Chamber and committees

Notwithstanding the fact that you need the permissions, what sort of timeline are we talking about? I think that you previously said that your aim was to start this by 2030.

That is obviously crucial to the bank. You are on record as saying that the money that you have been given will be

“insufficient to crack the missions”

if you do not get the relevant permission.

Okay. I anticipate that your success with the first application might be better than your success with the second one, but good luck.

I would like to go back to an unrelated point. It is a question that I raised at your most recent appearance before the committee. It is about the £50 million investment in the forestry fund that is run by the asset manager Gresham House. At the time, I raised the fact that your website said that that fund would create rural jobs. When I asked how many jobs it had created, you were not able to answer. Do you have an update on how many jobs that particular investment has created?

Thank you.

When you made the decision, was the bank aware of the concerns about the Internal Market Act 2020? What was your take on that? Did you think that it was not a problem?

Are there any lessons from this for your due diligence?

To be clear, are you confident that the changes in the workforce will be achieved through the natural process of existing staff moving to new roles or retiring? Are there no plans to carry out any redundancy process?

To be clear, then, you are confident that the 10 per cent reduction that comes later in the final couple of years of your corporate plan will be achieved, but it will have no impact on tackling the backlog.

That would be good.

I have a follow-up question. You mentioned that you work with solicitors to try to tackle some of the challenges. I notice that, in the most recent quarterly update to the committee, from February, you explained that you had an engagement event with the president and chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland. What was the mood in that discussion? What issues did they raise directly with you?