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Sure. I would be interested in knowing whether a stand-alone unit has the monitoring remit or whether it is put on to the divisions, which already have a lot of competing pressures and roles to fulfil.

I want to go back to the point about local firms competing for the same pot of money. We have heard previously from Scottish Women’s Aid about a lack of specialist solicitors in respect of offences in which women are victims. Is the direct employment of more solicitors by the board a likely direction of travel that will help to resolve that? Are you actively seeking to achieve that or—let us face it—are you up against the resistance of law firms and their lobby, who are pretty hostile to the idea?

Can I ask one question of the SPA?

This is budgetary. It is on NDAs and it is for Mr Brown. Have you had any discussions with the police on the use of NDAs and how they can impact on budgets, or do you expect to?

Are you exploring or have you explored the creation of a specialist provision within the framework that you already have?

I would like to ask about Police Scotland’s use of non-disclosure agreements, which, for people who are not aware of them, are used in the payment of compensation deals to keep the details of those pay-outs secret or confidential. It has been reported that the value of such claims has breached £1 million since 2013, and that raises serious questions about transparency and accountability for public money.

Just today, we heard about a successful tribunal claim that was brought by a female police officer called Rhona Malone. Her career was destroyed by what was described as a “boys’ club” culture. She had been offered a settlement on the condition that she signed a non-disclosure agreement. Mr Gray, are such agreements compatible with good governance, public confidence and accountability?

[Inaudible.] completely incompatible with the offer that was put to Rhona Malone. Her case was one of sexual discrimination, and an NDA was used in an attempt to settle confidentially, so that the public would be unaware of what transpired.

I have a quick follow-up question. If I understand correctly, in order to make radical changes to the structure, that would require political direction. On the basis of the structure as it is, do you have any thoughts about creating specialist legal provision to deal with what has been identified as a particular problem around domestic crimes?

I declare an interest, in that I am married to a serving police officer.

I thank our witnesses for coming. You have suggested that pay makes up something like 80 per cent of the overall budget. The previous pay award ran until April of this year, and I think that talks in respect of a new award are on-going—I think that there are to be talks tomorrow, in fact. If the award is agreed any time soon, it still would not happen until much before the end of the year, or, possibly sometime next year. What stage are the talks at? How confident are you of agreement? Given that officers have faced the pandemic and are now facing COP26—the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—does that apparent delay not risk demoralising rank-and-file officers?

Mr Gray, you said that non-disclosure agreements are mostly historical, but according to a media report this week, there have been seven in the past couple of years, all of which involved females—three officers, three civilians and one member of the public.