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In last year’s programme for government, there were a number of bills that were going to benefit the lives of disabled people. Those bills were all dropped over the past 12 months, and there is nothing in the programme for government for 2025-26 specifically for disabled people. You talk about helping the most vulnerable. What in the programme for government will help disabled people, who make up 20 per cent of Scotland’s population?

Will the minister give way?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it can take to reduce the number of teachers on temporary contracts. (S6O-04575)

I thank the minister for his answer, but does he not accept that, under this Scottish National Party Government, permanent teaching jobs have gone from being the norm to being a rarity and that those who are entering the profession now often have to work on difficult, short-term contracts, which means that they cannot get mortgages and have a stable life?

That is one possibility, among others. It would probably take greater minds than mine to design it, but it is worth looking at.

I thank all the other members for taking part in the debate, which has been interesting. I hope that whoever forms the next Government in a year’s time will not simply forget about the report for another 60 years, but will look at some of its recommendations and take them forward, for the sake of this Parliament and for Scotland.

Without pushing my point, does the minister recognise that the Parliament has a simple yes or no vote on those? There is no way that it can say that it likes most of an instrument but not all of it.

Briefly, I do not think that Mr Mountain is against co-design. He is asking why co-design cannot take place before a bill is brought to the Parliament so that the Parliament can vote on it, rather than the co-design being done after the bill is passed, when there is no democratic scrutiny of it.

The member might want to develop this in a moment. One of the problems for Opposition members is that, when secondary legislation is made, we have to either accept it all or reject it all—there is no ability to amend. To take the argument that the member referred to, she might introduce a list of 20 products that she wants to ban, but the Parliament might say that it actually likes 18 of them, but not two of them. The Parliament is then left in the impossible situation of having to say either yes or no. I do not think that the member has identified that difficulty yet.

I begin by thanking my fellow committee members, the clerks and all those who gave evidence to the committee during an interesting process.

I confess that today’s debate has not gone quite where I expected it to go. It felt at some points as if I was 40 years back, studying first year law and having some great debate about jurisdiction; at other times I was glad that I was not a member of Edward Mountain’s family, because his holidays seem to be run like military operations and not much fun.

This has been a helpful debate and I will reflect briefly on some remarks. Before he jumps to his feet, I say that I am not going to take an intervention from the minister. All the evidence, across almost every jurisdiction in the western world, is that more framework bills are coming forward. That is happening not only in this Parliament but at Westminster, in Northern Ireland and Cardiff, and in other parts of western Europe. As much as the minister wants to see numbers and figures, that is just the reality. One reason for that, as was mentioned by Lorna Slater, is that we live in a society that is different from that which existed 30 or 40 years ago. We have 24-hour news and there is an expectation that people will respond more quickly, although I am not sure that that is a justification for going down the road that we have taken.

I have concerns about framework bills and absolutely agree with Michael Marra’s remarks. I am not against consultation or involving stakeholders in legislation—in fact, I think that we should do more of that—but we go wrong when we do that consultation after passing legislation. That happens partly due to laziness and is a wee bit to do with not wanting to be held accountable by this Parliament. I would much prefer to see the Government doing consultation, getting all its ducks lined up and then bringing forward a bill that Parliament can properly scrutinise, so that we can decide what to amend and what to take forward. That would give far more assurance regarding financial memorandums—a point made by Roz McCall and others—and would also allow Parliament to make choices, rather than the Government.

I will concentrate most of my remarks on the subject of secondary legislation and Parliament’s inability to amend the regulations that come before us. I think that the next session of Parliament should look at that again and that, to pick up a remark made by the previous speaker, today may be the start of the journey, rather than its end.

During the passage of the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018—I have reflected on it over the past few days—we made the decision that the criteria for who would get benefits would be set out by regulation rather than by having it in the primary legislation, as is the case at Westminster. That was done to provide for flexibility and consultation—the usual remarks that we get from Government. The problem now is that, if any changes are to be made to who can get disability benefit here in Scotland, as a Parliament, we must agree to them all or we must reject them all. There is no way for any Opposition MSP, or even Government MSP, to amend those regulations.

I absolutely accept that the evidence that we took suggested that it would not be easy to design a process that would allow amendment of regulations, but it is possible. It should not be allowed in every circumstance—there would have to be quite a high threshold for it to happen—but it is worth a committee of the Parliament considering whether we can move forward to allow members to amend secondary legislation rather than just have the ability to make a yes or no decision, which is a negative way to do it. I would welcome further discussions on that.

What is clear—again, I say this with due respect to the minister—is that Governments will always love secondary legislation and bills that have little detail in them, because it means that the Government is not held to account. The reverse of that is those of us in Opposition do not like and will never like skeleton bills. That is the reality of life. However, there must be a point at which we can come together and seek a way forward for the good of this Parliament and for the sake of Scotland and the legislation that we pass.

I remind members that I am in receipt of ADP.

It has always been a problem in politics that there are very few easy questions and even fewer easy answers. As Willie Rennie pointed out, social security has never been a simple topic. Since its inception, Governments have had to deal with questions of who gets how much of what, balancing generosity with how we pay for it. However, I can say confidently that, today, we face a landscape that is more challenging than ever before. More people than ever qualify for benefits, creating an ever-growing bill that is becoming less sustainable by the day.

That is due to a number of factors, many of which are out of the control of either the UK or the Scottish Governments. For instance, an ageing population creates more demand for retirement-age and disability payments. However, a number of decisions have been taken that inflate the cost of benefits. The value of awards has increased over the years, and the criteria for various payments have been expanded, meaning that more people are eligible for support today than was the case in previous generations.

Those decisions, which are taken by Governments, have consequences. They are not necessarily bad decisions, but they require sacrifices in other areas to make the cost sustainable.