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You are right, Mr Griffin. The first key principle was establishing the agreement with wave 1 developers, which built most of the buildings.

My background is 20 years in corporate banking, and I dealt a lot with small and medium-sized builders and developers. We need a more nuanced approach. The last thing that we need is to put such builders out of business. We are closely looking at the £10 million figure and the loan scheme in Wales, and officials are in constant dialogue with UK and Welsh Government officials. Just a few weeks ago, I had an interministerial meeting with UK, Welsh and Northern Ireland colleagues, talking specifically about cladding, and I will have a follow-up meeting with UK and Welsh Government colleagues on the issue.

We are looking at the two things that you mentioned, but we need a more nuanced approach than that to support SMEs. Obviously, they have their responsibilities, but we need to make sure that they do not go out of business because of the issue. The general principle is that it needs a more nuanced approach. We will go into that, but we are looking at the two schemes that you mentioned and are in constant dialogue with officials from the UK and Welsh Governments.

I mentioned that we are trying to identify where there are immediate issues of high risk. I will bring in Rachel on that point.

Officials meet almost weekly, so I will bring in Stephen Garvin and Rachel Sunderland in a second on the technical discussions.

Mr Griffin mentioned the Welsh Government loan scheme. We are looking at that as well. Coming back to the point on legislation, we have talked about the UK Government’s responsible actors scheme, and we are looking at the potential applicability of that in Scotland. Those are two key things.

I mentioned the interministerial group that met a couple of weeks ago—I think that it was on 10 May. I am seeking separate meetings with the UK Government and the Welsh Government to talk in more detail about what they do. The interministerial group meeting was a short one. It was useful, but I need longer discussions about what they do. It is a UK issue, and we need to look at how closely we can work with the UK and Welsh Governments on that matter.

Rachel and Stephen can comment on the discussions that they have been having. From a political point of view, it is about working closely with those Governments, and looking at the two schemes that I mentioned and at their applicability. There needs to be a UK-based requirement or settlement. It is up for discussion and to be further advanced politically.

We will come back to you to agree the best way for us to keep the committee updated on that.

We will discuss with the UK and Welsh Governments what their approach is, how they undertake it and how they engage. Individual discussions on the subject are on-going. For example, we have had discussions with the Wheatley Group about the buildings that it is developing to ensure that they meet the standards.

We have talked about our engagement with Homes for Scotland on what its responsibility is and what the Scottish Government’s responsibility is. It is about looking into where the responsibility lies. Does it lie with Government or with the developers? Individual discussions are on-going with major stakeholders, but I will raise the matter with UK and Welsh Government colleagues.

As Stephen Garvin said, there is a duty of care in the sector. We are encouraging stakeholders to come forward if there are discussions to be had about how we can work with them on that.

We have recognised that in the department, Mr Briggs. On the broader resources that will be required, however, we will be sitting down with Homes for Scotland as well as UK and Welsh Government officials.

As we have discussed previously at the committee, there are currently 105 buildings on the list. The anonymised list by region was published on 30 January this year. Twenty-seven single building assessments have been formally commissioned. Obviously, a significant amount of work is going on, and 14 single building assessments are at a substantive reporting stage. Remediation is under way in one building, and mitigation work is under way in a second building.

A general point is that the tenure system in Scotland is different from the system in England and Wales—it is more complex. Homes for Scotland talked about that earlier with the committee. There were lots of technical discussions on that, and it has been heartening to see the progress in the past weeks to get to the agreement. A lot of technical questions needed to be answered. As Fionna Kell said, the more you start to get into buildings, the more you start to see issues that you were not aware of that require a technical response. A lot of the discussions have moved towards that.

It has always been the position that everyone wants to get an agreement, but the technical discussions have been on-going over a number of months. As I said, the more we get into buildings, the more we find that there are technical questions that need to be answered. It was heartening to hear Fionna say this morning that all the developers are moving towards that, although there are a few outstanding technical issues that officials are working on. Officials meet Homes for Scotland and developers regularly to discuss those issues.

The published number for high-rise domestic buildings in 2021 was 780. That is not to say that that is the number of buildings that are at risk. I think that that number was published in 2021, and, obviously, the 105 buildings in the pilot phase of the programme were identified. We expect the vast majority of those to be safe, but that is the number of buildings that were identified in 2021. We are going through the buildings that we think are at higher risk. The initial estimate in 2021 was 780.

If I return to a question that was asked previously, with buildings that we are already remediating, there have been issues to do with our not having the powers to move things on. For example, if there are fire safety risks, do we have the necessary powers on that? You mentioned holding developers to account through legislation. We have reached agreement, but, if we identify more buildings and developers that are not part of that agreement, we will need to move on that.

The key part—the important message—is that safety is, obviously, of the utmost importance. We need to be able to move on buildings and do things as quickly as we can. Legislation could be brought in to deal with that. It is about how quickly we can move things on in relation to where the barriers are at the moment.

We would look to legislate as soon as we could, if that is how we proceed, and that is still being examined. If we decide to do that, we would need to work closely with the committee on it. We would probably be looking at an expedited process, because safety is the most important part of this.