Grifithwm, a chyfnodd, ar y cwestiynau ymateb sydd y cyfrifysgwyr a'r Cymru Llyrfyniadol. Ymgyrch yn cymryd, peolodau ar y cyfrifysgwyr a'r Cymru i'r Cymru i'r Cymru i'r cyfrifysgwyr. Felly, dwi'n rwy'n mynd i'r 1st ychydig yn y diodd. Rwy'n cael ei ddwyngh yn ei ddweud o'i cyfrifysgwyr i'r cyfrifysgwyr, i'r 1st i'r cyfrifysgwyr i'r cyfrifysgwyr i'r cyfrifysgwyr i'r cyfrifysgwyr. those that have already declared my register of interest. I don't have any relevant interests to declare in relation to the work of the committee. Thanks very much, Steven. The next item of business is to decide whether to take items 7, 8 and 9 in private. Is the committee content to take those items in private? Agenda item number three today, we're taking evidence from George Adam MSP, the Minister for Parliamentary Business. This is one of our regular sessions with the minister on the Scottish Government's work relevant to the committee. The ministers are accompanied by three Scottish Government officials. First of all, Karen Ockinlock, the head of the Parliament and legislation unit. Gordon Johnson, the Brexit legislation manager in the Parliament and the legislation unit. Rachel Rayner, deputy legislation co-ordinator in the Scottish Government legal directorate. I welcome you all to the meeting. First of all, I'd like to remind all those attending this morning not to worry about switching the microphone on and off because that's done automatically for you. First, I'd like to invite the minister to make some opening remarks. Good morning and thank you convener and thank the committee members for asking me along here today. First of all it says in my speaking note I'd like to welcome Jeremy Balfour back to the committee but Mr Kerr is here as a suitable substitution in him and I seem to follow each other around this building in our regular basis so you know there's some more Stephen Kerr, George Adam times, never a bad thing at any time but on more serious matters as we all know this committee plays a hugely important role in scrutinising all legislation. I welcome the close working relationship that we have built up since I became Minister for Parliamentary Business and I hope that that continues. I don't have to remind you that the first year of this parliament has been very challenging. It began with the pandemic, still a major focus and ended with the situation in the Ukraine. I would like to record my thanks to this committee as officials and indeed the Parliament for the constructive way it has worked with the Government over extremely busy and challenging time. Despite those challenges, a significant amount of legislation has been introduced. 16 bills, 328 SSIs, 21 LCMs and 32 UK SSIs. The Government recognises the concern arising from the use of the made affirmative procedure during the pandemic and the committee's inquiry. We have a good record of ministers working with Parliament to establish administrative processes to enhance security even where urgent action is required. Fuller to the committee's recommendation on the made affirmative procedure and enabling powers in the Covid recovery reform Scotland bill specifically, I am pleased that the Covid-19 recovery committee has endorsed significant amendments to the bill that strengthens parliamentary safeguards. I know that the committee is considering a supplementary delegated powers memorandum on the bill at today's meeting. Since becoming Minister for Parliamentary Business, I have come to appreciate the volume and breadth of information that we share not only with this committee but with the Parliament as a whole. For example, we provide a forward look every week of SSIs to be laid in the following two weeks, weekly updates on UK SSIs and monthly updates on LCMs and monthly updates on the bill. It may be the case that there is still further information that we could helpfully share. Therefore, I have asked my officials to undertake a strategic review of the data and information that we have already provided to Parliament. I want the exchange of information to be as useful and efficient as possible and, of course, my officials will engage with the Parliament's officials to progress this. As always, I look forward to your committee's questions today. Thank you very much, minister. Just before I go into some areas of questioning that I have got here, did you mention the strategic review? Can you provide a timeline for that, please? Probably, off the top of my head, I cannot give you the timeline at this stage, but I will bring in Karen to give you some more detail on it. Yes, at an early stage, as Mr Adam said, there has been such a lot of information that has flowed between Government and Parliament in the past couple of years, Brexit and the pandemic. Mr Adam wants us to take a bit of a stock check to pause and start work with Parliamentary officials to make sure that the information that we are providing is helpful and that it is adding value and that there is no duplication. It is at an early stage, but we hope to pick up the work over summer recess. From our perspective, it is to make sure that the information that we are giving you is of value, as I said in my opening note. You can make sure that there is no point in giving you data for data sake. It is something that you can use and it will help you to aid you with your work. Thank you for that. I think that it would be quite useful if there could be some regular dialogue between your officials and the clerking team of the committee. That goes without saying, and they already have a very good working relationship with each other, as I have already previously said. It is one that we want to make sure. The committee is an extremely—there is quite a workload that you have, and it is quite detailed, so that relationship is really important for both sides. Thank you for that. You touched upon the Covid paper that we will be discussing later on this morning, but regarding the Covid legislation, will the Scottish Government have any further proposals or plans for legislation with a primary or secondary later in this session? Currently, we have got the bill that is going through Parliament, as we speak. Probably there may be an SSI in September at one point, but it is as and when we need it. If we need it, so at this stage, there is nothing in tablets of stone. The committee has previously called for an impact assessment on those affected by the made affirmative SSI. Ministers plan to publicise its content and implications to be included with the explanation of the reason for the urgency of the SSI. The Scottish Government has since said that it considers that an, I quote, current scrutiny frameworks are fit for purpose. Can the minister provide an update on what steps the Government will actually take to ensure that it provides a parliament with a clear assessment of the impact of any instruments made using the made affirmative procedure? There are a number of things here with regards to ensuring that you get the reasons for using the affirmative process. It is something that we already do. It is something that is part of the came in at stage 2 of the current coronavirus bill. We make sure that that is an ongoing issue for us all as well. It is the usual process and it is the relationship that we have with ourselves to make sure that we can make that work. That has been an important thing. All in all, I think that we are already doing it and we just need to make sure that we retain those relationships and keep working that way. Also sitting just on that same area in March, the Government provided response to the committee's made affirmative inquiry with a number of items still being considered by the Government. Can you provide an update or a written update to the various strands of work about that particular summary? That is on-going work for us in the Parliament. It never stops. Effectively, we will always have to look at better ways of ensuring that we can work with ourselves as a committee and make things happen. I would say that there is never an end to that type of work, but the short answer would be yes. We will write to you over the summer period to just update you on where we are with everything. Thank you, convener. In terms of made affirmative at one time, it would have been something that was a very rare occurrence in Parliament. Obviously, during the pandemic, it became much more frequent and used way of bringing regulation into being. What is the Government's position in relation to the use of made affirmative? What is the current thinking around when and how it should be used, if ever? Basically, in the very simplistic terms, Mr Kerr, made affirmative should be used when it is needed, when we need to get emergency legislation through. In other times, as you rightly say, over the past two years it has been used more than it has previously because of the situation that we found ourselves in. On the whole, I would probably think that it would be pretty flexible. I do not expect that I will be coming to you using the made affirmative all the time. I think that I said to Mr Simpson when he asked a similar question last year that it would not be my number one choice in going forward with legislation, but sometimes needs must. You need to go down this route in order to deliver what you want to deliver. On the whole, I am quite happy to work within the normal procedures that we have, but when I have to, I have to. It is just that when a certain practice becomes common, it can be an easy go-to. I think that what I am looking for is an assurance that the Government still regard this as a very rare way of bringing regulation into being. I would say that it is a rare way of bringing legislation into being, and it would not be my go-to way to do legislation. Before I bring in Mr Simpson, I am sure that you will be aware of the inquiry that the committee undertook in the debate that we had in the chamber. I think that, certainly since that period of time, the number of made affirmatives has certainly been reduced in the committee and in the Parliament, which has certainly been useful. Mr Simpson, you are absolutely right that the number of made affirmatives has tailed off. Minister, you know the committee's view that we think that it should be a last resort and that, if anything, it should be using the affirmative procedure. On that note, you will know that there are discussions on going to develop a protocol for using the affirmative procedure in order that that could be used, shall we say, more speedily, so that it would allow Parliament to use the affirmative procedure in a truncated timescale. Where are we with that? Well, those are on-going discussions between ourselves and parliamentary authorities to try and find the best way for us to be able to work together. That will be an on-going issue. I am not sure whether we can give us an update on any of that, if possible. We have been sharing the draft of the protocol with the clerks of the committee. We are probably likely to have a meeting in the next couple of weeks, but we are really aiming to finalise it as soon as we can. I do not want to hold it up. Okay. The committee has not seen that yet. You will be the first to see it, Mr Simpson. Okay, lovely. As I say, it is a sort of working draft that we are just engaging early on. Okay. Mr Sweeney. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the minister for coming along today and his colleagues. I want to ask primarily on the quality of drafting. Whilst the number of errors that the committee highlights in SSIs generally tends to be quite low and fairly minor in nature, the committee still regularly identifies drafting issues. So what is the minister doing to ensure that the quality of SSIs remains high? We want to continue the good work that we have been doing to make sure that there are less mistakes and problems. One of the—and you will be perfectly aware of this—Mr Sweeney has been on this committee for the past year or so, is that sometimes some of the areas are so complex that inevitably there will be errors and mistakes made. However, we have tried to make sure that we do not have that problem and when we do see it, we correct errors as soon as possible. I think that there has been a couple of times where your committee has highlighted some errors and, to me, that makes the systems working, and we managed to correct them within the times that we need to do that. However, on the whole, I would like to get to a place where there are as little errors as possible because we are making law after all. That is helpful. I also want to ask about the effort to put more explanatory notes in relation to SSIs. I know that the Government is committed to doing that in response to our reports. It says that the Government is sort of certain that it always does this, but clearly we have highlighted this as a major concern about the plain English explanations for rationales on it. Can the minister respond further about how more effort would be put into making sure that these are legible for the non-legally trained person? The Government would always try to make sure that there is plain English and that the explanatory notes are understandable. However, I get it from your position as someone who used to be in this committee as well. I understand that sometimes you can look at things and you are trying to, someone will point out to you that that SSI means that you go, oh right, I have read it twice and I never actually thought that. I am aware that there can be those issues. As always, the Government will do what it can to ensure that we can make sure that it is drafted the correct way, but also at the end of the day understandable to those who are doing it. I do not know if Camille wants to add anything on top of that? I suppose that most SSIs are accompanied by a policy note. I think that that is the opportunity for us to try to explain the same plain English. I think that we try our best to do that for some complex SSIs. Sometimes we cannot get away from the use of the glies for a point of a better phrase, but we try as much as we can to set out in the policy note the rationale and to explain what any instrument does. From my personal point of view, when I first get involved in Government, all the acronyms and everything else that has been used for everything became a bit of a shock. I am aware that we need to try to make sure that things are in plain English for us so that I do not get into a place where I am understanding Government lingo. We are basically not getting our point of view across. I suppose that it might be difficult to pre-empt understanding, particularly if you are so used to dealing with those issues, so sometimes you cannot anticipate what other people might not understand. Perhaps there is an effort from the committee to feed back more regularly on areas where difficulties are interpreted. That would be very helpful, Mr Sweeney. That gives us the opportunity to be able to see that. If you do not tell us, we will not know what the problem is and we will continue to do the same thing, so that would be helpful. We are all for plain English, for sure. Of course, I was not in the last Parliament, but in session 5, your predecessor would write to subject committees indicating the volume of SSIs that they might be able to anticipate that they are heading in their direction. However, that practice appears to have ended. What was the reason for the discontinuation of that practice and is it something that could be revived? I came in and said, I am not having any of that. No, I am only joking. As I said earlier on, when we are looking at strategic review, we are looking at the opportunity of what is a better way of working with the committee, and what is a better way of ensuring that information is getting over to the committee. It is something that we will look at within that strategic review and maybe come back to the committee and others. As I said earlier on, we are literally going to take a step back and look at everything and see what is working and what is not. If we are working along with ourselves, we think that that is a way forward, we will look at that as well. You did produce a table, I remember very vividly, a very colourful table that indicated the number of SSIs. That was some months ago, perhaps at the beginning of the session. I think that that might have been a bureau paper at the very beginning. Ah, right. That would be something that I think people would probably find very useful. Can you indicate what you anticipate the volume of SSIs looks like between now and the end of the year? See, this is me painting myself into a corner if I give you an actual figure, but we are looking at 40-ish between now and the end of the year. 40-ish, that could be 41, could be 42, it could be 39. We are there or thereabouts, depending on how things go and what happens. Events, dear boy, events, I can take over and give us to change things as well. We are looking about 40-ish with the emphasis on ish. We, of course, will be live for the human error, the margin of human error, that you are describing. I applaud you quoting Harold Macmillan. We are really impossible to provide some greater detail in terms of where those SSIs fall, particularly for the benefit of the subject committees. Yeah, happy to take that. We can consider and see what would work best for you, but we will give you as much indication as we can about what is coming and when it is coming. Right, that is very fine. I would like to ask just a couple of questions about secondary legislation stemming from the UK's withdrawal from the EU. Normally we would be asking about how many instruments should be considered under the SSI protocol, but I think that the committee welcomes the fact that this has been discontinued. Can you give any notification on how many SI notifications the Parliament likely to receive between now and the end of the year? Do you answer to Mr Kerr about the number that you anticipated being laid? We do have a figure. It will probably be round about 15 for that in particular. One of the challenges that we have with some of the UK Government situations where we receive the information and how long it takes for it to get to us, is that it slows up the process, but on the whole we are looking at probably 15. I have noticed on other committees where SSIs and so on have come forward that where they are coming from, the SI notifications coming from the UK Government, they tend to be very short in terms of the timing for the committee and the Parliament to look at it. Is there any way that can be made better or are we entirely in the hands of how quickly the UK Government notifies us? Mr Beattie, we are in the hands of how quickly the UK Government notifies us, but in my scenario I have tried to be my usual charming self and trying to work with them in a constructive manner in order to get to make the business flow, but that can be quite challenging. We have the UK retained EU law bill that we are coming out at one point. We do not know what it does, we do not know what it will do, so that is quite concerning because that is a big, massive piece of work. That would be an example of that. That may or may not affect the number of SSIs that we would have going through from the questions that you ask, so that could be quite challenging for us. I will bring in Gordon at this point, since this is his area of expertise, to give you some more detail. We have 15 SI notifications that we are anticipating between now and Christmas, and that information comes from two sources—a forward look that we get from cabinet office and a forward look from DEFRA. Given that most of the EU exit SSIs that we have notified recently have been from DEFRA. We are pretty sure that that is likely to be a fairly accurate figure, although every time we get a new iteration it does tend to vary slightly. We may be talking about the same figure here, but given that the power to correct deficiencies in the retained EU law is due to end at the end of the year or sunset at the end of the year, however you want to call it, can you give an indication of how many deficiencies related SSIs or SI notifications under SI protocol 2 are the parments that are likely to receive before that time? That is the same figure. I suspect that it might be, but it is good to have that clarification. Just to make it clear that the SI protocol is wider than just efficiency fixes, it now covers a lot more post-Brexit legislation. The protocol will continue to have a use even when the deficiency fixing power has gone. A lot of the SSIs that we are notifying now are not just about deficiency fixes, but it is moving on to dealing with that post-Brexit world. You are anticipating that this will continue after the end of the year? Yes. The protocol applies to various powers that were within EU competence before exit and now how they have transferred into domestic legislation and where the protocol applies. It is much broader than just deficiency fixes. Do you have any understanding of what the volumes might be or is that just more on an ad hoc basis coming from the UK Government? Yes, and there can be discussions about whether it is more appropriate to use a UKSI or an SSI. There are lots of discussions that go into bringing forward an SI notification. What work is there on-going or planned by the Scottish Government to simplify some of the complexity within EU law? Presumably, there are discussions going on with the UK Government in that respect. As always, there will be on-going discussions with the UK Government, but one of the main points that I explained to you earlier is the example of the UK retained EU law bill, whatever shape it takes. It could be a major issue for us or give us some kind of problems and so much as we do not know what it is, so it could affect us from that point of view as well. Is there any discussions on that and any co-operation on the development of that bill? In my time as Minister for Parliamentary Business, there has not been much in the way of co-operation or anything like that, so it is probably more likely to be that we will receive the information just before it is published or when it is published. That does not sound like a great deal of time for us to scrutinise it, either as a Parliament or a committee. It does make it challenging, Mr Beattie. You are not directly involved in any discussions with the UK Government with the contents or methodology that will be applied with the proposed EU retained law bill, but does that exclude the possibility that there are other parts of the Scottish Government that might be talking to their counterparts in the UK Government in order to assess what it would actually mean? Officials will always be being dialogue with each other from the UK Government and Scottish Government all the time. There will be dialogue there, there will be dialogue at ministerial level, but what I am saying is that the difficulty comes when it comes to publication of said bill or whatever. We do get it at the very last minute, so then we end up with a whole process where this committee, for example, is quite rightly waiting for us to give the information or want to see you for the one that was scrutinising said bill. You will not be in this case, but see you where. You would be wanting us to get the information to you as quickly as possible, so you could scrutinise it. Whereas, at the same time, my officials need to sit back, Rachel needs to make sure that it is legal from our perspective in the kind of works with Scott's law, Gordon needs to go through absolutely everything as well, and Karen is a whole and the head of PLU needs to make sure that we have a spot in the Parliament to make sure that we can do that. That all works perfectly when there is this kind of on-going respect where we will get it earlier. I do not know if recently this is a new thing. On my time, it has always been getting everything at the last minute. I do not know if Karen or anyone can tell us if there was another before time when we might have got things sooner. I probably could not answer in the before time because I have only recently taken up this post, but I am happy to go away and look into that. Mr Radden is quite right that we seek to have early engagement with the UK Government all the time at an official level. It can sometimes be tricky because we do not maybe see things until the very last minute, but where we can seek to engage and influence, we always do that. Can I just seek a point of clarification with what you just said there, Karen, when you said that you sometimes do not see things at the last minute? Is that at an official level as well as a ministerial level? Gordon might be able to help, but what I would say is that it depends on the area. There might be better engagement and a free flow of information. It depends on which part and what you get to see, but I do not know if Gordon has been doing this longer than I have. I think that there is a particular issue with the bills that were introduced just right after the Queen's speech. In those cases, colleagues are quite often seeing provisions on the day of introduction, in some cases, or on the day before introduction. It was a big and complicated bill, so it makes it very difficult to meet the two-week target in standing orders for lodging in LCR. I just want to turn to historical commitments that have been pursued by predecessor committees. Certainly our predecessor committee had welcomed the Scottish Government's work and meeting almost all its historic commitments by the end of the last parliamentary session, so the longest standing commitment is now the education-listed body Scotland order 2018, which is SSI 2018-7. What is the Government doing to ensure that it meets this and other outstanding commitments? I am glad, Mr Sweeney. You have said that we have managed to deal with a lot of the historical commitments of predecessor committees. The simple answer is that we are still committed to making sure that we do get this work done. Some of the things have just been on-going. Ironically, I thought that that might be a question, because I asked what we have on the decks, what are still there, what can we get done and clear out. It is one of the things that I would like to do, but, as in all things in life, sometimes some things are a bit more complicated than others. Can you just ask what procedure you follow to keep a positive tension within the team to make sure that it is constantly being challenged about how rapidly that has been progressed? I hate to say it in front of them, but I have a very good team. I do not have a head to get too big. I have been supported. They are pretty focused on making sure that they do their job and make sure that we produce all the work that we need to get done. As you can understand in the parliamentary legislation unit, it is much like the remit that you have here. It is quite detailed and quite a lot on-going. It is almost like Saturday night variety plate spinning. You have one still going and you are just getting them all going. It is in the list of priorities, the historical cases, that we have to try and get done. Will it get done tomorrow or the next day? Probably a wee bit longer than that. There has been reasons why that one in particular you mentioned has been taken as long as it has. In relation to that, turning to the Scottish Law Commission, Bill's and others quite the reservoir sitting waiting to be brought forward to legislation. I often think that Government time could perhaps be used more efficiently to drive that forward rather than debating motions without any legislative effect, for example. We would be good to try and utilise these fantastic pieces of legislation in the interests of the country, rather than being the model United Nations. To that end, the committee is looking forward to scrutinising the Move Transaction Scotland Bill. As highlighted in the most recent programme for government, the implementation of a number of other SLC reports are being considered for session 6. Could you update the committee on what legislation is in the pipeline and the timescale for introduction? Could you give an indication also on how many of those legacy reports will be brought forward on to the statute books this session? This time last year, when I first came to this committee, my Cairns predecessor said to me that the Moveable Transactions Bill was a perfect example of the Government working with the SLC to ensure that we get that forward. Then that bill became quite difficult and complex. It is a very complex technical bill in itself. I said to Cairns predecessor that I called it the Unmovable Objects Bill because it just did not seem to move. I sat here, committed myself to the committee, saying that we were going to go forward with that, and then we hit difficulty in so much that there were quite a lot of issues that had to be solved. I do not know if Rachael Yw will be able to add anything to that with the Moveable Transactions example. I think that issues have been resolved and we are pleased to be able to get that introduced. It is an example of the difficulties and complexities that we have with some of the SLC bills as they come forward. Yes, there can be lots of challenges, as you will have seen. It is a very technical area, so we need to make sure that everything is right before the bill is presented to Parliament. What I am saying is that I do want to try to see if I can give you exactly how many that I am planning to work with at this moment. The answer would be no, but we are quite happy to go on and look at that to see where we could be. Maybe this one in particular has made me a bit nervous because it just seemed to take forever after I told every one of you a year ago that that was one that you are going to do now.  Effectively, you have to be careful what you wish for as the committee because it is coming to your committee and it will be a challenging bill for you all to deal with. I do not doubt for a minute that you will deal with it, but it will be a challenging bill for you. You never lose it to a salesperson. I am sure that we are up for getting stuck into it. I just want to ask another supplementary question on that. Just to keep an eye on progress, would it be possible to have a grid of outstanding bills and reports and a view of where the Government's position is on bringing it forward to what the status of it is so that we have an indicator of the bill and the anticipated status and when we might see it reach the Parliament so that we have that oversight of what is there? It is a huge body of public money that is going into developing it. It seems like an inefficient thing, just that I am sitting there gathering dust. It might be good to have that oversight so that we can see that that has been two years what is going on and making it from time to time and just revisit it. I always thought that we shared that information, but if we don't, then that is part of the process of deciding what information we share with him and what we don't, we can take note of that and make sure that we include that in the look of what we are going to do. I want to go back to the issue of historic commitments, because certainly in the last session at one point there was a whole plethora of historic commitments and this committee really pressed the Government to make some improvements there and the Government certainly did. It is obvious that this one is just the outstanding. It has been there for a number of years, clearly. Brexit has happened, the Covid pandemic, but can you provide an indication as to when the Government will actually have that particular commitment? Probably my best bet would be to get back to you in writing on that one, just to give me a chance to have a proper look at it, because when I was asking I just put the information this morning with regard to this bill in particular, so if you give me some time to get back to you and I will write to you on it. Thanks, convener. Just a comment on the Scottish Law Commission. You will know that we work closely with them as we work closely with yourself. There has been that frustration over a number of years from them, which Mr Sweeney has highlighted, about the amount of work that they put into developing those proposals. As Mr Sweeney said, a lot of them are just sitting gathered dust. From this committee's point of view, it would be useful if we could have some kind of timetable from yourself. Even if it is just to say that there is no chance of progressing that one or that one, yes, there is an opportunity there. You are right about the moveable— I am happy to look at that, Mr Sweeney. That is good. That would be really useful. You are quite right about the moveable transactions bill. I had a quick look at it. It is quite daunting, but we will get stuck into it and we will do a proper job on it. My area of questioning is really around something that you mentioned earlier. Your frustration and your officials' frustration about having very little time to scrutinise UK bills, but we found the same thing with Scottish bills. In fact, we had a case last week with the Good Food Nation bill. The committee received a letter the day before the stage 3 debate, telling us about possible new powers related to the establishment of a food commissioner. We just had no time to consider that. Again today, as you said earlier, we will be looking at the coronavirus bill following stage 2. Stage 3 amendments have to be laid by noon today, and we are only discussing it at this meeting. If this committee decided that we thought that there should be an amendment, probably by the end of this meeting we will have less than an hour to do that. That is not really acceptable, is it? On the whole, my preferred option would be if there is a hardware in an easy way, I will take the easier way, which would be to make sure that everything goes as per normal. Sometimes, because of circumstances, like in the Good Food Nation example, where something came out at stage 2 with regard to the debate, changes are made. I take on board the point of view that you are saying with regards to that you would like more time in scrutiny. I want to come here and not say that you are not giving me enough time for scrutiny, because, as I have said to you last year, my job is effectively processed, and to make sure that process goes smoothly. I would probably prefer if we were in a situation, but, as I have said with other answers, there is always circumstance where you end up. If I use the example of LCMs, it becomes difficult. We end up in that process again, where the UK Government has given me them at the last minute. My officials are trying to find out if they are good, proper, if they can fit into Scots law, if everyone is okay, if everyone is right with it, and then we have got to make sure that the Parliament can scrutinise as well. It is trying to get all that at the one time. If one is like a domino effectively, once the domino starts, they all start falling down, but sometimes we need a few packs of dominoes so that we can kill my metaphor even further. I would be able to do the job properly, and that means that the UK Government has given us a lot more time. I was not talking about the UK Government. I was talking about you, Mr Adam. I am aware of the Food Commission 1 in the stage 3 debate when it came up, and I am aware of the situation. On the whole, I would have preferred if we maybe had more time at that stage, yes, but sometimes things do change at stage 2 and 3. As a whole, I try not to truncate the legislative process. There have been examples in the past year, but on the whole, I try not to. With regard to the coronavirus bill, why are we only considering this today, when today is the deadline for stage 3 amendments? Frankly, that does not give the committee enough time to properly do its work. Mr Simpson, with a great respect, I can only talk about process and parliamentary business, policy, and that is not my remit. I am not talking about policy. I am talking about planning and a timescale. However, the development of the policy itself and how it gets to that position is what takes the time. My question is not about policy. It is about giving the committee enough time to deal with whatever is in front of it. I have not mentioned the policy behind the bill. On the whole, Mr Simpson, we do. There are odd times when we have situations like that, and sometimes we just need to move forward. It is entirely up to the committee to decide when it has its discussion after I have left. We do not set the timescale, minister. It just needs to improve. We should not be in this position. I am suitably chastised, Mr Simpson. The committee has a long-standing interest in the scrutiny of bills that confer powers in devolved areas to UK ministers and the scrutiny of the exercise of those powers. It would be informative to understand what considerations inform Scottish ministers' decisions to recommend consent for UK bills, which confer delegated powers on UK ministers in devolved areas. On the whole, most of that is done on a LCM by LCM basis. We have to look at the basis of that LCM and how it affects Scotland and its devolution. I go back to part of the process and all that. It has been the difficulty that we have had with regard to things. On some occasions, officials, no matter how good their relationships have been with UK officials, the first time they have seen it and ministers have seen it, has been on publication of LCM. If it is not on the publication of the LCM, then we have seen it a day beforehand. That does not give us the time and scope to be able to do the work that we need to do to ensure that we can—again, it goes back to the whole scrutiny scenario where we need to ensure that we do that. On each and every LCM, it is done on an LCM by LCM basis. The decision will be made on how it affects us, either from a legal perspective or how it affects us from a policy perspective, over that period. Presumably, Scottish ministers have a template of the sorts of questions that you have alluded to. I say that you have alluded to it, because there is more detail that you can give us about what those considerations are. When you see a bill that comes from the UK Parliament and it confers delegated powers to UK ministers in devolved areas, is there a checklist set of criteria or questions that you then say, right, let's have a look at this and see whether we can ultimately recommend to the Scottish Parliament that we legislate a consent motion for that piece of legislation? Talk us through that with a little bit more detail. I feel that I have already explained the Government's position with regards to that, Mr Kerr, but always one for giving good value to the convener. Ash Rachel, from her perspective, when we are going through that process, what would you be looking at? As the minister said, we are looking at lots of different factors, what we think is appropriate, in the circumstances that we are looking at, the type of area it is, how the law works, whether we think that that would be an appropriate power. Is there also looking at are we retaining an option for ministers, for Scottish ministers to make their SSIs an alternative, looking at what is most appropriate in the particular circumstances of that bill? Maybe, Gordon, can you say something from the perspective of the work that you do? Does that affect your... I cannot add much to what Rachel has just said. If there are powers in a bill that give powers for UK ministers to legislate in devolved areas, then the ask for them, as would always be, to have a consent lock, so the consent of Scottish ministers is required, or to have concurrent powers, so we can do our own SSIs, Rachel said, in that area. Those requests, of late, have been falling on deaf ears, I think it would be fair to say, so we are asking for those things, those things that we are not getting them. There are UK bills where UK ministers have delegated powers that they can use without reference to Scottish ministers. They fall out with the scope of SI protocol 2, so a couple of questions for the minister then. I would be very interested to hear his views. How might the Scottish Parliament scrutinise proposals by UK ministers to exercise powers, as well as the Scottish ministers' position on those proposals? Well, as I said earlier on, Mr Kerr, the situation that we have is that when the LCM comes in, the decision has to be made how it affects us, the Scottish Government, and how we deal with it and how it affects the legislation. When we are going through the whole process ourselves, we have to ensure that we have everything covered. I think that what you are looking for, Mr Kerr, is that there is a template to cut and paste on every single LCM. I am trying to say and what my officials have tried to say is that there is not a template like that because everything is different and sometimes it can be more complex than others. It is quite simple where there is not an issue, but recently, more often than not, there have been issues and we have had to do an SSI and do something within the Scottish Parliament. I am not asking you to copy and paste anything, but I am looking for a ruler against which you measure a bill and the provisions in it that allow UK ministers to exercise legal rights in devolved areas. The rule, Mr Kerr, would be legislative competence in Scotland. I come back to my question, because you have answered the question from a governmental perspective, but it is the Minister for Parliamentary Business. I was asking about how might the Scottish Parliament scrutinise. Do you have a view on that? How might we scrutinise proposals by UK ministers to exercise powers that have been conferred to them through UK bills that have had the consent of the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament? I think that, on the whole, from my own experience as a backbencher and within committees like this one, we do get that option to look at the information as it comes from the Government, because you will be aware that there is an LCM, you will be aware that the LCM comes through and you will be aware that the SSI comes through as well. There are all those checks and balances in the Parliament to be able to do that as is. Again, if there is a better way of looking at it, I think that that is what you are trying to hint at, Mr Kerr. If there is a better way, then I am quite open to looking at a better way to make that happen and it might be more transparent for the committees in the Parliament itself. I am quite happy to look at that in any suggestions. Some others could be part of our process that we are looking into with regard to the information that we provide backwards and forwards to the committee. One of the issues that you have touched on that I would agree with, and I am sure that other members of the committee would agree with, is that there is an adequate opportunity to scrutinise in advance. That is a theme that has come up time and time again this morning in relation to matters general, not just specific to UK ministers having powers to legislate in the vulnerable areas but across the board. I think that I will probably leave it at that. That is always a good thing, Mr Kerr. I agree with each other. It actually happens more often than you might credit. That is on the official report now. The report of your quoted... It has been written down by my colleague. That has been killed in Paisley now. I think that I will have a discussion with the Presiding Officer just to make it aware. Certainly, thank you very much for that. It is just Mr Kerr to make you aware of your point regarding the scrutiny of the LCMs. That is something that this committee is very much active to. I have had dialogue about that because it is a valid question. We know that there is an issue there. Any other questions for the minister or his team? Okay. Minister and your colleagues, I thank you for your attendance to the committee this morning. I think that, genuinely, the regular sessions that we have are very helpful by way of this committee's work and also in terms of the way that we are able to work with the Scottish Government. I thank you very much for that. Can I just add that, if there is anything, my doors are always open for members of the committee or whatever just to contact us and we can discuss anything offline that they may have. As I have often said and people say it will come back to bite me, I do not believe that I have a monopoly on good ideas, so if anyone has any, I am quite happy to steal it from them. I am sorry, I will work with them on it. Minister, thank you very much for that. I will suspend briefly. Agenda item number 4, we are considering instruments that are subject to the affirmative procedure. No points have been raised on the draft health, tobacco, nicotine, etc., and Care Scotland Act 2016, supplementary provision, regulations 2022, and the draft age of criminal responsibility reports on the use of places of safety, Scotland regulations 2022. First of all, is the committee content with his instruments? Are there any points on the instruments? No, okay, thank you. Agenda item number 5, we are considering instruments that are subject to the negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2022, 201, 202, and 203. Is the committee content with his instruments? Agenda item number 6, we are considering instruments that are not subject to any parliamentary procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2022, 204. Is the committee content with this instrument? Okay, thank you. I'm with that. I'm with the committee and to private. Thank you.


Here we are zooming into NGC 4710 in the Virgo cluster. This magnificent giant galaxy is tilted edge-on to our view from Earth. This perspective allows astronomers to easily distinguish the central bulge of stars from its pancake-flat disk of stars, dust, and gas. When staring directly at the center of the galaxy, one can detect a faint, ethereal X-shaped structure. Such a feature, which astronomers call a boxy or peanut-shaped bulge, is due to the vertical motions of the stars in the galaxy's bar and is only evident when a galaxy is seen edge-on.


Macmillan Audio presents The Disordered Mind What Unusual Brains Tell Us About Ourselves by Eric R. Kandel Read for you by David Stifle Please refer to the supplemental PDF to view tables and figures. This document should have been included with your audiobook purchase. Introduction I spent my entire career trying to understand the inner workings of the brain and the motivation for human behavior. Having escaped from Vienna as a young boy soon after Hitler occupied it, I was preoccupied with one of the great mysteries of human existence. How can one of the most advanced and cultured societies on earth turn its efforts so rapidly toward evil? How do individuals, when faced with a moral dilemma, make choices? Can the splintered self be healed through skilled human interaction? I became a psychiatrist in hopes of understanding and acting on these difficult problems. As I began to appreciate the elusiveness of the problems of the mind, however, I turned to questions that could be answered more definitively through scientific research. I focused on small collections of neurons in a very simple animal and eventually discovered some of the fundamental processes underlying elementary forms of learning and memory. While I have enjoyed my work a great deal, and it has been amply appreciated by others, I realized that my findings represent but a small advance in the quest to understand the most complex entity in the universe, the human mind. This pursuit has animated philosophers, poets, and physicians since the dawn of humankind. Engraved on the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was the maxim, Know Thyself. Ever since Socrates and Plato first reflected on the nature of the human mind, serious thinkers of every generation have sought to understand the thoughts, feelings, behavior, memories, and creative powers that make us who we are. For earlier generations, this quest was restricted to the intellectual framework of philosophy. As embodied in the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes' pronouncement, I think therefore I am. Descartes' guiding idea was that our... Sample complete. Ready to continue?