A forensic audit is a different process. We did not commission a forensic audit.
I do not wish to present the committee with an analysis that says that this is a good situation, because it is not. To call it disappointing would be putting it mildly. The Grant Thornton report said that the process by which the money was being transferred
“has been embedded into the Board’s financial planning and financial reporting processes for a number of years and therefore has masked the underlying operating position of the Board.”
It went on to refer to the lack of challenge by the board, which we have discussed. On that subject, it said:
“This we think is due to a lack of reporting of the transactions, as the knowledge of these transactions seems to be contained to the NHS Tayside Director of Finance, NSS eHealth and the eHealth Leads group. They have been in effect ‘off budget reporting’ transactions.”
As colleagues have said, we have to rely on the assurances that we receive, otherwise there is no point in having them. Those assurances have come via a range of routes that have already been described. In my view, the transactions were carried out in a way that was intended to obscure them from the NHS Tayside board, and that is what happened.