Chamber and committees

On the more positive side, what if the said individual, after seven years, is doing a fantastic job and has all the leadership requirements that Mr Kerr is looking for? All of a sudden, they cannot stand any more and continue with the job that they are doing. Would that not limit the individuals, in terms of people with the ability who might want to go for the role?

From my perspective, it seems that you have already cut out quite a few people who would actually go for the role. I remember my time in public appointments in the local council, where a submarine commander applied for every senior job in the council. I am not sure whether he had the leadership qualities, or whether he could pick up the bins on time, but the whole idea is that there are people who have leadership qualities and could possibly bring something other than education experience to the role.

I appreciate that I have gone off at a tangent from my initial question, but Mr Kerr knows what I am like. There are other people who may have the leadership qualities for the role. Would your amendments not limit the potential for qualifications Scotland to appoint a dynamic person who had the skills to take the organisation forward?

Thank you, convener.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. It is funny; no matter how long I have been here, it never ceases to amaze me how we can all sit through the same evidence sessions and have vastly different views on what the actual evidence said.

At the very first meeting that we had on this subject—which was on 6 March, with the academics—Professor Thomas Horsley said that the UK internal market act framework was imposed without consensus from all the constituent parts. That backs up a lot of what you have said today. He also said that the UK Government has a problematic role as both regulator and central gatekeeper, which is another key issue that a lot of people have brought up in evidence. Professor Jo Hunt said that, with the UK internal market act, there was hasty implementation without proper stakeholder consultation, and that the top-down control undermines the devolution principle—and the evidence goes on.

The point that I am making is that it is amazing how we can sit through all this evidence and all come up with different things—but that is politics for you; people will do that.

What I got from businesses, particularly at last week’s meeting, was that they just want politicians to get on with it and tell them the rules and regulations. They see some problems with the UK internal market act, and they see the UK as a massive market and as part of their business, but they just want us to get on with it. I asked whether they believed that politicians should just get on with working together to create common frameworks, do exactly as Mr Harvie has said, and negotiate—a word that seems to be foreign throughout the world these days—and come to some kind of compromise. Surely that is the sensible way to go about business—the sensible way to do this—and the evidence that we have received backs that up.

Finally, one thing that kept coming up was the exclusion process. We heard from Dr Brown Swan, who highlighted the fact that the exclusion process lacks transparency and proper procedures, creating “uncertainty and confusion” for both legislators and business. Even those involved in business, such as Marc Strathie, raised concerns, highlighting that businesses face “uncertainty”, particularly around the exclusion process.

Is it not the case that the internal market act has created uncertainty for business, instead of the certainty that it claims to bring?

On that point, we have received evidence that the act itself

“positions the devolved governments as junior partners”.

Mr Kerr seems to think that it is a good idea for us to be the junior partners, but—as you rightly said, cabinet secretary—that is not the way in which the devolved Assembly in Wales and the Parliament in Scotland were set up. That is not the way that it was meant to be. We were told of the idea that we were meant to be equals in the whole process. I do not know whether Mr Kerr is saying that Scotland should go back in its box. Surely we should look to the history of this place and say that the internal market act is an attack against our Parliament, in particular by the previous Government, although who knows what the Labour UK Government is going to do? I do not think that it knows.

You will be aware of Mr Mason’s and Ms Haughey’s observations on commissioners in general and the amount of them that we have. Currently, Scotland has the equivalent of a rather large MGM musical chorus line of commissioners, while comparable nations—I am thinking of Ireland—have centralised the many commissioners’ offices into, say, four main ones. New Zealand, which has a population of 5.2 million, has a children’s commissioner, but it is proposing to merge its office with one of its three other bodies, and Denmark has done the same and consolidated them.

I am just saying that we do things differently. Could your office make an argument for working within a consolidated grouping, which would keep the parliamentary authorities happy in their on-going look? That might take you away from political questions about the office costing quite a bit of money and people asking whether there might be other ways of managing things. Could such reform be considered? I know that I am almost asking for turkeys to vote for Christmas here, but could that be a way forward?

One of the examples that I gave was the children’s commissioner in New Zealand, which exists separately but will be merging with others. Other countries that have similar values and ideals to ours are clearly having these conversations. You will understand why the public will be asking some of the same questions that Ms Haughey has asked about what you are delivering. I am all for delivery, and if I can find a better way to get you to do the work that you need to do, I would be all for having that conversation.

Thank you.

Since we are sharing experiences from childhood, back in my day, if you had free school dinners, you would be split up from everyone else, so things have moved on quite a bit since I was a young person who had to deal with that situation.

Programmes are already happening with third-party stakeholders, one of which is the work with young women that the SFA and the Union of European Football Associations are doing with Disney. Football is not part of that; I think that it is called “Disney Princesses”, or something like that, but it is about the whole experience and getting young girls into a room to talk and do things generally.

All those schemes are happening, but as far as I am concerned, the issue is very similar to what we were talking about in our previous conversation; it is all about getting the data and information together so that we can get to and engage with these young people and move on such ideas, so that we will not be sitting here in for four or five years’ time, saying, “We can’t reach these young people.”

Thank you.