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Finally, one thing that kept coming up was the exclusion process. We heard from Dr Brown Swan, who highlighted the fact that the exclusion process lacks transparency and proper procedures, creating “uncertainty and confusion” for both legislators and business. Even those involved in business, such as Marc Strathie, raised concerns, highlighting that businesses face “uncertainty”, particularly around the exclusion process.

Is it not the case that the internal market act has created uncertainty for business, instead of the certainty that it claims to bring?

On that point, we have received evidence that the act itself

“positions the devolved governments as junior partners”.

Mr Kerr seems to think that it is a good idea for us to be the junior partners, but—as you rightly said, cabinet secretary—that is not the way in which the devolved Assembly in Wales and the Parliament in Scotland were set up. That is not the way that it was meant to be. We were told of the idea that we were meant to be equals in the whole process. I do not know whether Mr Kerr is saying that Scotland should go back in its box. Surely we should look to the history of this place and say that the internal market act is an attack against our Parliament, in particular by the previous Government, although who knows what the Labour UK Government is going to do? I do not think that it knows.

You will be aware of Mr Mason’s and Ms Haughey’s observations on commissioners in general and the amount of them that we have. Currently, Scotland has the equivalent of a rather large MGM musical chorus line of commissioners, while comparable nations—I am thinking of Ireland—have centralised the many commissioners’ offices into, say, four main ones. New Zealand, which has a population of 5.2 million, has a children’s commissioner, but it is proposing to merge its office with one of its three other bodies, and Denmark has done the same and consolidated them.

I am just saying that we do things differently. Could your office make an argument for working within a consolidated grouping, which would keep the parliamentary authorities happy in their on-going look? That might take you away from political questions about the office costing quite a bit of money and people asking whether there might be other ways of managing things. Could such reform be considered? I know that I am almost asking for turkeys to vote for Christmas here, but could that be a way forward?

One of the examples that I gave was the children’s commissioner in New Zealand, which exists separately but will be merging with others. Other countries that have similar values and ideals to ours are clearly having these conversations. You will understand why the public will be asking some of the same questions that Ms Haughey has asked about what you are delivering. I am all for delivery, and if I can find a better way to get you to do the work that you need to do, I would be all for having that conversation.

Thank you.

Since we are sharing experiences from childhood, back in my day, if you had free school dinners, you would be split up from everyone else, so things have moved on quite a bit since I was a young person who had to deal with that situation.

Programmes are already happening with third-party stakeholders, one of which is the work with young women that the SFA and the Union of European Football Associations are doing with Disney. Football is not part of that; I think that it is called “Disney Princesses”, or something like that, but it is about the whole experience and getting young girls into a room to talk and do things generally.

All those schemes are happening, but as far as I am concerned, the issue is very similar to what we were talking about in our previous conversation; it is all about getting the data and information together so that we can get to and engage with these young people and move on such ideas, so that we will not be sitting here in for four or five years’ time, saying, “We can’t reach these young people.”

Thank you.

We used to talk about hard-to-reach parents and children. We do not use that language any more, but those are the ones who are not engaging. Mums and dads are not joining the parent council and are not engaged with the school. I agree that those are the people we need to get to. How do we get to them? How do we get to the young person who might be bright and gifted but is from one of the poorer areas in Scotland? We are not even getting the chance to give them the opportunity of a university place because, even from primary school, it becomes challenging and difficult for them.

You have already answered this question three or four times, but it seems that it is now our practice to ask the same questions three or four times as we go along. Is the SSI not an example of the Government seeing an issue with the sharing of data and finding a solution? When answering that question, please do not blink or shake your head, or the convener will ask you outside for a square go.