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Correct.

Absolutely. That was always the understanding, subject to the Parliament agreeing to the instrument. The order coming into effect in November last year has allowed work to be done in advance of this year’s election. The creation of a relevant registration form is one example of that. There is dialogue with the electoral authorities because, clearly, there is work to be done to identify the nuts and bolts of how this works in practice. That work has been going on, subject to Parliament’s approval.

The decision was reached in 2022 and predates my time. The Parliament voted for that position. In so doing, this anomaly arose, which we are now trying to address.

I am not trying to duck the question, but I was not in charge of, or involved with, the bill at the time. That decision was supported by Parliament a few years ago.

I will bring in Iain Hockenhull with the detail, but my understanding is that work has been done. The trigger for progressing all of the activity will be the signing off of the form and the passing of the SSI, if that is what Parliament decides to do. We have been engaged with the UK Government on the form, and I understand that the finalised version of it is currently with ministers in the UK Government.

I will be very brief, convener. I understand Ms Webber’s position on this issue, but what we are dealing with is an anomaly in a law passed by this Parliament. The law is there; we have an issue that we need to resolve temporarily, the next Parliament can return to the matter in full and come to a permanent solution. Obviously, all members of the Parliament will be able to feed their views in at that point.

With prisoner voting?

We believe it to be in the region of 20 people. This is a very complex area, which is why I was reluctant to go for a permanent solution at this stage. As we are required to act for compliance reasons, we have come up with something that addresses the situation for the period of the election and allows the next Parliament to get into the detail so that we have a permanent solution that captures all the different strands.

I will make a useful point here, for clarity. As part of considering the options that I had, I had informal discussions with the business managers of the other parties in the Parliament to get a view of what people considered the best way forward. The timing of the sunset clause came out of those discussions, in that it is sufficiently far away from the next election for the issues to be dealt with and, I hope, properly addressed in a permanent way.

I thank the committee for inviting me to give evidence on these regs.

The SSI seeks to resolve a disconnect between the rules affecting dual mandate MSPs’ salaries and their pensions, as governed by the Scottish Parliamentary Pensions Act 2009 and the Scotland Act 1998. This stemmed from the dual mandate regulations that I brought forward, which were considered by this committee last year.

This area could be described as one where responsibility is shared between Government and Parliament. Although the Government brought forward the dual mandate regulations, the Parliament has responsibility for the 2009 act and the rules of the MSP pension scheme. It is clear that the impact of the dual mandate regulations that the Government brought forward last year left those two pieces of legislation out of step with each other. When oversights are identified, it is important that appropriate action is taken, which is what the Government has done.

The issues with the original regulations were highlighted by the Scottish parliamentary pension scheme trustees. I understand that the disconnect, if it is not resolved, could impact annual pension figures and periods of reckonable service of any dual mandate MSP/MPs or MSP/councillors if elected following the upcoming Scottish Parliament election.

Following input that we have had from the parliamentary authorities and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, I am confident that this correcting instrument will ensure that those minor and technical cross-referencing issues are addressed prior to the dual mandate regulations taking effect at midnight on 7 May. I am grateful to the Parliament for its co-operation in working to resolve the issues.

:I think that the convener’s latter point is the most accurate one.

I also want to apologise—on our part—that we find ourselves in this situation. That is for the Government and the Parliament to reflect on in relation to consultation on something of this nature. We clearly asked whether there was anything that we needed to know about, which would be captured by the work that we were taking forward, and the answer was no. How much depth we go into in relation to such things is for all of us to reflect on. It is about trying to ensure that we do not take up committee time in this way by having to fix problems that are identified further down the line.