Chamber and committees

Would not it be helpful for you to know where the concerns and frustrations are? I appreciate that that information could be anonymous, but there could still be a note of when the case was opened.

I do not know whether you do any assessment yourselves or with some of your customers of the economic impact on their businesses of potential delays to outstanding cases.

I think that the business surveys that you did showed quite a high level of satisfaction against the national framework. Is that across all cases, or can you differentiate between clients and look at those who have been waiting for some time, for example?

You mentioned the slowdown in the market, and the opportunity to unlock—I think that you used the term “unlock”—some existing casework, which brings in additional income. You talked about bridging and so on. Does that mean that you are not dealing with those cases as quickly as possible? Are they being banked, as it were?

Good morning. There are two things that I want to ask you about. First, I want to get a bit of an idea of what documents might be included, whether there are any notable exceptions that might be included and how far the proposal goes. For example, does it include any health certificates that might be part of cross-border trade?

Given that the funding model has changed, you do not expect to draw down any additional support from the Scottish Government over the duration of the plan.

It really just comes back to the fact that, in the few years since we left the European Union, there have been a few examples of delays in trade because of paper documents having to be used. I was wondering how far down that goes and whether the bill affects things at the level of, for example, food exports. Some of that process has become digital over recent years, but I wonder whether such parts of the process would be digitised as standard now. I will look further into the issue.

Will there be a uniform approach across the UK single market, or is there potential for having different regulations and requirements within the UK?

Good morning, panel. Sam, you said that because Consumer Scotland has a large remit, you have to prioritise. Is the remit too broad?

One of our concerns when we were considering the bill was the potential for duplication—as my colleague Graham Simpson said, there was already advice being given. Have you seen a contraction in other parts of the advice sector, where some of their responsibilities are now with you? What has been the impact on the wider sector?

You are talking about growth. Given the circumstances, there is demand in a wide variety of areas. How do you see that growth happening? How will you resource it, budget-wise and people-wise? Do you see that being an increasing burden on how you do things?