Chamber and committees

If nobody else is particularly keen to answer that question and if Nicky Wilson has covered it, we will move on to questions from Maggie Chapman.

I thank both witnesses for their opening statements.

Fulton MacGregor has done exactly what I am not looking for by putting it back to me to bring everybody in. However, given that it is the first question, let us start with Alex Bennett.

We now go to Richard Leonard.

Thanks very much. That is the end of the committee’s questions. We have taken a bit longer than we expected. I thank both of you for giving us your time. That is really helpful for the work that we have to do.

That brings us to the end of the public part of our meeting. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday 18 January, when we will meet in private to consider our draft report on the petition to end conversion therapy and our future work programme.

I close the public part of the meeting. We will move into private session for the final item on today’s agenda.

Thank you. Pam, have you finished your questions?

Pam Duncan-Glancy wishes to put a brief supplementary question to Jim Phillips. Is that correct, Pam?

We will not be able to have everyone respond; committee members need to be a bit more selective, please. Nicky, do you want to come in?

In his question, Fulton MacGregor alluded to a concern that, as the bill focuses on miners, it will not pardon other people who may have been arrested. You mentioned that spouses were perhaps at picket lines. We are concerned that wives or partners may have been arrested at picket lines but the bill does not cover them. However, we do not want to spend huge amounts of time trying to sort out something that never happened. Are we worrying about something that did not happen? Were wives or partners arrested?

Thank you all for your opening remarks. We will now move to questions.