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I have one small point to make, which is that we should always take refugees because they are refugees; we should need no other reason. However, although this may sound a little cynical, I wonder whether any part of the argument that you are making to the UK Government to move on with the visa extension—if that is what happens—is informed by the skills needs that we have in Scotland and the skills that the refugees who have come here have. Are you making the case that those skills are very important to Scotland?

Ms Forbes said earlier that she did not want to comment on political events, but you work in a political environment. Things have changed since I first came into Government and this is probably the most difficult time for external affairs and SDI that I can remember. I can support that by citing the letters from Alister Jack and David Cameron, which are a cross between a juvenile huff and some control freakery and really set the context for the environment in which we have to work.

My memory is that, despite that, civil servants in the Scottish and UK Governments managed to work together pretty effectively. I am interested in whether that is still the case, whether the relationship is constructive and whether there is a difference between the locations where the Scottish office is located within a UK embassy and those where it is not. There may not be, but I am interested in whether that makes a difference. I would like to hear comments on how the civil services of different Administrations work together.

I acknowledge the work that you do. If you could mirror the success that we had in Canada by getting haggis reinstated as an import to the US, that would be good, too.

Katrine Feldinger, do you have any comments?

We have been given a really good briefing from the Scottish Parliament information centre, which includes details on the number of people who left the two ships, Ambition and the other one. In each case, quite a small number of people left to go to hosted accommodation. I think that the figure for the other one was 1 per cent and for the Ambition, it was 7 per cent. Do you have a figure for how many people generally—by which I mean not just the people on those ships—went to hosted accommodation?

Good morning, minister. Given that HES has been making more money, I was pleased to hear you say that you are looking at the idea of HES being able to keep any additional money that it makes, because that would be a real incentive for it to do more work. It is not for me to speak on behalf of the committee, but I think that, in speaking to HES and others in recent weeks, the committee was concerned that they did not exactly jump on the idea of exploiting their facilities to a greater extent as a huge opportunity. Given what you have said, and what we all know about the budget situation, surely HES should show greater vigour and urgency in seizing opportunities to maximise income from other sources. Can you give the committee any reassurance that that will be supported, encouraged and facilitated by ministers as a matter of urgency?

Thanks for that, and that is encouraging but, first of all—this might not be the view of the whole committee—the idea of public bodies accumulating reserves for no apparent purpose is not something that I am very supportive of. There will be different views on that.

However, with regard to those assets, I am keen to see a change in mindset, which is required so that imaginative entrepreneurialism takes place. I am sure that the committee will look at that in the future. Everyone talks about Badbea in the Highlands, for example—as I did last week—and the places that are important to people in North America as a result of the clearances. Parts of Scotland have Hanseatic league links, and along the road, for example, we have Picardy Place, which is a link between Edinburgh and that French region. I am also thinking about China and the presence of Scots in the banking institutions in Hong Kong and so on.

If HES did a complete audit of the important sites that it has, and some places that it does not currently have, and if it properly exploited those, that could transform the money that HES has to develop, maintain and improve access to its sites. That could also be done through fundraising—think of some of the corporate entities around the world that might be willing to contribute. It would be useful to know whether the Government would be willing to encourage HES to have a complete, fresh audit of what opportunities there might be in relation to every site. I know that it has an awful lot of sites, but it could start with a priority list, if that kind of approach was possible.

The tower has been closed for at least 25 years, as far as I know.

I will ask another question later.

I will stop being parochial about my own area. I was also thinking about Badbea in the Highlands, which is pretty grim for its significance. If you visit, you are on the edge of a cliff, so I imagine that you might want to be careful about how you get people there. You could engender interest from Canada and the United States, because that is where a lot of the immigration to those countries came from.

You could make the connections that you could tap into part of the criteria for any potential new acquisitions. For example, the Americans are the biggest spenders when they come to Scotland, and they are coming back—I have seen that around Edinburgh. The potential for dramatically increased income is huge if you can tap into what interests people. It would be true of different countries as well. Is there any capacity to do that on individual sites and see what the potential is?

Sure.

Generally, are there properties, such as Clackmannan tower, that have no real prospect of reopening?