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Will it take ministers to start insisting that the Crown accepts that there is a problem and does something about it?

However, there is nothing stopping any Government from saying to the Crown Office, notwithstanding the Lord Advocate’s independence and the Crown’s independence, that it could impose, create or fix a system without impinging on that independence.

I have a few points to make. One of the most important is on the statutory aggravator relating to the involvement of a child in a domestic abuse incident. Our report, which made eight recommendations, is perhaps key. We said that that aggravator is not really being measured, and that it is not clear how well it is being used; we do not really know. It is hard to work out the detail, and it is not entirely clear how that aggravator is being used. The response to that point in the report is a little bit vague. It talks in generalities and does not really say what exactly the Government is doing to address the issue.

My second point relates to communication to the public. Our report also made the recommendation that the previous public awareness campaign was quite effective, and it suggested that something similar could be done again, because people might not realise what the legislation does. Again, the word that I have used in my notes to describe the response from the minister is “vague.” The Government’s response says:

“There is consideration of a campaign to address these issues.”

It would be nice to know whether something material is happening in respect of both those points.

Maybe the Government does not want to go down that road and maybe there are no plans to do so; in that case, it should just tell us.

Maybe this is clear, but I do not know whether we know and, more important, whether the public know, what the timeline is for implementation of the legislation, which was brought in quite quickly on the basis of needing to address the issue of proxy purchasing of fireworks for under-18s. The expected timelines for implementation of firework control zones, licensing and so on have already been put back.

I think that there was a suggestion in the letter from the minister that it is still the Government’s intention to implement a key part of the legislation this year—I think that it was the provision on firework control zones—but it seems to be pretty unlikely that that is going to happen, given that we do not know what different authorities are doing and how that looks. Are we up to speed on a timeline? Forgive me if we are, and I do not know that.

I have a very quick question for Mr Haggart. I asked you previously about the electric fire engine that had been bought and deployed to Cambuslang. The most recent position from the Scottish ministers was that it was due to enter service this summer. Has it done so, has that incurred additional cost and do you plan to purchase more of those?

Given that that is 20 years’ worth of cash and assets from organised crime, it does not seem to be very much at all. That would be helpful.

There was a notable absence in the submission of any reference to the scandal of the malicious prosecutions of people involved in the Rangers takeover. The most recent publicly available figure for the cost to the taxpayer is £57.4 million, with £5.7 million of that being for legal fees. I understand that the compensation payments included an undertaking by the Crown to meet any future tax liabilities, if those arose. Have any tax liabilities been met by the Crown or by the Scottish Government in recent months? Have the figures risen since they were published? What cost implications might the imminent inquiry have for the Crown’s budget?

I have a very quick question about the increasing number of fatal accident inquiries. The relevant page in the submission is page 15, which says that 39 hearings are scheduled. Those are brand-new hearings for 2023. How many more hearings might be described as “works in progress”?

That is great, thank you.

On policing costs more generally, the submission from Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority talks about “hard choices” needing to be made and says that the revenue budget

“does not allow the organisation to maintain the workforce at the levels of previous years”.

In your opening statement, I think you said that the most recently identified number of police officers was around 16,600. Can you tell us what that number is just now and the best projection of where we might end up, based on the proposed budget?

Even on cost?