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Just reading between the lines, it sounds as if, of your total ask rather than what you think is on offer, about half is for business as usual—it is to enable you to perform to the current standards and levels of policing—but the extra is for extra elements that you think will be needed to make the transformation that you want. Therefore, you are not in any way suggesting that what is proposed will not be enough to maintain current policing levels, current workforce levels or existing standards of service.

If you spend £15 million on body-worn cameras, that is something that you can see, touch and feel, and people will notice the difference, but if you spend it on a software upgrade, which has a net benefit to the force, no one is really interested in that.

For this financial year, 2021-22, the total capital budget is £53.7 million. I am not sure whether I read this in the papers for today or in last year’s budget submission, but my understanding is that you asked for £85.7 million, so obviously you were given a lot less than your asked for. We do not know what you will be offered this year. What effect did that £30 million shortfall have on what you wanted to do with the business?

That is interesting.

My next question is for Mr Brown of the SPA—I want to make him feel included in the conversation. The SPA’s submission says:

“The Authority will continue to make a strong case for additional funding to Scottish Government, including proposals for borrowing or up-front funding for long term disposals/bridging finance.”

How much additional funding are you asking for from the Government? It would be helpful to know that so that we have an expectation ahead of the draft budget coming out. What are the proposals for borrowing that you refer to? What will you do with the extra money that you are given or that you borrow?

I presume that there will be another one.

I want to address what seems to be a bit of a contradiction in views about the situation in legal aid. Anyone who follows Scottish legal news or who has seen any headlines over the past few days and weeks will know that the legal profession is vocal in its concern about the situation. That is quite different to what we are hearing today about the drop in revenue being simply a by-product of the drop in demand.

We heard from Citizens Advice Scotland that the number of people seeking legal assistance has gone up by more than 30 per cent in the past year, but that the amount of grants being paid out over the same period had dropped by, I think, 27 per cent.

Another illustration is that witnesses who gave evidence at a previous session said that there are “legal aid deserts” in provision in Scotland. They also mentioned that there are many and varied issues to do with access to justice that are particularly acute in island and rural communities.

It seems to me, on the one hand, that a body of people are saying that the fees structure does not work and that they are not getting enough money for they work that they do, and that people in the real world are not able to access the legal justice and representation that they deserve or want. On the other hand, the system is saying that it pays out only as much as it is asked for. That seems to be a huge contradiction. Why is there that difference of views?

That is great.

I will follow on from that. I guess that the three strings to the puppet are interlinked. One string is the set level of fees, which is out of your control; it is a policy decision for Governments. The second string is the volume of cases that are brought to prosecution. The third string is the value of cases, which we have not discussed. There is probably no magic solution to all that. Surely, an increase in one or more of those would increase the level of grants that are paid out by SLAB and the amount of revenue coming into organisations such as Pauline McNeill mentioned, which are smaller scale and seem, on the face of it, to be struggling to survive. Where do you fit into the triangle in terms of getting those numbers up? We do not necessarily want to pay out more, but if that is the right thing to do because we have an uncapped system, then so be it. Something has to give. What is the most likely outcome?

I note that the previous survey was in 2018.

Good morning, panel. We have already covered a lot of ground, and I do not want to risk revisiting some of that, but my questions might lead to some crossover, so we might go back a bit.

First, I go back to the so-called “crisis” in the profession. The SSBA submission states:

“The profession is in crisis”,

so my comments and questions are perhaps best directed at Miss McPartlin in the first instance.

I would like you to elaborate on that; I am sure that some of your comments will echo what Mr Moir said. I want to get to the nub of the matter. Is it the case that the reasons that the profession is in crisis are twofold? First, you are struggling to recruit new entrants to the market, and it takes time to get them up to speed to enable them to handle cases at the level that is required of them, and secondly, there is churn, and you are losing people halfway through their career, or even in the early stages, to other parts of the legal sector.

It has been suggested that the increase in legal aid will be a short-term fix for those issues, but I am not convinced that I have heard the evidence, or the argument, for the connection in that regard. Perhaps someone can help me with that. I do not see a direct link between an immediate raise in fees and a solution to the problem of churn. Why do you think that there is such a crisis in the profession?

That is not what the other witnesses are saying. They are telling us that it is not just that a crisis is brewing—it is already happening. Mr Moir, what is your response to what Mr Fraser said?