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It is.

I want to follow up on Russell Findlay’s line of questioning. That would almost create a conflict. The committee and the Government will want to try to find ways to save costs, but many of the cost implications of the transfer seem to be for factors that most of us would support. You mentioned offering more training, better holidays and better pay. As politicians, we would want to support those aims. In the interests of time, I am really just looking for your comment on that point. I can see that you have been considering it.

I agree with that as well. It would certainly do no harm for this committee to look at the issues. We might need to have a wider conversation about how we feed back to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, but, given that community and criminal justice comes under our remit, it is appropriate for us to hold a one-off session.

Good morning and thanks very much for your evidence, so far.

My question is along the same lines as Pauline McNeill’s, and is about HMPs Addiewell and Kilmarnock, so a lot of it has been covered. I was looking back to 2016 and I found a question that I asked, to which the answer was that the private finance initiative payments on Addiewell were going to cost taxpayers nearly £1 billion. I assume—going back to your answer earlier—that the cost has gone up from that. It is an absolutely ridiculous amount.

Can you confirm that with RPI currently at 12.6 per cent you will be liable for something approaching 14 per cent of the cost of HMP Addiewell? On the back of what you said about HMP Kilmarnock, is it time, or are there plans afoot, to bring Addiewell back into the public sector, as well?

The final question that I want to ask is one that I asked the previous panel and the panels last week. It is about your interlinking with the other justice agencies. You heard this morning’s evidence, and I assume that you tuned into the police’s and the fire service’s evidence last week. You all seem to say very similar things; it is a very bleak picture, and there is no getting away from that. Have you thought about how a flat cash settlement will impact on the police, the courts service—from which we have heard this morning—the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and other criminal justice agencies? How do you take that into account in your budget considerations?

I had a supplementary to Pauline McNeill’s question, but it has partly been covered. I would still like to ask it, but I can come in later.

That is what I was going to ask about. You have already covered the matter, so excuse my naivety. Is there no way out of the contracts? Is that basically it?

Good morning, panel, and thanks very much for your evidence so far. I looked to ask a supplementary question earlier about Lady Dorrian’s work, which the committee is very interested in and supportive of, but it has been covered. I am actually glad that the convener did not bring me in, because I would have stepped on my colleague Rona Mackay’s toes. I wanted to clarify that point.

I have two broad questions that are not really related. First, do you have any idea what the impact might be on revenue that is raised through fees in civil court cases if the current inflationary cycle continues beyond 2023? What impact could that have overall?

You said that the service will continue to prioritise criminal cases, and particularly the most serious ones. I think that everybody would agree with that and there would be no argument about it. That implies that the civil stuff might take more of a back seat, for want of a better expression. However, civil cases create a revenue stream for you as well. If they take a back seat but they create revenue in an already constrained budget, have you thought about how that could play out?

My other question is about the interplay between different parts of the justice sector. I have asked previous panels about that, and we will hear later from the Scottish Prison Service, which is another key player.

When you make budget decisions and consider ideas, do you take into account some of the things that you might have heard from the police and the fire service last week—and that you might hear later from the Scottish Prison Service—to do with how everything is interlinked? If they all get flat cash settlements, how does that impact on you?