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My understanding is that there is new guidance or rules. Something new is being produced, primarily by COSLA. I presume that that is coming from the group that you referred to.

The question for the committee and for the Parliament is whether we can deal with that issue specifically through a non-legislative approach or whether it should be covered in the bill. I am interested in hearing your thoughts on whether what is coming will do the job that I think we all want it to do. Alternatively, should we consider a legislative approach, whether in the bill or elsewhere?

That would be useful, thanks. It is primarily of interest in relation to private providers but, as you said, sometimes they are not available. I would be interested in understanding what your process would be in those circumstances.

The witnesses are probably familiar with the evidence that the hope instead of handcuffs campaign submitted, specifically in relation to transportation providers for young people who are moving between secure accommodation, from elsewhere into secure accommodation or from secure accommodation to elsewhere. The campaign’s contention is that, although we are broadly on a path towards higher standards and better regulation of secure accommodation providers, there is a gap in relation to the transportation providers. It has provided evidence of inappropriate use of restraint, specifically handcuffs—hence the name of the campaign. There is the question of whether we need to wait for the bill to deal with that; there are other ways in which we can deal with it.

I am interested in your thoughts on the campaign’s proposals that relate to reporting mechanisms in particular. It proposes the mandatory reporting of incidents in which a transportation provider has had to restrain a child or young person. I would be interested in your thoughts on that campaign more generally and what it is asking for, and specifically on whom those reports should go to. Should they be submitted to the Care Inspectorate, for example, or directly to Government? Where would be the appropriate place for those reports to be collated?

That would be useful. I will follow up your point about the lack of capacity and the fact that, often, your officers have to provide the transportation. That should not be the case, but, given that it is at the moment, what reporting would you carry out if, for example, you ended up in a situation in which a young person who was being transported needed to be restrained in some way? What would the Police Scotland reporting mechanism for that be? Would you inform any partner organisations that you work with that that had taken place during transportation?

That is ideal. That is all from me for now, convener.

The advantage of that is that we could just go ahead and do it now.

Just on that point, Megan, if your position is that the guidance should be in legislation, do you believe that it should be in primary legislation such as the bill, or is there a way to do it through secondary legislation? Do you have a view on which legislative vehicle should be used?

On a not entirely unrelated note, I will move from consultants to secondments. I would be interested to hear whether you have come across any evidence in that space. I will take the rural and environment portfolios as an example. I am aware that organisations that represent agricultural business interests have had staff seconded into Scottish Government departments to assist with policy making in those areas. However, if you reduce things to a binary, the other side of those debates is the environmental non-governmental organisations. I cannot recall a single instance of a member of staff from an environmental NGO being seconded to those departments. In that particular scenario, that sometimes results in the agricultural business sector being broadly pretty happy with how the Government goes about its decision making and the environmental NGOs being broadly unhappy.

How much of the evidence that is out there and how many of the views that have been expressed about Government decision making are to do with process? How much of that is more representative of the responders’ agreement with the outcome? Are people saying that they do not like the Scottish Government’s policy making process because the outcome was not the one that they wanted?

I am interested in the point that you made at the start about the Welsh Government’s relatively systematic approach to external evidence gathering and the perception that the approach is perhaps not as systematic here. I am trying to reconcile that with some of the criticism that has been put the Scottish Government’s way about its externalising too much of the policy development process. The most recent high-profile example was the criticism that the national care service came under for being, to a significant extent, a production of KPMG, because the contract for that bit of policy formulation was awarded to KPMG.

Is it simultaneously true that the Scottish Government does not gather enough external evidence when it is doing internal policy formulation and that it outsources too much policy formulation, or is the picture a bit more muddled and there is not really a neat distinction because both can be true?