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There are two important areas there. It is difficult to be certain about the long-term requirement for the scrutiny of issues arising from Brexit. We have modelled that as best we can. David McGill will touch on that. Net zero is similar. We have a sustained action plan for that. I am not sure whether you are talking about scrutiny in relation to net zero or about our scrutiny of ourselves and what we are doing to achieve net zero. Michelle Hegarty will be able to expand on that in detail. David McGill can comment on the Brexit aspect.

Thank you, convener. Any time that I have presented before, that is what we have done and it is helpful to set out the main themes of the budget.

From a personal perspective, it always occurs to me that a vote in the House of Commons takes around 15 minutes and that we sometimes have 10 or 11 divisions in the Scottish Parliament, so we would be there for several hours if we were to follow that process.

I understand the frustrations that some members have experienced. Sometimes, the issues are to do with the robustness of the IT connection and network where the member is seeking to vote from. However, I still think that we have done a remarkable job in the time concerned. I might cheekily suggest that I have sometimes seen in the chat line—not so much in this parliamentary session, but maybe in the previous one—that some familiar faces have struggled to complete the voting process. I will say no more than that.

We recognise that what might have been thought of as merely a temporary requirement is a requirement that we will have to meet for the foreseeable future. As was said in the debate last week, changes in the longer-term working of the Parliament that might never have been contemplated at all now seem to be potentially more palatable and beneficial than they might have seemed if we discussed them in an abstract way prior to the pandemic.

That requires us, therefore, to continue to invest in our technology to ensure that it is robust. I assure the committee that we are aware of the difficulties that members have had and that we are working all the time to improve the technology. I do not think, however, that we will ever be in an environment that is 100 per cent secure from any kind of failing, and no other Parliament is in that position either.

I turn to David McGill.

I would go directly to David for a response to that specific question.

I would in the first instance say that we operate to indices that have been agreed by Parliament and to which we have adhered since we decoupled our members’ salary costs from those at Westminster some years ago. At that point, we agreed to adhere to the ASHE index, which, last year, would have produced a 5.1 per cent increase in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ’ salaries. Given the circumstances in that year, the corporate body took the view that it would suspend the arrangement and cancel the increase.

With regard to staff cost provision, again, that relates to the index that we have established. Of course, what salary increases are passed on to members of staff are a matter for each MSP, but the move protects the integrity of the sum that it was agreed was necessary for ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to be able to fulfil their function and to have the complement of staff at their disposal to achieve that aim. It would be wrong to remove ourselves from those two indices without very careful consideration.

Thank you, convener. I would ordinarily have made an opening statement. Were you expecting me to do that?

Mr Johnson, the radical shopkeeper in you is advocating the privatisation of our parliamentary estate.

That is a difficult question to answer at this stage, because in the first year of a new parliamentary session, it takes considerable time to engage staff, particularly for the new members. There will be some members of this committee who are new and who have not yet fulfilled their staff commitment or have taken several months to do so. It is probable that there will be an underspend in the first year because members will have been recruiting staff, some of whose start dates will not have been until the autumn. We will probably not get the full answer on that until the next year.

Michelle Hegarty is monitoring such things and will be able to give the committee an indication of our utilisation. We are probably sitting at about four fifths in relation to the typical capacity in other sessions.

As you say, I have been both a regional and a constituency member. I noticed a considerable change in the nature of my workload when I changed function. However, I also acknowledge that, with the additional fiscal powers of the Scottish Government, the overall responsibilities of the Parliament have changed significantly since I was a regional member and I am now less convinced of the variance in workload between regional and constituency members.

There is a difference in the nature of the workload. However, from the work that the corporate body did when liaising with members across the Parliament during the whole Covid period, I know that the increase in members’ workloads and the demands on them as a result of the pandemic has been considerable. As people have discovered Zoom and the whole nature of online inquiry, there has been a considerable increase in the ways in which people approach us and in the volume of those approaches.

There is also an obligation in that, at the heart of the entire scheme under which we operate, there is the principle of equality between all members of the Parliament. It is fundamentally important, notwithstanding how workloads have evolved, that all members of the Scottish Parliament are equal and are treated as such.

We are undertaking an initial survey of members, which is out just now, to help to quantify that. When we get to a certain stage in the roll-out, members may well take advantage of the opportunity to have an appropriate survey of domestic premises or whatever, with recommendations—as was the case with office security assessments—that they may or may not wish to take up.

There are a number of technical challenges and fiscal challenges, such as taxation challenges, on which we are having to liaise with representatives of other Parliaments, but we are investigating a number of different streams in relation to members’ security. I think that the best that we can do is come up with the contingency that we have. Obviously, we will have a far better understanding of that over the next 12 months, when we will be able to quantify the costs.

I am not sure whether Michelle Hegarty can add anything further to that. I think that I have pretty much summed up the position.