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Good morning, cabinet secretary. You have said to Jamie Greene twice that you have no intention of presiding over a drop of 4,500 officers. I am pleased to hear that.

I want to drill down a bit on the discussions that you are having with the Deputy First Minister about the issue. I am sure that you have shared the same concerns that the committee and I have. Police Scotland’s submission said—and the chief constable has said this openly—that it is not only the drop in numbers that is a big concern. As we have discussed many times, the Scottish police service is special in the UK and internationally because of the type of policing that we have here. It is not only the 101 service that is special. Perhaps only 26 or 28 per cent of calls are crime related. The police are very much the line of last resort. You know that, and you have heard that in many exchanges that we have had.

What discussions are you having in the Cabinet and with the Deputy First Minister about how we can avoid that drop in officer numbers? It seems to me that, even if you could find money in the budget, given the period ahead, it is important to protect and preserve that model of policing for the future. Are you getting that across to the Deputy First Minister? We are not talking about just a straight flat cut and a cut in numbers; we could lose that model of policing for ever because, when things are changed, they do not come back to where they were.

I have a final question. There are many areas of the budget that you could look to and find savings in. The area that always comes up is court time for police officers, who have to give up their rest days and all the rest of it. To what extent is that being resolved by the ingenuity of technology? How far down the road are we with that? Can technology assist with that?

I did not know that this issue was going to be raised, but it has been. Cabinet secretary, I appreciate that, at the moment, effectively, no one can say anything about the case because it is a live issue, so I will not press you on that.

However, Russell Findlay is right about accountability. A Lord Advocate took a decision some years ago that has massively impacted on the credibility of the Crown Office, not to mention the huge sums of money that are involved. When everything has been settled, what scope do you have as cabinet secretary to satisfy yourself that there will be accountability? I hope that you agree that, at least, somebody has to hold the Crown Office to account for that decision. A former Lord Advocate took that decision, and I do not think that that can be allowed just to dwindle out once the court case is finished. Surely, that cannot be allowed to happen again.

I am not asking you to disclose the details of the discussions but, given what you have said, I would like some reassurance that you want to protect police numbers and the police model. The only way in which that can be done is by having some kind of plan that is not the current one. Can you reassure us that there is a plan that the Cabinet supports? How far can you go?

During the passage of the Covid legislation, I raised a question about what I thought were pretty dreadful remote working circumstances in the sheriff courts, because the sound quality was so poor. I am delighted that the Government acted on that such that that approach will now be only for restricted purposes and not for full custody hearings. However, is that something that you are able to address—yes or no? I do not have an issue with things being done remotely, but there is no point in that if the quality of the connection is so poor that it undermines the whole idea of it. I have an issue with that.

[Inaudible.]—the IT, then?

I have a supplementary question on prison budgets. I previously put this question to His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service. You will know that, just by dint of the contract, the two private sector prisons are protected against inflation, which no one ever thought would reach double figures.

I put it to the chief executive of the SPS that she perhaps needs to have a discussion with the private sector prisons about sharing some of the pain. Have you thought about that? The issue might not be significant enough, but it seems unfair that two private prisons are protected financially when public sector prisons are not.

Thank you—it is because you touched on my amendment.

I had hoped that you would address the significant question around exclusion. You said that the 2004 act sits alongside the 2010 act. Forgetting for a moment your definition of sex versus my definition, I am interested in how the 2010 act is used for exclusions.

As I said, the Government has a minister who is telling health boards that they cannot exclude people and that if they do so, it might be discriminatory. That is completely unhelpful for the purposes of this debate, and I would like an explanation for that from the Government somewhere along the line.

I go back to the Glasgow Life example. I think that some bodies are either confused or potentially not implementing the section of the 2010 act that allows them to make a “proportionate” decision for a “legitimate” aim. In some cases, they are actually saying that they will not make any exclusions. That is not what the 2010 act says.

Given those examples, surely the Government has to step in and say, “Now hold on a minute—you are allowed to make exclusions under the 2010 act.” Do you see my point?

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

Your comprehensive amendment refers to a GRC being “fraudulently obtained”. What would need to be shown in court to prove that? You will be aware of the considerable debate around the provisions in the bill that say a GRC is fraudulently obtained if it can be shown that someone has done that for the “wrong reasons”, as you mentioned.

I have concerns that the bill does not set out what would be needed to be shown in court, given that self-declaration is a simple process.

The amendment is a good one, but I would be really grateful if you could outline what would need to be shown in court to prove that a GRC had been fraudulently obtained.