Chamber and committees

Thank you—that is very helpful.

We are up to time, but I know that some members wish to ask supplementary questions. If the chief constable and the other witnesses have a little bit of flexibility, it would be helpful if we could continue for another 10 minutes or so.

Thanks. Earlier, we discussed the benefits of multiyear settlements and, in your submission, you advocate for a multiyear settlement approach. Can you outline to the committee the impact of not having multiyear budgets? You spoke about annual budgets and the challenges that they present. What are the main factors that make multiyear funding more advantageous?

I presume that any budget requirement for that would be factored into your conversations.

Time is up. Before I suspend the meeting, I thank Martyn Evans for his contribution to the committee’s work. I know that retirement calls—not imminently, but perhaps at the turn of the year, and this might well be your final appearance before us. We are very grateful for the contributions that you have made during this parliamentary session. On behalf of committee members, I wish you well in your retirement, whatever you end up doing, which I am sure will not just be sitting around. Thank you very much for your service.

Thank you—that is really interesting. Pauline McNeill has the next question.

Out of interest, you also spoke about outsourcing services elsewhere. In an ideal world, would you prefer not to have to do that if you had the capacity in-house, so to speak?

Our next item of business is for the committee to agree to take agenda items 6 and 7 in private. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Our next item of business is to continue our pre-budget scrutiny. Our focus today is on policing and we have two panels of witnesses. Our first panel consists of representatives from Police Scotland and I am pleased that we are joined by the chief constable, Jo Farrell; deputy chief constable Jane Connors; and the chief financial officer, James Gray. I welcome them all.

I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I intend to allow around 75 minutes for this panel and I invite the chief constable to make some opening remarks before we move on to questions.

Congratulations on your appointment, Liam. We look forward to working with you. Would you like to say anything?

There is quite a lot to cover, so fairly succinct responses would be helpful, as I know that members are wanting to come in with a range of questions.