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You mentioned the sustainable procurement duty. What do you think about that? Does it need to be strengthened?

Is there is any way in which we can strengthen the legislation to ensure that there is not that focus on price?

If someone is sitting in the backlog, what update on their specific case do you give them? There are 329 cases, the oldest of which is from June 2022. Are you giving people a full picture of where you are? Exactly what information do you give to people?

Do you give people a timescale for when you think that the issue will be dealt with?

Thank you. Will you give the committee a progress update on your intervention with SEPA?

Good morning. To start with, I will follow up on some of Ivan McKee’s points.

David Hamilton, you spoke about the backlog. What does the backlog look like? At present, what is the longest that a case has been sitting in that backlog? How do you interact with people whose cases are in that backlog and update them on progress?

We see backlogs in other areas of our work, and we see that providing a good response and regular updates eases the frustrations of people who are in that backlog. The update should reflect what you are actually doing rather than what you are trying to work on.

SEPA is therefore generally going in the right direction.

That is reassuring.

Given the number of CPGs that are listed as having anything from partial compliance under various categories to a failure of compliance, I wonder whether the issue comes down to the number of CPGs. We have discussed that before. We maybe have to think about how numerous CPGs are.