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I note what you say about the change itself and the steady state, and the breaking down of the cost.

Emma, do you want to add anything?

To clarify, we have seen the focus on supporting consumers but my concern is supporting SMEs. It will often not be a contract of equals between a large supplier, which might be a large multinational, and an SME. I am trying to tease out a bit more information about that. I am sorry if I was not clear.

Yes.

Good morning. We have covered a broad range of areas across the piece. Before I ask a few other questions I want to check whether any of the three remaining panel members feels that there might be questions that we should have put but have not been able to in a session of this breadth. On my screen I can only see the witnesses’ backs, so I ask whoever wishes to go first to do so.

I have a last wee question, just to bottom that out. A lot of our discussion has summed up the issues that we face at the moment, such as lack of access to labour and problems with capital, and has moved on to the longer-term impact on productivity or the lack of it. That is where the UK scores badly when we look at comparator countries, whether they be small economies or larger advanced ones.

My question to you is: based on all the people with whom you work, do you anticipate a slowdown in investment? That might be investment in automation—which David Thomson brought up earlier—or in more general terms, while, at least in the short period, we will be focusing on getting through what looks likely to be a difficult period or in the longer run because of the wider concerns that are being shared about another decade of austerity. It would be useful to hear your thoughts on that.

That is helpful. My last question concerns the energy suppliers. Are people getting the support that they need from the suppliers? We have covered extensively the support that they need from Government. Are they getting the support that they need, from what you are picking up?

When do you anticipate baselining your estimated costs, so that you can nail your colours to the mast a bit more? At what point will that occur?

To build on that, we talked earlier about economies of scale. I think that Paul Manning mentioned the loss of economies of scale to local government. However, a corollary of that is the benefit of economies of scale to the Scottish Government. I want to ask about that because, all the way through this session, we have commented on public sector funding and our being in a precarious position, and we do that continually.

What specific economies of scale can you see with at least some of the proposals for the Scottish Government and therefore the public purse? It strikes me—I have put this on the record before—that having 32 local authorities with duplicate functions across the board is not necessarily the most efficient way of working. I am interested in your thoughts about where the economies of scale are for the Scottish Government rather than the disbenefit of economies of scale for you.

The financial memorandum does not mention economies of scale.

Does Sharon Wearing want to answer either of my questions?