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I cannot comment on the timetable for future legislation—that timetable will be made available after the summer recess. However, I am clear that we should first tidy up the bureaucracy and the governance of Scotland's marine waters.
I would like to put on record the fact that I have arranged to go to Brussels in the first week of the recess to pick up a few general transport issues, particularly on EU funding.
I now bring the meeting to a close. Because of the recess, our next meeting will be on 21 April, when we expect to hear oral evidence on the impact of welfare reform and children’s services.
Without doubt, we are moving from recession into recovery, and one of the challenges of that period will be to ensure that, as new economic opportunities emerge, we are able to support individuals to share in them.
In a second, I will run through some of the things that we are doing to ensure that we are focusing on that as much as we need to.I think that you are right that much of the discussion that we have had around digital in Scotland to date has been around infrastructure. There is a very good reason for that, which is that the infrastructure has been lacking.
If GDP is in decline or is negative and we are in recession, those are headline figures. Economists know that GDP consists of a complex set of things that are rather strange.
There will be a meeting in Scotland, which many countries from across Europe will attend, before the end of the summer recess—I cannot quite summon to mind the exact date.
To be sure of having a bill that is ready to go through Parliament, a member will have to come to us at least 12 months before whatever date you set as the cut-off date. I appreciate that you might not wish to comment on some issues.
If the consideration for a transaction was contingent on a certain event occurring, that would be one of the reasons why we would allow deferment until that contingency occurred in the future. We would take payment at the date that the contingency occurred rather than at the date of the transaction.