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That question came up when I was in front of the Finance and Public Administration Committee on this subject. As part of the budget process, the Parliament engages with the Government on its budget settlement, and I believe that the Parliament would take into account its requirements in order to support such bodies. That is the mechanism for resolving issues relating to administrative support and so on, but committee time is clearly a different resource, which I have already commented on.

As I said, the budget process should deal with that, because the cost of a commissioner would be added to the Parliament’s budget, which would then be put to the Government.

It is a good question. There are many different categories of public bodies. Are there too many different types? That might be worth looking at. Again, this is not something that we sat down and designed; it has grown over a period.

As executive agencies, some bodies have a slightly different set-up, but, to all intents and purposes, they are effectively part of the Government. There are others that operate independently but are funded and guided by the Government, typically in the delivery space, where we want them to perform a function that is delivering services, having an economic impact or whatever it happens to be. However, there are also bodies that, for very good reasons, we would want to have the independence to be able to provide information and comment on what Government is doing. For example, the work of the Scottish Fiscal Commission absolutely needs to be seen as its own and not influenced by the Government. Having that clear distinction on its independence is important.

I would be very open to discussing whether some of those bodies could or should be under the aegis of Parliament rather than the Government.

Absolutely.

You are right. The advocacy role has come out in your evidence. I cannot remember who it was that said that MSPs have a very important advocacy role: a lot of people come to our door and then we make a case for them by setting out the situation that they find themselves in and how that can be addressed. I suppose that it is important to parse that out to the regulatory bodies.

Not that we would, but if we said that we did not think that the Scottish Information Commissioner or the Ethical Standards Commissioner should be doing what they are doing—

The roles are very clear. I know that you have had some discussion about whether there should be fewer commissioners and more scope for amalgamation and so on, but, frankly, as I said, the Government would not want to get involved in that discussion, for obvious good reasons. In the abstract, I would say that commissioners do an important job as part of the democratic process and the checks and balances that are within that. It is essential that those regulatory roles are carried out.

In terms of the advocacy groups, I think that it will depend very much on the individual situation, because every context will be different. Different groups will be advocating for different groups within society. They will interact with different agencies and different parts of the Government and they will face different challenges. I suppose that the value that they will bring to that will vary, depending on what it is. That will be very much at the portfolio level and depend on the minister who is responsible for that.

My colleague, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, would tell us that there is absolutely no space in the calendar for this parliamentary session. Given the timescale, I think that you are talking about doing that in the next session. In theory, the Government would welcome anything that would make the landscape more effective and efficient and that applies to this committee’s remit to look at Parliament-supported bodies and to the larger and wider landscape of public bodies. We are absolutely willing to engage in that.

I can talk about my experience, although the three former ministers who are on the committee all have their own experiences of different portfolios to talk about.

A commissioner is one voice among several. Their impact will depend on the context, the portfolio, what the issue happens to be and on whether the commissioner comes up with something important or significant, but that impact could also come from a range of other directions.

The direction of travel is to look for opportunities to simplify the landscape. To be clear, we do not see structural change as the first port of call. There is a lot that we can do before we get to structural change, including having co-operation between public bodies, the sharing of services and resources, removing duplication, working in clusters and so on. If that leads us to a place where structural reorganisation is the right answer for the broader public body landscape, we will move into that space. Where legislation is required to do that, we will take that forward. We do not start with that, however; we get to that once we have exhausted everything else.

When you say “different functions”, do you mean different—