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I have a quick question on that point, Clare. We have talked about stakeholders a lot. We can appreciate why stakeholders and organisations may support commissioners, but is there any evidence of the general public’s perception of commissioners, what they do and how effective they are? Is public awareness of commissioners’ roles and responsibilities important in terms of their success?

I appreciate that they were not going be revised down, but Mr Thomson said that the £5 million figure was “a surprise”. Obviously, that was when they were presented as evidence to the committee. That was not in November or September, when there were discussions. It seems that there was no real understanding that the figures were going to be so substantially increased.

I appreciate that, but you have told us that you did not just sit back and accept the figures. You wanted your officials to interrogate the figures—

I will go back to some of the previous questions. The bill was introduced on 6 June 2023, and at the September Scottish police consultative forum, concerns were raised that the costs for Police Scotland would increase. Were you advised of those concerns or those potential increased costs at that time?

I am pleased that Allan Faulds talked about outcomes, because I was going to ask about those and about how we measure them. Adam Stachura, you talked a lot about effectiveness, which is completely understandable, but one of the concerns that the committee has seen in the evidence that we have received is that it is hard to identify how effective commissioners are and whether going down the commissioner route is the best way of solving issues. I would be happy to hear people’s thoughts on how we measure the effectiveness of commissioners and the outcomes.

I also want to follow up on the point that Allan Faulds made about the route. Are commissioners being used in some cases as a deflection by Parliament and Government, whereby responsibility for an issue that we all identify as an issue is deflected away from Government or Parliament to a body that is not cheap but which is perhaps cheaper than actually dealing with the problem. That might not be the case in all areas but, given that different commissioners have different responsibilities and we have some that advocate and some that have regulatory powers, is there any concern that they could be used almost as a deflection?

I am sorry, but this is additional training: it is new training that Police Scotland will have to provide and for which, you said, it has revised the figures. The costs are new costs, because they arise from the new bill. The fact that the costs have gone up considerably will surely impact on the ability to deliver front-line policing, as will taking off the front line officers who are required to undergo the training.

The fact is that the revised costs came out at about £5 million. Even one of your own officials said that that came as a surprise. It is clear that Police Scotland’s figures were not interrogated, if they came as a surprise.

In the committee meeting in March, I asked Graham Thomson:

“Did you have no idea at any point that the £5 million potential cost would be presented? Did that come as a complete surprise to you?”

He said:

“The exact figures were a surprise to us.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 26 March 2024; c 22.]

If the figures had been interrogated properly, should they really have been a surprise?

However, if there is a call for a commissioner, it must have been possible to identify and measure a problem. It seems strange that, once the commissioner is in place, it is then harder to identify the problem or the progress on alleviating it. It just does not seem particularly logical, yet that is what we have seen time and again in the evidence—commissioners have said that it is sometimes hard to look at how effective something has been.

You are suggesting that £4 million is an inconsiderable—