Chamber and committees

Thanks very much for that, minister. It is good to know that there is still openness and that there is listening going on. That might well come into my second question, too.

The Scottish Tourism Alliance wants the national parks to

“receive a fair share of investment from the revenue raised from the visitor levy”.

Do you have any ideas about how that might work in practice, given that one national park authority might span up to five local authority areas? Do you have any views on the potential for a regional levy scheme or something else?

Minister, there seems to have been limited thought around data collection to measure the success. Although the bill will be delivered by local authorities, I imagine that the Scottish Parliament will ask the Scottish Government for evidence of the bill’s success. I am really interested to hear any thoughts that you might already have around what quantitative or qualitative data might be key to measuring what is working really well. For clarity, are you saying that there is likely to be a common framework for measuring key quantitative and qualitative data and outcomes across all participating local authorities?

Thank you.

Minister, how do you respond to those who say that the council tax freeze is regressive and that it does not benefit the poorest people in society? What do you see as being the benefits of the council tax freeze?

Picking up on that, I would say that, culturally, we, in Scotland, certainly take pride in teaching our children to read and write. However, has the cultural shift been a bit of a barrier for the wider public in that respect? If so, how do we address that?

I have just a small question for Walter Humes. Professor Humes, you have talked about teachers and winning hearts and minds—indeed, you took the words out of my mouth. Teachers have such a wide range of views, too, so how do we bring together all of their views and get them to move forward together?

My colleagues will ask some questions about this later, but I am really interested in what you said about the fact that more and more information is coming and what we actually need are decisions to be made and steps forward to be taken. Do you think that having too large a group taking those decisions keeps the status quo in place, because you cannot all agree? Do you perhaps need a small group to take the lead and move things forward instead?

I am interested in what the other panel members have to say about turning policy into practice.

So, it is all about having a measure of consensus and flexibility in how you reach this.

So, time for collaboration and debate is vital. Thank you.