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Good morning, everybody. Allister, the statistics that you read out are encouraging, but I want to put to you a point that David Jones, GEOAmey’s managing director, made when he appeared before us. He talked about the increased obligation on GEOAmey. He said, for example, that it had to deal with 44 per cent more solemn cases, 35 per cent more bed watches and 38 per cent higher costs, and that 60 per cent more people were involved in hospital appointments than was the case prior to the pandemic.

As I understand it, those increases in the numbers and in the demands that were placed on GEOAmey were never specified in the contract, but we still imposed penalties on GEOAmey for not meeting those increased obligations and higher targets. Was it fair to not specify increased targets and, at the same, to penalise the company for not meeting them?

Why would penalties be enforced at all if such flexibility was built into the agreement?

In summary, there is a direct correlation between performance improvements and the number of staff who are available to implement those improvements. I needed to put that point to you, because Mr Jones made it to us.

I turn to the point that my colleague Graham Simpson asked about—the fact that seven prisons are at red status. Are they at red status because of the numbers? Are the numbers in a prison the main driver for that, or is it to do with conditions or capacity?

It sounds as though you need to take a range of actions to bring those seven prisons back from the brink—back from red status. Do you have the flexibility, the freedom of resource and so on to bring those prisons back from that red status?

I will ask Neil Rennick about that directly. What is the Scottish Government doing to address that and to pull those seven prisons back from red status? I am glad to hear that Kilmarnock prison is not one of them, by the way.

Can I pin you down and ask, on behalf of the public, when you anticipate the seven prisons being pushed back from red status?

Lastly, will the decision to stop incarcerating young people in young offenders institutions make a significant contribution to resolving that issue?

Is strengthening compulsory purchase powers part of the equation? That is for Ailsa Raeburn.

As I have listened to the evidence this morning, I have sometimes wished that I could transport us back 40 years so that the decision makers back then, who embarked on a process of selling off 500,000 houses in Scotland, could see the impact of that. All your discussions around the table are about that crisis—about building more homes in Scotland and making them available.

One of the elephants in the room, as we all know, is the huge cut in the capital budget, which would otherwise allow us to recover the housing position slightly, or even get close to the targets that we all seek. There is quite a bit of ingenuity spread around the table, and it is great to hear that, but do you think that the range of ingenuity in different areas will be sufficient to get us to where we need to be? We have talked about funds to reacquire empty properties—as Pam Gosal mentioned, the First Minister announced an extra £80 million for that. Last year, the acquisition programme was introduced with £60 million and it bought back 1,000 properties at a relatively low cost.

Earlier, Ronnie MacRae told us about the cost of constructing a new house, but there are other ways of trying to address the problem. Will the range of different measures that are available to us be sufficient to get us to where we want to be? For example, Mike Staples mentioned that the council tax supplement in Dumfries and Galloway is helping to put funding in a certain place, which helps to build up numbers. You have also all mentioned long-term voids and second homes, which you have all mentioned. Russel, I am prepared to bet that many of those former council houses in Gatehouse of Fleet are now second homes. Do we need to be more innovative about the measures that we can deploy to try to improve the situation? Perhaps Russel Griggs can start.

Thank you for those helpful and interesting answers to some of the points that I raised.

The issue of land availability has been mentioned. There seem to be differences in that regard between the situation in the south of Scotland and the situation in the north of Scotland. I invite our witnesses to comment further on those differences and their impacts.

Lastly, what more can we do to tackle the empty houses issue? Russel, you told us that 30 per cent of the housing in Gatehouse of Fleet is second homes. I presume that most of those are empty most of the time. I am not sure whether you can enlighten us about that in particular, but there are plenty of properties that are not lived in in Scotland. There are loads of them, including long-term voids that the councils have. We need a solution for that.

If the witnesses could first address the land availability issue, contrasting for us the situation in the south and the north of Scotland, that would be very welcome.