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It is not part of the standard process, but it sounds to me as if you are saying that quite a number of departments inside the Scottish Government have not got the message about the chronic shortage of public funds. It sounds as if people might get round to thinking about that at some point. In all honesty, if that were me, I would be developing a detailed assessment of the financial risk of using a framework bill for this sort of legislation and would be disclosing all of that.

You may be picking up from the committee that this all plays into confidence. If, in your preparations for today’s meeting, you and others in your directorate looked back at the committee’s deliberations on a number of bills, you would quickly and easily have gleaned that we have concerns about framework bills, which would have prepared you adequately for that question. It is a significant concern.

A lot of points about the FM itself have already been picked up. After I heard your opening comment, I realised that all the questions that I had were, in effect, moot.

Can you explore a bit more how on earth we got here? I notice and acknowledge that you have clearly had conversations with Police Scotland, the Scottish Police Federation and so on. I am interested in understanding the nature of those conversations, given that they suddenly had no meaning when we got to giving evidence. What happened and why are we where we are?

I want to pick up on the point about the training that you get from the parliamentary liaison unit. How long does that training last?

How many FMs have you both, and, indeed, the wider bill team, developed? What is the typical experience? Is it part and parcel of what you do, or is this your first encounter?

Is the effectiveness of the FM—the question of how much an FM hits the mark—included in your annual review? I mean for bill teams generally, not you specifically.

Given what it sets out, we almost wish that we had had the report before the recent review of the fiscal framework. That would have been valuable.

I could not agree more.

My last wee comment, which I suspect is probably moot, is about ranges. I will look at a range and the scale of the range will add to my confidence. In other words, if a range is significant, that makes me less confident. A range is entirely acceptable because we realise that we are talking about estimates rather than final figures. I noticed that the estimated upper cost of the bill’s provisions was 2.7 times more than the lower figure. Do you anticipate, or is it your intention that the ranges will be more acceptable in the updated financial memorandum that will come back before the end of stage 1?

Does that mean that the police thought that it could be absorbed based on conversations that had taken place by that point? Why did the available information lead them to that decision? Logically, that can only be because a lack in the information that was given to them led to a lack of understanding and because, as they gained more understanding, they were able to update their figures. That goes back to the point that my colleague Liz Smith is making, which is that people are making up numbers without having any clue about what the legislation actually intends.

Good morning to the witnesses, and thank you for attending the meeting.

I want to pick up on that last point and reiterate what my colleague Liz Smith and the convener have said. It is absolutely necessary that we have an updated financial memorandum before the conclusion of stage 1, and certainly before the production of any report. That is because the satisfaction of the Finance and Public Administration Committee critically depends on the numbers being within certain ranges and as accurate as they can be. I add my voice to that. That is very important.

As well as the finance side, we have responsibility for public administration. I must admit that I am quite surprised at how we have ended up where we are in respect of organisational culture. My colleague Liz Smith set the backdrop. We have seen an increasing number of framework bills. Such bills carry significant risks to the public purse in that a lot of the costs are put in past the stage at which the numbers bods—that is, us—are able to look at them in detail. From a public purse point of view, they represent a significant risk of a waste of money. What conversations are going on in your area about the risks against the backdrop of chronic shortages in public sector funding? What are the risks that are actively being considered of using framework bills?

Does any other project management training take place or is it just all in-house, as you have articulated?