 Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to the 21st meeting of the 2017 of finance and constitution committee. As usual, make sure that your mobile phones are in a mode that we cannot hear them and they don't interfere. The first item on the agenda is to take evidence on the Scottish Government's legislative consent memorandum in respect of the EU withdrawal bill, which is currently being considered by the UK Parliament. For that purpose, we are joined for this item by Michael Russell, who is the Minister for UK Negotiations in Scotland's place in Europe. Mr Russell is accompanied today by Scottish Government officials Ian Davidson and Gerald Byrn. The minister has written to the committee with a set of draft amendments that would rectify what he sees as deficiencies in the bill and members have got hard copies of those amendments and also a copy of the letter in which he sent us. I welcome our guests to the meeting and I invite Mr Russell, the minister, to make an opening statement. Given the detail that we have sent you already in terms of the amendments and other issues that we have raised with you and copied you into, I think that it will probably be just as appropriate to start with questioning. I think that people have heard a great deal from me in the last few weeks, so I am happy that I am open to question. I want to get into the amendments and some of the issues around that in due course. I know that other members want to do the same. However, I want to attach to your letter the list of 111 areas in which the UK Government's list of 111 areas is an annex to the letter in which powers returning through the EU intersect with the devolution settlement in Scotland. I know that there has been some media coverage on that, but when I looked at the list for the first time last night in detail, there were some surprises even for me. If I give you an example, a UNI share constituency boundaries, forestry domestic policy or a second example that I know that WWF has commented on onshore hydrocarbons licensing, fracking in normal persons language, was something that the Smith commission, in terms of its deliberations, was clear about that it should be within the policy framework of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. Can you explain to us what discussions that the UK Government has had with you about the list of 111, in particular the two that I have mentioned, so that we can get an understanding of what they actually mean by these particular elements? By talking about those two, it might allow us to understand what it means for the rest of them. Of course. We have had no formal discussions about the details of the list because the list appeared out of the blue. A similar list was sent to Wales and this list was sent to Northern Ireland, although I cannot vouch for the Northern Ireland list because they do not presently have it in the administration. I know about the Welsh list. It came from the cabinet office and it essentially is the list of areas in which EU competence intersects with competencies of this Parliament. It took us somewhat by surprise, I have to say, and there is an ongoing discussion, as you are aware, between the First Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself and the Deputy First Minister, about the issue of frameworks. Now, this letter relates to those frameworks because it appears to be the list of the areas in which frameworks may be established. Now, if you look at forestry, you have raised forestry. I am a former environment minister with responsibility for forestry. Forestry has been devolved since the beginning of this Parliament. The forestry commission has operated essentially as a devolved body in Scotland. There may be European regulation in forestry, but it is limited. Why forestry should then become an area where there is a potential for essentially re-reservation? We do not understand that. Unshawer hydrocarbons licensing or fracking is even more puzzling as you are aware and, as you have indicated, it was part of the discussion at Smith Commission. It is in Scotland Act 2015. There is a UK directive that sits above onshore oil and gas licensing. The UK regime for that has to lie in line with the EU framework directive. We will require to establish a licensing regime in line with the EU framework directive, and that is on-going work because we expect to do so. We would have to have a commencement order for those powers, but that is in the Scotland Act. That is going to happen. If the list indicates that there is an intention for that not to happen, or for the EU licensing regime to be established by the UK without a Scottish licensing regime or with a Scottish licensing regime that is absolutely the same as the UK licensing regime, that raises very considerable questions because there is a very different point of view prevailing in Scotland. They do illiastrate areas in which either we have a bafflement about why they are on the list, or areas in which there would be a genuine disagreement. To contextualise the frameworks—and it is quite important this—the UK discussion of those frameworks is about trading and barriers to trade. We have indicated that there are areas. We indicated in the Scotland's Place in Europe last year when we published in December that there are areas in which frameworks should be established by means of the Government sitting down as equals and putting together frameworks in which we would have co-decision making. If there are trading issues in there resolving those, a lot of those issues are not to do with trade. They are nothing to do with trade. If you look at the list, there is a very long list of legal matters. For the life of us, we cannot understand why they would be there because there is a separate Scottish legal system. We would expect to take those matters and operate them here. The list confuses us a bit, and it concerns us a bit. We want to get much more clarification, which we will try to get in the meetings with Damien Greene. What we could not agree to is frameworks on all those areas that are established by the Fiat of the UK Government. That simply would not be possible. Do you want to ask any questions on what is on the list at the moment before we move on to framework issues? I will supplementary on that. When was the list given to the Scottish Government? July? Sometime in July. It is not a list of the areas that the UK Government intends to, as it were, to re-reserve. It is just a list of matters that fall within EU competence at the moment. We believe, in the nature of the list, that there is an area that may indicate the areas in which they wish to re-reserve. Yes, because there is no indication that they do not wish to re-reserve them. We have asked repeatedly for a list of those areas that they do not wish to have frameworks in. If the existing bill were to operate, we would have orders and counsel that would free these up. We have had no such indication. On one hand, we have 111 items here, which raise the possibility of them being re-reserved and frameworks. We have nothing in the other scale that says that these are the ones that the UK Government says that we are not interested in. What are you supplementary on that? It is causing such a great deal of concern. My constituency, as you can imagine, any change to the support that comes from the EU, we benefit from having more or less favoured area support in this area. We have a great number of farmers and crofters in Scotland, compared with England. If we were to switch to, for example, a per capita system of funding, that would really disadvantage us. The EU S has been very clear about that. The decision-making point of devolution is subsidiarity as a key issue here. The competence of those who understand and know the issues. The less favoured area status payments is a very important part of that. There is no ELFAS system in England. It is not part of the support system. It is utterly vital. You are in my constituency in Argyllin but there would be no health farming without ELFAS payments. There are other items on this in the agricultural side, for example the issues of animal wealth. We would want to establish a co-decision making structure. That would be very sensible to do that. However, it has to be done on the basis of equality. Those powers come back and we say very quickly, let's get that structure going and let's make that structure work. That is exactly the position that Wales has taken to. We stand absolutely ready to do that, but that has not yet happened. I want to indicate now the supplementaries on that issue. Good morning, minister. I am just trying to understand the high-level concern from Scottish Government. There are powers coming down from the EU to the UK. In some areas, you feel that the EU should come straight to Scotland. The UK Government feels that, because it wants to create common frameworks, it wants to retain some of these at the UK level. However, you seem to be going further than that this morning, suggesting that there are areas where things that we currently in this Parliament have control over that we would not have control over should the bill as proposed in its draft form go through. Is that your position? There are things that would be taken away from this Parliament's competence? Yes. The competence of the Parliament in agriculture is a clear competence. At this point that you are making, Mr Fraser, I have heard from others, which said that the UK Government has used it to say that you will not lose a single power. I think that there are two ways in which that is not strictly correct. The first one is that the part of very agricultural support, if there is a UK-wide framework, will be lost. Without a doubt, it will be lost if it is a UK framework that is imposed rather than negotiated and is not co-decision making. That co-decision making in the European side means that there is a negotiation amongst 28 members in which Scotland influences the decision and attempts to. Sometimes the UK Government is not helpful about it, but it does attempt to influence that decision making. That will transfer to a single point of decision within the UK Government. There has been no proposal to do anything else. If there is a proposal to do something else, we would like to hear it. We have not heard it, so there will be a loss there. There is a larger issue in here that, if you were to take this down the road in three, four or five years' time, we believe that the process of this would considerably diminish devolution. The clarity of devolution—that what is not reserved is devolved—will be fragmented. Once that fragmentation starts, it is likely to continue. We believe that there will be a loss. There will be a tangible loss. There will be an intangible loss. The solution to this—I am sure that we will come on to this in a minute—would be to have common frameworks that are agreed at UK level, which will allow the Scottish interest to be heard as part of UK decision making. Where those are appropriate and necessary—we would want to discuss whether it is appropriate and necessary to do it 111 times—where those are appropriate and necessary, yes, and to be set up on the basis, as I keep saying, of co-decision making. The Welsh Government not only holds a position, but has gone further in terms of suggesting a way in which this could happen—published a paper on this some time ago—with some very interesting suggestions. What we are trying to avoid is to, I suppose, a repetition of the failed GMC process. The GMC process does not have co-decision making. It is entirely London-centric. There is a way forward on this, and that way forward would not be difficult to find, and both the Welsh Government and ourselves are clear what that way is. We are looking to have the UK Government accept that and one part of that acceptance, which we will come on to, is not to put in place a piece of legislation that, in fact, would take us further away from that resolution. Just very briefly, from a point of view of clarification, I understand that, if things stay as they are in the EU, withdrawal bill goes through unamended, and there is no more clarification on the list and what it means—you have sought that and not had anything back—then what that means is that the UK Government would be in a position to unilaterally impose frameworks on the 111 areas that would effectively limit the devolved powers in those areas. That is the road we are on, unless something changes. Is that correct? Yes, that is so. We can go back to the referendum in June last year and look at what was being said during that referendum. Although I rarely quote him with approval, let me quote what Michael Gove said during that campaign in a Radio Scotland interview in June 2016. Holyrood would be strengthened if we left the EU. The Scottish Parliament would have new powers of a fishing agriculture over some social areas and potentially over immigration. Now, in reality, what this is saying is that there will be no such new powers. All those powers will be taken to the United Kingdom Government and will not go to any of the devolved Administrations. Without anything specific—nothing on the face of the bill—there is an indication from David Davis in the debate that has come last week that there will be some transitional process at the end of which some of those powers may be transferred back to the devolved Administrations by means of a orders and counsel. However, there is no time limitation on that. There is no indication of how that will happen. Those who were not would presumably remain with no formal Scottish involvement or Welsh involvement in decision making, so those are the problems. I was going to come to the amendments in the bigger general picture, but we have had quite a bit of discussion around the framework issue. I know that Adam in particular wanted to open up a discussion on the framework, and we have got that right. Yes, I did so. We will come back to that issue. Thank you minister for publishing these amendments and for the early sight of them yesterday. I appreciate that. I also thank you for the way in which they have been presented, because I think that grouping them in the way that you have grouped them helps us to understand what Scottish Governments and Welsh Governments' concerns are. As the convener indicated, I wanted to ask about how you understand—this is a rather technical legal question, but I want to try and understand a little bit more about how you understand the relationship between common frameworks and legislative competence. The Scottish Government has said many times—and you have repeated it, I think, this morning—that you accept the need for some common frameworks in some areas. Obviously, you do not accept the need for 111 common frameworks in 111 areas, but within that list of 111 powers you accept that there is a need for some common frameworks somewhere, and that is welcome in my view. Do you accept, then, that if there is to be a meaningful common framework, it cannot be within the legislative competence of this Parliament to enact legislation that is contrary to such a common framework and that there will therefore have to be limitations on our legislative competence that do not currently exist? It is a very important point. I think that let me start with the issue of what the implication of a common framework is and is not. A common framework is not, in my view, axiomatically a framework that says that the power is reserved to Westminster. That should not happen. A common framework is a framework in which the partners take part in whatever structure we have, and I go back to that word, co-decision-making, because I have been using it a lot. It is very important. The partners agree to work together on areas that are within their competence to find a way forward. The area that would be most interesting here—and you are raising a very interesting issue—is that I suppose the partner disadvantaged in that common framework would be the UK if it did not have any legislative competence itself in that area. I am just running slightly ahead of where your argument is. If we were to agree to an area, a framework—let us, for the sake of argument, say a framework in animal health and welfare—let us use that as an example—my expectation is that the competence for that would be returned to the Scottish Parliament, to the Welsh Assembly, presumably to the United Kingdom Government in terms of England and English agriculture, and to Northern Ireland. I do not want to include Northern Ireland because it does not have an administration at the moment. It would be unfair to do so. Then we would sit down and find a way in which we could operate those competences in a way that aligned the policies that we were following. I think that I would want to think about carefully in terms of how that would operate within the competences of each of the partners taking part. I think that we would have to have a clear understanding from each of the partners of how they exercised their legislative competence. It would be—I suppose, though I would not push this analogy too far—a little like membership of the EU itself. You would agree to share your so-called—the word sovereignty is wrong here, but you see where I am going to. You would agree to share your sovereignty in order to take partners. I wonder if Ian would want to add something, because it is an important point, and I think that we would need to explore it very carefully. I think that you have covered it very well, minister. There is a very broad spectrum of approaches to co-operation from informal co-operation through formal memorandums, primary and secondary legislation, which imposes some constraints, i.e., a parliament can then only make changes if it subsequently legislates, through to adjustments of competence, either to increase the powers of a parliament or to reduce them. The existing principles associated with devolution encompass all those possibilities. As the minister has said, we are confident that we could enter discussions around frameworks that could give a wide range of certainty to all the partners involved, without leaping to a conclusion that it requires an adjustment of competence. However, all of those things do require to be discussed, and we need to understand the position of the respective administrations. We should not ignore the existing structures that could be brought in to bear upon this. For example, the co-ordination of policy positions, memorandum, memorandum of understanding, right through to legislative consent being given in a particular instance to the United Kingdom. There are frameworks or structures that could be used, and we envisage new ones. You asked me a question in the chamber two weeks ago about the question of changes to the decision making and power structures within these islands. That is the question that the Welsh Government has helpfully addressed in their paper, and it is one with which we are happy to engage. I would want to see the United Kingdom Government engage in that, and that would be a route to progress. Thank you. That is very helpful. I will try to understand and distill that and make sure that I have understood it correctly. If there is a common framework between either three or four administrations in the United Kingdom on, for example, animal welfare, then presumably that means that all of the administrations who sign up to that common framework or who participate in its negotiation and agreement agree to act in a certain way with regard to animal welfare, and not to act in a way that is incompatible with that agreed way forward with regard to animal welfare. My question is, do you think that that will have to be reflected in the legal framework, that is to say, in the Scotland act as amended, or will it be sufficient to have those common frameworks having the status of something that you might call a concordat going back to language that was used in 1998-1999? Concordat is a good word. It is the Welsh, for example, in their paper. Anticipate a system of qualified majority voting in any such arrangements. That might work on occasion. I think that it may be overcomplex on other occasions. I would only qualify as a variable geometry in it, and it is variable according to the subject and the agreement. I think that we can find a number of solutions to it. There will be some solutions that will cover large areas, but the basic point that I agree with in the sense that if such a structure exists, those willingly taking part in the structure must accept that they will come to a conclusion that will be binding upon the parties. I accept that. That is a normal part of being in a club, to be honest. If you sign on to be in the club, you should do so. Therefore, we would enter into discussions on those frameworks on that basis. I am just trying to understand how you think that withdrawal bill should be amended to reflect that practical reality. In the way that we suggest that it be amended, we start with the acceptance that there are no new constraints on the administrations and the parliaments. We start with the clear view that those powers coming from Europe come back to the parliaments, and then we willingly enter into discussions on those frameworks. I suppose that you might extend your question and say what happens if the UK Government believes that there should be a framework and that the devolved administrations do not? That is a matter for negotiation. One of the problems that we have is that there is no presently trust in the negotiating process. That needs to be re-entered. There needs to be an injection of trust into the negotiating process in which we could then make some progress. In that spirit, I welcome the discussions that you and Jackson Carlaw are going to enter into with the Scottish Government because that might be the next step on trying to establish a dialogue. I have lots more questions, but I think that I should probably leave it there at the moment. There were two people who had, I wanted to ask questions in the sharing. Neil was one of them, because he had issues around the frameworks as well. Neil, have you got that right? It was really into the UK single market and the amendments. Do you want to do the UK single market thing? Obviously, there is a desire to protect the devolution settlement and also a desire to protect the UK single market. Can you give an assurance that support for your amendments will not create any impediments to trade across the UK and put barriers in the way of the UK single market? There is no intention to do so. We have our reservations about the description of the UK single market. I will be happy to give you some writing on it from others, which I think has been helpful in that regard. However, there is no intention to have barriers to trade, none whatsoever. It is not in our interests and not in anybody's interests. What we are trying to do is to keep it clear and simple and to keep it clear and simple by observing the existing devolved settlement. I suppose that it is about the complexity of where that goes. You have alluded to some of that in terms of the fact that there is no time limit on the powers that are going back to the UK ministers effectively as a consequence of the bill. There are also powers that would allow them to change legislation, so perhaps we are very likely to get into a situation in which there is less and less clarity as to what is within the competence of the Scottish Parliament and what is not because that thing evolves over time. If you look down the list, there are some issues in here that you would see are issues that are currently in the Scottish Government's programme for government or are issues that are considered. Rail franchising, operator licensing, fracking, we have talked about carbon capture, airport noise management, regulation on use of animals, a lot of those are issues that are live issues in the Scottish Parliament's consideration at the moment. Do you want to explain a wee bit more about how that scenario could evolve and what the consequences could be if we end up in that situation where UK ministers are tweaking legislation that should be within the devolved competence? I think that the outcomes could be very dramatic and very unfortunate. We have a system that works. There may be people who do not like devolution, and I think that that is acceptable to people who do not like parliamentary democracy, but we have a system that operates. We are going to replace that system, and that is always a legitimate discussion. People are absolutely entitled to have that discussion and make proposals. They should do so openly. People say that we do not like the devolved system, we do not like the clarity of devolved and reserved, so we are going to put something else in. Fine, let us have that debate. To do it this way is a natural fact causing collateral damage to devolution to try and achieve something else. We do not believe that that is right or proper and will result in a number of consequences that are dangerous. One of which is the knowledge of those who are operating the system. If you take the legal ones here, there is a specific Scottish legal system. There are many people working in the Scottish Government who are responsible for administering it. If it is being done elsewhere, they will be done by people who do not have a knowledge of it, and that could be very, very damaging indeed. We just think that this is not necessary to do it this way. The unfortunate nature of the time that we are spending on this is that, as early as January, I was raising this within the JMC structure. Indeed, I did think that we had an agreement that we would work together to make sure that this was done in the right way. At the JMC plenary in the end of January in Cardiff, I raised this with the Prime Minister, as did the First Minister, and we made it clear that, like all legislation that will require legislative consent, the norm would be that officials would work with officials south of the border to develop the legislation in a way that there was not going to be any problems. Nothing happened. We did not see a bit like the article 50 letter. We just saw nothing, and then there was an election, and then we kept saying that we need to see this bill because it is getting closer and closer. Eventually, we were shown it, I think, first or second of 30th June, just after recess, and told that it would be published in a fortnight. I had a conversation with David Davis on the phone. We both said that we better sit down and talk about this. I went down to London the following week, and we had a long conversation about it with lawyers present. We said that close 11 was particularly difficult. We thought that it should come out of the bill, and there should be a placeholder where we discussed how we operate. That did not happen. We made it very clear that we just could not live with this. No changes were made. Now, we have found ourselves in this position. We did not have to be there, and we can get back from there by amending the bill in a sensible way, and then working out very quickly the areas in which frameworks are required. We will get on and do that, and, as Professor Adam Tomkins has indicated, we will have discussions about how those frameworks work together and how they work. I know that the number of AIS ministers still needs to touch on things that have principles of consent, trade agreements, IGR, the UK position papers, but we have not really got into the detail of your amendment yet. I think that we should probably do that at this stage, because you have obviously sent us that material, and you have just mentioned close 11. It is important that we understand what the Scottish Government's own views are about their own amendments. They need to be made in order for the Scottish Government to recommend consent. Which of those amendments are the most critical? Which are the ones that are that there is potential for discussion around? In the circumstances where all the amendments are successful, what other non-legislative routes could be used to try to find a way through this? I think that everyone, including yourself, from the language and tone this morning, I think that we all want to find a solution to this and find a way through it. If you could just help us and map us that, that would be helpful to us. If I just spend a little bit of time breaking this down to see where we are. First of all, in terms of the bill, we are talking about a variety of bits of the bill, particularly about clause 10 and schedule 2, clause 11 and schedule 3, and some other slightly less important items. The amendments that I have set you are grouped essentially into five groups. Amendments 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3—let me just say what they are—prevent the powers in the bill from being used to amend the Scotland Act 1998 by the UK Government alone. Any changes required to give effect to EU withdrawal or to implement international obligations could only be made either by the bill itself, which requires legislative consent, or by section 30 order, which is subject to a procedure in the Scottish Parliament. If a change is required to give effect to the withdrawal agreement, that would require the Scottish ministers consent, and that is for expediency. We are trying to be helpful. Amendments 4 to 6 mean that the UK Government can only use its powers in devolved areas with the Scottish ministers consent. The amendment will allow the convenience of UK wide orders when appropriate but only with the Scottish ministers consent when using the powers in the bill to make changes that could be made by the Scottish Parliament. Amendments 7 and 8 remove the new restrictions on competence relating to retained EU law in clause 11. The competence of the Scottish ministers and the Scottish Parliament would therefore be maintained in areas previously regulated by EU law on EU withdrawal. Amendments 9 to 19 remove or modify the restrictions on the Scottish ministers powers under the bill. Modifications to directly apply applicable EU law in devolved areas, for example justice or health, could therefore be made by the Scottish ministers and Parliament rather than exclusively by the UK Government. Requirements for UK Government consent, for example when a modification to do with quota arrangements, are replaced with a requirement to consult the UK Government. Amendments 20 to 38 are consequential amendments giving full effect to the four major changes in policy set out above. There is then a note that you have that indicates to you in greater detail what that is about. That breaks down into a number of four particular areas, first of all in UK ministerial powers. I should stress that we are not saying that we approve of the UK bill in its entirety. We don't, for example, we do think that there needs to be restriction on the UK ministerial powers and we accept a concomitant restriction and framework for operating powers in Scotland. Those amendments are amendments that we have agreed with the Welsh Government, which cure the bill for the two Governments in terms of our major objections. They don't amend the bill in other ways, which is necessary—charter and fundamental rights, for example. The political parties in the House of Commons are all bringing forward lots and lots of other amendments that deal with those matters. We are dealing with the core issues that the Scottish and Welsh Government views as being difficult, if that is impossible to accept. On the ministerial powers, the withdrawal bill gives UK ministers a broad and wide-ranging set of powers. We recognise the need for powers, given the extraordinary challenges of preparing for EU withdrawal, but those powers should not be used to make fundamental changes to important laws such as devolution statutes or equality duties. They must also, because of their breads, be subject to appropriate higher levels of scrutiny. We recognise the usefulness of certain instruments being made on a UK-wide basis, where the same or similar changes need to be made to a scheme that operates on a UK-wide basis, but the fundamental principles of parliamentary accountability mean that when changes relate to devolve matters, there must be some mechanism for the Parliament to hold the Government to account. That is the section about ministerial powers. On Scottish ministers' powers, the bill limits the Scottish ministers' powers in a number of ways. It prevents Scottish ministers from making necessary changes to an entire category of EU laws, directly applicable instruments. It contains requirements for the Scottish ministers to seek UK Government consent before certain types of instrument can be made. Those are all inappropriate. The correct way to divide the powers is according to devolution. If a subject matter is not reserved, the decisions on how the corrections should be made over the Scottish ministers and for Parliament to make. On clause 11, clause 11 is a new limitation on the powers of the Scottish Parliament. It means that, while the UK Parliament has a requirement to comply with EU law lifted from it, all the matters covered by EU law and exit day are put beyond the powers of this Parliament. The bill allows the new limitation to be modified by ordering council. That is not acceptable, since it assumes that where there is to be a common approach across the UK, it is necessary for that subject to be reserved, the point that I made to Adam Tomkins earlier. Neither the Welsh or the Scottish Government can recommend consent to a bill with clause 11 in it, so it must be removed from the bill and that is the proper constitutional position. As I say, it is a position that both ourselves and the Welsh take. On the issue of frameworks that the Scottish Government accepts, we have set it out in Scotland's Place in Europe, there may be a need for a common approach across the UK to some matters. Those must be agreed, not imposed. They cannot be negotiated against the background of clause 11, since that assumes that where a common approach is required, the subject must be effectively reserved. The UK Government insists that frameworks are needed to protect the UK's single market to ensure the shared management of common resources. We insist that frameworks must respect the principles of devolution, but we accept that, in so doing, the same end will be achieved. We are laying out what the situation is there. We do not say that those amendments are the only way forward. If people come with suggestions that there is a different way to achieve the objectives that we have set out, then of course we will discuss those matters with them. Presently we are discussing this matter with all the political parties in the Parliament. We will continue to do so. The Welsh Government is engaged in the same in Wales, discussing this with others. Obviously there is active discussion at Westminster about how those amendments should go forward. The First Minister and the two First Ministers sent those amendments to the Prime Minister yesterday, saying that we suggest a way forward and we await a response to that. You ask what would happen if the amendments were not made. The first consequence is that we would not bring forward a legislative consent motion, and in those circumstances, if the Parliament would not give legislative consent, we will give the Parliament a chance to vote on the issue at some stage, of course, but we would hope that between now and the last amending stage of the bill, and that is when the legislative consent motion has to be passed, there would be a solution found. That last amending stage, we don't think, would be likely until the turn of the year or even January, given the House of Lords situation. So there is time for a negotiated set of changes, and we are looking for those negotiated set of changes. What happens if that does not take place? Well, there are two things. One is that legislative consent, if refused, the proper thing under the civil convention is that the parts of the bill should be withdrawn. If they are not withdrawn, then we are in absolutely uncharted waters. We spent the last year in uncharted waters, but the unchartedness is getting worse if you put it that way. The Scotland Act makes clear that the UK Parliament will not normally legislate on such matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. That is embedded in our practice, and that would be a very serious situation. Finally, we have been considering, as the Welsh Government has been considering, a continuity bill. That is not the best way forward in our view. There are issues that we could not deal with in a continuity bill. We could not repeal the European Communities Act 1972 in a continuity bill. No, we would seek to do so, but it would put in place the legislative framework that we need to have in place if we were to leave the EU. In those circumstances, we are continuing to consider that as an option, as the Welsh Government. We will make a decision on it in due course. I think that you had some issues and questions around there as well. I hope that I have not pulled all that out in terms of that answer. I will dive in. Good morning, minister. The legislative consent memorandum begins by saying that the Scottish Government remains of the view that the best option for the UK as a whole and for Scotland would be the one that Scotland voted for to remain in the EU. As far as I understand it, the Scottish Government is still very clear in the view that leaving the European Union is an unnecessary and entirely destructive process, and we clearly represent all the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament people who, by substantial majority, voted against that reckless, chaotic, destructive and unnecessary process. Why should there be any circumstances in which you invite this Parliament to grant legislative consent for this bill, or in which we give it? I entirely agree with you. You and I have no difference on the matter of leaving the EU. It is chaotic and unnecessary. It is expending a huge amount of resource time and effort. We are doing it today, which could be better spent in other circumstances. It is not an edifying spectacle at the present moment. I am and you know this, because we have had this conversation and I am a strong believer in the importance of the European project and the importance of the piece that is brought to the continent of Europe. I am absolutely in the same position as you are. I have to make a distinction between that position and the technicalities that we are going through at the present moment. I make that distinction, because I think that it is still more than likely that the UK will continue on this course. I would hope that it does not. I am always looking for a change in that, but if it does continue in that course, we will have to have in place the legislative structures to cope with that. I noticed that Brian Taylor described me last week in a piece as the minister to mitigate Brexit. I suppose that I wear that hat as well. I am not only the minister—sorry? It is a very big ask. I think that it cannot be done. There is no such thing as a good Brexit. I got pelters for saying that on LBC two weeks ago. The express among others was on my case, but there is no such thing as a good Brexit. All that we can hope for is the least bad Brexit at the present moment. We do need a legal structure in place. We have accepted that essentially from the beginning and we have made that distinction. The UK Government has made that much harder. That is why we are here discussing this. If the UK Government frankly was being sensible, in my view, it would have made this process of getting this legal structure in place as easy as possible and therefore have been able to concentrate on what one might call the day job of negotiation, and they do not appear to have done so. I am trying to juggle those two requirements, and I do accept, Mr Harvey, that some people are an unacceptable juggling, but I feel that that is very much the responsibility that I have, and that is what I am trying to do. You say that the best thing that we can hope for is the least bad Brexit. Does that mean that the Scottish Government has given up on any hope of opposing this process in principle? No, absolutely not. I think that the chances of it not happening—I have said so before at this committee, I think that I have said so in June at this committee—is still a chance that it will not happen. I think that the chaos that we are presently seeing probably increases that. It is an extraordinary spectacle of the last week, which is continuing of a Government in open warfare about crucial issues. I think that it intensifies that. One half of me, perhaps more than half of me, has to be idealistic and positive, and I want to stop. Another part of me has to get the practicalities right, and that is what I am trying to do. There have not been many weeks in which we have not seen extraordinary and unprecedented events in UK politics, but moving on to that pragmatic argument, I am interested in what you think the implications are of the discussion that happened when you gave your ministerial statement last week. Jackson Carlaw said, I am ready to meet bilaterally, to understand the various remedies and positions, and to work where we can to do all that we feel able to do, to secure an LCM that the Scottish Government will have confidence in placing before the Parliament. You welcomed that offer and you agreed to those meetings. What is it that is shot of everything that you have put on the table that would be acceptable in terms of agreeing to recommend to Parliament an LCM? Surely there is no half measure here. Surely the powers that reside at European Union either return to Scotland unless they are reserved, or is there a fundamental abrogation of the devolution settlement? I do not disagree with the point that you make, but I do not want to pre-empt discussion taking place. I want that discussion to take place. I thought that it was a positive indication from Jackson Carlaw, from Adam Tomkins, from almost all the people in the Conservatives who spoke, perhaps one or two had the memo, but the reality is that we need to have those discussions. It is better to talk about it than not to talk about it. I have said no preconditions, but when I have those conversations I will be entirely clear what I think needs to be done. I mean that I am indicated here where I think that the problems in the bill are and they need to be resolved. Equally, I am ready to talk to many people. You know that we have had conversations with your colleague Ross, we have had conversations with Lewis MacDonald, we have had conversations with Tavish Scott. I am very open and I should have made this offer earlier, but I am very open to brief the convener and the vice convener's committee and their roles to make sure that they continue to understand what is taking place. We need an open process. We need it as transparent a process as possible, but there will, of course, be discussions that we would all rather have privately while we try to explore what is possible. I am not ruling anything out. My responsibility is to try and make sure that we get this process concluded in a way that is least bad for Scotland. I am going to try and do so. Just briefly and very finely, I would accept that there are discussions that will be happening between all the political parties. My party has had a discussion with yourself. All position parties will talk to one another as well, but you say that the process must be open and transparent. I hope that you commit to ensuring that any process that leads to the Scottish Government changing its position in order to secure, conserve its support and to recommend an LCM is as open and transparent as possible and that any changes in your position are discussed on the record with the committee beforehand. I am happy to make that commitment. That has to be done open and above board. We have to have the confidence not just to this Parliament but of the people in Scotland for the actions that we are taking. I have no difficulty with that at all, but let us have the discussions. Let us not pre-empt them by saying what we think is going to happen. Let us have them and then let us see where they go. It will not be easy. The history of such discussions between parties in this country and elsewhere is never a straight line, but we have to try to build a process if we are going to make any progress. I hope to do that with people around us, table and others. Before we go into other areas, Neil, I think that you have some issues around amendments as well that this particular section started off with. Have you already been exhausted or do you want to pick up on it just now? I appreciate what the minister said about the fact that discussions have to take place in relation to amendments. If all the amendments were agreed to, you would consent. The Scottish Government would support legislative consent. I have said that openly. I am happy to say it again. If all the amendments are agreed to, of course, that would happen. If alternatives to the amendments agreed with Wales were found, which achieved exactly what we are trying to achieve, we would lay that out very clearly. Of course, we consider those, but we are trying to find a way through this, and we are trying to do it with other people. I think that the best place to go now is to ask an IGR, because that is full part of the discussion. I am going to come to Marie and trade agreements and then Willie, I think that you have issues around position papers, so I think that that is what we have left. I have a couple of things that I want to raise myself. Ash, on you go. I would like to ask you about the JMC. Obviously, the JMC has not met since February, but it was set up. Originally, its remit was to provide oversight on the Brexit negotiations, but also to get agreed outcomes between the UK Government and the devolved nations. I know that it is due to meet again shortly in October, but has it already failed on its own terms? You and your committee advisers are somebody who has looked at the JMC process inside out. I share her published view that the JMC has not been a glittering success in the last 18 years. Perhaps we put too much weight on trying to find a development of the JMC that would work. I was a member of the JMC in 2009-10. It was a pretty dismal experience then, but it has not really changed much. There should be a robust way of ensuring that the four parts, the four nations, are able to work together in the devolved settlement. What the JMC essentially is, is a London-centric structure that is entirely controlled by the UK Government. It is very difficult to get—there is no decision-making structure—and it is very difficult to get any continuity or progress from it, because it is essentially at a whim. I think that the UK Government has also taken against consulting the devolved administrations. I think that it has become a little bit tiresome perhaps because the devolved administrations myself and Mark Drakeford and perhaps some of the Northern Irish representatives when they were coming have been very robust in our views about what is taking place. The terms of reference of the JMC were clear and agreed, and everybody agreed, including the UK Government. They were signed off at the Downing Street meeting that we had at the end of October. Those were broadly twofold. One was to seek to get an agreement on the article 50 letter, which never happened. The article 50 letter was never shared with members of the JMC. Mark Drakeford and I saw that it was just after it was published. I believe that it stopped meeting the JMC in February and February 8, because it would have become increasingly impossible to have meetings if it was not quite clear that it was not being tabled. The second part was to have oversight insofar as it was possible of the negotiations in so far as they were related to devolved competencies. Given the monthly nature of negotiations, both Mark Drakeford and I have made suggestions of fitting in a JMC meeting into that monthly cycle, so that we could receive an update on what had been happening, look at the next issues, make a contribution to it and, by that means, be embedded in what was taking place. That has not happened. What has happened is that, in the three rounds so far, I have been briefed on the first occasion, I think, 10 days afterwards by David Davis, so, though, to be fair, Tim Barrow in Brussels gave me a briefing immediately afterwards, because I happened to be in Brussels. During the second round, David Davis gave me a verbal briefing on where things were, and he gave me a briefing on the third round on Monday afterwards. Those are briefings. Those are not discussions. Those are not consultations, so we have not had any meaningful involvement in that. I think that that is serious and difficult. When we get on to the published papers, I think that we will indicate why it is even more serious and difficult, that if negotiations are taking place on matters of devolved competence, which this Parliament is responsible for, it may not be possible for the UK Government to deliver commitments made if they do not actually talk to the devolved administrations. I think that there are serious issues in this, but there are also issues of due process. There is a constitution. It may not be a written constitution, but there is a constitution. The law has established these parliaments. These are part of the structures of these islands. You cannot pretend that they do not exist, but that is essentially what is happening. We need to ensure that we find a way of reminding people that the devolved administrations do exist and that they have responsibilities, and that they need to be integrated into that. Mark and I have made detailed suggestions about how the GMC should go forward. We have also made it clear that you cannot bilaterally decide on the future of a multilateral structure, so there needs to be a meeting of the GMC to take those forward. There is now a meeting of the GMC, which is scheduled to take place on Monday 16 October. Of course, I will tell the committee after what has taken place. We hope that that will start the monthly cycle again. We hope that we will get clarity on how it is going to operate. We will find out on the day. If it is like the previous ones, then I am afraid that we will be depressed again. If it is not, and there is a commitment to change things, then I think that we will be quite pleased. I suggest that you, in June, sent a joint letter to your fan, Mark Drakeford, and you mentioned that just now, suggesting a reset and making practical suggestions for how things could be improved. Did you get a reply to that letter? I think that we have had a number of replies, but I am not sure that any of them have addressed the points. The new chair of the GMCEN is to be the first secretary. He is now thinking about it. I think that he has been reminded of that particular letter. It is an important point—we have not laboured it, but it is an important point—but the UK Government is now in breach of the memorandum of understanding. It had, I think, four weeks, am I right? It had four weeks to either have a GMC or to call one as a result of Mark and I asking for one, and it has not happened. Well, obviously it did not happen in that period of time. I think that we asked about it on the 14th of June. We are well beyond those four weeks. Even technically, they are now in breach of the memorandum of understanding. Obviously there is a real need to strike trade deals in the future when we are leaving the EU, and I think probably to bring some clarity to a focus on agriculture again because it is an issue of importance in my constituency—it is an issue of an item sitting on the list—but agricultural subsidy, for example, can be a real bone of contention when you are striking a trade deal. Over the last week, there has been a little more clarity around the UK Government's statements on that, why they want to retain powers over agriculture. Lord Duncan has given some signals that he would like to look to a less protectionist future in terms of trade deals. Clearly that causes us a great deal of concern in my area. Is it possible that trade deals could be struck at a UK level without us having any input into that? It appears that the trade secretary, Liam Fox, does not wish the devolved administrations anywhere near the issue of trade deals. I suspect that the collective mind at Westminster is to shudder what happened over the CETA treaty and the role of semi-substate parliaments, particularly the Flemish Parliament, which took exception to certain of the details and was required to ratify it. We should remember that the withdrawal bill at Westminster is the first of several bills that will take place, one of which is a trade bill. We do not actually know the content of that trade bill yet, but I would be pretty surprised if it was generous towards the devolved administrations. There is a concern about subsidy, and quite rightly so. Michael Gove keeps sending confusing messages about what he thinks. There is no question. Hill farmers of the west require support from the agriculture industry. As you know, crofting has always been about how people live on the land as much as about produce. There are whole issues that are not relevant to elsewhere, so there are those required to be addressed. There is another issue, which is that you probably need control of agricultural policy if you are. We could use the chlorinated chicken example, but let's use hormone beef and Brazilian beef as an example. Brazilian beef has not been admitted into the EU. There are a lot of reasons for it, some are to do with hormone feeding, some are to do with the environmental nature of its production. If you are going to have that deal with Brazil, I would think that beef is pretty near the top of the list for them. You would not be able to do that with the willing consent of the farming community in Scotland. I am absolutely sure of that. I think that the Scottish Parliament would have severe reservations. You may well want to make sure that they are nowhere near this deal. I am publicly very sceptical about the idea of the glorious Brexit, as Boris Johnson puts it, with these buccaneering trade deals all over the world. I do think to use the beef analogy a bit further—it's mints. That being the case, even if that were true, they would have to have control of those things. We should be very aware of that. We should also be aware of the reality of some of this rhetoric. Junkers' State of the Union message talked about new trading arrangements that they were establishing with Australia and New Zealand. The EU is already in there and is already doing the things. If you look at the much-vaunted Indian trade deal, which did not happen, the real barrier to the Indian trade deal has always been, even in the EU terms, the UK and the issue of migration. Unless the attitude to migration changes, some of these deals are simply impossible. I am sceptical on all that, but I am a worried sceptic in terms of what it may mean in terms of some of these powers. I would agree with you. We have real concern about agricultural subsidy, real concern about animal welfare standards and the quality that that impact that that might have on food. Another area that there have been concerns about in the past that is not really clear in all this is the NHS. There is a very different system in the NHS in England where there is much more private company involvement. I see on this list public sector procurement. We have protected our NHS in Scotland. From private companies coming in and running our hospital wards or our maternity services, is there a possibility that that could open up? You are opening up a wide area on this list. The path into it is this. We should certainly consider this. First of all, where there is EU regulation, some people resent that regulation. You can understand that. Regulations are always difficult. If you were to abandon that regulation, you would need a different regulatory structure. The view of what that regulatory structure might be may well be different in terms of the NHS between Scotland and England. However, if those powers are taken only to the UK, Scotland's view of what that structure would be, even if it does not like the EU structure or a different one, would be decided upon by the UK. That is one of the big issues in the transfer of those powers. You might be dealing with a decision made by the 28 with which people in Scotland and in certain sectors may disagree. You would then be dealing with a decision by one with which you may well also disagree. There does not seem to be such much benefit in so doing. Public sector procurement in the health service would be one of those issues. You might find some things in the European directives to be unduly onerous or burdensome. You might then find that what the UK Government wants to do with that is equally unacceptable. The ability of Scotland to influence that decision would be lost. Willie, you had some questions around UK position papers. I would like to get some then to come to a conclusion on the Parliament's role in scrutiny of Scotland's Government ministers, so you do not mind. Minister, could I just open up a little bit of conversation about the UK position papers that appeared in August? Mr Ynchor even said that none of them are satisfactory. Was there any involvement with the devolved administrations in the framing of those position papers? What are they about? Have we got any opportunity to even influence them at this stage? No. There has been no involvement. You will have seen a letter—I think that you have been copying the letter that I have written to David Davis about the papers. We have now had, as of 19 September, we have had 15 papers, seven position papers, seven future partnership papers and a technical note on the implementation of the withdrawal agreement. We have looked at all those papers and provided you with an analysis of those up until the data of the letter. We can continue to do so. However, we were getting increasingly concerned by those papers. The first interesting thing is that many of them—in fact, all of them—contain pretty strong convincing reasons for staying in the EU. I do not like to suggest at any stage that the civil service is subversive, but if you were to take a common view of them, you might think that there was a hidden message coming through here. However, when you look at them, some of them deal with areas of devolved competence and there has been no discussion at all. What happens is the same as what has been happening in terms of the negotiations. You will get told that these are coming out—in fact, we get told about 24 hours beforehand—a copy will be shared and my colleagues will be asked what they think of it. However, they do not have any input to it, and they cannot say, well, they do not have page 2 paragraph 3 because it does not work. They are just published. Where this is impolite, I would have said to say the least, I also think that we could help on some issues. The one on migration was actually an options paper. We could actually say, well, here are some other options, one of which is—I took part of a very interesting event last night, organised by the IPPR and the Royal Society, at which Jackson Carlaw spoke and I spoke and Paul Sweeney spoke. There was quite a strong measure of agreement on the need for a more flexible migration policy for Scotland than the reasons why that should be the case. We could have injected that into it. It did not happen. What gets really serious is where areas of devolved competence are dealt with without any consultation of this. If those papers are being read by negotiating team and others, the assumption must be—no matter what you think of them—that this is authoritative of whatever can be delivered. However, we do not know whether it can be delivered or not because we have not been consulted and we do not know as a Parliament whether we can do these things. We have not been asked to do them. There is a false prospectus being put forward here. People need to know that. The right way to do this is to talk to us about these papers, to have a conversation. It does not have to be lengthy. Show us a draft of the paper two weeks beforehand and we will say what we think. We will put some ideas in. We are happy to work like that. We are flexible. We are much more flexible than many other similar administrations, but we do not get the opportunity to do so. That is, as I say, not just impolite. It is quite dangerous in terms of assumptions being made. Some of the papers are also thin. David Edward gave evidence last week to the European Committee, which he said on one in particular that had been offered to him as an undergraduate essay. He would have failed it. However, I think that there is the opportunity to get this a little bit better if we were involved. Are European colleagues aware of Scotland's view on those papers that our voice is not represented? We will continue to make the point in conversation and discussion. We have a very effective representation in Brussels. Ministers are there and meeting people regularly. I am in Brussels next week and we will continue to make the point. In broad terms, where do you think that we are in terms of the three key negotiation points for progressing to the next stage in negotiations on citizens rights, the financial bill, financial sport and the Irish border commission? Do you think that there is sufficient progress being made there? The commission and the Parliament will have to make in the coming weeks. I think that a great deal will hinge on what the Prime Minister says on Friday. I think that the expressed concern that, in some way, there is something unfair about the sequencing of the talks, rather ignores the fact that the UK signed on to the sequencing of the talks and did so willingly in June. I am not going to be dismissive. The view is that progress is being made on some areas and not on others. Some areas will be impossible to progress with the present attitudes. I am not sure that it helps greatly to speculate on it, except to say that there are issues on which we have agreed with the UK Government, on migration. We have been quite clear about that disagreement. We think that it is very important to say that on other issues such as the budget. We have not said that because we are not sure that it helps very much. We will wait to see what takes place. We accept that there will be a legal obligation to pay moneys and we do not accept that there is £350 million a week waiting to come back to the national health service. We do want to see progress made, but we do not think that it is going to be made the way that it is being made at the moment. However, what the Prime Minister says on Friday and what is the outcome of that, we wait and see. Again, we do not know what she is going to say. We are 48 hours from it. Like the Lancaster House speech, we have no idea what is going to be in it. We will not know until she says it. There is a sense in which she thinks that that is not particularly helpful. All 27 members of the European Council have to agree as I understand it that progress can be made. One of the key questions is clearly for the Irish Government, as the Irish border issue. Yes, I heard Simon Coffney speak in Cambridge two weeks ago at the British Irish Association dinner. He is very clear about it. He thinks that the progress that needs to be made and he was open about this is a customs union that requires to take place. He does not believe that it can be done without a customs union and he believes that the right position for the UK is continuing membership of the single market. I think that that is a minimum that we should look to, not as transition but as destination. I think that that is what I would want to hear. We have been very clear that the Irish situation is not one that anybody should dabble in. We recognise and respect the process that will be taking place and nothing should put at risk what has taken place through the Good Friday agreement. There is a guarantee in the common travel area that is extremely important. It is much more difficult than some of the speculation puts in place to establish an open, seamless border. The only way that can really be done is with a customs union. Thank you. I bring the focus back to our Parliament. Minister, you made a very welcome commitment in your LCM statement to the chamber last Tuesday that you will work with the Parliament and its committees. I agree a set of principles and processes around the legislative issues as far as this Parliament is concerned. I think that it would be helpful if you could say a bit more about what you are thinking is in that area, because it is obviously very important to this committee that we are able to scrutinise what you do appropriately. I want to be as open and helpful as I can be. I have said, convener, and I repeat this, that I would be very happy to keep you and the vice convener and the wider committee, of course, briefed as the process goes ahead. If we plan out from where we are, we might understand what could take place. You are considering the legislative consent memorandum, and you will no doubt report on that. I would hope that the discussions that are taking place between the parties would lead to a common position on the amendments that are required. That would be my objective. I do not know whether that can be achieved, but that would be my objective. If that is the case, and if that also applies in Wales, we are working very closely with Wales, but we cannot envisage a situation in which Scotland would be content and Wales would not be, or vice versa. If we have a guarantee of that from the UK Government that the amendments will be taken and accepted, we have moved forward. Essentially, we can bring forward a legislative consent motion and will. If we do not get that progress, then quite clearly we are involved in the process of the House of Commons attempting to amend. We will support our colleagues in the House of Commons, and we hope that other parties will do so too, and we will work with us. We offer very much the opportunity to work together on the limited number of amendments that we have agreed with Wales to see if we can get that amending process under way. During that entire process, I am very welcome committee scrutiny. If we can get agreement on those amendments, we will then move into issues such as how the powers that the Scottish ministers have might properly be supervised through a framework or whatever. We are open to that discussion. You have written to me about issues of secondary legislation. I think that we need an active discussion between officials and the committee in your clerks about how we can bring together a proposal on that scrutiny. I am very happy that the parties can bring together those proposals. I commit myself to a framework for scrutiny in that way, if we can come to one. We also need to look at things such as the charter of fundamental rights. However, if all that does not work, then we are into the process of a continuity bill, perhaps, and that would be a different process than I would come back to the committee and explain how we were going to take that forward. That would be a bill, so there would be the additional work that is required by a bill. Thank you, minister. That was a very helpful evidence session for the committee in getting an initial understanding of your thinking. The committee will now take written and low evidence over the next couple of months. We expect to publish our interim views on the LCM before the Christmas recess. We will then aim to publish a final report on all things being equal before the last amending stage in the House of Lords sometime in the new year. That ends this particular session with the minister this morning. I thank you and your officials, and I suspend the meeting now to allow for a change of witnesses. Colleagues, the second item on our agenda is to discuss the budget process review group's final report. With two external members of the group, we are joined today for that item by Carline Garner, the Auditor General for Scotland, and Dr Angela O'Hagan from Glasgow Caledonia University. Another external member of the group, Professor James Mitchell, had hope to join us today, but, unfortunately, he is unable to be here and he has passed his apologies to the committee. Before we open up the session, I want to put on record the committee's gratitude to all members of the group for their incredible efforts in producing such a wide-ranging and high-quality report in what is a very challenging timescale that they were presented in. I know elements came into your thinking halfway through it, such as the change of the autumn budget date, etc. I am grateful for dealing with all that turbulence. I know that the external members of the group in particular played a key role in formulating the recommendations aimed at improving our budget scrutiny processes, particularly in the light of the change in circumstances, and I thank them all for their contributions. I believe that the group has provided a positive example of Parliament, the Government and Civic Society working together on something that we should be applauded and, hopefully, we can serve as a model for similar initiatives in the future to try to find a successful way forward. The committee is absolutely clear, and I am sure that you know that from the report itself, that the proposal and the report will take some time to implement. There are elements that will stretch over a number of years, particularly in relation to fiscal framework issues, etc., and the budget adjustment process. That will not, in any way, be able to be implement for the scrutiny of the budget process for 2018-19. It is just to set the context of where we are. To begin the discussion today, before I go to James, you will make a couple of opening statements. Forgive me, but I have been premature there. I do not know who wants to go first, but I think that you both want to make a short opening statement. I will be brief, but we thought that, in the light of the shift between your first agenda item this morning and where we are now, it would be helpful just to set a bit of context. On behalf of the members of the budget process review group, thank you for inviting us to provide evidence on our final report. As you know, we were established to review the budget process in the light of the new tax-raising powers and spending powers being devolved to the Parliament at the moment. We published our interim report in March, which highlighted what we saw as being the key issues for a revised process, and we included questions for consultation. The final report reflects the breadth of contributions from members of the group, but also from the external stakeholders that we engaged with during our work and those who responded to that consultation. In agreeing our findings, we reflected on both the existing budget process and the implications of financial devolution, which is fundamentally changing Scotland's public finances. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed their views. It is very clear that the range and quality of the contributions that we have got reflect the growing level of interest that there is in Scotland's budget as we move into this new phase. Based on the detailed work that we have done over the last year, there are four key things that we think that the revised process should do. First of all, we think that it should enable Parliament to have greater influence on the formulation of the budget. It should increase transparency and raise public understanding of the budget and the way that the new powers are being used to make important choices. It should respond effectively to the new fiscal arrangements and the wider policy challenges that the Parliament and Government face and, most importantly, lead to better outcomes for the Scottish people. To achieve that, we consider that significant changes to the existing budget process are needed and we have made a package of recommendations to this effect. We recommend a framework for a revised process that includes a continuous cycle of scrutiny throughout the year, where committees can explore the impact of budgetary decisions and look to influence the formulation of the budget before the Government sets out its firm spending proposals. We think that parliamentary scrutiny should be evaluative with an emphasis on what budgets have achieved and aim to achieve over the longer term, looking at where money has actually been spent and raised and the outcomes and outputs being achieved. It needs a long-term outlook, building up evidence over time and focusing more explicitly on prioritisation within the fiscal constraints that we will always experience and making sustainability a key consideration. Scrutiny needs to recognise the independent nature of many of the policies at which the budget is seeking to deliver. Our recommendations look to enable that. They build on the principles identified at the time that the Scottish Parliament was established and reflect an ambition for a world-class approach to managing the public finances to meet the challenges of today and the future. We recognise that that will mean cultural change as well as changes to processes and procedures and that that will take time to work through, as you say, convener. Given the complexity of the issues, some of the recommendations will need to be phased in overtime. We expect that there will be an opportunity to introduce most of the changes proposed as we look towards the 2019-20 budget cycle with the publication of a medium-term financial strategy for the first time before the 2018 summer recess. We would also expect some aspects of the budget process to continue to evolve during the current parliamentary session as these new approaches bid in. Convener Angela just wants to add to that from her perspective before we move on to your questions. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you very much, convener, and members, for your invitations. Again, on behalf of the group, thank you very much for your very gracious comments on the process and report. The budget review process was indeed a positive exercise, with a shared commitment on the part of the group's members, but, as you have said significantly, on the part of Parliament and Government to meet challenges and to come up with to advance a practical and responsive and progressive budget process. Core to that process is the commitment to embed equality analysis throughout the process. Through the recommendations to increase parliamentary scrutiny, there are greater opportunities to embed equality analysis. The expanded budget process gives a greater emphasis on evidence around outcomes, impacts and the proposals that we have put forward create more access and entry points for equalities scrutiny. The Scottish budget process is already well ahead of anywhere else in the UK and most of Europe in terms of equality analysis, or at least the process to allow for greater equality analysis. There is an opportunity to build on that pioneering work with the equality budget statement and increased committee scrutiny. As Caroline says, to create a world-class approach to equality analysis within the budget process. I want to emphasise that significant and distinguishing feature of the Scottish budget process and the budget review process and report. I thank you for coming along this morning and for the very detailed work that you have put into your report. I realise that it has been a challenging issue but you have carried it out very acidiously. One of the issues that we are obviously looking at in recent times, the budget process has been a curtailed one to a certain extent because of external factors beyond the control of this Parliament. There is a bit of frustration about the amount of time that we have had to properly consider. One of the things that you have looked at going forward is producing an approach that involves looking at an all-year-round budget process and a longer-term view, rather than simply looking at the budget in the coming year. Politicians and interest groups take a much longer-term look at the factors affecting the budget and therefore produce a much more robust and qualitative process. One of the key factors around all of that is data available to people to be able to make proper assessments. What in terms of the all-year-round budget and a longer-term approach, what data do you envisage being available to Parliamentarians and stakeholders in the year running up to the budget and also for the longer term? That is a really good question and I will kick off if I may. I think that we absolutely recognise, first of all, the challenge that Parliament has had over the last few years in trying to scrutinise the Scottish Government's draft budget in a very short period of time, which also happens around the Christmas holiday, so time is squeezed in all sorts of ways. The focus of the budget itself tends to be a fairly short-term time period. Our view as a group was that that tended to focus attention on the numbers that are changing at the margins rather than on the overall bulk of £33 billion, which is being spent on what it is achieving. We spend a lot of time looking, first of all, at the question of timing, and I am sure that you will want to talk a bit more about that this morning, but also about how we can help Parliament or make suggestions that will help Parliament and its committees to pull back and look at the budget as a whole rather than being squeezed into looking at the numbers which are catching the headlines that year for particular reasons. One of the benefits that we think there will be of a longer-term approach is that committees can, over the life of a Parliament, agree the areas that they are most interested in because of demographic pressures, because of policy challenges, because there are signs that the money is not keeping up with demand in various ways or that there are better ways of spending it and build up their evidence from there. Some of that evidence will come from simply having more time to look at trends, looking back at the way at what has been spent and how that has changed, and looking forward to things like how demographic changes will affect demand in future. Health and social care is an obvious example there, but it is also a chance to draw in evidence from a wider range of stakeholders, including audit reports from Audit Scotland and academic research. I think that, very importantly, the views of people who rely on and use the particular public service themselves to drill down and build up that understanding in ways that can help to improve the scrutiny of the budget, but also, as we say in our recommendations, influence the way that the Government formulates its budget and the sort of proposals it brings forward every year. The sort of data that is available will be different in each of the different policy areas that you look at. I know that this committee is having a close look at economic statistics and indicators, and that will obviously be key for some of the tax proposals that are coming through. However, in areas such as education, health and social care, the information that you need will be quite different and will be drawn together from different sources. However, that longer-term cycle gives you the chance to identify what data you need to start to pull it together and to start to see what it means for you. In the report, we talk about the basket of evidence that needs to be and is there to be brought into play to assist in the year-round scrutiny, and that would include everything that Caroline has said. We have tried to give a graphic depiction of that to point to the range of background documentation that there is, including things that, as Caroline has said, audit reports, but the reports that are generated, the data that is generated across the agencies that are responsible for dispersing public finance, and included in that the data and reporting mechanisms around the public sector equality duty, so the mainstreaming reports and outcome reports that are produced there that give an indication of the impacts of changes in resource allocation or changes as a result of public service reform or service reconfiguration, so to be looking at a wider range in that expanded time frame. There is also, again in the report, the emphasis on a greater hook-up between assessing and evaluating outcomes from publicly funded activities, as assessed through the national performance framework and the data that goes behind that. Again, interrogating and drilling down into what is behind the national performance framework and making closer links between budgetary proposals and subsequent evaluation through the performance framework. You have both identified a lot of different information sources that can be used in terms of identifying trends and helping with policy choices. One of the things that I am interested in is that there are private sector and public organisations out there with the Parliament. To take a longer term view would produce a business plan and produce a five-year forecast, which would give, on a year-by-year basis, at least at a very high level what the overall numbers look like. We do not currently have that in terms of the Scottish Government in relation to the medium-term financial strategy. Is that something that you think is achievable to produce? Although all the different information sources that you have identified are very helpful, ultimately the overall numbers and the data is going to be critical to the political decisions that are going to be made. I think that, as a group, we felt that the medium-term financial strategy was one of the key elements of the package of measures that we are proposing. It is one of the things that helps to compensate for the continuing shorter period of time for focusing the detailed budget proposals each year. That is the thing that will set the context for the budget each year. It will be looking at the economic forecasts, the demographic forecasts, the other things that are expected to change alongside current policies and the ways in which they will be affecting demands on the public finances as well. It will also be looking at the level of taxes that are expected to be raised from each of the devolved taxes and demand-led spending on the new social security powers in particular. Setting out clear policies and principles for the way in which new powers such as the borrowing powers and reserve powers will be used within the overall framework. There is no doubt that it will be challenging for Government to produce that for the first time. It will be a new element of our fiscal arrangements here in Scotland. First of all, it is possible for it to be done next summer, before the summer recess in 2018, to inform the 2019-20 budget cycle. Secondly, more importantly, it is critical for making this longer-term, more strategic scrutiny of the public finances effective. It is that that lets you move away from a focus on the individual numbers that are changing to the bigger context and the things that the budget is trying to achieve. The way that they described paragraph 81 and the four particular elements in your report and just for the records and also for those who are tuning in so that they can understand clearly what that mid-term financial strategy will contain. Those four elements were forecast revenue and demand-led expenditure estimates from the Scottish Fiscal Commission and their effect on Scottish public finances. The broad financial plans for the next five years, clear policies and principles that are using and managing and controlling the new financial powers and scenario plans that are based on economic forecasts and financial information in order to assess the potential impact of different scenarios on the budget. That follows through in some of the things that we, as a committee, are asking for as part of the discussion on last year's budget, so I thought that it was very powerful. Sorry for reading that out chain, but it just sets the context for the wider people who are listening in. Sorry, on you go. I think that that's helpful. Finally, obviously what this requires is a change in culture from a situation over recent years where the budget has been looked at over a very short timescale to looking at it all year round and also taking a longer term view. What do you think is required in order to make that successful so that politicians and stakeholders are able to understand the new process and engage with it effectively? It's a challenging or difficult term to use culture change and to use it in a way that doesn't sound like being critical. Certainly, our view within the group is that it has to be seen in the context of the recommendations for a more expansive and extended process, whereby the focus and we focus very strongly on that in the report, is on outcomes. What difference is public funding making in the key areas of government? If a budget is, as we say from a kind of equality budgeting perspective, if the budget is the principal expression of a Government's priorities, so how then are those priorities being met through public spending? That's what we want to encourage greater scrutiny to be over the longer term rather than the immediacy of the politics of budgeting but looking at the longer term impacts and outcomes that are achieved through the consensus that ultimately is the agreement of a budget and will be the agreement of the medium term financial strategy and the multi annual budgets, which again allow for setting that consensus, for setting that strategic direction for public spending and the outcomes that we collectively inform through improved public engagement want to see achieved as a consequence of the dedication and allocation of Scotland's resources. To look to what differences are being made to advance the wellbeing and equality of people in Scotland and to shift some of the budget scrutiny from the immediacy of political points going around indicators and targets but to look more longer term and more in-depth at what kinds of changes are happening and where adjustments might be more effectively made. I'd add just a couple of brief points to that. First of all, I think that there's something for all of us involved in this about accepting that the new fiscal framework, the new devolved tax and spending powers mean that there will inevitably be more uncertainty in the budget than there has been in the past, that forecasts are never going to be right in the narrow sense and the fact that more tax or less tax has been raised in a year than was forecast isn't necessarily an indication of failure, it's that sense of how we manage the uncertainty and the volatility as a whole. The second is a strong theme in our report, which is about greater transparency of information across the whole of the public finances and looking at how those things join up and doing things to make sure that transparency is useful to people in Parliament and to people across Scotland. We make a recommendation about in-the-budget documentation separating the presentation of the numbers from the political presentation of them. I know that there was concern in some committees last year about the way some elements of the budget were presented. I think that if we can strip away that confusion between the numbers and their presentation politically, it helps people to focus on, as Angela has been saying, the numbers and what they are intended to achieve, rather than whether that number should be 50 million higher or lower, depending on which definition you use. That doesn't help anyone, and it tends to get caught up in the very narrow political street fighting, rather than the bigger decisions that are needed around the budget. Okay, thank you. Probably Murdo means that revisions are in that area that we've just been hearing about, so you want to pick up on that. Yeah, thanks, convener. Good morning. Just as a precursor to my question, if I could just echo what the convener had to say about the report, I think that it's excellent. In particular, I think that the emphasis on the evaluation of outcomes and outputs is exactly where we want to be going, so I think that it's been very valuable. I've got a specific question around the question of budget revisions that you touch in paragraphs 184 to 186 in the report. There's a specific scenario that came up during our budget scrutiny for the current year, which, perhaps if I just narrate by way of illustration, might be helpful to put this into context. The budget was presented to Parliament on, if I remember rightly, the 15th of December last year. At that point, the finance secretary told us that every pound was accounted for in the budget. The opposition parties were challenged if they wanted to propose alternatives to the budget that would have to say where the extra money was coming from. That draft budget was then put out to the various subject committees for scrutiny. It was only six weeks later, and that period included the Christmas and new year break, when the finance secretary came back to Parliament for stage one, at which point he'd done a deal with Mr Harvey's party and had found an extra £220 million in order to agree this particular deal. There were a lot of jokes at the time about the finance secretary's sofa and how he'd found this money wedged down the back. On the two more serious points where, firstly, had the opposition parties been aware that the budget was understated on the 15th of December, that would have put a different complexion on any negotiations that took place. Also, the committees of this Parliament who were scrutinising the budget were scrutinising the budget that was £220 smaller than it was in reality. I wonder if that is an issue that you considered looking at the question of budget revisions or whether you came to any view on how, in future, we might improve the scrutiny process and provide greater transparency. You won't be surprised to hear that it was an issue that we spent some time considering, and the broader question of amendment powers and whether Parliament should have amendment powers over the budget as presented by Government. There are arguments on both sides. We heard examples of legislatures elsewhere that have various thoughts of amendment power, either general, within the overall cap of the resources that are available or none at all, which is clearly where Scotland is at the moment. We thought quite hard about the pros and cons of that. I think that it didn't take us very long to rule out the idea that unrestricted amendment powers are generally not a good thing—that you end up with the risk of pork barrel politics and fiscal sustainability tends to go out of the window. However, we thought long and hard about whether it should be possible for opposition parties to propose amendments within the overall cap that had come forward. The more we thought about it, the more we thought that that really throws up the same question that you are raising. What is important is that everybody is clear what the overall envelope of resources is in ways that are complete and transparent. Earlier this year, I had a patch where I would have small bets with colleagues to test whether they could tell me where the extra £200 million came from or not. Very few people understood that. First, the budget that is currently presented does not tell you the whole picture. Secondly, the process that we currently have does not require that explanation of where the movements are happening. Things such as the non-domestic rates pot are outside the budget as presented. That presents opportunities because of the way that it is managed on a rolling basis, either to take money out or to put money in. From this year, we have the new borrowing and reserve powers, which bring in for different purposes different streams of money that are not shown directly in the revenue budget that is presented to Parliament. The decision that we took as a group was that the best thing to do was to stick with the current arrangements for Government being able to amend the budget, but instead to focus very heavily on the transparency and the accessibility of the information and on the importance of that covering the whole of the budget, not just individual elements. We need to see how all those new moving parts around borrowing and reserves, around the block grant adjustments and the way they work, the interaction between forecasts and reconciliations later, and how all of that is operating in terms of the amount of money that is available and the choices that are made about tax raising in future. One of the recommendations in the report is for a fiscal framework out-turn report, which puts all of that again into the public domain and gives everybody the same basis for understanding where there might be levers that could be used to raise more money for investment, for spending or, indeed, for tax cuts in future, if that is the decision that Parliament comes to. We considered it carefully, but that is the basis for the recommendations that we made. Thank you. That is very helpful. I suppose that the lesson is that, in future, when the budget is presented, the first question that will be asked to the finance secretary is the complete picture and what else is there that is not being presented. The medium-term financial statement and the fiscal framework out-turn report will give you, as a parliamentarian, information on which to ask those questions in an informal way. Thank you very much. I suppose that following on from that, there is a need to recognise that, as well as the objective that you set out at the beginning of allowing Parliament greater opportunities to influence the budget before its publication, there is also a political process that comes after publication. Whatever views—I am sure that there are different views about the merits of any particular outcome in any one year—the question about transparency and having a finance secretary not holding back further information is really important. Given that we are now in a period where we are all being forced to accept that the budget process itself after publication is much shorter than it used to be and that that does not look likely to change, I would say that that increases the argument in favour of giving opposition parties some ability to make amendments. Given that you have reached the view that that is not what you want to propose, I would ask how you discussed or struck the balance between coherence of a budget and political accountability to Parliament. The current period of a minority administration is relevant to that, but the years of coalition were relevant to that as well, and some of the same criticisms of a political deal between parties resulted in a lack of coherence in budgets. Some of those arguments were made at that time as well. We need a process that is going to be able to work in periods of potentially majority minority and coalition administration in the future. Is it just to give me a sense of how it was that your recommendations reflect the importance of parliamentary process and the reality that there will be a political process after publication, perhaps on a bit of a breakneck timescale that has not always worked well in the past? I might be starting at the end point about the post-publication and trying to create space that does not exist in the calendar at that point, and that is where the emphasis on the pre-budget scrutiny, the opportunity and the necessity of greater committee involvement and scrutiny over the year and the pre-budget influence, the pre-budget formulation and setting out proposals from the committee processes. That, we felt, increases the involvement of Parliament more in the round and engages Parliament much more in the propositions and proposals that should inform and structure the proposals in the budget. There is also the recommendation that the spring budget revision should be accompanied by a mid-year report on revenue and spending up to the end of December, and that the mid-year report should be scrutinised. When you take the basket of measures across the report, there is public engagement and parliamentary engagement and scrutiny, proactive involvement from the committees, not just in a scrutiny role but in the proposition of pre-budget proposals and the data that James Kelly was asking about earlier on, as well as increased monitoring of the finances over the course of the year. What we have tried to present is a series of proposals that have to be taken as a whole because of their interlinking nature, all of which are intended to derive greater accountability and transparency. I noticed that paragraph 167 deals with some of the negrities of this. Can you just expand some of that? Again, for the wider listener who is not as close to all of this as we are, I think that it would be helpful in response to Patrick's point. The first thing to say is that we were very conscious that although we are all working in a particular composition of Parliament at the moment, that what we design has to be able to cope with every possible permutation that can come out of our electoral system. It is not about a minority Government or anything else, it is about what Parliament needs to work. As I said earlier, one of the key things that we were trying to balance was, first of all, proper parliamentary influence with, secondly, the ability to manage a budget and keep fiscal sustainability as a key consideration in there to avoid the risk of the sort of pork barrel politics that we have all seen elsewhere that lead to decisions that are politically palatable this year but that lead to long-term problems after that. We felt that the package of recommendations that we are making put more information in the public domain for the longer term with the medium-term financial strategy and the fiscal framework outturn report are a good starting point. The longer term evaluative phase that Angela has talked about influenced committees pre-budget reports in ways that should be driving some of that shift in the proposals that the Government publishes in the budget bill. The budget bill itself, giving that much more complete picture of the public finances rather than just one angle on it with other moving parts elsewhere that are not included, all limits the risk of misunderstood or just not understood changes coming through at a later stage. Equally, we recognise that this will always be a political process. This is the way that Parliament operates. Increasing transparency all the way through was a key part of what we were looking to do. The ability for the Government to bring in amendments at the stage 2 process felt to us as a key part of the ability to reflect on the negotiations that are happening and will always happen, the influence that is coming from committees as part of their scrutiny and the scrutiny by this committee of the big picture of what is happening with borrowing reserves with forecasts of revenues and spending for the future was the best overall balance that we have. There clearly is no right answer, but we felt that what it does is respect the fact that this is a political process, shine more light on the ways in which it is working and provide Parliament in general with more information about the impact of the changes that it is making than it currently has was the right place to land. The fact that the political discussion led to stage 2 amendments last time round was unusual. Are you suggesting that that should become the norm, that that should be an expectation, that if the Government reaches agreement with other political parties it should be expressed through a formal process of stage 2 amendments going through on the record? I think that we felt that that mechanism was already there, that it is better than the ability for any political party to bring forward amendments for the reasons that we have discussed already. What I was going to move on to say was that the thing that makes it both a more managed part of the process and one that is better understood is the greater transparency about the overall picture within which decisions, amendments are being made and the ways in which they will be funded and the long-term impact of those in the context of a medium-term financial strategy. If I stick with the experience that we had last year, you are right, it has rarely been used. The amounts involved were not huge in the context of the overall £34 billion or so that we are talking about, but equally some of that money that we know came from different assumptions about the balance on the non-domestic rates account. Parliament should have been able to see that impact and what it means in terms of trends while voting for it or not, the budget as it went through. We think that it makes the use of those more effective and more likely to lead to good fiscal decision making. I can finish that off. You have also specifically said in your recommendations, 40 and 49, some changes to the existing process. Particularly in 49, the group recommends that any changes to the Scottish budget publish spending proposals during the budget process must be dealt with through amendments to the budget bill at stage 2 and stage 3. That is taking it a stage further than we have currently got, where it is in the Government's will. In that regard, I think that you are suggesting that that should be a process that becomes a norm. As I say, for all of us, that is about making it more transparent and better understood in terms of the decisions that are being made and their longer-term consequences. I think that it gives Parliament greater control. Thank you. The other aspect of parliamentary scrutiny that I was interested in talking about is on the tax side. Obviously, a large part of the purpose of the budget review process has been to understand how we evolve from scrutinising a spending budget or almost entirely a spending budget to one that is much more balanced between taxation and spending. I understand entirely why you did not feel able, within the process of this review, to make a clear recommendation on the idea of a finance bill, but you said that that should be examined further. In the interim, have you discussed how we might achieve a higher standard or a more regularised standard of scrutiny of tax instruments before we get to the point of making a longer-term decision on a finance bill? We have a negative instrument on non-domestic rates, which is a major tax power. We have a much more high-profile and tightly time-constrained process on income tax rates—a rate resolution that needs to be passed—in a very, very tightly defined timescale to get to the budget. For legislative reasons, we have had a much higher level of scrutiny of something like LBTT. The council tax is still, in theory, a local tax, but the constraints around it are bound up with a national budget process. Have you had any discussion about how we might achieve a common standard of scrutiny for relevant tax powers in the interim before we get to a point that might be several years down the line of making decisions about a finance bill? I think that, in some ways, this was one of the most difficult areas that we looked at because it is so technical and because the legislative provisions have built up piecemeal over time for reasons that we all understand. We heard some quite strong views from different stakeholders about the need to review this and to streamline it a bit. You'll recall that, when I was here with John Peebles and Jim Mitchell earlier in the year on our draft report, you asked us then about the possibility of a finance bill. We considered that and we ruled it out of our consideration on the basis that we were very keen to make recommendations that were in the power of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, not ones that would require changes to UK legislation. We've made some recommendations for streamlining and improving the quality of tax legislation in terms of the way that it's reviewed for minor housekeeping changes as they come through to avoid some of the difficulties and teathing problems that we've seen as the devolved taxes have first come in. To be frank, we feel that that's an area that needs more time and more consideration than we were able to give it as part of this report. It's something that could appropriately sit alongside the implementation of those recommendations. Those would improve things in any case, but I'm sure that there's more fine-tuning that could be done around the tax legislative provisions. Do you want to add to that? There's not much more that I would add other than in terms of the principles and the common standard of scrutiny being around the principles of taxation, the so-called Scottish approach to taxation, and to ensure that whatever proposals are around tax instruments, which are political choices, but that the scrutiny that is applied be from the perspective of equality and how they can be implemented and the kind of upgrading and take-up and so on. I wanted to ask on equalities as well. I don't know if you want to bring others in on this point. I think that we've covered a fair bit of ground already. I think that it's the key components of what the process has already been discussed, so I think that it's appropriate just to finish off your question in part. Thank you. If I can come to Dr O'Hagan in the first instance on that, in your opening remarks, you said that the Scottish approach to equalities analysis is better than elsewhere in the UK. I wonder if you agree that that setting is a bit of a low bar and that what we have should not be seen as a model, but as a starting point to build on much more substantively. We've got an equalities statement that accompanies the budget, which I would suggest, and I would ask if you agree, places a lot of emphasis on the value of positive things that the Government thinks it's doing, but does very little to analyse the impacts of, for example, cuts. Let's just look in the last few years at the number of jobs that have been lost in local government as a result of the constraints on local government spending. There hasn't really been any attempt by the Scottish Government to produce an equalities impact assessment or an analysis of the equalities impact of those kinds of decisions. The Government claims that it is unable to. It claims that it has a lack of suitable evidence base to conduct an intersectional analysis, the kind of distribution analysis that your recommendations call for. However, you'll be very well aware that the women's budget group itself has done a fair amount of that kind of work with existing data that's already available. Is it the case that the Scottish Government has been unwilling to go further on what's already possible? If that's the case, why would we assume that, if it has more data available, it will do what's needed with it when it hasn't been doing what's needed with the data that it has already got? I would start by saying that, while the Scottish approach and the equality budget statement are used as a model, it is the very best of what's going on in the UK where there's very limited equality analysis. There is no equality impact assessment and no similar documentation surrounding the UK budget, for example. I've consistently said, both within the equality budgets advisory group and in successive consultations and evidence sessions to Parliament and elsewhere, that I think the equality budget statement as it stands, while a very important development in our budget process, is a narrative accompaniment to the budget decisions. It is not an equality impact assessment. What we have recommended in the budget review group report is that we move more to the typology approach that is advocated by the OECD of ensuring that we have an ex-ante, concurrent and ex-post equality analysis of the budget. By creating or encouraging the creation of this year-round scrutiny of parliamentary involvement, we are creating many more access points and entry points for equality analysis to prompt and require of Government and within parliamentary scrutiny, because the committees themselves could be much more robust, I would argue, in some of the equalities analysis that shouldn't just be concentrated within the equalities committee, but across all the subject committees that would begin to address some of the issues that you have raised. For example, on the impact on local government employment, let's not forget the impact of services and public service reform and where the impact of that falls, usually on low-paid, precariously employed women. The kind of approach that we are advocating is to make more of the public sector equality duty requirements, to ensure that proposals that are coming forward within the budget, as much from committees as from the spending departments, are subject to equality impact assessments and that a wider range of equality analysis tools are used, including beneficiary analysis, so we are trying to work out what the impact will be. There has been significant improvement in the equalities data available in Scotland that can be brought into much more effective use in the analysis. Indeed, the Scottish Government has recently been saying in relation to the budget and the national performance framework that there is better data there and more should be used. The kind of analysis that we are talking about is not what is currently in the equality budget statement. That is why the report has made the recommendations that we have, both to strengthen and improve the equality budget statement, to reconsider the timing of it and the purpose of it and the use of which it can be applied in Parliament. The recommendations on distributional analysis are there for a reason. We know that the data has improved and that improving distributional analysis will improve parliamentary and public understanding of the impact and outcomes from public spending. There is an increased availability of data. We still have data gaps, undoubtedly, but there needs to be both the political will within Government and within Parliament to bring that data into better use and to commit to that kind of intersectional analysis where we are looking at the lived experiences of women and men in all our diversity in Scotland and how public services and public finance in Scotland are advancing equality or not. That is the very basic question that must come before every committee. To what extent does any proposal that comes before us advance equality and seek to eliminate inequalities? If that proposal is not going to do that, then go away and think again. That is where we can look to other jurisdictions at a sub-national level with similar budget levels that have considerably more advanced equality analysis, such as the Andalothian region in the south of Spain or at a national level in Austria, which is one of the examples in the international report for the group. Without suggesting that perfection is achievable immediately, your view would be that the Scottish Government already has available to it the data that is necessary and the tools that are necessary to produce a much higher level of information for Parliament when it publishes its budget on the impacts of its budgetary decisions in terms of gender, disability, ethnicity, age, income desile. That should be an expectation from us that the Government publishes that kind of information alongside its budget. We know that there is a significant deficient—there is a big improvement in data, but in some areas there are still deficiencies. That is historical. There are about the kinds of data sets that we have available, the population size for data sampling in Scotland, within UK samples, etc. There is a whole lot of technical reasons there. The point really is about not just producing the data alongside the budget but using that data in the pre-formulation of budget options, using the data in the ex-post evaluation and concurrent evaluation and using it in ex-anti-formulation of budget proposals. If they are using the data in that way to shape their budget, the way for them to show that they have done so is to show that they are working when they publish the budget. Showing their workings in the margins is a phrase that I have used very often in relation to equality analysis. The emphasis here is on the public authorities and public bodies who are implementing the services funded through public finance. That is why, in the budget documentation that we talk about in the report, we are looking for committees to look much more widely and to look at the public sector equality duties and the associated publications that are required for compliance with that duty. What is the NHS, or Skills Development Scotland, or the successor to Scottish Enterprise, saying in their mainstreaming reports and in their audits about equalities and how they are advancing equalities and how those proposals are going to meet the overarching objectives of government and policies as proposed by parliamentary committees? That is helpful. Thank you very much. We have a very good discussion around your budget processes, longer-term planning, timing revisions and mid-term financial strategy, which I think is hugely important in particular part. I have a very quick question, Ivan. I really just focus on outcomes. I am glad to see that you have given that some attention in the national performance framework, which is something that I think we do not talk about often enough in this committee and in subject committees. There are clearly difficulties in our own subject committee that I am all in struggle to establish the relationship between the input funding and the outcomes that are delivered and how you line those up when you talk about that. I see that you are talking here about potentially moving from portfolio-based budgeting to programme-based budgeting, which would be interesting. Can you maybe just talk about the discussions that you had and the difficulties that you see there in what we need to do to get the committee and subject committees to move more firmly in that direction, looking back on what has happened and not just having this political bond fight about how we are going to line up input funding going forward? I think that it was common ground in the group and among all of the external stakeholders we heard from that the outcomes approach is a good thing, that we absolutely should be looking at the outcomes that we are trying to achieve rather than how many nurses, doctors, teachers we have taking that longer term view and that there is more that can be done to link those outcomes to the money that we are spending, which is the key way that any Government, any organisation aims to achieve its aims. Alongside that, as the outcomes are being agreed and set, there is more that Government and public bodies can be doing to set out their plans for how they want to shift those outcomes. At the moment, in many areas, we think that there is a gap between the outcomes in the national performance framework and the way they cascade down and the plans that Government has and all of the people involved in trying to shift those outcomes for how they will actually go about it. Now, that is a complex thing. For most of the outcomes that are in the framework and that we care about, you do not just crank a handle and you can see what is changing, but equally we think that there is much more room. For example, if one of the outcomes is about keeping people safer by reducing reoffending, to be clear what are the interventions that the evidence says to reduce reoffending, what are the ones that we intend to try here in Scotland or in different parts of Scotland, what money we will put behind that and how we will know over time that things are moving in the right direction and, therefore, we can do more of it or the wrong direction and, therefore, we think again. We have a section in the report about the planning for outcomes and the way that that would be done in the Scottish budget overall, but also within the budgets of the public bodies that Angela has referred to. That information itself would give the subject committees much more to be working with in testing and challenging whether that thinking stood up to scrutiny, whether the evidence available is changing over time and, therefore, policy should and the direction of money should. It felt to us that that was all a very positive direction of travel that would build on the good things that are already in place with the national performance framework and the outcomes approach that we have embedded in legislation in Scotland. As I said earlier, this has been an excellent report. I think that this session has been very, very valuable. There are obviously lots of processes and procedures that have been laid in there, but the one thing that I think that I heard a couple of times was culture change. I think that it is going to take a significant culture shift within the Parliament to be able to make sure that some of those processes and procedures are embedded in what we do in a meaningful way. Obviously, the financial issues advisory group set the foundation stones for the parliamentary budget process. They did a rigorous and robust job on it. We have got an opportunity now, I believe, to take us forward to a completely different level, to produce that world-class budgeting process in the constraints that we all work with under. If we can achieve that on an all-party basis, I think that we have done the Parliament and Scotland proud. I hope that we can get to that end. I want to thank you for helping us to push us along that road. Now, the collapse will bring forward a paper at a future meeting setting out our suggested approach to the implementation of the review group's final report. Again, thank you, and I close this particular part of the meeting. Cheers.