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No, it is not 100 per cent on cities. When I was on the cycling, walking and buses cross-party group in the previous session, I found it to be quite Edinburgh-centric, and I am keen for that not to be the case with this group. I am very alive to the issue. As with all of the groups, this is a cross-party group for the whole of Scotland, not just urban Scotland. There are, as you well know, specific issues in rural areas, particularly around public transport.

I do not want to put a figure on it. We are looking at issues in general, which means that, when we produce a report, it will reflect the whole country.

Yes. Thank you, convener. It is a pleasure to join you this morning.

Before I get into my pitch for the CPG, I will just say how much I enjoyed the committee’s recent debate in the chamber. I thought that it was excellent, and I appreciated your kind comments afterwards, convener. During that debate, I mentioned—I am being really cheeky here, but this is to inform the committee—that I have a proposed member’s bill coming up. The consultation for that will go live next Thursday, and I will send it to the committee.

Having got that out of the way, I will talk about the CPG on sustainable transport. The background is that, in the previous session, there was a CPG on cycling, walking and buses and a separate CPG on rail. Those of us who were members of one or both of those groups got together and decided that it would make sense to merge them and call it the cross-party group on sustainable transport. Those who were involved in those—[Interruption.]

I am very grateful—I am aware that I have taken up quite a bit of time.

I completely agree with the Deputy First Minister: we do not want to have to wait 54 days to put through regulations that have a certain degree of urgency about them. It is a question of Parliament being flexible and perhaps coming up with a bespoke procedure. I will leave my comments there, because other members have things to say.

Yes, thank you. Can I carry on, convener?

I welcome the Deputy First Minister to the meeting. We are all grateful that he is here, and I am interested to hear what he has to say.

Mr Swinney, I note that you have brought three officials with you, and I wonder whether we could start off by hearing from them, because they are the people who have to draft the laws, which is being done at breakneck speed a lot of the time. Before I question you, Mr Swinney, could we hear something from the officials about their experiences of having to make legislation during the pandemic at great speed?

Mr Swinney, I want to ask about something that witnesses have raised and that we have not covered yet: the idea that we should introduce sunset provisions in both primary and secondary legislation. What are your thoughts on that?

I can comment on them all. SSI 2021/478 is not contentious, so I will not say a great deal about it. It relates to a technical issue in the chamber. MSPs were unable to vote on a previous set of regulations, which therefore expired. The regulations have now been relaid—that is now out of the way.

However, I take a different view on the other regulations, which came in over the festive period and which relate to leisure, sporting events, theatres, pubs and night clubs. Members of the public and the people who are involved in those sectors know very well what happened. Sporting events were closed down; the football calendar—certainly, the Scottish Premier League—was put on pause—[Inaudible.]

We have just been discussing the made affirmative procedure. My view is that the use of that procedure for those regulations was not appropriate. They would have benefited from some scrutiny but they had none. Parliament could have made time for the use of the affirmative procedure. We have acted—[Inaudible.]—at times previously. The affirmative procedure is the better procedure to use in such instances. On that basis, I will be moving against SSIs 2021/475, 2021/496, 2021/497 and 2021/498.

Thank you.

It would be helpful if such statements were made. It would be even more helpful if the Parliament was allowed to take a view on any such statement, but I suppose that having one would be a good first step, because ministers would at least have to justify their position.

When the vaccination passport scheme was introduced, the committee took a view on the matter. The scheme had been planned and trailed for several weeks, but it was put through the Parliament under the made affirmative procedure. Our view was that the Government could not say that that was urgent, because it had been planned for weeks. That is a good recent example of why it is important for ministers to justify their view that something is urgent.

On parliamentary oversight, the Deputy First Minister says that Parliament gets a vote. It does, but that happens only after the law has come into effect. That is the wrong way round. A lot of the time, we could use different procedures. We do not always need to use the made affirmative procedure. Parliament could take a view on a measure before it comes into law. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that more regulations could be introduced using the affirmative procedure, which would allow the Parliament to vote on measures before they become law?