknowledge and recognise fully the linguistic status as well, in terms of a BSL. But they are going to have to show that it needs to be a priority for those listed bodies, because there will be many other pressures on them, we know, as well. I think it is going to be very dependent on what the BSL guidance is, how it comes forward, and although we say it is produced by an incoming Government, I think in the spirit of Mark's approach and our approach from the Welsh Government to co-production, it will be very much guidance coming from the BSL stakeholder group and the panel and the adviser.

Just in terms of appointing the panel—the advisers on the panel—that'll take up some time in the first year. I think it's important—we've said this, and I said this back in July—that the work that's being done at present by our stakeholder group means that things are happening for the BSL community.

I was just thinking that we should acknowledge the fact that we're already working on the all-Wales standards for communication and information—that's the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care. Renewed standards—you’re all aware of how important that is. The mental health and well-being strategy is, again, ensuring that mental health support is accessible to all and considers the diverse needs of the deaf community. Our disabled people's rights plan, which has been out for consultation—specific actions there to improve outcomes for deaf BSL signers in Wales. Timely access to BSL for deaf babies and children—that’s an example of the action of the Welsh Government. Mark, I know, doesn’t want to wait, and certainly not our stakeholders, for this all to be in place and costs incurred. We are already, across Government, delivering on deaf BSL signers—the work that we’re doing with them.

Finally from me, unless my colleagues have any further questions: because there’s a lot of support for this Bill, assuming that it becomes the Act and goes forward, and after next May, would you want to be looking at Senedd sessions and BSL interpretation being there as a matter of course, rather than what we have at the moment, which is, effectively, ‘Nothing about us without us’, or when we discuss BSL that it’s there? Would that be something that you would want to encourage the Commission to look at as a natural way of things, as we have translation from Welsh to English, but also to have BSL interpretation as a mode or as something that is a matter of course in Wales?

I completely endorse that proposal, Peredur, as Chair of this committee, and I’m sure this will be emerging from the Equality and Social Justice Committee. We really welcome the progress the Senedd Commission is making already. We’ll always remember, won't we, the fact that the Welsh Government had that BSL signer on day one during the terrible pandemic in those press conferences. It was something that—. It just suddenly meant an awful lot that we were committed, but it should not be case by case, it should be throughout business that we have that BSL interpretation, so let’s hope that that will come forth.

Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr. I can't see any further questions. There will be a transcript available for you to check for accuracy, but, as I mentioned before, we will now be going into private. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi.

Diolch yn fawr.