Chamber and committees

That is a helpful response.

That concludes the public part of our meeting. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 27 October, when we will hold a round-table evidence session on the role of the Scottish criminal justice sector in tackling the misuse of drugs.

I wonder whether post-Covid recovery provides an opportunity and could be used as a platform for reform. That brings me on to issues around changing demand. There has to be a balance between how we promote reform and the change in demand on the police service. In the report “Five year financial planning”, you talk about changing demand arising from the changing nature of crime, community expectations and needs and so on. We recently visited the Scottish crime campus and had quite a helpful discussion about the challenges of recruiting specialist staff to tackle, for example, cybercrime. Bearing that in mind, what might be the budgetary implications around changing demand and the specialist nature of some of that new demand? How might that impact on budgetary considerations?

I ask members to confine their questions to budgetary issues. I am afraid that you are going—

Mr Lancaster, thank you for your attendance today; it has been most helpful. If there is anything you wish to follow up on, please feel free to do so in writing. The committee will also take that evidence into account.

We will take a short break to let Mr Lancaster leave before we move on to the next item.

I am aware that this is a really important topic and that there are a lot of moving parts at play, but I ask that we try to keep to time so that we can cover as much ground as possible.

I will bring in Collette Stevenson.

Before we move on, I have a quick question on the subject of estates. I am aware that an estate condition survey was being undertaken, and I think that that was due to be published or reported back on some time ago. Do you have an update on that?

I will bring in Russell Findlay, before coming to Collette Stevenson.

Let Mr Gray speak, please.