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I do not know, but that might be one of the cases that is referred to in the Police Scotland submission.

I have one more question, which is for Professor Burman. In the written evidence, you talk about civil and criminal cases sometimes running in tandem, albeit they are completely disconnected. I am familiar with cases in which an abuser has used the criminal courts as a means to extend and prolong abuse, or they have used the civil court to delay or derail the criminal prosecution. Has any research been done into that specific problem? Has anyone given any consideration to a fairly radical fix of combining criminal and civil matters relating to the same parties, or is that getting a bit ahead of the game?

Has that appeal been through the court?

Of course.

The written submission from Police Scotland was really detailed and helpful. On page 9, it refers to two cases, which Moira Price has already referred to. Those are cases where DASA was successfully used to prosecute rapes under a DASA charge, which otherwise would have been uncorroborated and not prosecuted. Those cases are both the subject of appeals, and I will not ask you to predict the outcomes, but I would like to ask you a two-part question.

First, do those appeals have any bearing on current DASA cases, or are any cases incorporating a rape charge or rape element on pause because of the appeals? Secondly, in the worst-case scenario, if the cases are successfully appealed, does that fundamentally derail DASA for that purpose?

I have a quick supplementary question for Mr Naylor. Does HMICS have any remit around training and targets? Can you hold the police to account in certain ways?

It might be worth asking about the possibility of an online action tracker, so that individuals involved in the report, people in the professions and members of the public could see where we are on each of the 200-plus recommendations. Would you support that, or have you asked for that? Has there been any discussion of that?

Good morning, Professor McKay. Your report is six months old. By my count, it makes 205 recommendation over 115 pages, and many of those recommendations have sub-recommendations—for example, recommendation 8.10 has 11 specific asks. It is a huge piece of work, which I had not appreciated as I had no real involvement with or knowledge of it.

The report makes reference to an implementation gap. There is an understanding that what the Government seeks to do and how that is delivered might be two different things. Six months after delivery of your report, can you give me a sense of the Government’s position on those asks? Do you have a general sense that some of that will never see the light of day? Has there been a favourable reaction to the recommendations? Roughly, where do you think that the report has landed?

I begin by noting the irony that the minister responsible for trying to curtail fireworks is now putting on such an entertaining display as she seeks to become First Minister.

There is a lot in Elena Whitham’s letter, and it is quite concerning. We should remember that the legislation was rushed. Collectively, we felt that there was not the appropriate and necessary time for all the scrutiny that was required. We were told that there was nothing to worry about and that the details would be filled in later. Here we are with a letter that, frankly, fails to do that.

Jamie Greene has touched on some of my points already. In the bullet points at the bottom of page 2, the minister talks about

“A slight delay to implementation of the licensing system”,

which is one of the central planks of the legislation. My understanding is that the system should have come in this year, but it will now not be in place until next year “at the earliest”. That seems a bit open ended.

Even more vague is the final bullet point, which concerns the restriction on days of supply and use. The committee will recall that those provisions related to specific cultural and religious events and so on. The letter says that the provisions have been

“paused to a future financial year”,

but it does not say which year, even as a guess. It would be nice to know whether ministers could give us some indication as to which one they are working towards. Is it—as in the previous point—2024, or will it be even further down the line? Might it even, as Jamie Greene suspects, not happen at all?

With regard to all the implementations, we warned about the confusion around what is being brought forward. I think that the confusion will now be even greater, given that the public will be getting this stuff coming in piecemeal.

The plan was to bring in the proxy purchasing provisions and the aggravation for emergency service workers in year 1, and then to bring in all the other stuff in year 2, which is this year. That is now not happening. The situation was already confusing, and it will now become even more confusing.

Anyone who reads the letter would think that everything was all perfectly fine, but it is far from it. It is clear that there are big problems around delivery, as we warned that there would be. We need to drill down as much as possible into what the timescales are and why the delays are happening.

Some of the stuff is happening anyway, some of it can be done in organisations through cultural change and some of it might require legislation.