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Good morning, Derek—you are doing an absolutely magnificent job of explaining to the public in Scotland why the plant shouldnae shut and why it should continue. It all sounds to me like a rerun of the Gartcosh story in 1986 and the Ravenscraig story in 1992, in which a major strategic industry is removed from Scotland.

The explanations given now are basically the same as they were then, but this time the net zero transition is being held up as the main reason for this. Can you clarify where the refining capability will go during the transition? It is not stopping altogether. I imagine that it is being transferred elsewhere. Grangemouth could do 150,000 barrels a day, which is 54 million barrels a year. That demand will not just suddenly stop. Is that refining capability being transferred elsewhere during this so-called transition process? If that is the case, it is not a transition, it is an asset-stripping closure, is it not?

I was on the marches at Gartcosh and Ravenscraig and the outcome was what we expected, wasn’t it?

I will focus on the transition. If we, in 2024, are on a pathway to a just transition, is it not fair, right and just that that transition completes at Grangemouth? That is why I was emphasising the point about refining continuing. If production capacity is just moved away from Grangemouth, that is hardly a just transition. If we reach a point at which society does not need 54 million barrels of oil a year, the transition will be complete, but Grangemouth should be involved in that process until we reach that point.

Thank you. I wish you well.

It certainly does.

Do you spend a lot of your time basically dismissing complaints that do not fall within the scope of the code? Could you give us a flavour of the amount of work that you do in simply dismissing things that are not relevant?

I should probably have asked Ian Bruce this question, but I will pose it to you. Do we know what proportion of complaints that were deemed not to be relevant came from councillors who had not undergone training on the code of conduct?

Thank you. We will.

Could you update us on the position at the end of August?

Thank you for your opening remarks, Ian. My question is in the same area. Why do so many councillors complain about one another? When might you expect to see the fruits of the guidance being embraced and adopted by our local authority councillors? Will you also say a bit about whether awareness of conduct issues rather than performance issues, as you described, is a mandatory part of councillor training? Will you give us a little flavour of that to widen the discussion a bit?

You will be aware that the committee recently agreed to support the Scottish Local Authorities Remuneration Committee’s recommendations on councillor pay. Might there be an opportunity to take that further to include more mandatory elements in the councillor training regime, particularly on this issue? Could we put more into that mandatory bag of training for local authority councillors in return for that salary uplift, should it be awarded?

Thank you for that—it is much appreciated.