Clarification of European Social Fund programme statement: FOI release

Information requested

The Scottish Government’s 2018-19 consolidated accounts include the following statement:

“The European Social Fund programme within the ESF is currently in 'pre-suspension' status due to audit issues identified during a 2018 audit. As a result the Scottish Government is not yet in a position to have these claims refunded by the European Commission (EC) and in turn are also unable to pay out funding to lead partners who are affected by these audit issues, one of which is Skills Development Scotland.”

On 26th June 2024, the Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, said this in the Scottish Parliament:

“On the first question, in relation to the minutes that she quotes, I say directly to her that at no point did the Scottish Government pause the payment to our partners of the funding that they had incurred. She is right to quote directly from the minutes, but I say unequivocally that the Scottish Government paid out the funding at our own risk. We recognised the costs that had been incurred, and the Scottish Government ensured that we paid out the funds to the partners.”

The information I am seeking is which of these two statements was true? The statement in the 2018-19 consolidated accounts, or Kate Forbes’ statement on 26th June 2024?

Response

Both these statements are true. The decision had been taken in 2019 in principle to pause any payments to those Lead Partners with claims affected by the audit issues. However in practice the few claims that had been submitted to Scottish Government by lead partners during this period, with one exception, were not affected by these issues. Therefore, those claims were paid once our verification checks had been completed.

The one claim that was affected by the audit issues during this period was that from Skills Development Scotland (SDS)for the Developing Scotland’s Workforce programme. This claim required extensive additional checks to be carried out to satisfy revised audit requirements. Once these had been completed that SDS claim was paid.

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