Chamber and committees

Obviously, when you are in financial times such as those that we are in at the moment, every penny is a prisoner and everybody is looking for everything.

I had a similar conversation with Jackson Carlaw’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee when Fergus Ewing, I think, brought up the idea of a purge of commissioners. I said that it would hardly be for me to say that that should happen, because if I went along and said, “Well, do we really need the information commissioner?” that committee would rightly tell me to go and get knotted.

There is always a balance to be struck. FOI is an important part of our democratic process. When we start to talk about the costs and the facts and figures with regard to it, we put ourselves in a difficult place. However, as you are aware, if an FOI request is too costly, there is a cut-off point. Sometimes, we do not explain that as well as we should. We could explain it a wee bit better when we respond to people’s FOI requests.

It is not for me to say whether FOI is the right or wrong thing or whether the costs are too much. My role is to defend parliamentary business, freedom of information and any forms of open government.

I will bring in Jill McPherson, if she has anything to add on that.

I take that on board. We will have a look and see what we can come back with.

It is getting better. As I always say, if something is broken, I want to fix it.

Well, with section 5, we do not need to do any primary legislation.

Stephen, you have just won officials bingo: elected conveners is one of the topics that we said might have an outside chance of coming up this morning.

It is for the Parliament to decide on that issue, too. If the Parliament decides to go down that route, the Government will engage, as one of the major players. It is for Parliament to make that decision, however.

I do not think that there is any policy within the SNP as to how we go forward on that issue.

There are processes before things get to a free vote. The chief whip would probably never forgive a former chief whip for making a suggestion like that.

Ironically, when we had the discussion with the Electoral Commission yesterday, I had my Minister for Parliamentary Business hat on and I was saying that it would be a case of stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, royal assent and—boom!—job done. The person I was speaking to said, “Yes, but the secondary legislation, minister,” to which I responded, “Oh, yes.”

We have worked it through and we are in a safe place to have the proposed legislation set out to the right timescales.

I would like to say a few words, if that would be okay, convener.

I would need to see more detail and to discuss it further to see how we would go forward with that.