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I am more than happy to discuss and negotiate with the Government what it thinks the best date for commencement is, and whether it would prefer to commence the bill by regulations and leave it entirely within its gift to choose the date.
That might be good news—it might be that there have been no such complaints—but it seems to us that some thought is required as to how entities will be regulated, given that the legislation is now, if I can put it this way, slightly out of date. That is really the sum and substance of it.
The RSR plans are helpful as a starting point, in a sense, but keeping them up to date is a live process. That links in with what I said earlier about prioritisation.
Our international recruitment strategy has been really successful, to date. As, I think, I mentioned earlier, we had recruited 200 staff by August 2022.
To look at recent projects, Social Security Scotland has to date spent £250 million setting up its IT, and Police Scotland estimates that it needs to spend around £300 million on its computer systems.
We said that we would have HPMAs in place by the end of the parliamentary session in 2026. If I work back from that date, I can see that an awful lot of work will need to be undertaken.
If the Scottish Government has concerns about the basis on which we make the calculations, we will take an open-book approach, and if some of our assumptions are out of kilter with the most up-to-date data, we will update them. We have nothing to hide in that regard.