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One point that was made to us during our trip to the new facility in Maryhill was that each health board seems to have a different approach, so the SPS was frustrated that there was a lack of consistency. It will be interesting to make that point when we write to the CMO.

For what it is worth, I think that it is quite a useful letter. We have heard that there have been problems with or objections to the change from some quarters, but the letter lays out the benefits quite clearly, including greater consistency and efficiency. It is quite reassuring.

Seven months ago, the First Minister and the Minister for Drugs Policy attended a fire station. The headlines stated that firefighters were to start carrying naloxone. The announcement came with £90,000 of funding to train officers. The letter tells us that 1,226 members of staff have been trained, but it does not tell us how many are carrying naloxone. It also omits to make any reference to what I believe is some form of disagreement or dispute between the SFRS and the Fire Brigades Union about the issue.

There is perhaps a sense among some officers that there is a presumption that they should carry naloxone without any reassurances about liability for use or misuse and that those questions have been unanswered. Therefore, it would be useful to ask the SFRS what is actually happening. Is naloxone being used, and what are the issues, if any?

I agree with Rona Mackay that that is probably necessary, but that is the job of the Scottish Police Authority—or at least it is supposed to be. It should be asking those tough questions.

It seems to be more about early intervention.

Turning back to the letter from the Scottish Police Federation, I know that the general secretary is perhaps not slow in coming forward, but many elements of what he says are really strong and quite concerning. To go back to two of the points that Rona Mackay raised about the intent to recruit new officers, the general secretary describes an apparent annual

“accounting chicanery of mass recruitment before each quarterly publication”.

In relation to bringing in officers from elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the language that Police Scotland used was “maximising transferee opportunities”, which the general secretary describes as “meaningless corporate language”. Such is the strength of difference between the two submissions. What underpins all this is the financial situation. The budget for the next few years is not just stagnant but, with inflation, it represents serious cuts, so that will be a huge issue for us.

When I read the Police Scotland letter from David Page, a paragraph jumped out at me and I underlined it. In relation to what it is fair to describe as an exodus of police officers, some of them with a great number of years of experience, he says that

“there is no impact to service delivery”.

When I turned to the letter from Calum Steele of the Scottish Police Federation, I found that, like me, he had quite strongly questioned that statement. His take on the claim by Mr Page that there is “no impact”, which is there for everyone to see, is that

“This is demonstrably untrue and verging on the deliberately disingenuous.”

Calum Steele goes on to point out that Police Scotland

“has the lowest number of police officers since 2008”

and concludes by saying of the challenges that Police Scotland faces that it cannot properly respond to them

“if it is not honest about them to itself, whilst simultaneously seeking to present a highly partial narrative about them to our parliamentarians.”

It is quite extraordinary that the general secretary of the SPF is saying, in effect, that Police Scotland is misleading us as MSPs and as a committee. It is vital that we get to the bottom of this and work out exactly what the pension issue and its effect on officer numbers is going to mean for policing in communities.

Your four-year plan talks about your first annual report to Parliament being due in summer 2022. Do you have a date for that?

One bit of information in a briefing that we received suggests that the Scottish Government was seeking that biometric data held by UK policing organisations, such as the British Transport Police, the Ministry of Defence Police and the NCA, should come within the remit of the Scottish Biometrics Commissioner. Has that happened?

Good morning. I think that you have answered one of the questions on my list, which was about the difference between yourself and the biometrics commissioner down south, which has been in existence since 2016. You have a much broader scope of material or factors to consider. Is that general assessment correct?