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I suspect that one of the biggest areas of interest, and perhaps concern, on the part not just of the committee but of the Government relates to the effect of tax divergence—Scotland having differential rates compared with the rest of the UK.

You state that, broadly, historically speaking, there has been little divergence, but that it has increased for this tax year and that it might increase in future tax years. The known unknown is what effect that will have on people’s behaviour and how it will affect the tax base and the resulting tax take.

What work has Audit Scotland or the NAO done on understanding how any such behavioural impact will affect the final outturn numbers? What are the risks? How high or low are they?

We know what some of the risks are, as they are well documented and are talked about often. However, quantifying those risks will be difficult until we see what people start doing with their money. Let us take, for example, the scenario of a person who earns £50,000. Such a person would pay 20 per cent more tax in Scotland than they would do elsewhere in the UK, which is a substantial difference. The number of people who are affected in that way must be easy to find out, but it might be more difficult to forecast what they might do. I guess that that is part of the problem. One presumes that, if there is a huge shift in behaviour, that will affect future budgets and how much money is available to the Government. Is that fair to say? Is that a risk in how we forecast budgets?

We do not want to do that, of course.

Absolutely. That is entirely their prerogative.

I have some specific recommendations that may make things easier in the future. There are two things that I believe do not happen at the moment when someone is identified as suffering from mental ill-health and is signed off sick. The first is that that information is not shared with the SPF. I presume that that is for data protection reasons, but I wonder whether it is an issue. I may ask David Threadgold to chip in. Sharing that information might lead to that individual seeking some counsel outside the employee assistance programme, about which we have heard a lot of criticism. I also wonder whether there is any merit in introducing, or reintroducing, having full-time welfare officers within the force.

That is helpful.

It was about welfare officers.

Are you saying that, when someone has been signed off or relieved of their duties, for whatever reason, they would be signposted to a number of places where they might seek help, and that your organisation would be one of those, but there are others?

Perhaps this is a question for Police Scotland and the Crown Office. I do not want to get into specifics, because that would be unfair on individuals and their families. Have any patterns emerged? For example, is there a pattern of people having identified as being in a position of severe trauma, such as having been suspended from an investigation by the force, being signed off from work because of physical or mental ill-health, or having recently experienced a trauma in the workplace? Have patterns emerged that point to specific factors being triggers that could be spotted and addressed?

Good morning. I appreciate that this will be a difficult subject for people who are watching the meeting.

Earlier, Ms McQueen commented that we cannot learn and move forward unless there is openness, honesty and transparency about what has happened thus far. I struggle with the assumption that is made about serving officers who have, tragically, taken their own lives in the past few years: no link has ever been identified, publicly or openly, between what they did for a living and what happened to them, which I find incredible.

The committee has met, in private, former and serving officers who have been frank and honest with us about the fact that they had either tried to take their own lives or had thought about it quite considerably, as a direct result of circumstances that they found themselves in, in being serving police officers. Their situation was not caused by relationship or money problems, or by historical mental health issues; rather, it was directly related to circumstances in which those individuals had found themselves. We know that to be true, as do the officers’ families. Why is no one willing to admit that that is the case? There is surely a link.

I will not pick a specific witness to respond to that, but if any of you wishes to answer, please do so.

I apologise.