Thank you, Mark Isherwood, for bringing this statement to the Senedd today. I think it's important that issues of this kind are brought out in public in front of the Senedd. The public accounts committee has undertaken scrutiny of the accounts of various public organisations on an annual basis for very many years. The work is very important, although not usually headline-grabbing. This work has seen year-on-year improvements in the presentation and accessibility of the annual reports and accounts by the public bodies that have appeared before the committee. There have previously been problems with the accounts of Natural Resources Wales, which I will not go into but which are a matter of public record, and these have also been reported to the Senedd.

The committee scrutinises the annual report and accounts of the Assembly Commission and the Welsh Government every year. The committee have found that this work has been an important driver of transparent financial reporting, having identified issues and made recommendations for improvements. And just a reminder: we're discussing the 2020-21 Welsh Government accounts. 

Over the last five years, the accounts have been signed and laid within the statutory time frame for doing so, normally early. The statutory deadline for financial reporting has been missed, and as Mark Isherwood said, section 131 of the Government of Wales Act requires the Government to submit their accounts to the auditor general for audit no later than 30 November in the following fiscal year. The public accounts committee should have approved the report, either at the end of the autumn term or in January.

Just a reminder: these accounts are produced by Government civil servants with no political involvement. I'm sure everybody is actually pleased that there is no political interference in the production of these accounts. This is very much an administrative matter.

Three questions for you, Mark Isherwood. When will the committee conduct its scrutiny of the 2021 accounts? Is further information still required by the auditor general from the Welsh Government civil servants? And how will this delay affect the 2021-22 audit of accounts?