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We now turn to agenda item 3, which is an evidence-taking session on the annual report of the Standards Commission for Scotland for 2023 to 2024. We are joined for this item by Lorna Johnston, executive director of the Standards Commission for Scotland; and Suzanne Vestri, convener of the Standards Commission for Scotland.

When we come to questions, we will direct them to Lorna Johnston, but Suzanne Vestri should feel free to contribute. There is no need to turn on your microphones—we will do that for you, so that is one less thing to think about.

I invite Ms Vestri to make a short opening statement.

Thank you. It was useful to hear the detail of the process and how you pick up and process the work from the Ethical Standards Commissioner.

Lorna Johnston, I have a broad question around the fact that the Standards Commission’s annual report states that the organisation has had a positive impact on ethical standards in public life. Can you tell us specifically what has occurred for the Standards Commission to be able to state that?

Suzanne Vestri indicated earlier that she wanted to come in.

Speaking of things online, we have the opportunity in our committee to have members join us online. We will now go to questions from Willie Coffey, who joins us online.

Thanks very much for that. I will bring in Alexander Stewart.

That would be helpful.

I am just making a note to put that out on our socials in the future.

I will bring in Mark Griffin, who joins us online.

There is a little bit of interest in this area. Before I bring in Willie Coffey, I will go to Alexander Stewart and Emma Roddick with brief supplementaries.

That is interesting detail. Can something be done on that when we move towards local authority elections? Maybe your guides could be sent along with the information that comes from the Electoral Management Board for Scotland, or there could be QR codes or something. However, it is not for me to come up with those solutions—that just popped into my mind.

Thank you very much for giving that statement and highlighting the key points. There are quite a lot of different bits to keep track of in the work, not just on what you are doing but the backbone administration and cybersecurity aspects.

We have a number of questions to tease out a bit of detail, and I will begin. During 2023-24, the number of complaints about councillors more than doubled when compared with the previous financial year—it was 344 versus 156. What are your thoughts on the reason for that rise? Should we be worried about ethical standards in local democracy?