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I have always had an interest in your work with regard to children and young people and underrepresented groups. We have spoken in the past about the challenge of getting those groups to understand their rights. Will you give us an update on where you are on that now and how you see that developing, rather than the retrospect that we have in the report?

09:15

From the report, at a very simplistic level, it seems that your expenditure has gone up, the reserves are, in effect, gone and savings are immediately absorbed because you have an increased workload. Would it be fair to say that? It is worth a conversation—or maybe something slightly stronger than that.

Like many staff, your investigators and staff are sometimes at the front edge of that.

Before I close this part of the meeting, is there anything else that you would like to add?

No problem, Annie—technology is what it is.

Commissioner, you have talked about the budgetary challenge—your resource challenge. You have a request in at the moment and were gleeful at the passing of the budget last night, although the funds have probably come from somewhere else. Is the resourcing model working and will it work going forward, or should the Parliament and the Scottish Government look at the model for the commissioner?

Our next agenda item is consideration of the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 (Consequential Provision) Regulations 2026, which are subject to the affirmative procedure.

We have an opportunity to take evidence from the minister before we consider whether to recommend to the Parliament that the Scottish statutory instrument be approved.

I welcome to the meeting Graeme Dey, Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, who is joined today by Scottish Government officials Andrew Proudfoot, who is the Parliament team leader, Parliament and legislation unit, and Rebecca Reid, who is a solicitor. Good morning.

I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Again, we find ourselves in an interesting position in which we are invited not to put in the bill something that we recognise as important. My amendment 218 would require the Scottish Parliament to review the act. Of course, any committee of the Parliament has an innate right to investigate anything within its remit that it wants to. However, the purpose behind the amendment is to mark the importance of the issue. I am always cautious of the dangers of binding a future Parliament—I agree with Ross Greer on that—but I am more than happy to bind a future Government.

The minister is right that there are two aspects. There is an overarching responsibility relating to how the bill is progressing, but there is also an obligation, through post-legislative scrutiny, to drill down into what is happening with a piece of legislation and to consider whether it is operating as the Parliament envisaged when it was passed, or whether unknown unknowns or known unknowns have come into view.

To be fair, all the amendments in the group articulate a review of the bill. The minister rightly has concerns with regard to amendments 219 and 220, because they would overlap with reviews that are being considered or other elements that will be looked at. However, it is important to have a review because, as we have heard, there are areas in which the bill has not yet envisaged reviews taking place and that the minister would like to happen.

Albeit that my amendment 218 would place a burden on the Scottish Parliament, the advantage is that it would place a duty on others to instigate the review. The questions that the members of the committee that would do that would ask themselves are articulated at a very high level in the amendment, which would allow that committee to scrutinise as it wishes to do.

That intervention is incredibly helpful. If amendments 219 and 220 appear in the bill at stage 2, that will allow progress towards what I hope will be a cross-Parliament agreement on post-legislative scrutiny.

With that, I seek to withdraw my amendment 218.

Amendment 218, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 219 moved—[Ross Greer].

I am not being in any way disrespectful to Police Scotland, but is the challenge not that it will always be easiest for a provider to continue with an existing process? The amendment suggests that we shift the argument to say, in effect, that a police station should become the last resort, and that every other option should be considered first. I think that that needs to happen. I accept the minister’s articulate discussion of the issue and I note that the group that she mentioned is meeting, but is this not fundamentally about flipping the question over and challenging Police Scotland on why it could not facilitate the use of, for example, a hospital or a house? I realise that weekends and evenings will be difficult times, but if we agree that the use of a police station should be the exception rather than the rule, how long does the minister envisage that it will take to reach that position?