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Good morning, Mr Maxwell. I see that Calvin Harris is doing a concert in the summer at Hampden park. That was announced yesterday. It is great news.

Good morning, Sir Mark and Mr Davis. First, I reiterate other members’ acknowledgement of the fact that you are new to your role, Sir Mark. I, too, wish you well with resolving the very many issues that there are in the organisation. However, I also make clear that I think that we need to see decisive action being taken quickly to resolve those issues.

I will follow on from Mr Harvie’s point about responding to media reports. Our Scottish Parliament information centre briefing today helpfully points out that:

“There have been a range of media reports that have highlighted concerns over governance issues and the internal culture at HES. At the time of writing, HES has not published a formal response or statement on any of these issues on the News section of its website.”

Given everything that has been in the public domain and all the issues and allegations, why is that the case? Why has an organisation that is facing so many allegations, concerns and issues not published on its website a response to the very many issues that have been raised? Is that a deliberate strategy? What does it say about the culture of HES that no response to any of the allegations has been put on the website?

But there is nothing on the website.

Thank you.

One of the issues that I will come back to in a minute is the need for openness and transparency, and the need to address the very many issues that there are. As has been said, we have seen allegations of racism and other impropriety, concerns about financial mismanagement, and concerns about a culture of fear, a culture of spin and a culture of secrecy. We have used the word “culture” a lot, and it is clear to me that we need a review of the culture in HES, which, as Mr Kerr said, should be an independent review.

You mentioned earlier that a culture review would not take place until the individual processes were resolved. When do you expect those processes to be resolved?

The next couple of months—okay.

Now that there is an intervention from Audit Scotland, which is doing its section 22 report, and Parliament is asking questions, do you not think that HES should be ordering its own independent culture review?

I have a couple of follow-up questions on that. My understanding was that a presentation was given to senior managers in August of this year referencing that 2 per cent increase and the 3 per cent increase in public sector pay policy. When I asked that question and we got a follow-up letter, why did we not get the response that you just gave me? Why did the committee just get a one-liner that said, “We always adhered to the 3 per cent policy,” and which did not talk about the financial strategy being 2 per cent—

Well, I certainly cannot say why that happened.

I am here to ask questions on behalf of the committee. My original question was about financial management and financial strategies. Clearly, budgeting for 2 per cent and increasing it to 3 per cent suggests that the financial strategy that was in place was not sufficient, because the budget had to be increased to 3 per cent. That was my original question.

My subsequent question today is that there are not only financial management issues in that regard but transparency issues. Parliament is asking questions about the financial strategy and public sector pay, yet we are given one-line answers that do not go into what was clearly an increase in the budget in line with public sector pay policy, which was not originally budgeted for. You may not be able to comment on the specifics, but clearly there are concerns about financial management and transparency within the organisation. Would you agree?

We have talked a lot about the balance between accessibility and cash, and the impact on young people. We obviously want to showcase the game—the men’s game, the women’s game—to the next generation to inspire them to get involved in football. Equally, it is not just about that, because we want to provide them with the youth coaching opportunities to enable them to be the footballers of the future. There is a difficult balance to be struck: we all want matches to be free to air and we all want to ensure that there are proper resources for Scottish football.

At the moment, we have free-to-air qualifiers on the BBC, and we have the resource that follows from that. I think that George Adam described that as the best of both worlds. Is that the optimum situation?

Do you not think that, if Audit Scotland is looking at the culture of the organisation, it may assist that inquiry if HES showed that it was turning a corner or trying to address the issues itself and ordering its own independent culture review?

You do not think that there are any issues with transparency when HES provides a one-line answer that does not go into the detail of the answer that you just gave me.