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At the outset, I acknowledge my colleague Willie Coffey’s stance and agree with him, to some extent. The petition has been around for a while and I think that it is important that the committee knows what its remit is in relation to the petition, as opposed to wider issues. I also agree with other colleagues and sympathise with the petition. The issues are affecting all our communities.

I have done bits of work and raised questions on various aspects that the petition considers, as have other colleagues. For example, not that long ago, along with colleagues from other parties, I attended a meeting of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee to discuss swimming pools, which have been a big issue, and I have done a bit of work in a cross-party group forum on access to football pitches. Meghan Gallacher is right that funding is an issue, but there are also other issues and the landscape is complex. For example, there are international issues with the chlorine supply for swimming pools, and we know that energy costs are problematic across the board, but especially for swimming pools. I feel that nobody is pulling all the issues together. I wonder whether there is an opportunity for the committee to do that.

I would be open to keeping the petition open and using it as a springboard to consider the wider issues, and to writing to local authorities to give us a bit more information before we decide whether to close the petition. I am also open to closing the petition and looking at including the issues that it raises in our work programme. I am happy to hear what other members think. Whatever decision we take, the petition has sparked the committee’s interest in the wider issues, which I would like us to take forward. I am not entirely sure whether we should do that by keeping the petition open or not, convener. I am sitting on the fence.

Thank you for that—you have predicted my next two questions, which is really good.

That was quite impressive.

I was going to ask whether you know how many assessors might be needed to carry out a revaluation and what the potential impact on the appeals system could be. Ellen Leaver began to touch on that, but I do not know whether anyone wants to say anything else on that.

I will move on to another line of questioning, which is resources and potential costs. Professor David Heald suggested that the costs of revaluation in Wales could be used as a starting point for estimating the costs of revaluation in Scotland. Given the difference in the number of households, is a cost of around £25 million a fair estimate? You may have heard that figure in last week’s session.

Thank you. Cabinet secretary and Councillor Hagmann, this question is probably one for you. How will the Scottish Government and local government communicate any proposed changes to council tax?

Thank you. Councillor Hagmann, I will take you back to an exchange that you had with Mark Griffin when you were talking about the people who reflect on proposals for council tax change being likely to be those who are most impacted. The Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation Scotland told us that there are risks in the efforts to reform being

“ambushed by those who will be disadvantaged.”—[Official Report, Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee, 25 February; c 23.]

Can those risks be mitigated? If so, how? If you want to answer my first question, you can just link it in.

Cabinet secretary, are there any lessons to be learned for any council tax proposals from the processes around how the Scottish Government has developed and implemented reforms in other areas of taxation, such as non-domestic rates, land and buildings transaction tax and income tax?

I asked whether there had been any discussions within the Government about a review, given the other changes. It is clear from your answer that you decided early on that you did not want to do that and that you wanted to take more direct action, which I appreciate, but was there any discussion about how the changes might be reviewed in the future? Given the changes to corroboration and the likely change to the not proven verdict, was there any discussion about how we—both the Government and the Parliament—might review the legislation?

We are obviously all hoping that the sky will not fall down, and we all think that it will not happen. However, given the range of views that we are hearing, what thought has been given to how we might look at reviewing the legislation if it does not bring about the results that we are hoping for?

Good morning. My questions were about part 4 as well, but Liam Kerr and the convener have covered many of my points, and you have already given quite a good overview, cabinet secretary. I understand that the purpose of this meeting is to explore some of the amendments, so I will not ask questions just for the sake of it.

However, I would like to ask whether any thought was given to having a trial period—I may be using the wrong phrase—because it is likely that we will agree to the removal of the not proven verdict, which will be a massive change. Further, during the scrutiny of the bill, the changes to corroboration also came in, as you have already said.

Given that those are massive changes and that we are getting different views from different people about the changes to jury size and majorities, when you were drafting the amendments, was any consideration given to having some sort of trial period to see how the new changes bed in, or having what I suppose you could call a sunset clause for the new changes?

Thank you.