 Gweld fawr i'r 10 ymwneud, o'r 2024, y dylai gyda'r ysgolion yn y Lloroforum Cymru, i na oedd ymwneud am y rhan a'r cyflawn i'r lleiolol, ac'r wych yn ei dweud i'r cyffredigol, ac yn y bwysig i'r ffawr i'r ffoen ac oes i'r laelio cyffredigol. The first item in business is to decide whether to take items six, seven and eight in private as a committee content to takeUnity's items in private. Under agenda item number two we are taking evidence from George Adam MSP, the Minister for Parliamentary Business. This advice is a regular session with the minister on the work relevant to this committee. The minister is accompanied by three Scottish government officials. suppordinate legislation repór, Charles Mcgregor, the head of parliament and legislation unit Rachel Raynor, the deputy legislation co-ordinator on the Scottish officer in the Government, legal directorates. I welcome you all to the committee this morning. The minister will make opening remarks. Good morning and thank you convener, and the committee member is Rhaid i gyd yn ddaeth i siwr o ffodol yn fawr oedd oes iawn yr unig Cymru a byddaeth gwrs-dynol. Felly, rydw i ddweud bod i chi'n gweld i'n fyddialog fwyaf deiligol i ddechrau i'r Specialistol Cymru ond mae fyddai gael amser i ffodol i ddweud geisyingol gwaith am ddweud i gael am ffordd mewn cyfyrdd a i'r contestau chi'n fyddai lleuiddol i'r Cymru. Fywrdd i ddim beitio i ddiweddio i ddaf i gweithio'r gweithredu i ffodol i the committee's remit. From the Scottish Government's perspective, the last six months have been broadly positive. We continue to strive to bring forward the best quality legislation we can and have maintained high standards in the last quarter. Implementation of the UK Government's retained EU law act continues to require careful consideration of its impact on the devolved statute book, and the volume of legislation arising continues to be manageable. We have introduced the long-awaited judicial factors bill, which I know the convener is particularly keen to see progressed, and I welcome the steady progress that we continue to make with implementing the Scottish law commission reports. I know our respective officials continue to work closely together, and I remain committed to listening carefully to the views of the committee and doing my best to resolve any issues that arise. I look forward to hearing from the committee today, and I am happy to answer any of your questions. Just at the very outset, the vast majority of the SSIs are not reported under any reporting ground by the committee, but we continue to identify some drafting issues on a regular basis. Can you tell me what you are doing to ensure that the quality of the SSIs remains high? Well, I think that, compared to when I first attended the committee when I became a minister, there has been an improvement towards the less drafting mistakes and the issues that you have been bringing up yourself. However, the Scottish Government continues to strive to ensure that legislation we bring forward is robust and fit for purpose. As a significant amount of time and house guidance and training is in place, which my officials can explain if that would be helpful. We have extensive written guidance for all our different legislative programmes, but particularly in relation to SSIs. That is designed to ensure that officials go through the necessary processes and understand what the Parliament is going to want to see and the type of scrutiny that the subject has instruments to. We also do quite a lot of outreach, as we call it, so we go out and speak to a wide range of directors in the Scottish Government, either because they might not have experience of legislation to explain to them what that will look like for them and where to get further advice, or because they are doing a lot of legislation and they might want to drive up standards. Social Security is an example of that. They have done a lot of work in-house and we have worked closely with them to help them with their legislation. That is what we do in a policy level. I do not know Rachel if you want to say something about SGLD quality assurance. Quality of SSIs, checking is just a part of it. We start by providing support and coaching and training to people both in looking at the policy, considering the legal issues and in providing the drafting. We then have a system of checking SSIs within the team where they have been drafted and then there is a further check from a different team who has not had any involvement. We also have other sessions, for example, where lawyers involved in drafting SSIs get together to share experience and to learn from each other feedback issues that arise in DPLRC. We see it very much as a whole package working very much with policy colleagues and lawyers working together to produce high-quality SSIs. As you can see, convener, it is important that we have the relationship with your clerks on the committee in particular to make sure that we can work together to, if there are any issues, we can talk it over and move things forward. You mentioned the lawyer who has not been involved. Would that be a different lawyer depending on the specialism and the SSI? The idea is that it is a lawyer who has not been involved. It is a fresh pair of eyes who is coming to something fresh and then checking it on that basis, because, as in many things, a fresh pair of eyes will pick up things that someone who has been very involved in the drafting may not. So they do not need to have a specialism in that particular subject area? No, but they have training and support in checking SSIs. It is the fresh pair of eyes who are experienced drafters who can often spot small things at late stages. That is just in terms of the wider staffing that you have. Is it a high turnover of staff within the legal directorate, or is it a fairly stable set of staff that you have? The SGLD has grown within recent years, but we are providing support and training both to people who are new, to people who are drafting a lot of time, or to people who have been doing other types of work and then come back to drafting. Different support will be needed for different types of people. Within the team that provides the last stage checking, we have had a stable team and that has increased recently, but within that team we do not have a concern about high turnover. Since September 2023, the committee has reported four instruments under the reporting grounds that it considers to be more serious. One is underground E, which is there appears to be a doubt whether it is intraverous, and three is underground I, which is drafting appears to be defective. Are you concerned about this minister, are you concerned about this trend and have you taken any specific actions? How many did you say again, convener? It was four. Personally, I would not call that a trend. I would say that there has been a couple of issues that we have had to do and, as always, we will work with the committee to fix them, but I will not say that it is a trend. Ministers, your officials provide our committee and the subject committees with helpful, and I mean that helpful they are, because otherwise we would not know what we are doing. Weekly update of instruments and they are expected to be laid in the next two weeks, following what we received through. Can you provide an indication of the anticipated volume of SSIs likely to be laid between now and the summer, and which expected lead committees are likely to be involved? With regard to yourself, there is a significant SSI that is coming up for your own committee, which you are already aware of. We have no major packages on the immediate horizon. SSI volumes, easy for me to say, for the last two years remain lower than what has historically led even pre-pandemic, but there is no particular reason for that. It is just the way things have been. You are not seeing much coming forward between now and the summer, no? I am not seeing any major packages coming along in the not too distant future, but if you just want, maybe Stephen can give you some detail on that. I think that we are looking at about 40, up to 40 instruments before some recess, which is well within the norms. I do not have a breakdown by the individual committee, but we can certainly take that away and get back to you. Okay, well that would be very helpful. Thank you very much indeed. So, as we are saying, the committee appreciates the forward looks that you provide. It really does help us a lot. Given that some of the SSIs are much longer and more complex than others, it is particularly useful to the committee, as well as relevant subject committees, to be given as much advance notice as possible of large and complex instruments or large packages, as has been mentioned, of instruments. Do you know if there are any such instruments? Well, we know that there are one or sets of instruments in the pipeline, and are you able to keep us updated on the progress going towards this? As always, we will try to be as flexible with the committees or committees as we possibly can with regard to anything but SSIs in particular. However, when you say that they are complex for your own point of view as a committee member and for the committee's process, it is equally as complex for us to make sure that we get them in a place that they are suitable to come to committee. We have got to make sure that we do not have any drafting errors as well, so that we can get that balance so that we can get the information to you, but in a way that is acceptable. I think that, on behalf of everyone who is saying that the drafting errors that we receive tend to be relatively minor, but they can have a bit of an influence if they are not corrected. We do come back and correct them for us, so that is useful. I think that the good things about the relationship between my officials and the committee is that, when your clerks have pointed out or your committees have pointed out something, we have gone out of our way to make sure that we can try to fix a problem. That is something that we just need to continue, because our job here is to make this place function. It is important that we get it ready. I welcome those comments on trying to get things right. I just wanted to ask about some of the historic commitments that the Scottish Government has made. There is an amendment to the Scotland Act, the specification of functions and transfer of property order 2019, SSI 2019-183. Is there any progress on that that you can share with the committee? I am not going to kid you on, Mr Mundell. I probably knew that you were going to ask this question. It is not because I am hyper-efficient at what I do, because it was about the only one that has taken the length. There are ten, five of which are all part of the one programme of the kind of stuff that we are doing. The 2019 one that you referred to is older than my two youngest grandkids. It is a work that got really complicated and quite difficult for the officials to try and get it sorted. We are in the process of fixing it and getting it sorted, so it is something that we could update the committee on as we progress down that route. I can tell you the figure normally that I come here and I do not tell you the exact figure of the ones that are outstanding. You said eight, so it is actually ten. There are five of which are all part of the one package. It sounds more than what it actually is, because obviously five of them are actually for the one process. You are acknowledging that that one is getting passed. It is quite a laundry and I just wanted to push you on the timescale so that we have a reference point for coming back to you again if it does not happen. I am not saying the exact date, but when would we expect to see further progress? I am quite happy to be helpful on this one, Ms Mundell, and I will ask Nicola if she wants to give you any detail on that. I am happy to do that. As the minister said, we have ten outstanding commitments that we are tracking in detail. The Scotland Act order did some sort of investigation of the history of that. At the moment, the process with the Scotland Office has kick-started. The policy position paper has been submitted, and from that point we can anticipate the timescales with the UK Government for the Scotland Act order being between 12 and 18 months. It is a long process. The challenge, of course, was getting to that point, but we have got to that point. That kick started in October, so 12 to 18 months from October would be either this October or the following March. It is helpful for us as officials to have the committee's interests in that now, because that is a reference point that we can use to point to the Scotland Office in terms of following up with it to make sure that it stays on track. Your interest in it is helpful in making sure that it stays on track. As the minister said, the other nine remaining commitments, five are related to a package of pensions and SSIs. I will not list them all. There are different kinds of pensions for different kinds of people, but all in relation to that package, that is six dealt with. Then there are four remaining commitments from the 10, and those will be addressed in further identified SSIs that we anticipate laying within the next 12 months. I hope that that gives you a timescale. That is really helpful and clear, and we will enjoy seeing the minister back next March to be able to ask about that. I look forward to Mr Mundell, and I will keep this note that my policy officials do not pick a fight with Mr Mundell. On that, the longest outstanding issue, would you find it helpful if the committee were to write to the Scotland Office, or this because I know that we have had the engagement with them in the past, but the fact that that document has now been sent to them— I do not see it being unhelpful. I think that it would be quite helpful for us as well, because it makes the argument that we have all got to work together to make that deliverable. Good morning, minister and the team. The question that I have for you—I am sure that I will pick a fight on you since it is the first question that I am asking you—does not regularly comment on explanatory notes that accompany instruments, but it would be interesting to know more about the usual process for drafting and checking of explanatory notes. Are the minister and his officials able to set that detail for us? Basically, just how we go about explanatory notes, Mr Trowdry. Is that what you mean? Yes. Okay, then rather than me waffle on for a couple of minutes, I will go straight to Stephen, and he will probably go straight to Rachel. Thank you. Explanatory notes are part of the SSI, so they are drafted as part of the SSI, and they have the same checking process as the SSI. They are not done separately. The purpose of an explanatory note is to enable somebody who does not know what the instrument is about to pick it up, look at the explanatory note and understand what the instrument is about. Is there something that they are interested in? Is there something that they want to find out more about? Explanatory notes should be concise. They are not trying to explain every small part of the drafting. Obviously, there is an element of judgment involved that one person finds concise and helpful. Another person may prefer a little more information, or somebody may prefer a little less. On the whole, we get that judgment right. On occasions where there are different views, we are happy to consider that and take action if we think that we did not get the judgment quite right in a particular case. I was at the conveners, my annual visit to the conveners group. You might remember convening when I was there. There were two conveners who believed that explanatory notes were too detailed, and there was one convener who believed that it was not enough detail. In a lot of cases, it is in the eye of the beholder and what people actually want from it as well. That again is something that my officials try to get the balance to make sure that we are giving you enough detail. I mean that with all the publications that we do with bills as well, not just explanatory notes. Thank you very much. I have another question for you. When delegated powers, which are exercisable with devolved competence, are not mentioned on the face of an LCM, does that mean that the Scottish Government is content with the UK Government's proposal to take those powers? We asked this question in the context of recently considering the LCM for the UK Parliament's criminal justice bill, which did not mention anycoli or commencement powers, which confirm powers on UK ministers in the devolved areas. When it comes to LCMs, it has become increasingly challenging for us to manage that in particular. Partly that is because of the political situation—let's not kid ourselves on—there is a political situation there, but it is also partly the result of amendments that we get from Westminster Government themselves. I mentioned this the last time when we were going through the process of LCMs, which was the fact that I tried to look at it from the UK Government's perspective, because I am always coming here and I am going elsewhere and thinking from our perspective. When they are drafting legislation, it is not as if they are going out their way. They do not take into account the fact that how it is going to affect Scotland, but the problem for us is that we have to make sure that we take that into account. I do not know whether that answers your question, but we have been working recently with the Parliament on a way to deal with that. The Automated Vehicles Bill was an example where all kinds of road traffic act can fall out from the LCM itself. However, in order to try to balance out the time, we came up with a legislative LCM memo that we did not have the Government's position on it, but we did it within the timescales so that we could get that out there and do it within our timescales, but it still gives us the time as a Government to see what that impact is. On one hand, the committee quite rightly is asking me about the quality of the drafting, the answers and everything else that we are doing, but on the other hand, there is a timescale for everything as well. That is an example of a way of trying to make it easier for us to manage that. I do not know whether that is helpful for Mr Chowdry and his answer, but I will bring in Stephen again to sum up some of the other bits and pieces. In relation specifically to the criminal justice bill, I wonder if we can take that one away. Generally speaking, if there are powers for UK ministers to act in devoled areas, that triggers the requirement for an LCM, and the legislative consent memorandum should describe what those powers are and what the Scottish Government's position is on them. I think that I would need to take that one away and have a look at it if that is okay. We are happy to do that on that scenario, and the fact is that the LCM landscape is quite difficult, but I am trying to dispassionately go through it all and make sure that we just do our jobs. If our committee writes to the Westminster and they ignore it, what do we have to do? I am not telling me to go down and chain yourself to Downing Street or anything like that, but it is helpful when the committee does make any written appeal on our behalf. Although we work in a political environment, it is important that when we are trying to make things function and get the business done, it is important that we try to be adults about it. It is always helpful when the committee makes any intervention in those things, so I encourage you to continue to do so. To come back on the explanatory note points, I noted that you said some of it is down to the eye of the beholder. Across the Government, there are a lot of different ministers introducing lots of different bills, and I push a wee bit on what is done to ensure that there is a kind of common understanding of what is needed. Obviously, we are hearing some conveners think too much, too little, and the Parliament has the opportunity to say that, but we have certainly seen some things recently where there is a degree of variation. I know that there is a balance. Is there someone working across Government to ensure that all bills are— There is a standardised template. You will be glad to know that ministers do not sit there and decide what the accompanying documentation is. Do they look at those and sign them off before they introduce the bill? Yes, they do. It is what happens to make sure that everyone knows what the minimum standard is. I am less worried about there being too much information, and I think that the harder one is where there is not as much information. I was going to answer your question about Rachel's champion at the bit here, so I will let Rachel answer. Obviously, that sort of issue would be covered in guidance, but that is something that we would feed back. Recently, I am aware that there was a question raised and a response given in an explanatory note amended by way of correction slip. That will be fed back that is something that we will raise to remind people what is the purpose of an explanatory note to think about what information needs to be included in there. When points are raised, we feed them back. That is helpful. I will add something else on the LCMs as well, but I will see if they are on this particular area. Yes, yes. No problem, okay? I think that you were just about to say minister—sorry, good morning minister, I think that you were just about to say that there is a template which people follow. Does the minister sign the document off before the minister goes to somebody within your team, whether that is Stephen or Rachel, to cast an eye over it just to make sure that it is following within that, or is it left to each minister or department? Parliamentary liaison unit Stephen runs as party to everything that goes on, all the legislation that goes through the Parliament, so they will be the ones that will be oversight of just about everything. Stephen, if you want to add anything to that? We do not check every instrument. There are too many of them literally for us to do that, but we have in the past done a sample exercise, particularly when this committee has raised concerns. I think that previously it was in relation to policy notes, so that is something that we can look at again if there are concerns from the committee about the quality of the information. The explanatory notes mean that there is a template, there is guidance about what is expected, I think that those examples that you are giving us are really helpful for us to be able to say, along with this slightly abstract guidance, here is a practical example of what the committee was unhappy with, so let us avoid that in the future going forward. As Rachel said, there is a second pair of eyes in SGLD who looks at it, so there is quite a high degree of guidance and quality assurance already in place. Thank you. Before I bring you in, I will just, by way of a wee bit of balance on this, this is the first time for quite some time that this committee has raised the issue of the explanatory notes. I think that, in fairness, they have been fine in terms of the instruments, but because this one was quite obvious that there was a lack of detail, so it is not as if this is a recurring issue when it comes to explanatory notes or certainly it is not a trend, so it is just a bit of a wargilyw quite stark, so just to make you aware of that. Steven says that we will take that on board and we try to use these sessions as a way of us trying to see how we can do things better. I was just following up on the question around LCMs. I think that part of the challenge is where the Scottish Government says nothing or is silent on the powers. It is just whether we should assume that means you are content or whether it is just that capacity question where you run out of capacity or time to query every bit of a—are you prioritising or is it where you say nothing about a power? We can take it that you are content and happy with it. I think that every LCM, if you have not heard anything doing, the Government's position is not available until the Government has made its position clear. Most of the time, if you are hearing nothing, it will be because—if I use the automated vehicles as an example, that was quite complex and quite detailed. By the time you go through it, it took quite a while for us to get the detail. If you took the assumption that we were happy with it while that was not the case, it was just that we were getting our ducks in a row so that we could make the argument that there were certain kickbacks that the UK Government had not assumed would be a problem for the Scottish Government. I guess that once you have commented, is that a complete comment and that is you finished in relation to that LCM? The position can be pretty flexible, as you will be aware, because there could be negotiations between officials, there could be negotiations between ministers over that period and that position could change. I think that there has been a couple of LCMs, I cannot think off the top of my head, where our position has actually changed because we have negotiated, the UK Government has accepted our position and we have moved on. There have been other times where the UK Government has not accepted our position and we have had to say that we are coming out with the LCM saying that we are not happy. I guess that moving forward, would you make more of a conscious effort to say where there are things that you are happy with so that we would know that there are things that we need to look at, where you were silent? Your stuff tends to provide a commentary on the things that you are most concerned about and then say nothing at all about the other bits. We have to make a kind of... I think that you have been a wee bit unfair because I do not think that that is the case. That might be the political narrative between ourselves if we started to go down a political argument, but within the actual process itself, there has been plenty of times where the Government has made its position clear that we are supportive of the LCM and want to make the changes. I am saying, for example, around commencement powers or things that would... Obviously, even within things that you do not agree with, there can be some of the powers that would not be a cause for concern. We are trying to work out which bits to focus on. I think that there have been a number of examples recently as well where there have been parts that we have not been happy with and that we have made everybody aware of, the parts that we are not happy with, but there are other parts that we were quite happy with. I actually read everything that goes in with the LCM, but I cannot at this moment think off the top of my head, but Stephen, perhaps you could give me some examples to back me up here. I was not aware that this was an issue, to be honest, so it is something that we are happy to take away from. If, as I said previously, there were devolved powers in the UK bill, then we would expect to set out the Scottish Government's position on them. I do not know whether that is an issue of whether supplementary LCMs, where we might have said in the original LCM what the position was on parts of the bill, and then an updated LCM does not recover them because they have been addressed already, or whether its powers are not actually touching on devolved areas. If we can take it away and have a look into it for you, we would be happy to get back with more. You know, that is fine. Good morning again. The Scottish Government has made commitments to amend delegated powers at stage 2 of a number of bills recently, which are going through Parliament. For example, the Regulation of Legal Services Scotland Bill, which the committee has scrutinised and reported on at stage 1 since the last appearance. Given the potential significance of the amendment of delegated powers at stage 2, can the minister commit to allowing more than the minimum time permitted by standing orders between the submission of supplementary delegated powers when random after stage 2 and the scheduling of stage 3 to allow the committee sufficient time to consider report to Parliament on any new amended delegated powers? I am always looking for the hard and easy way to do business. If I could find that easy way and get it to you beforehand, I would, but unfortunately we do not live in that perfect world and that is not as simple for us to achieve. However possible, we will try and get the information to you as quickly as we can, but it can be, as we have already heard today, quite complex. I do not know if Stephen Watt wants to add anything with regard to that. Improvements that we have made in this over the years have come up in previous inquiries from the Parliament into the legislative process that delegated powers in the Lord from committee did not always have as much time as it would like between stage 2 and stage 3. We have given a commitment that we try to meet to write to the committee. If there is going to be any significant powers amended at stage 3, we have as much information about that as possible. In the scheduling of stage 3, we try to ensure that there is at least one session of DPLRC before stage 3 takes place. I have a moment of watching out between stage 1 debate and stage 2. For example, if we take the example of the Regulatory Legal Services Bill, during that debate, the minister committed to bringing forward a number of amendments, some of them relating to delegated power. Now, we as a committee do not normally take evidence after stage 1, but on this time, I think both myself and my convener made the point that we might need to take evidence to see what the professional bodies feel about that. That takes time just to give a week to be able to write to the Law Society, to write to the Lord President for us to then weigh that evidence and be able to report in an appropriate way. As minister, what discussions do you have with your colleagues when it is particularly legislation that is looking for fairly major amendments? You have brought up something again, which is a classic example of why those committee sessions are good, of something that we have not really discussed. Possibly, if you give me the opportunity to maybe have a look at that, Mr Balfour, I will get back to you at a later date. Not too late, I did. Moving on, what reflections have you had with the Scottish Government? I see some of the concerns raised in relation to delegated powers, so I think that you have heard from not just this committee, but others saying that bills are moving quite down with a lot of delegated powers. Is that something that is a concern to you? Is it something that is discussed with the Scottish Government? There is not a trend that I tend to use the buzzword of today towards us having more delegated powers for legislation, but what tends to be happening is that, in various bills, there is the classic example of co-design of the bill and making sure that it actually does what we want it to do. In fact, from your and my point of view, I think that both of us were in the Social Security Committee in the last session where we did the Social Security Bill. I do not know if you were on at that stage, Mr Balfour. I think that the way we did it in that bill was a perfect example of how you can make it work in such a way that you can actually deliver what you are saying. At the end of the day, with the public, we can sit here and talk about legislation all day for hours, but the public just believes in delivery. If we use the Social Security Act and how we went about that as well—in fact, it will go as far as our former colleague on the same committee, Professor Tomkins, said that the bill and the work that we did during that period was a perfect example of how he was on the committee at the time. I do not know if you had to declare a say that he had to do with some of the work, but he used that as an example. There are certain times when you do that when it actually delivers what we want to do and that it is flexible for us all. You are the position minister that we are not having more, if you like, framework bills. My impression—I am happy to be correct—that within this session of Parliament, for the last three years, we have seen a lot more framework bills than we did in previous parliamentary sessions. I had a fair idea that that question would come up because the political narrative has been down that route as well. We have checked that and we have not had any more than normal. It is not any more when we discuss it as well as the UK Government as well. I know that everybody gets a bit kind of upset when we start doing like for like, but I am comparing it to another Parliament and its processes with regards to that as well. On the whole, we actually are not doing that. However, if you listen to the discussion in Parliament, you would think that something entirely different, but it is not the case. To me, it is actually not a political issue. For me, the concern is about Parliament having it to say. To me, you made the case for that in your own comments, because politicians can spend all day talking about legislation. Most of my constituents do not have the time, although they want to see delivery and to see things work. They do not have the time to go through legislation letter by letter or by word to make sure that it works. Ultimately, if the legislation does not work, you do not get the delivery. To me, the big concern that is coming down the line, although there might not be more framework bills, is that they are on more substantive topics. Things like agricultural funding are very complicated. There will be a lot of secondary legislation needed to make that work. National care service is exceptionally complicated. There will need to be a lot of secondary legislation to make that work. I am concerned whether the Parliament as a whole has the capacity to deal with that level of secondary legislation on what is going to be controversial topics. We have seen that with the regulation of legal services. People have strong views on things that are being left to secondary legislation. Is the committee going to have people in every week to talk about each and every one of those that are contentious in terms of policy? Is that something that the Government has thought about how that is going to work in practice? To answer your final question at the end there, we will work with the committee to do whatever work we have to do to do the work of Parliament, as we always do. I do not agree with your point, but I take on board what you are saying. My argument would be, if I use the social security example, that the secondary legislation in working with stakeholder groups would make sure that that is what made the difference. There is always going to be, even when you get a broad church of stakeholder groups into one room, there is always going to be those who feel that they are not getting their point across. On the whole, when that process happens, that is to give us that flexibility. My argument would be that that gives us the flexibility for those who are involved in the delivery of the process or on the receiving end of delivery of the process are the ones that are being consulted with. By taking on board the workload issue, we will look at that for a future chat that we have with ourselves and see how that would look when we go further down the line. It is a difficult one to deal with, but to try to make sure that the committee feels that we are taking on board what you are saying, I am quite happy to have a look at that. Thank you, because I mean as possible that two or three of those could come together. We talked about how many SSIs are expected before this summer, but you could go through periods where there are real peaks in what has come through the department. It is not just this committee, it is the other subject committees as well. We are then trying to look at other new legislation. I hear what you are saying around the flexibility and that some people are always going to be unhappy. Do you recognise that there is a challenge where discussions are taking place away from the Parliament? There are stakeholders and some people who worry that those with louder voices or who are able to lobby harder or who have more professional support might have the chance—or may politically be perceived to be closer to the Government—to have a better chance of getting what they want through that process than they would if it went to Parliament as a whole and was subjected to the full scrutiny of primary led. I think that the Scottish Government in these processes tends to make sure that it listens to—when we say that we are going to listen to everybody and we are going to quote his eye and make sure that everybody's voices are listened to, whether the conclusions are always what every individual wants is always the argument. For me, the important thing would always be that we make sure that we deliver on what we have promised in that legislation. Do you recognise there is a tension there? Do you think that it works well? I think that there is a political tension. I do not think that it is a process tension. I think that there is a political tension there. I take the agricultural and rural communities bill as an example. We have a GIQ that sets out that 70 per cent of funding for that would go into tier 1 and 2 as direct payments. That decision has been taken by the Government before the stakeholder consultation formally begins. That is possible while the bill is going through, but it is not possible to get some of the other information that you would normally expect from the bill on the details. The Government is picking and choosing which bill to write. I know, but it is never a great idea to write everything in the face of the bill if we take that argument to the next level. There is a balance and a tension. I believe that there is a political tension, but there is a balance and a political tension. I believe that you have to be very careful because once it is on the face of a bill, it is law. If you find that something at a later date does not work as well as you thought it was going to work and that is not down to any drafting issues or anything else, it is just that it is maybe a clumsy piece of law, then you have not got the flexibility to be able to change that. The last message is that you can put it on the face of the bill when it goes through Parliament and retain the flexibility to change it later and that that is different from not putting it on the face of the bill at all and leaving it to secondary legislation? I think that you and I are playing out the political pressure. It is not political. I do not think that framework bills are good in any Parliament. I think that there are times when they can be used, but I think that you have to have enough information on the face of the bill for parliamentarians and the public to know what their national Parliament is passing before people cast a vote and not just to say that the rest will come later once it is agreed. I do not think that that is a good way to work. That is your opinion and my opinion is that it gives us the flexibility to be able to deliver to the public and to engage with the public through the process. There is a philosophical argument that you could do that consultation before the bill was brought and then have that still have a flexibility, but I do not think that this is actually, I mean, I think that I am a bit like my colleague Mr Mundell. I think that purely on a philosophical view, there is a tension there. I do not think that it is a political one. I think that I would have the same concerns about what sometimes happens at Westminster, but you could do the consultation before the bill comes to Parliament, so Parliament still gets that final say yes or no. Listen, as I say, I still believe that it is more of political tension, but that is my personal view. Yourself, Mr Balfa and Mr Mundell have already expressed your view on it. I think that we are going to have difficulty actually agreeing on that. Let's move on to something that we can all agree on. The committee was contacted by the Lord President during its consideration of the Delegated Powers in the Regulation of Legal Services Bill, which had misgivings about some of the proposals to delegate powers to his office. I wonder if you can help me out here. What procedures are followed when a bill is being drafted and a decision is made to delegate power, particularly when a power is being delegated to a body that is not within the Scottish Government? Alas, Stephen. I think that in general terms, we would expect there to be engagement with the relevant bodies about the approach being taken, but I would have to take that specific case away and find out what actually happened on it. I think that I would be helpful because it seems to be a real... It's not often you get the Lord President, the Law Society and the Faculty of Advocates to re-came and give evidence to his committee, which seems to be almost taken by surprise about what was still there, so it would be helpful if you could come back to us on that one, and with that I will leave my questions. Okay, okay, thank you. Do we have any other questions? No, okay. So, with that, I thank the minister and his officials for their evidence. This morning, the committee made for the letter with any additional questions stemming from the session. So thank you very much, everyone, and I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave the room. Under agenda item number three, we are considering the instruments subject to the affirmative procedure. No points have been raised on the draft registration of social workers and social service workers in Care Service Scotland amendment regulations 2024. Is the committee content with this instrument? Yes. Under agenda item number four, we are considering an instrument subject to the negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSI 2024-74. Is the committee content with this instrument? Yes. Thank you, and with that, I'll move the committee into private.