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I will stay with you for my second question, but anyone else can come in on it. I am interested in your thoughts on the focus and scope of the bill. Should the bill focus solely on cladding remediation or should it extend to cover all fire safety issues—or even all significant building safety matters?

The second item on our agenda is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses on the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Bill, with the first session taking the form of a round-table discussion. We are joined in the room by Phil Diamond, who is the managing director at Diamond and Company, Jocelyne Fleming, who is the policy and public affairs officer at the Chartered Institute of Building, Gary Strong, who is the head of professional practice at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and Kate Swinburne, who is the associate director at OFR Consultants. We are joined online by Alan McAulay, who is building standards hub pilot director at Local Authority Building Standards Scotland, and Jim McGonigal, who is joining us from the Institution of Fire Engineers. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting.

I will begin our conversation by inviting everyone to introduce themselves. I am Ariane Burgess, a member of the Scottish Parliament for the Highlands and Islands region and the convener of the committee.

Before I bring in Phil Diamond and then Alan McAulay, I will bring up something with you, Gary, although I know that others have made this point. We have heard that the bill is a good first step. Is there a sense from the work that you have been doing on the cladding working group and the directorate that there is more to come and that we need to do this because there is an urgency to get moving on it? I understand the point that, if you are going to assess a building, you should do the whole package. The committee is just seeing this piece of proposed legislation, but is there more in the pipeline that is being considered?

Thanks, Alan, that is helpful. It is about how to parse out the issue. It is important to find the right way—or as close to that as possible—to look at it.

Thanks for that. I will bring in Jim McGonigal next.

I want to clarify something. What Jocelyne Fleming was saying was interesting. We have a question about what the cladding assurance register is for. We can also ask whether we are moving in the direction of developing something else—a safe buildings register that includes the MOT idea that has emerged through our conversations. Is it useful to conflate those, or is it better to keep them separate, because of what we are trying to do?

I will bring in Pam Gosal with questions on the single building assessment.

I will bring in Kate Swinburne, then we need to move on. We are in a sticky situation: we are getting a lot of good information but we are only halfway through the questions, and we have only half an hour left, so we have to strike a balance.

Perfect.

That lack of nuance has certainly come through in previous evidence sessions as well.

Before we move on, I welcome Mervyn Skeet to the meeting. It is good to see you. I have opened with a few questions about consultation on the bill. Did your organisation have the opportunity to engage with the bill and, if so, has the engagement been effective in improving the bill? I will not put you on the spot by going to you next, so I will go to John Sinclair.