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I hope that you are successful in achieving the mooted £1.5 billion saving, because it certainly shows the audacity to pursue change that I want to see. However, I notice that you have not mentioned anything more about risk appetite or cognitive diversity in your senior leadership team. One of the civil service’s greatest strengths has been its attitude to risk, but it could also be one of its greatest weaknesses, given some of the challenges that are coming out of left field—you have mentioned some of them already—such as climate change and artificial intelligence. Are you consciously considering those issues as part of any culture change that will enable delivery?

I will carry on because I want to cover a couple of themes, the next of which is transparency. You are accountable for ensuring transparency in the civil service, as well as for acting personally and making decisions transparently. You will be aware of increasing concerns about transparency. Yesterday, The Scotsman’s Catriona Stewart wrote an article that noted that the UK Government had answered an FOI request in full but that the Scottish Government had redacted an identical request entirely, bar the words “Dear Andrew”. I understand the difference between the various legislative regimes and acts, but do you understand that the optics are poor?

My substantive point is about the Scottish Information Commissioner. You will have seen his letter, in which he made three points: more information was redacted than he expected in the delayed 281/2025 release; he has not yet received a response to his letter of 2 February, which was 36 days ago; and the disjointed and “chaotic nature” of Scottish Government responses is troubling and merits further investigations in order to ascertain whether he needs to open a “third intervention”, which would this time be at the Scottish Government’s expense. What on earth is going on?

Clearly, though, you do not need to wait for that. That has been made very clear.

I am aware, because it is in the public realm via an FOI, that those groups with whom you have consulted in developing this guidance have only—I am reluctant to characterise the debate in this way—been on one side of it. In other words, they are groups that give voice to the concerns of trans groups. Do you not find it the very definition of madness only to consult one side and not to consult with women’s groups—and, critically, For Women Scotland, which won the court case—in developing this guidance?

What I am referring to, just so you have it for your records in case you want to follow it up, is a letter from For Women Scotland dated 3 March, which references specifically—and I quote—

“extensive engagement with trans organisations”

as well as

“additional roundtable meetings between Scottish Ministers and the same six trans groups”.

There has been only one meeting between For Women Scotland and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and of course, none between the First Minister and the group.

I am asking about that, because if you are going to deliver a change that adheres to the law and which has been accepted so that everyone can move forward with clarity and together—because that is what everyone wants; everyone wants people’s rights to be respected—how on earth are you going to do that when you talk to only one group? What is stopping any of you meeting For Women Scotland, given that that case cost the Scottish Government £780,000?

But do you not think that you should consider that? This is all costing the public purse. As I think I have suggested before, if this was your money, I bet you would not be doing this, but this is public money. People are looking at this and going, “Well, this is costing the public purse a fortune,” and we are still not obeying the law. It seems quite incredible.

Actually, what I am suggesting is that none of this would have happened if the Government had been able to take cognisance of balancing rights and not make it about competing rights and, of course, critically, if the Government had not allowed the wholesale roll-out of self-identification to public sector organisations, which was never part of the law, and that has been absolutely confirmed. Therefore, the failure to engage with one entire side of the debate seems utter madness, because this is going to carry on.

Following on from that—I am doing a bit of an overview of this parliamentary session—one of the issues that we have touched on habitually is that, to understand growth, we need to have the data, but there are missing data sets. The Fiscal Commission also raised that issue. I previously wrote to the OBR about collecting data to allow us to see what the Scottish inflation rate was, which it basically refused to do, which was unfortunate. In relation to the fiscal framework review, are you also looking at gathering additional data—have you factored that in at all? If we do not have the data, we do not have sight of the information.

It is ironic that the restrictions that are placed on the Scottish Government via the fiscal framework are passed on to public sector organisations.

Before Lesley comes in, I want to say that am pleased to hear that you are meeting the Information Commissioner tomorrow morning. However, that letter was sent on 2 February, which was 36 days ago. You are telling me that you are mindful of the matter, and we all understand the issues around complexity, in fairness, but that is a very evident example—it is 36 days on from a letter being sent. Given the amount of interest in the issue and how on point the Information Commissioner has been, what on earth is the reason that 36 days have gone by and there is still no reply?