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I hear what you say about striking a balance and I think that the Government has tried to do that. Do you run the risk of ending up with a bill that nobody is very happy with?

Like my colleague Karen Adam, I have a couple of questions on the substance of the bill as drafted. Before I ask them, however, it would be remiss of me not to recognise the concerns that you and others have expressed about the bill. We will have a decision to make on its general principles, and it looks as though that will be very difficult. That is coupled with the fact that amendments are coming but we do not know when. However, I will leave that to the side, because you have articulated your concerns well, and move on to my questions.

My first question is a basic one. Do you think that the complaints process under the bill would be more consumer friendly than the existing one?

What are your views on the fact that the bill as drafted will remove the right of appeal to the Court of Session? We heard from the Faculty of Advocates and the Senators of the College of Justice that abolishing the right of appeal is likely to lead to increased delays and expenses in the complaints process. Would you like to put your view on that on the record?

Thanks for that—it is helpful to get that on the record.

My second question, which I will open up to the whole panel, is a request for thoughts on the rules on alternative business structures, including a request for SLAS to expand on concerns in relation to the rules on the suitability of outside investors.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel members. Thank you for your evidence so far.

Following on from Annie Wells’s line of questioning, I want to come back to something that Roddy Dunlop started to address, which is the faculty’s position that protection should also be extended to the title of “advocate”. Roddy, I want to give you a wee opportunity, if you want it, to expand a bit further on that. You have already said that you can see some issues with that position, but I want to know about the initial thinking around it and whether there are any solutions to the issues that you started to address in a previous answer.

Good afternoon to the panel. I have two questions. The first is on the issue of missing people, which was mentioned a couple of minutes ago. I did a wee bit of work on that in the previous parliamentary session after a very tragic incident in my constituency, not long after I was elected in 2016.

The police were going through a review at that point of how they dealt with missing people. We will all be familiar with information being shared on our social media feeds very early in the process, which was well fought for. It is very good that the police engage the public in those searches. Did the mental health component of missing people come up in the review? Did that issue come up when you spoke to officers about missing people? How do the police manage that component of a missing person inquiry?

Thank you.

That is interesting. I will be interested in the findings of your future work on missing persons, as I am sure the rest of the committee will be.

My second question is about the recommendation for Police Scotland to produce a mental health strategy, which you have spoken about at great length. Was any thought given to embedding health professionals within the police structure? I know that some work has been done on that.

The unfortunate nature of the situation is that, although there is a multi-organisation approach, the police are the first responder for many people and organisations. Was any thought given to or were any discussions had on embedding mental health professionals as direct employees of Police Scotland to assist, or is that just a pie in the sky idea of mine?

Good morning, cabinet secretary and officials.

To follow on from Rona Mackay’s question, we heard some concerns from the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland about a “lack of clarity” and a potential “overlap” between its role and the role of the proposed victims and witnesses commissioner. Has the Government looked at that? Do you think that there might be a case for making that clearer?

We have covered quite a lot about trauma-informed practice already, so my question is quite general and touches on something that the cabinet secretary has already raised.

Clearly, we have heard evidence that a lot of good trauma-informed practice is already happening in the justice system, albeit that it perhaps happens in patches throughout different organisations. I think that everybody recognises—we have heard this from various people who have told us about their experiences—that the justice system often retraumatises victims. Is it the purpose of this part of the bill, which brings trauma-informed practice into legislation, to try to drive culture change and to look at the good things that are happening and try to replicate them across services quicker than would happen without legislation?