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An awful lot of what you said is very similar to what we have heard in other instances of governance failure; there is a lot to be done afterwards, but at the time the governance was weak. At what point did you realise that the governance structure was failing?

For many years, the committee has looked at report after report from the Auditor General that has highlighted failures in governance. At times, it seems that it is almost endemic, and it is really disappointing that the SPCB falls into the same category. This seems like an extraordinary failure in governance, and so, quite simply, I ask you: was your governance fit for purpose during the period in question?

Were you satisfied that you had sufficient processes in place to highlight when such issues were coming up? For example, when were you sighted on the fact that statutory directions were coming from the Standards Commission? That was an extraordinary event.

But you had substantial influence over the commissioner, given your oversight role. How did you engage with the commissioner? Were there regular meetings and exchanges of information?

What would an escalation process be? The whole thing broke down, and the governance broke down. Presumably, your relationship became a bit strained, given the differences of opinion and so forth. Where would you normally go from there? How would the escalation process work?

Given the failure within the organisation, and given that inaction on the part of the SPCB would have led to unfortunate outcomes in terms of investigations being carried out and so on, would it not have been appropriate to bring the problem to Parliament?

Given that practically everybody that you could point at in the commissioner’s office was underperforming for various reasons, would there not have been a degree of greater urgency and necessity to act swiftly to rectify the situation much more quickly than appears to have happened, given the timescales?

Give me a timescale.

What would have happened if the previous commissioner had not gone on leave and the impasse had continued? What would you have done?

I would certainly recommend it, given the experience that Audit Scotland has had with similar governance failures elsewhere.