Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. There was a lot in there that, I know, members will be interested in coming back to.

I will move swiftly on and bring in David Crawford to answer the same question.

Before I open up to questions from other members, I will stay on the issue of recruitment, and park the budgetary issues for a moment. You have spoken about the difficulties of recruitment, and I suppose that we all recognise the challenges with recruiting in rural areas, for example. However, you have described a service that is evolving and that we could argue is multidimensional nowadays and so is perhaps more attractive to people and more varied than it was even 10 years ago. What factors are creating obstacles to recruitment? What is preventing the recruitment process from working?

I want to move things on. We are almost half an hour in, and a number of members still want to come in. If there is time, we will come back to that. Ben Macpherson has a supplementary question.

A brief response would be helpful.

I am going to bring in Katy Clark. I should say that we have a bit of time in hand, so if members want to come in with very brief questions, they should indicate as much to me. I know that Russell Findlay would like come in again, but I will take Katy Clark first.

That is very interesting. I will bring in Dave Crawford and Tim Kirk to wind things up.

Thank you. Would you like to add anything before we finish, Tim?

Thank you—that was very helpful.

I will now open up the discussion by bringing in Katy Clark.

Thank you. I will now open up the meeting to questions from members.

Thank you very much. If no more members want to come in, I will finish off with a question about partnerships and collaboration, which we have touched on during this session. I know that the SFRS has been working for many years in collaboration with partners, particularly on engagement with vulnerable individuals, home safety and so on. I am very interested in the proposals around expanding that into working with the national health service and the Scottish Ambulance Service. I am interested to hear a bit more about what that might look like down the line, and also about partnerships where you would prefer there to be some clear water, such as with Police Scotland.