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It is important that people feel comfortable. We have already touched on culture, religion and other aspects, including disability, all of which add to the complexity that an individual might feel they have to break through and the weight of what they want to express. They need to know that whomever they are speaking to will give them support and advice and, as Dr Crowther said, will not open a Pandora’s box that creates a more difficult situation for them in the future. Each of your organisations has an ability to balance that support. LGBT Youth Scotland does it through the youth work sector and others look at a wider area in trying to manage these issues. The challenge is in co-ordinating it.

You have pointed out the progress that has been made and have touched on potential new ways of working. Technology, for example, has developed quite rapidly over the past 18 months of the pandemic to tackle loneliness and social isolation. I also believe that some work has been done on intergenerational wellbeing. It would be good to hear your thoughts on those two areas, as they will continue to develop over the next few years and during this parliamentary session. We might have to change direction slightly as we tackle such issues, enforce measures and change how things have been done in the past to ensure that we capture as many individuals as we can who fall into the older age group.

Barriers to technology are also a problem for some people, as they might not have full knowledge and understanding of all the technology that is available to support them. How do we enhance that knowledge and ensure that they are exposed to some of that technology and receive the support and training that they need in that respect?

Cabinet secretary, you talked about the staggering increase in levels of domestic abuse during lockdown in many communities. The police and other organisations and sectors had to be much more robust in tackling it because, as you identified, home was not a safe place for many individuals. The funding that you talked about will go to support that action but, as we saw, there needs to be more of a crossover between agencies and organisations to capture some of what different groups were identifying using different ways and means. Was information about that collated and transmitted to other support mechanisms to ensure that lessons were being learned about how vulnerable some of these people were and the conditions they were living in?

I think that the strategic objectives that you are putting forward, Mr Bruce, show that you are attempting to have greater accountability and transparency, and even stakeholder engagement. That is welcome, because we want people to feel that they are able to engage. How are you balancing that attempt to have that meaningful relationship against your existing resources? You have indicated that you have some new roles and have taken on some new people, but your budget constraints are still there and your workload is increasing. In trying to ensure that you do all of this, how have you managed to square that circle?

It is about avoiding the tick-box exercise or just going through the motions.

The pandemic has meant that staff are not able to meet as they would normally in an office environment. Has that given you any difficulties in fulfilling your role and responsibilities and in ensuring that you can still have engagement and transparency? It would be good to get a feel of how you see that developing.

Do you think that that is to do with pressure of work, or is it just the environment that you are in?

Specifically on this group, it is only right and proper that there is the change. I concur with and accept that. However, you make a very valid point, convener, about the resource and timescale that we have. There are a large number of CPGs, and they are quite diverse in their roles and responsibilities and the curriculum of activity that they may get involved in, depending on the topic.

It would be best practice if we had some structure that meant there would not be a tsunami effect on the committee clerks in having to manage it. Perhaps we can tailor a structure in which some formulation is put in place that helps the CPGs but that also helps the committee and its officials to manage the process. I am aware that they put a lot of effort into all of this, and we cannot have them being engulfed. We have hundreds of CPGs. If they all did this, we would spend our complete working lives dealing with it, and that cannot be the case.

There may be an interview in which a candidate goes in front of a number of individuals, but there is usually an application form to complete as well. How do you encourage and support individuals to fill in that form? I know from seeing such forms in the past that they have a one-line question that applicants are expected to write maybe 300 or 400 words in response to. That is the topic and the style, but that style can sometimes be quite restrictive as to what individuals can say. How are you planning to broaden the whole idea of that to ensure that the application form and the interview are much more aligned? Sometimes, they can be quite rigid or stuffy, and people do not feel comfortable in that environment. How do you change that?

The standard or template that you are putting together will give them the opportunity to develop that. Is there also the opportunity for things to be expanded in different boards when they are looking for different people? If the criteria are too rigid and people do not fulfil the criteria, they are bound to fail, but if the criteria are widened and people feel that there is a bigger opportunity to develop that, that may encourage more people to progress.

Commissioner, you have given a very broad view this morning of your intentions with the code and how you want to encourage individuals to come forward and boards to be much more diverse. I think that that is starting to become a reality now.

It is also very important that we try to get the best individuals and that there is a good calibre of candidate coming forward, but not all candidates will succeed. Looking at those who do not make it, what are you doing in the code to look at what happens to candidates who go through the process and fail? Are they encouraged to come back? What role do you have in that? You have talked today about how you are very involved in the application process, in which those individuals progress only so far. It would be good to get a flavour of what you are trying to do there and how you are revising the code to encourage people to come back.