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Good morning. I want to ask about the work that was done for the recommendation on the uplift or the reassessment—whatever we call it. I am in a similar position to Willie Coffey on that. I declared my interests earlier. The recommendation on increasing councillors’ pay is very welcome and overdue, as councillors’ pay has increased only minimally since I first became a councillor in 2012. Therefore, I welcome it.

I want to ask about an issue that has occurred to me while the discussion has been on-going. What did you find out in your investigations about the role of councillor being a second job? Often, that is the case through necessity. Most councillors I know have another job. Whether they say that their job as a councillor or the other job is their second job is neither here nor there. They usually have two jobs. Did you undertake any analysis of what impact the uplift or reassessment might have on that?

There are two sides to that coin. The first aspect is one that we have already talked about. Do you think that the uplift or reassessment will take away the aspect of low pay being a barrier to being a councillor, with the result that more folk will be able to go for the role of councillor? Conversely, do you think that the reassessment will mean that councillor pay will go up to what we could call a high enough level, whereby it more represents a fairer or a “normal” wage, with the result that some people might feel unable to do their other job, and that it might therefore act as a barrier in that way?

I hope that that question makes sense. That thought came to me today. Did that issue come up in any of your discussions?

Thank you very much for those answers. I reiterate what I said in my opening remarks: I very much welcome the proposed uplift, which makes a lot of sense and is well overdue.

Jane, you mentioned in answer to other questions and, I think, in your opening statement the possibility of people in the same council being pitted against one other on the issue. I want to take that a bit further. Is there a risk, depending on the final decision on how the uplift will be paid for, that we could be left in a situation in which—I do not think that we are set up for this just now—local authorities end up making individual decisions, which could mean that X local authorities agree to the uplift and Y do not, or do you think that that will not happen and that the uplift will go ahead across the board or not at all?

I am okay, convener. The questions that I wanted to ask have been covered.

That was a good answer.

You have started to answer my next question, because I was going to ask whose responsibility it is to initiate debriefs. Is it the responsibility of the management or the individual officer? What would happen if an officer who had dealt with a death, for example, said, “I’ve dealt with a really difficult situation this morning. I do not want to go out to anything else that’s potentially difficult or traumatic this afternoon”? What sort of response would that officer get from management?

The other side of it is the number of incidents that the police are dealing with, which is hard.

I have one more question, convener.

I do not know whether any of the witnesses caught the previous part of the session when I asked about thresholds for police officers’ daily work, and at what point such a threshold would kick in for management to say that a police officer had done too much that day—that is, that they have had to deal with too many things that could be considered to be traumatic—or for a police officer to say that. I got some good answers on that. Where would the line be for you and your management staff in saying that you cannot expect officers to do any more until they have had time to decompress?

Good morning. We are hearing, and there are indications, that staff absences because of psychological disorders are rising. Do you have any idea what the reason for that is? Has the nature of policing changed in recent years?

Good morning. As the convener said at the start of the meeting, we have been looking at these issues for a while. It has always struck me that, as has been referred to today, the police deal with almost everything, including the most difficult situations. I know that some of what they do involves plugging gaps in other services, which has been covered, but the police are always the first ones there for deaths, assaults and incidents involving children—the most horrific stuff that we can think of.

I want to ask about thresholds. When a police officer is dealing with something, is there a particular threshold? Do individual departments have a threshold? For example, if a police officer has to deal with a really difficult child protection issue, perhaps alongside social work or other services, do they get a debriefing afterwards, or do they just go on to do something else, such as dealing with an individual in a really difficult mental health situation? Are there thresholds that kick in, with officers being told, “You need to come in for a debriefing and not do anything else for the rest of the day”? Does that question make sense? Suzanne Smith is nodding, so I will go to her first.

Do other organisations or services deal with vicarious or impact trauma better than the police? Can lessons be learned in that regard? We are not here to talk about other services, because there are probably lots of concerns about those services, too, but could anything be learned from them?