Chamber and committees

Is that not fundamentally because we do not have enough money to do the things that we want to do, including—I am sure that we all agree on this—what you have just said we would like to do? A commissioner being created does not create more money.

The key difference is that it was previously thought that the training in question could be incorporated into the normal training, but now it has been realised that separate, additional training will have to be provided.

I am sorry to interrupt, but does the police chief constable not always do that?

On a more cheerful note, I agree with materiality, which I think is a good thing. I may be in a minority on the committee in that regard—I do not know about that.

Mr McGillivray suggested that internal figures are rounded, but I would be inclined to round external figures, too. I cannot remember the exact figures, but some of them go down to the exact pound, when, as you said, it is not meaningful to go down to the exact pound. It is totally meaningless to talk about whether something will cost £354 or £353 in 10 years’ time, and I think that it gives the wrong impression. It gives people the impression that there is a high degree of accuracy, which, frankly, is unrealistic. That is my personal opinion—take it or leave it.

I do not want to repeat what colleagues have said, but I am interested to find out how we got to this point, because, in one sense, I think that it is a one-off. I do not remember a financial memorandum ever coming to us in relation to which there seems to be such a gap between what one of the main players—Police Scotland—thought and what the Government thought, and I am intrigued as to how that happened. Why did Police Scotland not see the bill in a fairly complete stage in order to understand what the requirements were?

Yes. It is stuck everywhere, as I understand it.

I am still struggling a bit. I get that the policy intentions were always clear—you have already said that. That is fine, and I think that we are all agreed on that. The police knew the general policy intentions. However, is it the case that, although there was no new information in the detail of the bill that the police did not already know about, perhaps they got a new lawyer that Monday or something, and they looked at it and revised their position? You said that they revisited their position. Did they just have second thoughts, whereby they went away, slept on it and thought, “Oh! Maybe there are going to be costs here”? Was there nothing new in the bill that they did not already know about?

I know that we are not concentrating on one particular commissioner, but Adam Stachura has put his case for one. Older people are one of the most powerful political groups in the country. They have achieved the triple lock for pensions—I am aware of no other group with that kind of strength. Would older people not be one of the last groups that need a commissioner, given what they already have? It is very different for children, who have no vote and no voice.

How many commissioners do you think there should be? Would you put a limit on the number of them? If we had 100 commissioners, all their voices would be tiny.

But so do people with autism and so do children.

Is “equalities” not a better overall term?

Let me press you a little on that. Is it inevitable that, when a commissioner is created, the first thing that they will ask for is more money for their sector, or can a commissioner look at the money that is being spent and say, “You could spend that same money better”?