Chamber and committees

Although blips have happened over the past wee while in relation to the issue, your local authority seems to be, or to have been, on the ball. However, nationally, we do not have a set advice and help toolkit for everyone who is involved. Do you think that that would be beneficial?

Grand. Natalia, do you have any comments on that?

Very briefly, you are looking at this from the debt advice side, Natalia, and I understand, because that is who you folks are. Would a toolkit like that be helpful, not just for debt advice but for the likes of GPs and link workers that Joe McMonagle spoke about—all the people who are involved in this process and helping folk—so that they follow the same lines in getting the right advice for clients as well?

While you are thinking, I will tell you what my thinking is. We have a homelessness toolkit in place, so that folk follow—or should follow—the same kind of things. That toolkit can be added to with the wealth of knowledge that comes in from various professionals who are dealing with homelessness. Would something like that, with a flexibility around it so that it can change and all the knowledge can be kept up to date, be useful?

You are looking at this from the debt advice side, and I understand why—

Adrian Gillespie said that the south harbour at Aberdeen should do us a turn for decades. I hope that it is centuries. After all, Aberdeen Harbour Board is the oldest company in these islands—it was founded in 1136.

My understanding is that hemp was grown to a huge degree in the middle ages. It sooks up carbon dioxide.

I turn to Stuart Black, who does not have to talk about hemp.

You have all talked about the pressures, and Ms Morrison-Ross talked about partnership. This is a very brief question for you all. How do you share resources? What do you do to co-operate and collaborate with each other to ensure that costs are lowered?

Maybe the witnesses could supply us with more detail on the shared backroom costs, because it would be my expectation that many of the things that you are doing could be done on a shared basis rather than each organisation doing something separately. It would be good if we could get further details on that shared agenda on backroom costs.

More of that, please.

I think that all of you have mentioned hydrogen, which, obviously, has huge opportunities for us in Scotland, particularly in the export market to places such as Germany. We have our hydrogen strategy, and we already have some expertise in Scotland, in respect of transport in Aberdeen, in my own neck of the woods.

Does what are you doing fit in with the hydrogen strategy? Are you speaking to other experts about the formulation of your future investments? What needs to be done differently to make those future investments easier?