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What is lacking, then? In your paper, you say that

“The key challenge ... is the lack of an overarching strategy to tackle online child sexual abuse”,

and that

“there is no government leadership with the issue straddling multiple government departments and Ministerial portfolios.”

In effect, what are you asking the Government to do? Would you say that the lack of take-up of your service is due to a lack of awareness among the community of those who might benefit from it or simply a fear of contacting you, because of what might happen thereafter if they pick up the phone or access a website?

Does anyone else want to answer? We are running out of time.

I might come back with some questions later, convener.

Okay. I had lots of questions, but everyone has used up my time.

I will ask a slightly left-field question. Has there been a rise in vigilante behaviour from members of the public to try to—through online or physical approaches—capture, tackle or deal with predators, for want of a better word? Has there been a rise in people self-policing, in effect? If so, what has been done to tackle or prevent such activity?

Thank you. I realise that that is a slightly different area of questioning, but I wanted to raise the issue.

I have a final question for the NCA, which is about the complexity of the enforcement landscape. If an image is discovered on a site or through an app, whether we are talking about mobile or fixed-base internet service provider access, it is often not clear where responsibility lies with regard to escalation. Does it lie with the website operator or with the internet service provider? Is the process governed by Ofcom, the Internet Watch Foundation, ministers, the police or the NCA? That lack of clarity can be such that no action is taken. It is not always clear to the consumer how to escalate such a matter, other than by immediately reporting it in the first instance. If no action is taken thereafter, the path to escalation, whereby the ISP or the website can be held to account, is not obvious.

I appreciate that the issue crosses a range of policing and devolved and reserved matters, but could the pathway be tidied up a little more so that people know exactly who does what, who regulates what and what can and will be done if no one else takes action?

Given that we are being asked to agree to the instrument, we should ask the main protagonists who responded to the consultation whether they are happy with the framework, or whether they have any observations or reservations that they want us to consider before we agree to the instrument.

I apologise to committee colleagues and the Wise Group for being unable to make the visit. I make an open offer that I would be very willing to go with other members or to visit on my own at a suitable time. I am happy to arrange that through the committee clerks or directly with the Wise Group.

In your written evidence, you say that you struggle to quantify the demand on police to deliver services that you probably should not be delivering but which you are happy to deliver as a first port of call, and that that comes down to issues with recording systems, information technology systems and how an incident is interpreted. What is being done to improve that?

I have a supplementary question to that opening line of questioning. It is clear that you work in a very difficult area involving health, justice and prevention. To be frank, I dare say that some people would find the approach to be controversial. There is clearly a wider societal, moral and philosophical discussion about how to deal with people who have these kinds of thoughts or engage in such actions.

My understanding is that the National Crime Agency has given evidence in public that there are around 500,000 to 800,000, or possibly even 900,000, individuals who pose various degrees of risk to children. What sort of numbers do you deal with? I ask that because those numbers seem disproportionate to the number of people out there who could be helped. When I say that they could be helped, I am talking about those who have not committed a crime.

My understanding is that the instrument allows the Government to introduce its framework document, setting out the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s priorities and objectives, as it is required to do under the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005, following centralisation. The framework document was published and then subject to consultation, and a number of responses were received. It is unclear from our documents whether the priorities and objectives on which the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service will be mandated to deliver are the same as those that were published prior to the consultation, or whether the framework document that sets out the objectives has been altered in any way as a result of responses to the consultation.

I am interested in that because some of the measures that had been suggested in relation to exploring new ways of working for the fire service were not entirely positively received by those who responded to the consultation. Has the Government reacted or responded to those responses by producing a document that is in line with the consultation feedback that it received? If it has not, the consultation was pointless. There is no Government minister here, given the nature of the instrument, but I would have asked that question of the Government had I been able to do so.