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However, much to my regret, this Government was not in office in 2002-03; it did not come into power until 2007, by which time the share that local authorities commanded of the total Scottish budget had fallen to 33.4 per cent.
Thank you, Presiding Officer.Transformation training means transferring skills and being retrained from, for example, the automotive industry into the oil and gas industry.
Governance arrangements also matter for the perceived independence of the Fiscal Commission, so the mechanism for appointment needs to command confidence. There must never be a circumstance in which a commissioner acts as an adviser to the Government, as that would conflict directly with the commissioner’s role as scrutineer.
We welcome those policies, but the issue is their practical application all the way down the chain of command when someone puts their hand up, points the finger and speaks up and speaks out.
There is also a second dimension, which it was rumoured we would hear more about today, in the form of publication by the United Kingdom Government of a command paper on institutional reform in England.
Notwithstanding the comments just made about the parity model, Professor Spicker said in his submission that the UK Government’s command paper said that there should be uniform terms and rates of benefit for all benefits.
We have a border force—the border policing command—that is part of the group. In addition, we have HMRC; the Department for Work and Pensions; the NHS counter fraud service; and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which sends people up from London to support the group.
From briefings that I have heard from the Law Society of Scotland, it seems that it does not think that the Public Petitions Committee of this Parliament is a grand enough committee to command the Lord President’s attention.
My final point relates to accountability. Although “Our Place in Time” commands the wide support of the sector, as things stand we have no indication of who will be tasked with ensuring that outcomes are met.