Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. You touched on the medium-term financial strategy and the letter about that that members have been given only this morning. I will ask about that first.

I think that there will be disappointment throughout the committee. I have not spoken to all members yet—I found out less than an hour ago that I was receiving the letter. Surely, sending something along the lines that the strategy will not come out until Thursday 20 June is not really acceptable from a scrutiny point of view. That makes it extremely difficult for clerking teams to get papers out to members, let alone for members to absorb them in order to have any meaningful scrutiny at our last committee meeting on the Tuesday before recess.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Of course, the discussion has stimulated further questions in my mind, but I am not going to ask them. We are well over our time and we must be fair to our second panel of witnesses, who have been extremely patient, given that we have overrun by about 50 minutes.

I thank the permanent secretary and his team for answering our questions so directly and frankly, and I thank colleagues, too, for their questions. I will now call a two-minute break while we change witnesses.

I will ask you in a second how you feel that we should be rethinking that, but I first ask Dr Elliott to answer the question with regards to what the Law Society has said about the integrity branch. What is your view on that?

The committee is aware of all those potential iterations, but I am quite keen on finding out what your view is. Do you feel that we should have an expanded Scottish Human Rights Commission with a rapporteur, for example, rather than independent commissioners?

You were head of legal in the Scottish Government, so you have a unique experience in that you are able to see things from the inside and the outside. You have said that consideration should be given to a more systematic approach to post-legislative scrutiny involving legislation relating to commissioners. Can you expand on that? How long after legislation has been passed should that post-legislative scrutiny take place? A year? Two years? Five years?

Do you want to respond, Professor Page?

Arms and legs.

Permanent secretary, I understand that corporate capability has also been strengthened with the introduction of mandatory risk management learning for all civil servants within the Scottish Government and through an annual assessment of risk management maturity. What does that entail?

When you talk about indicators moving in the wrong direction, in what regard do you mean?