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My final question is for Kevin Lindsay. Have you had different experiences over the past year? The publication of “A Vision for Scotland’s Railways” has been a very important contribution in relation to what Scotland’s railways could be, or should be, in the future. We do not have time to go through all that today, but can you reflect briefly on what has happened over the past year and what you see happening with “A Vision for Scotland’s Railways”? It would be helpful if you could say whether you have had any engagement with the Scottish Government on such issues over the past year.

The issue was that if someone no longer wants a prepayment meter, they have to pay to get it removed.

How do you reconcile what may be competing tensions between the delivery of net zero, which is an imperative for all the organisations that you have talked about, and the immediate impact on consumers? Has your organisation thought through how to position itself in that regard? Your drive to help with advocacy for individual consumers may work against the wider issue of trying to make sure that we can deliver on net zero.

With the convener’s indulgence, I will pick up one point first with regard to energy and the cost of living. The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s energy price inquiry last year identified that people were having to pay for the privilege of having prepayment meters taken away. As an organisation, has Consumer Scotland been able to have an impact on that?

Other members will go into specific issues, but I will focus on the range of your work and how you do it. Are there any practical examples of collaboration with other consumer organisations in the work that you have planned? You touched on some areas, but can you tell us of any organisations? It might be helpful for us to get a sense of which organisations you work with.

I am interested in seeing how your work develops with Trading Standards Scotland, which does invaluable but probably unsung work. Some of the advocacy issues will be important because of the broad impact on consumers. Does the consumer network for Scotland bring together areas that you might see in the devolved sector and also in the reserved sector? When are you next likely to meet with the network? What are its priorities? Are they the same as yours, or is the network steering you in a different way?

I will stay with the issue of connectivity and the point about who organises that, and who should organise it. There seems to be a bit of pass the parcel among individual local authorities, regional transport partnerships and possibly Transport Scotland, although I am not even sure whether it has a role in that—you can tell me otherwise.

My constituency in West Lothian is semi-rural, but a lot of cars could be taken off the road there if there was better connectivity in relation to towns and park and ride. For example, we can see what is happening with Fife into Edinburgh. There is so much focus on the cities, but in this region, we also have East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian.

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect, and that really needs co-ordination. What is happening to try to change that? Is there something that can be done with regional transport partnerships to give them real targets for what they need to do? Who are they accountable to, and how can we get the co-ordination that Councillor Macgregor talked about?

David Hammond, from an officer’s point of view, are skills and capacity in financial investment being built up within local authorities?

Where would the bus partnership fund sit in discussions about the new deal for local government, if it is to help local councils?

Yes. I will move us on to natural capital. We took evidence on that and I recall Highland Council being quite strong in relation to some of its concerns in that area. What work is being done by local authorities to attract private investment into tackling natural capital and its contribution to our net zero targets? Are there any specific examples where local authorities are working with the Scottish Government or other agencies to realise that?