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Thank you. My second question is related to the ways in which the deals might not work so well, such as when projects get stuck. I am thinking specifically about the Sheriffhall roundabout project. When I speak to local councillors about the project, they say that they cannot do anything to change, fix or unstick it because it is part of the UK city region deal and the UK Government needs to do that. However, we had the Secretary for State for Scotland in to give evidence and he said that the power to make a decision to move forward or to change the project sits with the Scottish Government. There is a lot of finger pointing. That is where collaboration goes wrong—when it is always somebody else’s fault or responsibility.

The evidence that we have collected as a committee suggests that the relevant report and the decision on that project are sitting on the transport secretary’s desk. The DFM said earlier that there is no desire to hold up things, but that project has been in limbo for months and months. Does the Scottish Government have the power to make that project work or to redirect funds if it decides that it is not to go ahead? What is the hold up?

I would love things to get moving with Sheriffhall roundabout in whatever direction. I might write to you on that point and to ask whether facilitation could be undertaken to improve that collaboration.

Minister, thank you for coming back to the committee. Last week, my questions were about the particular SSI on the registers. Thank you for the reassurance in your letter on the mechanisms for correction, accuracy and third-party data and for accepting that no system is perfect or free from error and that bad actors can abuse any system. I am content to support the progression of the instruments, but will the minister or his officials commit to coming back to the committee or its successor in 18 months to two years, to provide an update on how things have gone, whether the corrections procedure is working and how many people have required to use it?

I will follow on from Ash Regan’s line of questioning. One thing that we are looking at is scrutiny and how all the commissioners fit in the landscape. Parliament watches Government, you watch the MSPs and it sounds as if the Parliament and the Standards Commission watch you. We assume that the voters are watching the Parliament.

On the place where you sit in the landscape, I think that Dr Ian Elliott said that you guys are a sort of a fourth branch of government—you are the ones who watch the watcher. Do you see the other SPCB-supported bodies as sitting within that same space of watching us in public life or, from your perspective, is what they do quite different from what you do?

That is fine. I probably misunderstood. Thank you for clearing that up.

You adjudicate only on councillors and one other group.

The Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee covers MSPs and lobbyists.

If we are looking at consolidating or restructuring the framework, the adjudication function needs to be separate. That does not necessarily need to be done by a commissioner, though. Maybe the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities could do it. What are your thoughts on that?

I will follow up on that a little, because the committee wants to look at the overall framework. Clearly, we do not have a blank slate, but I think that we need to look at the landscape with fresh eyes, as if we were designing something new, so your suggestion that we would not necessarily end up where we are now if we were starting with a blank slate is interesting. I will take that on board, and we can all think about whether there is a gap in relation to the independence of the process of how our Parliament scrutinises itself. As I said earlier, part of the reason for examining the framework is to find out where there are gaps, so that we can improve the system. It is certainly not solely about affordability, cost and so on: it has also got to be about making sure that it works and that it builds trust in public life.

I hypothesised with Mr Bruce about the formation of a larger body that might be called the office of trust in public life, or something, which might encompass the work of the Standards Commission, the Ethical Standards Commissioner and the Scottish Information Commissioner as well as, possibly, ombudsmen and so on. Can you imagine such a thing? Are those bodies all positioned in the same space in terms of public scrutiny, or are they very disparate?

Of course. In addition to looking for gaps, we are looking at whether there are ways of consolidating or imitating models that are used in other countries. We want to ensure that we have all the functions that we require to maintain standards in public life, with the system performing as it should, but we are looking at whether those functions need to be in quite so many places. Could you imagine the investigative and adjudicative functions being part of the same body, or is it really important that there be separate bodies?

I will come back to that in a second. In relation to public trust, I will loop back to the earlier discussion about your objections around the potential combination of an adjudication function and an investigative function. Your objection to that proposal seemed to be not so much structural but about routes of appeal and public trust. If we were to come up with a framework that combined those functions, provided that public trust could be maintained and there were straightforward one-stop shop or portal routes for appeal, would that structure even be feasible, or is there some major objection to that?

That is brilliant. I liked what you said about the portal and the one-stop shop. The committee should continue to consider that, including whether that might mean creating, for example, an office of public trust that has all those things, so that people do not need to know whether they have to go to the ombudsman or the Standards Commission, for example.