Chamber and committees

From my experience as a back bencher and as a member of committees such as this one, I would say that we have the option of looking at the information as it comes through from the Government. You will be made aware of an LCM coming through—and, indeed, if an SSI comes through. The checks and balances to do that sort of thing are available in the Parliament as it is.

I think that you are trying to hint at the possibility of there being a better way of looking at these things. If so, I am quite open to a more transparent process for the committees and the Parliament, and I am quite happy to look at such a suggestion. Indeed, any other suggestions could be part of our consideration of the process whereby information goes backwards and forwards between us and the committee.

It is always a good thing to agree with each other.

That is me killed in Paisley now.

My door is always open to members of the committee or whoever, and we can discuss offline any matter that you might want to raise. What I often say—and people have said that this will come back to bite me—is that I do not have a monopoly on good ideas. If anyone has any, I am quite happy to steal them—I am sorry; I mean, I am happy to work with them on it.

We are. I have tried to be my usual charming self and to work constructively with the UK Government in order for business to flow, but that can be quite challenging. The UK retained EU law bill will be introduced at some point, but we do not know what it will do. That is quite concerning, because that bill will be a massive piece of work. It might or might not affect the number of SIs that we have to consider, which relates to the question that you asked. That could be quite challenging for us.

Gordon Johnstone will give you more detail, given that this is his area of expertise.

That might have been a Parliamentary Bureau paper right at the beginning of the session.

If I give you an actual figure, I will paint myself into a corner, but we are probably looking at 40-ish between now and the end of the year. That could be 41, 42 or 39. We are there or thereabouts, depending on how things go and what happens. “Events, dear boy, events” can take over and cause us to change things. We are looking at about 40-ish SSIs, with the emphasis on “ish”.

That is a very technical question, so I will bring in Gordon Johnstone again.

I came in and said, “I am not having any of that.” No, I am only joking. [Laughter.]

As I said earlier on, as part of the strategic review, we are taking the opportunity to look at a better way of working with committees and ensuring that information gets to them. We will look at our practice within the strategic review and we will come back to this committee and others once we have done so. As I said earlier, we are going to take a step back and look at everything to see what is and is not working. Working alongside the committee, if we think that there is another way forward, we will look at that as well.

I am glad that Mr Sweeney said that we have managed to deal with a lot of the historical commitments that were pursued by predecessor committees. The simple answer is that we are still committed to making sure that we get the work done. Some things have been on-going.

I had thought that I might be asked about that, so I asked what we have on the decks and what is still there that we can get done and clear out. That is one of the things that I would like to do, but, as with all things in life, sometimes it is a wee bit complicated.