Welcome to the fourth meeting of session six of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Before we move to the first item on the agenda, I would like to remind everyone present to switch their mobile phones to silent. The first item of business is to decide whether to take items eight and nine in private. It is a committee content to take items eight and nine in private. Moving to agenda item number two, today we have before us George Adam MSP, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, to give evidence regarding the work of the Scottish Government and how it relates to this committee. Mr Adam is accompanied by two officials at the moment who are all appearing remotely. We have Steve McGregor, the head of the parliament and legislation unit, and Susan Herbert, the head of the subordinate legislation team in the parliament and the legislation unit. We are hoping to be joined by Rachel Rainer, the deputy legislation coordinator in the Scottish Government's legal directorate. First, I welcome you all to the meeting and I would like to welcome the minister to his new role. The minister will be aware that the previous committee had an excellent work in relationship with the minister and certainly we are keen to ensure that it continues in this parliamentary session. I would like to ask the minister if he wishes to make any opening remarks. I thank you very much for asking me along here today. I too hope that we have a good work in relationship because it is important that I, as a minister of Parliament, have a good work in relation, particularly with this committee, because I am aware of the work that you do because I used to be on the committee myself, so I know how important it is to make the cogs of this place actually work. I congratulate you, convener, on your coming, convener, of the committee. We have known each other for a very long time, although we support rival teams in Renfrewshire and we can leave that argument for another day, but we have been friends for a very long time, so it is good to see you there as well. I would like to welcome everyone else who is new to the committee or those who are continuing on from their role in the past. The committee itself is important role in scrutinising all the legislation that goes through the building. In the past year, it has been particularly challenging for you. It has been a difficult year with all the legislation that has gone through, but there has been a full legislative programme and we are still addressing many of the challenges that we are dealing with with Covid. I recognise from the feedback from the committee that the Government has improved its processes. Policy notes now are more accessible. Outstanding commitments met huge improvement that will continue and improvement management of volumes of SSIs. Improvement of the number of SSIs reported. 13 per cent of the 396 SSIs laid in 2020-21, the majority in the last quarter. I am not complacent that we want to see further improvement with that as we continue. I provide clerks with forward look of SSIs to be laid in the following two weeks. I need to avoid where possible breaches of the 20-day laying period. I know that that is a thing that particularly vexes the committee. The ones that we have had recently have unfortunately been relatively unavoidable, but I am aware of the issue and I am aware that I want to try to get things better. However, what has happened recently has been systematic. Of the 25 breaches out of the 143 negative SSIs that were laid in last year, around 17 per cent in total, we are like that. It is not good enough, but we will try to move it better than that. I would like to ensure that the committee receives information on the volumes of legislation that comes to Parliament and can expect to receive from the Government on a regular basis. I welcome the views that the previous committee made in their legacy report on the consideration of the Scottish Law Commission bills. I am pleased to note that the announcement for the programme for government, the moveable transactions bill, will be a Scottish Law Commission bill. There will be other ones that we are committed to in the programme for government that will be part of that. I know that that is another major issue for the committee. I look forward to hearing the views of the committee and working with you in the future. I hope to have a similar relationship to the one that you had with my predecessor. I have known Mr Day for years and I find it difficult that people find him charming, but obviously you all had a good working relationship with him. I am quite happy to try and keep that going. If you did not, I will be quite happy to make it better. I will open up some questioning. The first one suggests that it is regarding a late SSI that came into the committee last night. It is on the agenda for this morning, which we will discuss later. It is the social security residence requirements of Afghanistan and Scotland regulations 2021. Clearly, the situation in Afghanistan is urgent and pressing. Certainly, as a committee, we would be keen to understand that are you anticipating any more instruments regarding Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead? As you have already mentioned, it is a difficult situation and it is constantly moving, but I would not like to be doing a last-minute SSI like that to yourself unless it was completely necessary. In that case, I believe that it was. However, whenever possible, we will try to make sure that things get decided well in advance. Certainly, of all the Covid SSIs late in the past 18 months, how many separate SSIs are still alive and how many have been superseded or are no longer used? Off the top of my head, I could not get you that information right now, convener, but I could get it to you back in writing, no problem. Obviously, I am performing without a net here today as I have only got a couple of officials, so I can get that information to you, the committee, as soon as possible. In session 5, the committee regularly highlighted to ministers the quality of the drafting of secondary legislation and saw a general reduction of errors, which is something that you touched upon in your opening comments. The Government has clearly been under pressure to bring forward legislation quickly to respond to the coronavirus. Certainly, in terms of your own thoughts about that, what are you planning to do to ensure that the quality of SSIs remains high? I think that, as you have already said, convener, it is important that we have a clarity in the legislation. I know that there have been times over the past year when there have been difficulties with definitions on various things, and sometimes such things can be unavoidable, whether it is in the political debate itself or whether it is in the legal realms themselves. We have tried all the time to ensure that we get legislation that is clear and that we are able to understand it. It is extremely important that, on every occasion, I do that, I try to bring it as clearly as possible. There have been a couple of issues that have happened over the definition of concepts, as I have already said, which have caused some confusion. I have no simple solution to that issue. There is no simple solution, but it is something that, as minister, I will strive to try to make everything as clear as possible. I am a great believer in the simpler you make everything, the easier we are all going to get on. I am a predecessor of the committee. I welcome the Scottish Government's work in meeting almost all the historic commitments by the end of the last parliamentary session. Some of those historic commitments go back more than one parliamentary session, as you will be aware. What is the Scottish Government doing to ensure that it meets its commitments swiftly in this session to ensure that the problem does not resurface? Are you talking about the 28-day issue? No, it is that there are a number of instruments where there have been issues, or technical issues, with them. The quality of SSIs again then? Yes, yes. I will do not most to make sure that you do get the information. It is inevitable that, with the sheer volume of what is done, that mistakes are made, people are human, things do not go wrong, but we will try to make sure that we have a process that you get as accurately as possible of any SSIs that are laid in front of you. Thank you very much, convener. I welcome your comments at the start about the relationship that you want with the committee. When I was convener, I had a good relationship with Graham Day. You will be horrified to hear that. I know how working one was at easy. Also, as predecessor, Joe FitzPatrick, I found them both very good to work with. When they appeared at the committee, we had a very cordial relationship, and they knew what the committee's requirements were. That said, we had some correspondence with you last week around the vaccine passport debate and the proposal from the Scottish Government to introduce the requirement for vaccine certification at certain events. You have seen our annual report from the last session where we expressed some, shall we say, concern over the number of made affirmative regulations that we are going through. For anyone who is watching, that is where the Government brings in a law without it being scrutinised by the Parliament. The scrutiny comes later. Most Parliamentarians would accept that there has been a need for that during Covid, but there has been a large number of that. We wrote to you, as you know, around about this proposal for vaccine passports. That might not be the term that you use, but that is the term that I use. We know what we are talking about. You wrote back to us on 9 September. It was quite a quick turnaround. You, in your letter, essentially said that, if there were to be regulations and there would have to be regulations if that was to come in, your view is that that made affirmative procedure should still apply. Despite there being weeks to prepare for this, I am asking you here, is that still your position? I do not have the same view on the made affirmative scenario as you do. It still offers a level of scrutiny through this committee with regards to that. As I kept saying, Mr Simpson, parliamentary scrutiny and accountability are extremely important. I agree that, wherever possible, we should give Parliament the chance to scrutinise the regulations before they come into effect. However, there needs to be some form of balance between parliamentary scrutiny and the need to maximise Minister's ability to finalise those decisions as close to the relevant time to account for the fact that situations change at the moment rapidly. They were living in unprecedented times and, over the past 18 months, there have been times where Government has had to deal with things rapidly. There are a number of moving parts in the decision-making process, as well as all the emerging data that we are currently receiving. There are a number of issues that are being worked through in the design and operation of the scheme, including how medical exemptions could be considered. As I put in my letter to the committee, there is an urgent need for this measure to be implemented to provide an additional layer protection and a limited set of higher risk settings. In all honesty, I want to work with the committee on the issue, but with some of the Covid regulations, as has been the case over the past 18 months, I cannot make any guarantees that we will not be using the made affirmative process, which I have said in an answer to one of your colleagues, Mr Stewart, when he asked a question in Parliament a couple of weeks ago. That sounds like there might be some movement so that you might not necessarily use the made affirmative procedure. I can guarantee one way or the other. I think that there will be a good chance that it will be made affirmative in some of those regulations as they come forward. As I said in the past, where possible, I will try to work with the committee in a way that will be acceptable to yourself. However, on many of the issues where there is a timescale and we need to deliver something, there are times. We had a debate last week in Parliament with regard to Covid certification and there was a vote in Parliament as well. We have already had one level of scrutiny within the Parliament as is. We had a two-hour debate about something that we knew precious little of. We certainly did not know the details and that is where scrutiny comes in. I know that you know that, so I do not think that that debate counts as scrutiny. The scrutiny would come when you tell people, tell Parliament what it is that you are proposing to do, if indeed you proceed with it. You mentioned in your letter, and I will just read it out. You say, I absolutely accept that the made affirmative procedure must only be used when the test for using it is set out in schedule 19 of the coronavirus act 2020 is met. If we have a look at schedule 19 of the coronavirus act 2020, paragraph 1.1 says, Scottish ministers may, by regulations, make provision for the purpose of preventing, protecting against, controlling or providing a public health response to the incidents or spread of infection or contamination in Scotland. That gives you the power to do all that stuff, but there are some checks on that, also contained in the act. One of which is under 4A, where it says, regulations under paragraph 1.1, which I have just read out to you, may not include provision enabling the imposition of a special restriction or requirement unless, so that could include vaccine passports, unless the regulations are made in response to a serious and imminent threat to public health, so it has to be both serious and imminent, or imposition of the restriction or requirement is expressed to be contingent on their being such a threat at the time when it is imposed. My point to you would be, given that the First Minister announced her intention to bring in vaccine passports a couple of weeks ago and that they would not actually come in until the start of October, that does not meet those tests in my view. That is not serious and imminent. That is when she announced it. It was not serious and imminent. If we go on to the second point, that there being such a threat at the time when it is imposed, we cannot possibly know what the threat is in a couple of weeks' time. That is why I would argue that you should not be using this procedure, you should be allowing prior scrutiny of whatever it is that you are proposing so that we get this right. Again, Mr Simpson, we are here to the difference in interpretation. From my own point of view, I would say that the situation and the key groups that we are trying to ensure are vaccinated through because of the Covid certification is important and serious that we do. There is a health scale there as well. My interpretation would be the opposite of what you have just said, because those key groups that we need to be vaccinated and the whole idea of the Covid certification is to ensure that those key groups are indeed vaccinated and safe. We will have to strongly disagree with each other on that. My interpretation of that act, which gives the powers to do things, is that you have not met those tests, but we are clearly not going to agree on that. Start for us, both. I am sure that we can improve as we go along. I think that others might wish to come in at this point, convener. Mr Huy, thank you convener and welcome minister. Given that, if you go down the route that appears likely, it may be the last opportunity that we have to question the Government in detail on the application and the operation of the scheme. Just for the public who might be watching, could you say what specific data an individual will have to disclose in order to apply for a Covid passport? The data will be the data that you have already got on NHS Scotland with regard to your double vaccination. That will be it. It is a QR code that, effectively, there will be no data going backwards and forwards. It will just be the equivalent of a green tick as in you have double vaccinated. Will that include a photograph? As far as I will need to get back to you in that one, but I would not think so, but I would need to double check that one for you. Given that then that QR code and the data will be read by a third-party device, that is right. It will be the bouncer or the person in the doors. Am I correct? That is my understanding. The best way to explain it would be very similar to modern football matches. My interpretation of it would be that, effectively, there is a QR code when you go through your ticket and you put it through the turnstile and you get accessibility. There are hand-held devices that are available to do that. The information when you are doing that is already technology, it is already used on a regular basis. When that happens at a football game, nobody's data goes transfer and over other than what is held by the, if it is a season ticket with a club itself. That is about gaining entry to a match, but, obviously, that is a requirement to buy a ticket. In those circumstances, I am the bouncer and you are seeking to come into my nightclub. How can I confirm that you are who you say you are and that you are the person who has the double vaccine? What appears on my screen to give me that assurance? It will be your QR code, and your QR code will be secure and so much that you will be the one that will be there. I know that Mr Simpson said that he managed to gerrymander a QR code last week, but I do not believe that that would be the case. It would be the case that you would have your own one. It is very similar to, again, we all have been using QR codes to a certain degree with regard to checking into hospitality venues at the moment, where the detail that is going over there is the fact that George Adam has appeared at this pub or restaurant at this time. You are appearing in the pub and you are simply recording the fact that you have been there. What I am wanting to know is how does that bouncer know that you are who you say you are and that you have the double vaccine? What specifically appears on his screen, because it could not be a green tech, because then I could take your phone and go with it? What specifically appears on his screen to give or her screen to give them the assurance that you are who you say you are and that you have been double vaccinated? What I will do, Mr Hoy, is that I will take away the actual question, the detail of what you have got, and I will get you a more detailed answer so that I can put your mind at rest with regards to this, anyway. I will bring this back to the committee, if that is okay. Okay, fine. By this stage, probably ministers should be aware of how the system functions, but we will leave that. On the back of that question, have you in any way assessed that the system that you are about to introduce is compliant with GDPR legislation? I would assume that it would be to comply with GDPR. I think that we probably need more than an assumption at this stage. Well, I think that you would be just being a bit of a rascals there, Mr Hoy, because I think that the Government would not do anything illegal. Okay, thank you. I just want to follow up on that, because I am a football fan like you. If I go to a football match, I show somebody at the gate my QR code, he or she scans it into their personal mobile phone, which is what it will be. That is what the Government said last week. On their personal mobile phone, my concern is that my name, address and date of birth could show up on that person's personal mobile phone. That, to me, is a breach of my data. Again, I would say my answer to Mr Hoy. The Government will not do anything that will breach any law or GDPR. Would you accept that that would be a breach of my data? It is a nonsense question with a great respect, Mr Simpson, because I do not believe that you are going to end up in a situation where I could walk out in the street and get knocked down by a bus, but then again I might not get knocked down by that bus. I might cross the road safely. I think that you are just speculating just to leave it too much there. Speculating, because we do not actually know, but you have said you will write to us with the details. I will move on, convener, if that is okay. On another item that you mentioned earlier, which is the need for clarity when you lay instruments, we had a very interesting discussion at committee recently about what constitutes dancing, because you will recall that if you are dancing in a nightclub, and of course we have not got a proper definition of a nightclub yet, let alone dancing, but if you are dancing you do not have to wear a mask, but there was no clear definition of what dancing actually is. The Government came back to us and said that if it is a form of exercise, it will fall under that description, in which case, as Craig Hoy mentioned at the same meeting, you could be dancing in a supermarket aisle and take your mask off. That is why there is a need for clarity. I wonder if you have defined what is meant by dancing yet? At the end of the day, we all know what dancing is and what dancing is going to a nightclub. I know that you and Mr Kidd had quite a discussion about what constitutes dancing. I have seen Mr Kidd dance myself, and that is something that defies a definition in itself. At the end of the day, I think that when people are going to a nightclub and then they go on to the dance floor and they start doing whatever they do, many of our age is known as dad dancing, but effectively when they do go on to that dance floor, that constitutes some dancing on the floor there and they would take their masks off. We are dancing in the head of a pin with regard to this one. There is actually a need for clarity, which I agree that we need to be clear at all times, but at the same time, we have to use a bit of common sense when we are talking about a lot of that. Most of the young people who will be going to the dancing—that was a very wedgy term that I used there—would understand what constitutes dancing. I do not think that you could do it in a shop. I do not think that you could just get your mask off and start dancing in the middle of a store. That was the problem with the way the law was framed, and that is why we raised it. We are joking about it, but it is a serious matter that, when we write law, it needs to make sense and it needs to be understood and there should not be a loophole. As I said, there is common sense, which is that if someone takes a mask off in the middle of a Tesco and has a wee dance to them, I do not think that it constitutes the same as dancing in a nightclub. I will move on to my final question for now. We have highlighted—again, this is something that you mentioned earlier on—that we are not persuaded by some of the reasoning provided by the Scottish Government for breaching the 28-day rule for negative instruments. Can you expand on what work you are doing to ensure that such breaches are only made when absolutely necessary? Mr Simpson, I spend most of my life reminding my colleagues of various regulations such as the 28-day period. It is serious, and I tell them how it should be avoided at all costs, because, if I am honest with you, Mr Simpson, I do not want to become into committee to you for something that is, effectively, should just be natural for us to do it within the timelines. I find it irritating to myself, but there are times when it has been unavoidable. We will probably agree to differ whether that was unavoidable or not, but there are times when that is unavoidable. However, I agree with the need for us to get better and to continue getting better with that approach for the 28-day breaches, because, for me, it is a process, and we should just do the process. Thank you very much, convener. Minister, I can ask a couple of questions about secondary legislation stemming from the UK's withdrawal from the EU. Prior to the UK leaving the EU, the previous minister, as has been mentioned, regularly updated the committee and, on a number of occasions, talked about the volume of secondary legislation that is required to fix any legislator deficiencies that stem from the withdrawal from the EU. In terms of legislation arising from the UK leaving the EU, can you provide an estimate of the number of SSIs that is required to be laid under the European Union withdrawal act to deal with the consequences of the withdrawal? In general terms, I expect the EU exit-related SSIs to remain relatively low compared to what they were at the peak, because Mr Simpson and the convener will be aware that there was a period in which that was literally all that you were dealing with. I expect about 18 Scottish EU exit-related SSIs to open until the end of December, but that could be subject to change. Since 2019, we have laid 74 Scottish EU exit-related SSIs. I can expect to see further Scottish EU exit-related SSIs during 2022, but there will not be anywhere near the number that we have had in the past. There should be a reduction in the number. Scent notifications for UK SSIs are only considered by subject committees. How many SSI notifications will you estimate will be sent to the Parliament under SSI protocol 2 between now and the end of this year? Probably about 22 will remain UK notifications before the end of this year. I will just answer your question very quickly. I will, thank you. Is that a slow down as well then? Yes, in general, compared to the previous committee, the two members that have been here previously will know that the general volume of SSIs relate to you when it was going through. I suppose that we are just trying to get a feel for what the forward workload is going to be and be able to anticipate as best possible future SSIs in relation to non-Covid aspects of legislation. How will the Scottish Government prioritise non-Covid instruments to ensure that the necessary SSIs are still laid and scrutinised by the Parliament in a timely manner? We continue aim to analyse and prioritise the legislative programme, taking into account the Scottish Government's legal and policy capacity and parliamentary scrutiny capacity. That has helped us to avoid having to continue to stop and start the legislative programme to avoid peaks and troughs. As you will be aware, we tend to, in general, with SSIs, not to try to put too many through the system at the one time in order to make sure that it can balance itself out over the period, because this committee would be extremely busy if we just did it all in the one time. I suppose that one aspect of the dynamic that we consider is packages of SSIs and groupings in relation to specific bills that have passed. There have been significant pieces of legislation that have passed in recent years, such as the Social Security Act 2018 and the Transport Scotland Act 2019, and they have a significant number of delegative powers because they are quite complex pieces of legislation, obviously. It would be useful for this committee in order to plan its forward workload, as well as the relevant subject matter committees, to be given advanced notice, given that those are just two examples. Do you know if there are any sets of instruments in the pipeline and are you able to keep us updated on that progress, given that those are particularly landmark pieces of legislation? Mr Sweeney, I know about this because you recently brought this up with my officials at the, or all of you did, the committee did at the recent business planning session that you had. I am happy to take an undertaking that is part of our profile on future legislation. We will seek to identify significant packages of bill implementation and SSIs. I can also provide some information today, just to answer your question. A package of seven SSIs to implement redress for survivors, Historic Child Abuse and Care Act split over September to November. Implementation of the Civil Partnership Act 2020 will be three SSIs in October and three in November. Implementation of the Disclosure Scotland Act 2020 will be two SSIs in November, with more to follow. Implementation of the Forensic Medical Services will begin in January. I am keen to make sure that this is a perfect example of that. I was already aware that you had an issue with that, and my officials were able to come to me and give me that detail so that I could bring it to you, so it goes back to what I was saying earlier on. The more we can have an open and frank discussion, the more things I can deal with and be able to give you the information that you need. I mentioned two specific items of legislation. You mentioned a series of bills that have now become acts and delegated powers have been drawn down. In relation to the Social Security and Transport Acts, particularly because there are significant pieces of legislation, will you be able to give a commitment that you will go back to your civil servants and ask them to consider when that might be coming forward and right to the committee to indicate when that is likely to be happening? I am quite happy to do that and try to give you the detail. That would be great. I appreciate it. Your predecessor tended to write to the subject committees at regular intervals to highlight the volume of SSIs that would be anticipated to fall within a period of time, within six months to 12 months period. Do you intend to continue that practice? Yes, I do, because I do not want to see Graham Day ever getting better of me. Thank you, Mr Swinney. Thanks again, convener. Just following up on that, when we had a private meeting with your officials, we did ask about the area of questioning that Mr Swinney has just covered, and we specifically asked if the Government could provide us with a list of outstanding regulations that flow from acts that have been passed. I am not sure that we have seen that. Mr Swinney mentioned the Transport Act, but there have been a number of others, including the Planning Act. I think that there is still some outstanding stuff there, so I think that it would be useful to have that list if we could have it. What I will do is to get my officials to make a troll of what is coming up and what is available, and I will share with you what I can at this stage. I will make sure that I have all the details correct and that there is nothing that can be taken the wrong way. Just on that point, minister, it might be useful in the intervening period, to write to the committee on a quarterly basis, to keep the committee updated on what is coming down the line over the next quarter. I will look into that for us and see what we can do. I will move on to discuss the Scottish law commission. The committee works very closely with the law commission as do you, but there has been a long-standing frustration from them and us—particularly them, I would imagine—about the amount of work that they have done, the amount of reports that they have done that have just stacked up and have not resulted in legislation. In fact, they have provided us with a list. I think that there is about 18 Scottish law commission reports dating from 2006, which have not ended up as legislation. That covers things from electoral law to level crossings. There is all kinds of very serious work going on here, so they are very frustrated. We were very frustrated, and certainly in the last session, we worked with the Parliament to put in a set of protocols that could allow this committee to take on more bills if they were presented. That would help the Parliament to get stuff through. In the programme for government, you said that you wanted to do something on moveable transactions. When do you see legislation on that being introduced? Do you see there being a bill that meets the criteria that might be considered by this committee? On the Scottish law commission stuff, all your work in the legacy paper that you did last time has been listened to by government and has been taken on board, because I know that it has been an open sore for this committee for a wee while and the Scottish law commission as well. The moveable transaction will probably be, I would suggest, coming to this committee when we go forward with that. The programme for government announced quite a few SLC bills this year. I would like to use that as an example, Mr Simpson, of listening. I think that this is a good news story. We have listened to what the committee has said and we have implemented it through the programme for government. The moveable transactions, I will probably get the dates somewhere, but I will make sure that I get them accurately to you. I will get that back to the committee at a later date. I think that the trust law was the other one. The trust law, title conditions, contract law and judicial factors. You anticipate them all coming this year? Probably within the next 12 months. Within the session of Parliament? I do not know the actual dates. I think that it would be useful for the committee to have something from yourself about which SLC reports you anticipate bringing forward and which you do not. Then we know what we are working with. I will give you the list of what we are actually doing and take it from there. I think that just to make anyone watching aware that the letter that has been referenced has now been published on the committee webpage this morning. If anyone is interested, they will be able to find the letter there. Certainly, just to make everyone aware, I think that the letter genuine was extremely useful and the discussion that we had prior to the committee coming back in this session was also extremely useful. There is a particular element of the work of the SLC, which is certainly useful for people to understand. From 1965 to December 2020, of the 190 reports published by the SLC, 158, that is 83 per cent, have either been implemented in whole or in part. Five, that is 3 per cent, have been superseded. The point that Mr Simpson was raising was that 27, which is 14 per cent, have not been implemented at all. The wider clarity of the role of the SLC and the work that the SLC undertake is just that it is important for people to be aware of that. Regarding the Prescription Scotland Act 2018, that is yet to be commenced and the Scottish Government has consulted on the draft commencement regulations for the act last year. When does the Scottish Government intend to lay those regulations? I do not have that level of detail with me today, so I am quite happy to get that back to you, to talk to officials and get that back to you as well. Just two brief questions, if I may minister. From the bills highlighted in the programme for government, do you anticipate that any of them will have significant delegated powers? Do you think that it might be useful to highlight those to the committee at this time? All the bills that we have announced in the programme for government will be interesting obviously in their own way, but at the moment none of those bills seem to fit into the category of what is referred to as framework bills. However, I am happy to give the undertaking to keep that under review and come back to the committees should that position change and ensure that we have an open dialogue that basically no surprises from yourself. In terms of specific powers on individual bills, I think that it is too early to say at this point, but I am happy again to keep that under review and get back to you. A number of previous Covid-related bills have been considered in a very short timeframe, and that is perfectly understandable. However, for the expected coronavirus compensation for self-isolation bill, do you see this providing the committee with sufficient time to scrutinise any proposed delegated powers? I think that inevitably with legislation connected to Covid, the laws might need to progress everything quickly. However, in relation to the compensation for self-isolation bill, I do not expect that it will require to an emergency timetable, and I expect this committee to have significant time to scrutinise any delegated powers in it. The colleagues have any other questions for the minister? Thank you, chair. I was keen to bring you back to the correspondence from Charles Garland at the Scottish Law Commission, which was an interesting session that we held with the gentlemen, particularly in relation to the 27 items of draft legislation that are shovel-ready, if you like. Would it be possible for yourself to perhaps commission a review of those 27 items and assess the opportunities that the Government can bring forward in a timely manner? Or, as the committee mentioned, they could be sponsored by members through the NGBU as members' bills, and perhaps use that as an alternative route to achieving that. There is a national interest in having that body of work carried forward as quickly as possible, so it might be useful to do a sort of assessment at this point of that archive of material and see what opportunities there are. If that can be written in the form of writing to this committee perhaps just to see what the Government's view is on those 27 items, that would be quite a useful exercise, I think. We could probably come back with the position on that to you with the detail. Just to continue about the letter of the SLC, the stuff that they mentioned about trust law, to use that as an example, I understand that the Minister for Community Safety will shortly write to Lady Payton on that bill, so we will be able to take that one forward. I think that it is reasonable for the committee to further reference the SLC's trust law report in the programme for government. On the whole, what I am trying to say—I am going round about circles here—is that I am taking on board seriously and that we need to find a way. As Minister for Parliamentary Business, I am not too keen on too many members' business about what the bill is kicking about because I am trying to manage the five-year programme, as we speak. If I can find a way to manage some of the SLC commitments that we have made and I will look at some of the other stuff, then we will do what we can. As the convener has already stated, the numbers are not as bad over the period, although there are still some that are always left. Thank you, minister. Any other questions, colleagues? Just for the public record, Lady Payton from the SLC will be in the committee in two weeks' time. With that, minister, I thank you and your officials for the evidence that you provided. I know that there are one or two action points from yourself, but there might be some other questions from the committee when we have our discussion later. We might want to write to you on that, so there might be some further correspondence coming from the committee. I am happy to have this open dialogue and make sure that we can get a lot of the work that we will be doing together is stuff that we should be able to get the process right and do it. I certainly look forward to working with you and your officials in the term ahead. I do not know about my officials right enough, because they have all been here the other day. They are virtual somewhere. With that, I will suspend the meeting and we will reconvene in a few moments. Thank you very much, minister. The next item of business is consideration of instruments subject to the made affirmative procedure. An issue has been raised on health protection, coronavirus, international travel, Scotland amendment number 17, regulations 2021, SSI 2021-301. Regulation 4B inserts a new paragraph 9 into regulation 5F of the international travel regulations. Paragraph 9 provides for the definition of private provider in respect of Covid-19 day 2 and day 8 test providers. As company drafted paragraph 9B, it refers to private day 2 and day 2 test providers and this should refer to private day 2 and day 8 test providers. The Scottish Government advised that this would be rectified in a forthcoming amending instrument. SSI 2021-307 was laid before the Parliament on Friday 10 September and includes provision of rectifying this error. This instrument will be considered by the committee in due course. Are members content to report the instrument under the general reporting ground due to a typographical error in regulation 4B of the instrument, whilst at the same time noting that the Scottish Government has since rectified the error? Thank you. No points have been raised on SSI 2021-299. It is the committee content with this instrument. Under agenda item number 4, we are considering instruments subject to the affirmative procedure. No points have been raised on the following draft instruments. The animal welfare licensing of activities involving animals Scotland amendment regulations 2021, the redress for survivors historical child abuse in care Scotland act 2021, forum and content of waiver etc regulations 2021 and the forestry exemptions Scotland amendment regulations 2021. It is a committee content with these instruments. SSI was laid by the Scottish Government very late in the day yesterday. It is the draft social security residence requirements Afghanistan Scotland regulations 2021. The department for work and pensions is introducing regulations to allow those evacuated from Afghanistan to have immediate access to social security assistance where they enter the UK. SSI has been laid to ensure parity of access to benefits for which Scottish ministers have responsibility. The Scottish Government is seeking to have those changes come into force tomorrow. While in the very limited time available, no points have been raised on the instrument, I reserve the right for the committee to look at the instrument again next week should any issues subsequently be found. We could then write to the Scottish Government to highlight those. We are taking all that into account as the committee content with this instrument. Under the next agenda item, we are considering an instrument subject to the negative procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2021, 3 and 0, 2. Is the committee content with this instrument? Under agenda item number 6, we are considering instruments not subject to any parliamentary procedure. No points have been raised on SSIs 2021, 291 and 295.


Good afternoon. It is first of all lovely to have you all here. Thank you for being here. I want to welcome everybody who is joining us online, and I want to thank Radiant and Pastelie for giving me this opportunity to spend a bit of time with you this afternoon. What an incredible day and a half it's already been, and I hope that the next hour will, that you'll be able to take something from what I've got to share with you today. So I'm here with Ruth. This is my wife over here. She's my superstar. I knew I had, I knew I was gonna have one person in the room. So I'm blessed to have so many of you here. So thank you. And we live, we've been in the US for 10 years as you can tell. Hopefully from my accent I'm originally from the UK, and I say hopefully because Ruth tells me that my accent is slowly slipping. So I'm gonna try and hold on to it as best I possibly can. So today we are gonna be talking about ideas, we're gonna be talking about innovation and creativity, and I had to kind of think back to why like why am I so passionate about this this topic? Why do I believe ideas can really drive change? And I remember in what I think most of you were called middle school. So I guess I was 12 or 13 and I had a teacher called Mr. Parry, and every day he would read a book, an excerpt from a book, and it was called Ideas that Change the World. And I think it was just like drummed in to me from that point in time that ideas really can change the world. They can change our behaviors, they can change everything. And I think from that early stage I got passionate about ideas and that's really what I've spent most of my career over probably the last 20 or it's probably 25 years now but I'm still good. Let's go with 20 because that makes me feel younger. So can we just pray before we get started? Does that sound good? Father God, I just thank you for this opportunity to spend this time with this group here and everybody who's joining online. I just pray Lord that whatever is the message that you have for this group today, I pray that you would bring me the words, bring me the wisdom and the knowledge. Lord, just have your way in this next hour Lord. I pray it brings hope and inspiration and some excitement for what lies ahead. In Jesus' name. Amen. So my plan for the next roughly 40 minutes, something like that, is I'm going to talk to you or share with you a few things that I've learned in my secular life related to ideas and innovation and creativity. And then I want to make the connection to what that means for us as Christians. And how should we be approaching this whole area? And I think, spoiler alert, I think we are uniquely placed to be incredible innovators and full of ideas and innovation. So I'm actually going to approach this in three parts. And Miguel, I'm normally used to presenting with a clicker. So Miguel is going to be my clicker today. And Miguel, maybe you can just move on to the next slide, please. So I want to start by talking about mindset. So it's going to probably be a bit weird because I'm not going to talk about ideas until a little way into this conversation. But the first thing I want to talk about is mindset. Because I believe that our mindset is one of, if not the most important thing in determining whether we create an environment where ideas can thrive, where ideas can be successful. Let's just go to the next slide, Miguel, please. This is what I feel like most of the meetings that I attend can often feel like. I've often heard finance committee described as the place where good ideas go to die. If this is our world, if this is our environment, if this is what it feels like, then it's no surprise that we don't see the raft of creativity and innovation. Things get stifled. So as you think about that, we've got to be really, really intentional about mindset. We've got to think about where we are in the process.  And then there's a time for closing things down and starting to say, okay, what are we going to do? We've got to be really clear to everybody which mode we're in. Because if you have half the group who are in the closing things down and half the group who are in the possibility, imagine what could be. Funny enough, things aren't going to work and you're going to end up with things colliding. So it's really, really important to signal to everyone, where are we at on our journey right now? And here's a phrase if you can go to the next slide that I love to use and it's called, I heard it and I just latched onto it. It's called Wow Before the How. And I'm sure you've probably all been there where everybody's like, well, you know, we kind of, we tried that last year and you know, it didn't work because of X, Y, and Z. And you know, well, we thought about doing that. But yeah, what you need to know about what this group right here is, what's different is, and you hear all of these things straight away. So my encouragement is before we get into judging, before we start to think about the practicalities and so on and how we might make it happen, start with the Wow. So when you hear somebody and they have a gem of an idea or a thought, just let it grow. Let it breathe for a moment. And this is such a simple thought and as anybody who knows me knows, I love simplicity and I love making it really, really easy. So hold on to that thought about the Wow Before the How. You know, the other things that you can do is ask some really provocative questions like, what's the one thing that if we could do it differently, if it could be different, would change everything? Ask yourselves those really bold questions, those things that kind of scare us a little bit because those are going to be the things that are going to open up possibilities. And I wanted to say one word on failure. You know, the only failure is failing to learn from failure, right? We have to fail. I'm going to share with you some of the examples of the things that have, where I've seen success and where we've had incredible results. But I can tell you that behind all of those, there's a litany of things that were disasters that didn't work. And frankly, most of what I'm sharing with you today comes from that journey and those experiences of things not actually working. So I wanted to give you one example. And so this is an example. I've worked for Kellogg's serial company for about 18 years, nearly, in the UK and in the US and around the world.  It's advertised as cereal with milk, in a bowl, probably with four people, sat around a table, and that's been pretty much it for ever, probably 100 years since WK, just up the road, kind of came up with the idea. And, you know, the problem was, cereal's really, really boring. And we needed to do something about it. So somebody had a great idea on the team.  Pasta? Thank you. That was English there. Okay. So I'll stick with pasta. You should think about it like pasta, because you could eat it anywhere.  You can do, you can do all these things with it. Why didn't we think about that before? So it's a really good idea. And the mindset of the team was very open to what's possible. And I say that because we briefed a classic advertising agency and they came back and they said, okay, we've got this great idea. You know, we're going to picture the scene as you kind of, kind of anybody who's seen the kind of classic movies or madman or something like that, you know, these guys come in and they say, okay, we're going to do a 30 second TV ad and somebody comes into somebody's home and they're going to reimagine it. And we were all sat there and completely underwhelmed because it just didn't do justice to this idea. And then there was a guy on my team who came to me and he said, I think I've got another idea. And he said, I think we should open a restaurant. And like this is a company that's made cereal for 100 years, sells to Walmart, you know, deals with big trucks, doesn't deal with like restaurants. And but if you think about the why before the how, the best thing to say, okay, tell me more, tell me more about it is like, well, I think we could sell cereal in every kind imaginable from the middle of them, you know, early morning, all the way through to the evening. I think we could just do it completely differently.  And we ended up launching the cafe in Times Square in New York. And it was more six times more successful than any traditional advertising that we'd done previously. And people wrote about it in social media, we got to open the New York Stock Exchange as a result. All of that to say it's a secular example, but it's an example of, you know, if the classic mindset would have been, oh no, no, we don't, that's not what we do around here. That's not the way we do it. So I just encourage you just to be open to the fact that the ideas might look really, really different to what we do today. So if you think about that, let's go on to this next slide. I want us to think also about individuals, because we all come at things with our own perspective, right? We all come with our own mindset. And one thing I want to say up front, there's, I love things like MBTI and Enneagram and all these different typology things that you can do. And some people love them, some people hate them, but it kind of helps you to think about your preferences. And I think one of the things I want to say up front is so important is that those, you have to be really careful to make sure they don't define you. Those things are just a guide for where you might, you tend to gravitate. But I want to share one that I heard this in the last year because I thought it was really, really useful. So it's from the table group, and I like it because it's all about geniuses, and that sounds really good to me. I think everybody, basically it means everybody's a genius. And there's six geniuses, and I want us to go through these. Generally what they'll say is there's two that you just naturally go to. You're like absolutely draw energy out of it. And then there's two that you can do, but they're really, really hard work. And maybe at the end I'll ask Ruth if she can tell me which, I think Ruth's pretty sure, I'm pretty sure you'll know which ones I struggle with. But anyway, the six geniuses here, there's the genius of wonder. So these are the people that look at the world and imagine it different. They just, they ask the questions why, and why is it like that, and why is it, and what if that's the gift of wonder. The second is the gift of innovation. So these are the people that just walk around and go, hey, I've got an idea. I've got an idea for you. I've got an idea for you. They're exhausting, but I've got an idea for you. I've got an idea for you. The third is the gift of discernment. So this is that ability to actually look at an idea and say, yeah, actually what we need to think about with that, or what would have to be true for that, is this thing. They're really good at kind of assessing an idea and working out whether it's going to work. The fourth is the galvanizes. These are people who, they're really good at getting a group together and exciting people. Getting people unified behind an idea and corraling effort. The fifth are the enablers. These are the people that bring the help. So these are the people that see the financial need, the people need. They're like, okay, yes, absolutely. I can help with that. I love the idea. I'm here. This is, let's go make it happen. And then the sixth one, which is not me, is the people that actually make sure it gets done and gets across the finish line. And these people are really, really important. They are going to drag it, kicking and screaming across the line to get that thing done. And I say that because, you know, I talked about the fact we've got to be really intentional about our mindset and where are we on our journey when it comes to ideas and innovation. Also think about it from an individual level. Where am I naturally going to gravitate towards? I won't ask everybody to put their hands up today, but hopefully you can kind of connect and start to fill with where you might be. So it's really, really good just to be able to think, okay, where am I at as I come into this conversation about ideas and creativity? Okay, you can go to the next slide. I actually, so we've talked about groups and we've talked about, we've talked about us as individuals. I want to talk about us as Christians and our Christian mindset. And we've all heard this verse countless times, but I feel like this one just never gets old. It says we're in Ephesians 320. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think according to the power at work within us. Abundantly more, we have a God who, I like to think of him as, he's kind of like mission impossible. The things that we think are impossible that we just see no way for them to happen, he just does it.  I read, I was reading Acts this week and I was reading just the conversion of Paul. And you know you see Saul stood over as the executioner. There is no way out for this guy, right? I mean it's impossible. And yet in the very next chapter we hear how Paul or Saul is God's chosen instrument. I'm like, you know, it just kind of blows your mind. So think about that. Think about all of those stories, all of those things that are real, where the impossible happened. You know, I think our mindset as Christians, we should be the most possibility oriented group of people on the face of the planet. I really, really believe that. Somebody who is really good if you want to read in this area, Mark Batterson, I've got a couple of quotes from him that I just love. The first is this one, Miguel, if you can bring it up. This is a great question for all of us to ask. What looms larger in our mind memories or possibilities? And don't get me wrong, there's power in memories and we talked this morning about you know remembering the great revivals and the things that we're going to draw inspiration from. But if the past is where we spend our time, we will never spend our time in the future and what's possible. So I, this to me is a really, is a really, really challenging question to ask ourselves, you know, where am I today? Where am I dwelling? And you know, sometimes when I feel like I'm, I'm not being as creative, I'm not being as innovative as I need to be, it's nearly always because I'm dwelling in the past and I'm thinking about mistakes or I'm thinking about things, maybe things that went right and I'm trying to hang on to that way that it went right and it's like actually I'm going to go do a new thing. So I just, I love that one and then I wanted to finish this section, this first piece with the second quote if you can go there Miguel. The size of your dreams may be the most accurate measure of the size of your God and I just, I read that and I loved it and I underlined it and I highlighted it and you know when was the last time we tried to do something that was not going to happen without divine intervention?  But I'm really trying to give room in my life for God to show up and God to move. So that's really what I wanted to say about mindset. Mindset is so so important and if you take nothing else out, think about ideas and innovation and creativity by getting in the right mindset first and remembering that as Christians we can be the most possibility oriented people. Okay the second thing I wanted to talk about was purpose. So purpose is obviously really really important and if you, if you're not clear, whether you're talking about a school or a church or a business or wherever you are, if you don't understand why you're there innovation becomes really really really hard because it just becomes random and I like a quote here from Simon Sinek who's a, you probably, you may have heard of him, he's a leadership author and and so on and speaker that's out there and he says people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it and I think that's also really true if you think about the organizations and the teams you're a part of, you want to connect them to the why behind why you're there because then they're going to bring their heart and soul to what's in hand. So I think it's really really important that we understand why we're here. There's another author that I really like, Michael Cooley and he says, this might be a little bit harsh but it's nice and simple, every activity not aligned with your purpose is a waste of resources. It's pretty, it's a pretty challenging statement but I think it's a really good filter for us to say okay if we're really about this is everything that we're doing organized and driving towards that thing because if it isn't then we end up with random stuff and I guess every once in a while one of those random things hits but we've really got to understand where we're coming from and if I think about innovation and ideas and creativity and things that I've been involved in where we've often gone off track is because we're not really know why on earth we're doing this thing in the first place. So I'm going to give you an example so we're going to go back to the world of Kellogg's and how many people have eaten a Rice Krispie treat? Okay most people I didn't really know what they were when we moved here and we did like Rice Krispie cakes I think but Rice Krispie treats they are the thing that brings the family together right you bake these slabs and and then you kind of you cover it with all this stuff and so I work that was it that was one of the brands that I I worked on at Kellogg and one of the things about that brand in terms of what it stood for was it was all about human connection it was all about bringing people together and that made sense to me once I understood the history of Rice Krispie treats and where this thing came from like you open it up and everybody comes in and gets excited about it so the purpose of that brand was all about human connection and back to school back to school is a really big time for retailers it's a really big time for people that make all this kind of stuff and kids go back to school and somebody on my team said you know the most important school supply is love and support and I was like oh that's good somebody write that down before we we forget it love and support is the most important back to school supply and and so that led to the idea to put right on wrappers on the on the wrapper because what parents are saying is hey I send my kids off to school and then I'm not there and I wish I could just send them an encouragement in the middle of the in the middle of the day which was really cool did very well but if you think about the purpose of this brand and human connection somebody else came and said hey we've got visually impaired kids that can't that for this it doesn't work for them like they can't receive those messages and I was like I felt like I'm back in the cereal cafe thing I'm like okay tell me more what are you thinking and they're like well I think we could do braille stickers that parents could order that's customized to what the message they want to send to their kid we can send them to them and then we can put them on there and and and that's what that's what we could do I was like that sounds pretty cool how do we do it no idea but that doesn't matter yet because we're still in the wow phase and and they did it and you know what I love is as they go into they were like do you know there's actually a significant number of visually impaired kids can't actually read braille so we need to do an audio version and and it just kept going and going and going and again what's fascinating about it is in terms of a it was the right thing to do but from an impact standpoint on the business was also incredibly effective much more effective than all the other stuff we traditionally done and why is it effective I believe it's because it comes back to the purpose and why why the brand exists in the first place so by the way I think in life I never thought I would talk about rice crispy treats and Jesus and so I feel like God's kind of laughing and he's like yeah I got this like I'm going to bring it all together so I wanted to talk about purposes as Christians and I think we are blessed to have the clearest or the most clarity on purpose again on anybody on the face of the earth right everybody knows let's go to the let's go to the great commission in Matthew so I love this go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and by the way just as an aside I love that it says and behold I'm with you always to the end of the age so we're certainly not doing this alone but I I just love the clarity in that it's just abundantly clear what we are supposed to be focusing our energy and our time and our resources on and this is something that I think many of us struggle with you know what's the point why am I here what am I supposed to do find the connection back to this because that's where we find our purpose I uh this is a lovely quote that that I wrote down it said God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time of course it seems like the wrong place at the wrong time and I feel like that happens a lot but God really does position us in the right place to be able to move and I don't know if I if I kept in the next slide Miguel if you can go there I love this quote it's another one from Simon Sinek it says dream big starts more but most of all start and I think sometimes we get kind of paralyzed and like oh I don't know is it right is it right should I be doing this should I be not let's let's start let's take that step because Jesus always comes and meets you when you start stepping so um that's that's purpose so um as Christians we have this or we should have this mindset oriented towards what's possible we also have absolute clarity in our purpose and and what we're here to do so let's then move on now and Miguel maybe go to the next slide we're going to start to talk about ideas themselves and uh so we kind of need some ideas right how do we actually think about and come up with ideas there's there's three steps that I like to use as I think about coming up with ideas and what I want to say actually before I get to this is that there's no formula for ideas and I would say that I don't think I've ever come up with an idea when I've been sat in a room kind of like stood at a whiteboard you know waiting for something to happen so you you really need to be open to inspiration happening at any point it's actually really good you know if you read there's a great book called Habit which is an excellent read and you know if if you follow the same route to work every day if you eat the same thing every day if you do the same thing every day you drive the same route you do all those things day after day after day no surprise that there's not much room for inspiration and creativity so deliberately disrupt yourself and you'll find yourself becoming more creative and having more thoughts and ideas so with that being said I want to give you kind of three filters that I think are really useful when it comes to innovation and ideas the first is Miguel if you can go to the next slide look we're like in tune now I feel like we're humming so the first thing it starts with that purpose right so we know we've got we've got the mindset but it starts with the purpose why are we here what is it that we are trying to do so whether this is whether we're talking about your business whether we're talking about your school whether we're talking about your family whether we're talking about the church it starts with why are we here and then you really want to get super clear on what's the problem we're trying to solve what is the thing that's the barrier or the obstacle to that to the purpose for which you exist what's getting in the way and as you think about those problems it's really really good to keep asking why but why why is that why is that why is that keep asking the question why to try to get to really to the root cause of what's getting in the way and really think about behaviors like okay well so people are showing up at church once in every once every four weeks on average why is that okay let's really start to get into that start to unpack that so we have to have clarity on on purpose on problem and then the third bit which is where it gets really exciting is the possibility what's the thing that we could do what's the spark what's the thing that could overcome that problem to achieve the purpose that we're striving to do and this is where it gets exciting because this is where we get to bring in things like technology we get to think about new ways of doing things that we haven't imagined before and I think you know the last 18 months has been a perfect example of that we've been innovating by necessity at an incredible rate and finding new and different ways to do things so one thing I wanted to say about technology though is technology is it can get really exciting and you can get really lost really quickly so and I know because I have so I feel like for years I was like we've got to have an app everybody's got an app we need an app what's it going to do I have no idea we should have wearables right wearable technology why I don't know but it would be really cool if we could and I think if we chase the technology then we put that first and that really doesn't work so what's so important is to think about the technology as as part of the possible as part of the solution but you've got to understand the purpose first and the problem that you're trying to overcome and when you understand those things then the technology really gives you really helps make that idea work and I wanted to go back this is an idea that I was involved in in 2000 who got their first mobile phone mobile mobile mobile cell phone before 2000 before 2000 anybody have a mobile phone before 2000 cell phone before 2000 there's a few okay so back in 2000 I was living in London and I was getting used to this thing called texting which was which was pretty cool but you know it didn't have predictive text like we have today by the way just as an aside I remember listening to people you know delivering messages and it would be like oh here he is on the old school stuff and what it used to be like and now I'm up here doing it so anyway where was I yeah so we're just getting used to texting so we're typing in things like how are you with a capital R and a U because it takes too long to be able you didn't have predictive text you couldn't put the whole thing in but everybody was kind of obsessed with this idea of text messaging and at the time I worked for Cabri which is a chocolate company best chocolate in the world and everybody's sort of Willy Wonka right and the chocolate factory and the golden ticket so like that like we've been using that for like 80 years basically just rolling over and over and find the lucky the lucky bar but it's again it's getting tired it's getting bored what are we about we're about fun we're about excitement and bringing brightness to your day so somebody on the team came in and said okay I've got this idea we want to bring excitement that's what we're all about but the problem is everybody's seen it all before we think that we might be able to put a text message inside of a chocolate bar wrapper and then get this you could text that to a number and that number will text you back to tell you if you've won or not and like minds are blown it's hard to believe now but I remember in that moment and I said okay do you know how to do it well not quite but we think we know some people that might be able to help us help us do it and if you go to the next slide this is this is what that looked like it was called Cabri text and win and I had to go back to the BBC and look at what they said at the time the biggest trial of wireless advertising this promotion is pushing the boundaries of how text messaging can be used as a marketing tool it was actually the first time that text messaging was used as a marketing tool 10% of people in the UK took part and I think we probably agree it's subsequently become a pretty big thing from a marketing standpoint but I wanted to use that as an example because it you know it came back to okay we're about bringing fun we're about bringing excitement that's what we're about and there's this problem it's just all it's just boring we need to do something different and it gave a purpose for the technology and so I wanted to share that and I it's wonderful I look back on with quite a lot of nostalgia I guess related to related to that so let's now think about it in relation to us as as Christians and this is where I think it gets perhaps most exciting of all so actually I wanted to go to first Corinthians 3 9 and it says in the ESV for we are God's fellow workers here's the King James version for we are laborers together with God and I love that because it means that we are not operating under our own power we are not operating on our own when it comes and that means we're not operating on our own when it comes to ideas and innovation and creativity which is pretty cool we have something called the Holy Spirit it's like this secret source it's this extra special advantage that we have that's coming alongside us and is going to inspire us and is gonna bring thoughts and is gonna bring ideas and innovation if we are open to it Mark Basseson references the movie Inception if anybody's seen that movie it's all about kind of implanting ideas into your subconscious it's kind of a cool a pretty cool movie but one of the quotes that he says is I believe the Holy Spirit performs Inception that idea of the Holy Spirit coming and planting something and I feel like even over the last day and a half I've heard in multiple sessions people talking about how the Holy Spirit came and brought them this idea or brought them this thought or brought them this component that was gonna really set them on a course and set them on a trajectory and if we're open to it God is ready and willing to work with us and that means in every facet so I guess as I kind of bring it towards a close you know I believe there's I believe that there's ways of doing church that nobody's thought of yet I think we started to see that over the last 18 months we've seen an acceleration in that one of the things I love about the Great Commission it's I also call it the unconstrained commission like it's it was very very clear but it's also very open it's open to ideas it's open to innovation it's open to creativity and I think we need to be able to approach it in that way so if you just go to the last slide Miguel if I can leave you with anything it is that mindset really really does matter as you're approaching the thoughts of innovation and creativity and as Christians we really should have the most possibility oriented we should be the most possibility oriented people on the face of the earth secondly from a purpose standpoint we have absolute clarity as to why we're here and what we're supposed to do so if nothing else let's work on that as a purpose and then from an idea standpoint remember the ideas can come from anywhere be really open to it but be open to the Holy Spirit and be open to the Holy Spirit working in you and planting ideas in you and seeding those ideas in you and when you hear an idea remember wow before the how so that's everything I had for you guys and I wonder what I can turn open to any questions that you've got I'm an open book so feel free to ask anything that might be on your mind oh actually there's there are two one of them is I want to say it's in a snowy pit in a in a pit on a snowy day with a lion that perfect dream team that is that's probably my that's probably my favorite


For the Secretary of the Army, the Honorable John McHugh, a trip to Afghanistan is about more than getting out of the office. Well, I spent a lot of time in the Pentagon around a briefing table. So the primary reason I come to places like Afghanistan is to see what I've been briefed about firsthand. And when it comes to getting a personal perspective, there's no substitution for seeing this or any other mission the Army is taking up. With, you know, up close and personal. This is far from the first time he has been here. This is my 23rd trip to theater between Iraq and Afghanistan. Every time I've seen incredible soldiers doing amazing things, but I've come back a little bit smarter about the challenge about the mission. The thing that really makes this radio different from other radios that soldiers are typically hearing today is that it transports both voice and data. First, it helps me to make better decisions about resourcing, about training and equipping our force. But it also gives me a little bit more credibility when I talk to our congressional overseers and other folks about, you know, what the mission is and what our needs are. Credibility that only comes from experience. It's one thing to talk about what you've seen in a briefing deck, but it's quite another to say you were there, you talked to the soldiers, you've seen it firsthand. And these trips give me the chance to do that. Armed with that knowledge, Secretary McHugh is better prepared to help you with your mission. I'm Petty Officer Xander Gamble. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Bagram, Afghanistan.