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I mean the other shipyards that are potentially in competition with Ferguson Marine for some of those contracts, for example. Is there a disclosure clause that means that you understand who else is a part of its client base, to ensure that there is no conflict of interest, for example?

It does not work both ways, though, does it? We are sat here with hardly any information at all, all at the say-so of that overseas-owned multinational consultancy company.

Okay. I should declare an interest. On my voluntary register of trade union interests is my membership of the GMB trade union.

It might have been better asking the shop stewards about the layout of the yard rather than spending large amounts of public money to ask FMI to provide that for you. Do you not see that there might be a conflict of interest if FMI’s clients include people who are competing against FMPG for the public procurement contracts?

Okay. I will come back to some of those areas later on.

The deputy convener has got a short question before Graham Simpson comes in with more questions.

Obviously, as a committee, we can make recommendations in the medium and longer term about changes to the legislative framework that might get us into that terrain. I do not know the status of that work or whether you are able to share that with us. If you are, it would be useful for us to have sight of it, because we are interested in whether you have considered alternative governance arrangements and what they would look like.

We understand that it may be beyond your power to establish such alternative arrangements unilaterally, but we would be interested to know what led you to conclude that that might be a better way of providing oversight.

I turn to the question of auditing. David Hamilton, the commissioner who told us that he felt that he was “financially hamstrung”, was the author of the view that the audit process, both internal and external, is disproportionate and overburdensome. You might have seen that evidence from a few weeks ago. As members of the corporate body, have you taken a view of that perspective?

An idea that has been paraded before us as an interesting possibility—it is no more than an early-stage idea—is that one option might be for the commissioners and other bodies to have a committee of the Parliament that would meet in public and take evidence from the commissioners. That would not preclude subject committees from receiving reports, in the same way that the Auditor General for Scotland plugs directly into the Public Audit Committee but also gives evidence to the Economy and Fair Work Committee, the Education, Children and Young People Committee and so on when reports are produced on those particular areas.

Do you have any thoughts on that model and whether it might work as a way of addressing some of the gaps that might currently exist? Might that be a better way of holding the commissioners to account on their work?

It is important to recognise and to stress that Audit Scotland has 340 full-time equivalent staff, so it generates an awful lot of work. The commissioners that we are speaking about have much smaller establishments of staff, so the dimensions are different; we accept that. We wondered whether you had any initial views or whether, on reflection, you could get back to us with a view on whether that model is worthy of further examination.

Good morning. I would like to ask you some questions on the subject of capacity, and in particular your capacity. I read the evidence that you gave to the Finance and Public Administration Committee and the speeches that you made in Parliament when there was a debate on the report that the Finance and Public Administration Committee produced, and I note your concerns about whether you had the capacity to cope with the existing number of bodies for which you have responsibility, let alone new bodies that might be added to the SPCB’s responsibilities. We now know that there will be a patient safety commissioner, and I think that the bill that would establish a victims and witnesses commissioner is at stage 3 in the parliamentary process. I am not a betting person but, if I were, I think that I would put money on the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill going through.

What is your perspective on capacity, in the light of the existing situation and the imminent growth in the commissioner landscape? Do you have the capacity to have effective oversight, governance and scrutiny of those bodies?

Again, I do not wish to go down the rabbit hole on the topic of the Ethical Standards Commissioner, but an argument could be made that the issue might not have been picked up in the way that it was through the audit by Audit Scotland if that body had been part of a more collective audit process. It is not inconceivable that it would have been picked up in such a situation—it could have been—but, nonetheless, without that focused attention, the audit might not have led to the remedies that were required to deal with the situation.

A short answer to my next question would be helpful, because I do not want us to go down a rabbit hole.

It is often said that we learn more from failure than we do from success. One of the triggers for the agreement with the Conveners Group was the failure of the Ethical Standards Commissioner, which led to Audit Scotland producing a section 22 report. The Public Audit Committee was of the view that it should not have taken that to resolve some of the issues that had clearly been developing inside that organisation. Have you learned lessons from that about how better to provide oversight, scrutiny and accountability?