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Yet, in this debate, Frank McAveety has spent the best part of his speech criticising us for raising an issue that is within the competence of the devolved Scottish Parliament.
It also offers us an opportunity to examine the very real effects that the SNP's proposals for a local income tax would have. At best, the nationalists' attacks on council tax and their proposals for a local income tax are disingenuous.
No parliamentary committee, even with the best of intentions, would carry any public confidence in its inquiry or in its conclusions for the simple reason that we are all politicians and are not qualified to undertake such an inquiry.
We want something to delay that, to allow a client to obtain advice on whether a debt payment programme would be the best way forward. That would save the client's house.
My concern about leaving the matter to the subject committees and telling them to do their best is that we would have a continuation of the existing ad hocery.
We can never agree a timetable, because the Westminster timetable is fluid, as is our own legislative timetable. We can agree as best we can an indicative timetable, but we never set down a hard-and-fast timetable, because such matters are by definition fluid.
However, as John Home Robertson rightly says, the objective is to get into the building, assess how we are doing and do our best effectively to manage the visitor flows, which will be a far bigger issue than the chamber audience will be.