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I am concerned that that occurred and it would be wrong of me to say otherwise. The issue was brought to my attention within a few days of my coming back into post, and my question to officials and to the lawyers was how that could have happened.

In a moment, I will bring in Douglas Kerr to give some background to how that came about, but we take the matter seriously and I do not in any way want to be seen to be making excuses for what occurred. It is clear that a sizeable proportion of the errors pertain to a particular set of regulations relating to pensions, which is a very complex area, and there was another similarly complex area with an evolving situation of policy change. That has prompted us to go away and look at what more we must do. I will come to that in a moment but, if it would be useful, I will ask Douglas to explain the background to what occurred.

I will bring in Douglas Kerr to answer that.

I absolutely agree that committees have a crucial role in scrutinising delegated powers in bills. Since April, the Government has consistently provided more than the minimum amount of time that is required between bill stages, including having a voluntary 14-day gap between stages 2 and 3—a period that exceeds by four days the period set out in standing orders. We are trying to do everything that we can to support further scrutiny, but I understand the frustrations that committees sometimes feel about finding time for that, given their other workloads.

One thing that I will be doing during the next few weeks—I would have started to do it by now, but for the fact that we are spending a lot of time in the chamber because of stage 3s—is meeting with each convener to hear of any concerns that they have.

I recall that, when I was previously in this role, towards the end of that session of Parliament, I worked very closely with a Conservative convener of one of the committees to reorder some of the work that it had coming to it, because he felt that that would allow the committee to complete its work programme. We did that successfully. In situations in which I can work with my officials to accommodate requests from committees, I give it assurance that we will look to do that to try to help to manage their workloads.

As of now, we are anticipating circa 151 SSIs and four dual-Parliament SIs to be laid before the Parliament dissolves. I should add that we are currently going through an additional triaging process on several other instruments, so the number will rise. That is positively comparable with this point during previous Parliamentary sessions. By way of example, in session 5, 259 SIs were laid during the same time period. I will give the breakdown, if it is helpful, Mr Balfour: there will be 53 affirmative SSIs, two made affirmative instruments, five super-affirmative instruments and 77 negative instruments, while 18 instruments will be laid with no procedure.

We are acutely aware of managing workloads, which is what I think that you are getting at. The officials work closely with committee clerks and we scan ahead to see what the workload will be. As an experienced committee member, you will appreciate that, sometimes, committees take on additional work at short notice, which complicates things.

I will give you the committee-by-committee breakdown: out of the 151 SSIs, we expect the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee to receive 24 instruments; the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee to receive 23 SSIs; the Criminal Justice Committee will receive 20; Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee will have 17; the Finance and Public Administration Committee will have 12; the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee will have 12; and the Social Justice and Social Security Committee will have 10. The remaining committees will have eight or fewer.

I will pass that to Claire Trail, who is the expert on this.

I recognised that description, because this SSI fell in my previous tenure as the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans. I am just as keen as anyone to see this dealt with, and I recall a commitment that I made in 2019. My understanding is that, following an evidence session in April, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands provided a letter to the convener outlining the situation and the next steps with regard to the order under section 93 of the Scotland Act 1998, which will correct the previous order. At the time, some complexities that related to interaction with another proposed instrument were still to be resolved. However, I am pleased to advise—this is hot off the press—that those issues have since been resolved, allowing the process to move forward from that sticking point, and I can confirm to the committee that, since then, official-level agreement has been reached in relation to the order and that the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands has sent a letter to the UK Government this week seeking in-principal ministerial agreement to make the order.

There is that additional level of checking—in other words, a fresh pair of eyes, which I think that we would all agree is a useful exercise. You are right to say that all legislation is technical, but it can be very complex, too, as was the case with the pension regs. That is why it is important to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at this at some stage in the process. At some point, you will see only what you think you see in front of you, so you need an experienced pair of fresh eyes looking at it, too.

I should also expand on Douglas Kerr’s point about additional training. We are actively looking at making available to colleagues a very specific SI-related training stream, because we absolutely take seriously the committee’s concerns in this instance.

And whether it will give additionality to what is already in place, do you mean?

We can happily write to you on that. I just want to get across the point that we take this matter extremely seriously, and I expect to see our performance improve from that of the first quarter.