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It would be difficult for any local authority. Essentially, Parliament could agree to regulations only if we have the money in place, so I guess that what comes first is agreement around funding. There would have to be agreement around that before the regulations. Would the regulations come in the new year?

I think that councils are instinctively against ring fencing.

It would then be a question of what mechanism to use as part of the local government settlement. Would the money be top sliced? Such things are all details that would need to be discussed, but there are ways of doing it, if political agreement can be reached.

That refers to what Fiona Campbell said earlier about the uplift mechanism and making sure that there is no detriment from the uplift being a year later. There would, going forward, be a mechanism to make sure that remuneration would keep pace with inflation and so on, and it would take into account that the change was being implemented a year later.

There might be, but I do not think that that was particularly looked at as part of developing the SLARC recommendations. It might be an issue that is more for the special interest group. I think that the mechanism of uprating will help to avoid councillor pay falling behind again and our being back here in 10 years.

Are wider reforms needed in local government? Well—how long have you got? We could sit here all day and discuss what they might be. SLARC was set up for a very specific reason and its remit was, understandably, quite tight, so it probably did not venture into some of the wider reform issues about the number of councillors and their roles and responsibilities. That is a whole other discussion. Is it one that might have merit in the future? Maybe, but we have in front of us, here and now, the situation that we need to focus on resolving.

As ever with detailed reports with a number of recommendations, some with far-reaching implications—and not just on a cost basis—the recommendations had to be properly looked at, analysed and responded to, and that was done. If we had rushed out a response without looking at the detail and the implications, we might well have been equally criticised.

To be frank, I suspect that, if we had had the report and if we had ensured that our response landed around the time of the pay review and the publication of the pay policy, that might have led to some unwelcome scene setting for what has become a series of quite difficult local government pay negotiations. Given that context, I am not sure that there would have been a great or perfect time for this to have been published, as comparisons were always going to be made between the uplift proposed in the report and what might be proposed for local government staff. To be honest, I just do not think that you can avoid that, and I therefore do not think that it would have mattered when things were published. That comparison was always going to be made.

The important thing is what we do now, and there is room and scope for agreement to move this forward. The history of looking at councillor remuneration is a troubled one; the first attempt back in 2011, I think, did not really get very far. What will be important—and I want to be really clear about this—is cross-party support, not just at local government level but in here, too. After all, regulations will require support if changes are to be made. If this is to be a priority, it must be taken forward on a cross-party basis. Indeed, that is the only way in which it will be taken forward.

There is maybe a wider issue. I would focus not on pay in particular, because you are probably on a bit of a hiding to nothing, to be honest, but on the role of councillors, the wide variety of work that they do, their responsibilities, the fact that many of them are trying to juggle other jobs at the same time and so on. There is something in there about us elevating the role of councillors and the work of local government and explaining what councillors do, why it is important and the need to have a wider variety of people stepping forward. That could be part of trying to encourage more people to think about standing for local government in the run-up to 2027. In the old days, becoming a councillor used to be seen almost as a voluntary thing that only those, such as those and retired people would ever enter into. We have moved on from that and more women and younger people are involved, but the numbers are still low compared with other spheres of government.

There is a perception issue and, potentially, there are practical barriers. When the special interest group reports on those wider barriers, there may be something for us to do collectively—the committee might also have a role to play—to look at ways of putting some of that information out there, to start a bit of awareness raising around the role of councillors and the importance of the work that they do. I would certainly be up for that.

On your first point, I have to be honest and say that what was said in the earlier session was the first time that I had heard that there was any breakdown of anything. That is just not my understanding at all. I was not at the meetings, to be fair—I have to be clear about that—but I do not get the sense that there was any difference or any changes to the report or the outcomes, which would have happened whether or not folk were attending all the meetings. I think that the report is the report and that it would have been the report no matter what. It is a good report. It is very clear in its recommendations and I think that SLARC has done a good job.

As you have alluded to, we then come to the question: what now? As Fiona Campbell said, the regulations will set the level of salary and, clearly, how that is funded has to be agreed in advance. Otherwise we would be passing regulations when folk have not agreed how that will be funded, and that is just not the order to do things in.

We have to get into sorting the how, and that has to be a compromise that is discussed through the budget process. I have said that I am open to that discussion and we should look at the art of the possible. I will have a requirement from the Government’s perspective that this is a collective decision and a collective priority.

I am certainly not dismissing that. I am saying that the lack of records means that there is no evidence of what the parental involvement was or was not. I am saying that the legislation underpinning the setting up of the redress scheme was for children who had been removed from parents through social work legislation, where there was no contact and parental responsibility had been entirely removed.

My predecessor made an apology prior to the redress scheme being established and it was made to all survivors in all settings, and I absolutely want to reiterate it fully. On the point about the evidential requirements for Redress Scotland, Scotland’s redress scheme is more broadly drawn than any other redress scheme anywhere in the world at the moment. Most of the redress schemes that have been established are far more tightly drawn than the one in Scotland. However, evidence is required for an application to be brought in front of Redress Scotland, so there have to be records showing where someone—

We have established the research project. That was my way of trying to get to the bottom of whether records exist. That could look at the barriers around parental connections and consent, and existing records that show that someone was in an establishment at a particular time. The purpose is to get to the bottom of what may or may not exist in the archives.

Beyond that, as I have said, support networks that are provided by the likes of Future Pathways can support people who have experienced abuse in any setting. They were established for that purpose. Such support might not be for everyone. Not everyone would want to access such support, but it was established so that people can provide it.