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The reason why I asked is that OSCR is one of the regulators of housing associations. When I meet housing association chairs and board members, I always ask them whether they challenge the senior management of those associations in a positive way. That is a constructive aspect. Thank you for putting that on the record.

Good morning. I am not sure whether I have to declare this but, for transparency, I say that I am a trustee of a small charity called Spirit of Springburn. I have no financial gain from that. My interest is registered under the voluntary category, and I declare it at this point.

Clearly, a significant amount of work will be needed to implement the Charities (Regulation and Administration) (Scotland) Act 2023, and I suppose that that means that there is no business as usual—things have to change and there is an impact on resource. Will one of you give an example of how you have had to change from business as usual to doing something different that will allow you to implement the 2023 act?

That is a helpful and specific example of the impact. I have a follow-up question. What has been the impact on casework? I imagine that the casework teams are left to deal with the same number—or perhaps a greater number—of inquiries with fewer staff.

Before you answer that—because we are time sensitive today—if there are other examples of where there has been an impact, will you put those on the record as well? I will move on to my next question at that point.

There is no question for you to answer, cabinet secretary; I am simply asking you to do something. Mr Simpson mentioned ticketing and the fact that people do not always get the split fare pricing that allows them to get the best deal for tickets. Trainline takes less than a minute to use, and it allows you to add on discount cards. For example, I have a Club 50 railcard, because I am now over 50, which enables me to get a significant discount on rail travel.

When you have those discussions with ScotRail, will you make sure that the technology that it uses—the machines in the stations and so on—allows travellers to access, and promotes, the various discount cards that are available for ScotRail? We are trying to increase revenue, and that is a good way of getting more people to travel.

There is certainly no such benefit, convener, although I hope that there will be for my constituents, if they get jobs in the years ahead.

Cabinet secretary, if Mr Fairlie is leading on canals, I hope that you can suggest to him that we look at the wider regeneration impact on communities. In my constituency, there is regeneration at the Hamiltonhill Claypits, impressive investment is being made in Maryhill, Gilshochill and the Stockingfield bridge, and a new nature reserve has been developed towards Cadder, beside the banks of the canal. Does the cabinet secretary agree that using canals as drivers of community regeneration, particularly in deprived areas, is important and that, when we audit Scottish canals, we should audit their social benefit as well as the pounds and pence elsewhere?

Absolutely.

I do not know whether the next question is related, but in preparation for today’s meeting, I was looking at the papers and saw that, some six years ago, the UK Government started talking about radical reform of the rail system across the UK. In 2021, the Williams-Shapps report was published, and eventually, in February 2024, the UK Government introduced a Rail Reform Bill that, from what I can see, would protect many of the devolved aspects of the rail industry.

However, there has been a lot of delay in relation to that bill, and now that the UK election has been called, we will have to wait to see what an incoming Government does. Has there been any impact on the Scottish Government and its planning arrangements in relation to Scotland’s railway, now that we are six years down the line from what was marketed as radical reform of the rail network?

I have a question about the performance of ScotRail. The most recent performance data that we have shows a public performance measure figure of 91.3 per cent, but the target is 92.5 per cent. Therefore, although performance is pretty good, it is not quite there. How can we drive improvement in ScotRail’s performance? In March this year, ScotRail had to pay out £1.5 million because of delays and cancellations, but £1 million of that was not to do with anything that ScotRail had done; rather, it related to issues with Network Rail.

ScotRail has reached a performance level of 91.3 per cent. Admittedly, that is not the target, but its failure to meet the target is down to Network Rail rather than to ScotRail. How do we drive an improvement in performance? How can we report on the data in such a way that we can work out which organisation needs to up its game to do even better?

There is a question—it is not to declare an interest, although I will say that I had to go to Cardiff to see Bruce Springsteen, because he is not playing in Scotland on his European tour.

A few months ago, in a debate in Parliament, I raised the idea of a £1 levy on tickets that are above a certain value for events in Scotland. If 50,000 people are going to see Scotland playing Finland at Hampden or 50,000 people are going to see Taylor Swift, the money from that levy could be used to provide high-quality public transport. If someone is paying £100 for a ticket, £101 would not be much different, but just think what we could do with that pound. I raised the idea in the debate that you led, cabinet secretary. How could that idea be developed further?

That was very helpful. Speaking from my position as someone who is involved in the committee’s scrutiny of the matter as well as being the constituency MSP, I suppose that we should start to ask some of those questions when it is appropriate. No doubt we will return to the matter, so I will not ask more about it, at present.