Chamber and committees

Thank you. We have heard you. That concludes our formal business and I thank all the witnesses for attending. We will consider the remaining items on our agenda in private.

Please do.

Fulton MacGregor is attending online.

Rachel Wood has indicated that she would like to come in quickly, and then I will move on to Meghan Gallacher.

Is there anything else that members would like to cover? I will bring in Paul O’Kane, who might want to ask about the definition of “legal services” in section 6 being rather narrow. Have we covered that?

I suppose that £60 is quite a lot of money to a lot of people. If we are trying to ensure that the law, in every aspect, is accessible to as many people as possible, there will be many people who would think that £60 is quite a lot of money.

I understand what Andrew Stevenson said about reducing vexatious complaints, and that has worked. I am considering the balance of risk. Will a £60 charge put off people who need to access the law? Is that risk worth taking? There is a balance to be struck.

You can come back on that one if you wish.

Thank you. We will move to questions. We have quite a few areas to cover, so, as I indicated earlier, I encourage witnesses to be succinct in responding to the substance of each question. On that note, we will crack on.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Fulton, I am conscious that we are running slightly over time. If panellists have something to offer directly, that will be great, but if not, I will move on. Are you content, Fulton?

Those comments are very helpful and you made them in less than five minutes, so there you go.

That concludes our formal business this morning. I thank the witnesses for their attendance and for giving very good evidence and making it easily understandable. It will certainly help with our scrutiny.

We will move into private session to consider the remaining items on our agenda.