Chamber and committees

I am sorry to cut across you, but you must acknowledge that they do not improve the situation. At the moment, Scotland is a massively ecologically degraded country with a significant net contribution to global climate change. We recognise that something needs to change, so it is not good enough to say that, at the moment, the basic payments are conditioned on not making things much worse. We have all agreed—the Parliament, the Government and the sector—that the status quo is not good enough. The conditions for the basic payments really do not fly, do they?

That is useful. Finally, have you had such a conversation with all the organisations? I am sure that you have engaged with them throughout the bill process, but bodies such as RSPB Scotland, Nourish Scotland and the Landworkers Alliance have all given the committee incredibly similar submissions on exactly that point. Have you already started engaging them in discussion to explain your approach? In some cases, it sounds as though all that is needed is clarification; in others, there is disagreement over policy intention, which is fine. Have you engaged with them to clarify those points?

I understand and entirely share the motivation behind the amendment, but will it lead to duplication? As I understand it, under the current system, victims already have the opportunity to make a victim impact statement before the case is referred to the children’s hearings system. As a result, the panel will already be in possession of it. If I understand correctly, the amendment essentially repeats that process, and I am concerned about the impact on victims of having to recount their trauma repeatedly, after being given the opportunity to do so and given that the panel itself should already be in possession of that statement.

Apologies—I probably should have intervened and posed this point to Roz McCall. I would be grateful if she could address it when summing up. The point applies to amendments 189 and 190 to some extent, too, but I am more interested in amendments 18 and 19.

The Scotland Act 1998 enshrines the prosecutorial independence of the Lord Advocate, which is an important principle, but amendments 18 and 19 seem to undermine or erode that—or at least narrow it. I would be keen for Roz McCall to expand a bit on that point. To me, that raises issues of competence in relation to the Scotland Act 1998 and the principle of the Lord Advocate’s independence, on which there has been a growing debate in the Parliament over the past couple of years.

I was going to ask the same question as Ruth Maguire.

I agree with Willie Rennie on the point of principle that we are not looking for mutually exclusive outcomes here. I am conscious that committee members have received lobbying and briefings from a range of organisations in the field of children’s rights, victims’ rights and so on, some of which ask us to support Willie Rennie’s amendments but, in the case of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, ask us to oppose amendments 122 and 123.

Does Willie Rennie agree that we are not a million miles off a position that is acceptable to the Government, other members on the committee and all key stakeholders, and that there is scope to reach agreement on reporting arrangements ahead of stage 3?

Good morning, secretary of state. I want to follow up John Mason’s line of questioning on the length of time for which funding is provided. Before I do so, I note that, yesterday, the Welsh Government published a report by the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales. It included interesting research on public opinion across the UK, including on whether—and, if so, when—the UK Government should spend in devolved areas. Only 5 per cent of people in Scotland thought that it should do so whenever it wanted, while 18 per cent thought that it should not do so normally or without consent but that there might be circumstances in which it should. That is lower than the percentage of people who thought that the UK Government should legislate in devolved areas, which was also quite low.

Regardless of the fact that people welcome funding coming to their area and that many projects have merit, are you not concerned about the core democratic point, which is that people in Scotland—the findings for which are not particularly different to those for England or Wales—do not believe that the UK Government should spend directly in devolved areas? They seem to prefer money being given to the Scottish Government or directly to local authorities to decide how to spend it.

In that case, why have you gone for a three-year funding period, not, say, five, seven or 10 years?

Some of us still retain significant concern about the freeports, but that is a separate debate.

Finally—and briefly—secretary of state, have you ever raised concerns with any of the chancellors with whom you have worked or with Treasury officials that the spending review periods are resulting in the UK Government not getting best value for money and that they are limiting the options in your portfolio to develop multiyear funding models that would provide better value for money as well as greater certainty?

Having engaged in budget negotiations myself, I can sympathise with that point at least. Thank you.