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Thanks. I am going to ask Lucy Hughes a follow-up question, but it applies to all of the witnesses, so they should feel free to chip in.

I am going to be a bit challenging. I cannot remember a time that Engender advocated for a new policy that I disagreed with. However, I want to go back to the question of whether we should do less but do it better or if we should do more. If the Scottish Government followed through on previous commitments that it has made and improved policy delivery in areas that you have already worked to secure commitments on, would your organisation put less pressure on it to commit to new policies?

Ultimately, there is a political trade-off. The reality of politics means that the Government feels pressure to constantly commit to new policies, but if the organisations that are able to put pressure on the Government directed that pressure towards asking the Government to follow through on delivering commitments that it has already made, perhaps there would be a shift in political focus, and then there would be the resource and public sector capacity that comes with that. However, that requires give and take on both sides.

On the question of follow-through from consultation feedback, it sounds—certainly from your written submission—as though the national planning framework 4 process was perhaps quite a good example of that. Did you feel that you were getting some kind of direct response to what you were feeding in that said, “Yes, that has now been adopted,” or that explained why it had not been adopted?

I welcome your reading that out and putting it on the record. Bearing in mind the evidence that has been submitted to all of us in various guises at various points, how confident are you that the present reality reflects that?

Thank you, convener—not at all; those questions and answers were all important and useful for our evidence.

My line of questioning relates primarily to transport provision for secure accommodation. The questions will be mostly for Tony Buchanan, in the first instance.

You are probably aware of the evidence that we heard in previous sessions from secure accommodation providers, who laid out the complete absence, essentially, of transportation provision based in Scotland. They cited some examples, including worst-case scenarios whereby young people needed to be transported from one side of Glasgow to the other, or from Montrose to Ninewells hospital, and the transport provision had to come from Portsmouth or at least from somewhere in the midlands or somewhere else far south of here.

I presume that the local authority has to deal with the matter and find transportation provision. Why do you think that the situation is happening? Is it a case of market failure in Scotland, or is it something else that means that nobody is providing the service here?

Thank you. If anybody else on the panel wants to come in, they should feel free to indicate.

On the point about the centres themselves providing transport, what is currently blocking that? One way or another, transport needs to be paid for; at present, separate private providers are being paid to do it. Presumably, in an ideal world, the money that is being used for that could simply be reallocated and go straight to the centres, which would provide the service. It is obviously not as simple as that, so what is currently preventing the centres from putting on transport provision themselves?

I am keen to move on to talk about the COSLA-led working group and how we get to those solutions, but, first, given that evidence of such experiences is coming up monthly, as Ben Farrugia said, we face the issue of how to report it. My question is for Tony Buchanan initially. Are local authorities confident that, when a secure transport provider has had to physically restrain a child for whatever reason and by whatever method, the local authority responsible for that child is being informed of that? Are you confident that there is a consistent reporting mechanism for those instances? Does that vary by local authority? Are individual authorities making policy about what that reporting should look like, or is there something national?

I have a potential daft-laddie question about the funding. If a young person injures himself or has some kind of medical issue that means that they need to go from secure accommodation to a hospital, who pays for that? Someone needs to procure the transport provider. Does the secure accommodation centre pay for that from the block grant of funding that they are given for the child, or does it invoice the local authority for individual journeys? How does the funding work?

Might it delay the journey if negotiation about who is going to pay for the trip needs to take place before the young person is actually placed in a vehicle and taken to wherever they need to go for whatever it might be?

Tony Buchanan, the COSLA submission says that you believe that secure transport should be included in the regulations. Do you support the inclusion of a power in the bill for ministers to make regulations in this area? Is it correct to say that you are not looking for anything specific, such as the criteria and standards for secure transport, to be included in primary legislation and that you would be content with ministers having that regulation-making power?

If it was to take that on, would it require a change in primary legislation or could it be done through secondary legislation?