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You cannot introduce yet another cliff edge, on top of the UK Government one.

I apologise if this has already been covered. What consideration has been given thus far to a situation in which a young man in secure accommodation should elect to self-identify as being of a different gender? I ask that specifically from a safeguarding perspective. Has the detail of that been worked up? Obviously, that issue has been much discussed by the Criminal Justice Committee.

Is the minister able to respond to my earlier question about there being equitable representation from victim groups and those of the accused at the round-table event?

I appreciate that the Government will give consideration to the matter—I agree that it should do that—but I want you to flesh out the nature of that consideration. As my colleague Ruth Maguire alluded to in the earlier group of amendments, balancing rights is a challenge, but representation must be equitable.

I will pick up on a tiny point regarding the issue of rights. In the event of the UK Government wishing to remove us from rights—for example, the ECHR—which has been presented as a very real possibility if not a threat, have you considered the extent to which that would implicate the rights provisioning in the bill?

Have you had advice on that? I am just probing a bit more about the rights-based element and the extent to which you can be confident in all potential legal scenarios. Are you confident that the advice that you have received thus far takes cognisance of that possibility, from the point of view of children’s rights?

We appreciate that the round table is an important part of the discussion. Would you look for equitability of representation of victims as well as the accused, rather than simply representation?

Will the minister give way?

I have one further point, to sum up. Minister, you will have gathered that the committee has some concerns. I appreciate the position in which you find yourself with regard to what you are able to control, and I empathise with you in that respect. However, are you able to commit, off the back of this discussion today, to set out specifically, based on your discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, the basis on which the committee can, as individual members, go forward to stage 3?

I cannot speak for every member, but I sense that it is not enough for us to go on to stage 3 knowing only that the matter might be looked at in a further bill or that there will be a round table at some point, given the scale of the concern over the challenge of conflicting rights. Will the minister be able to write back to the committee once she has had a chance to affirm the specifics of the next steps, including dates and so on?

Following up on that point, I accept what the minister is saying about amendment 206, and it might well be that it is a probing amendment and there is still further work to do. However, the principle has been established in terms of the current provisioning in the criminal justice system compared with the new provisioning in very serious cases, where we recognise that there could be an uptick, particularly around rape and serious sexual assault.

Is the minister willing to give further thought to how the voice of victims can be heard in the process, even if she does not accept the amendment? Clearly, there will be a marked difference in the opportunity for people to make their voice heard, which is important. It is even more important, I would argue, than providing a written statement, because, for a victim, it allows their voice to actually be heard. Will the minister give further consideration to that, even though I fully accept that the amendment might not be perfect in relation to the legislation?

Good morning, minister, and hello again to the panel.

I want to ask about two areas. As it stands, because this is a framework bill, we do not know what the final running costs will be, we do not know what the economic benefits will be and, critically, we do not know whether we can afford to run the service itself.

My first question is on the economic benefits. I appreciate what you said about having a business case for this, but I would argue that the business case relates not only to the costs, which we have talked about a great deal, but also to the economic benefits, which are primarily what we as the finance committee are interested in. Are you concerned that evaluating the potential economic benefits will bring out an even clearer understanding of further costs? You have made some very good points, and I completely agree with you about the hidden work that women, in particular, do, but there is a cost associated with evaluating the economic benefit of getting those women back into the workplace.

There is a very good comment in the letter from Social Work Scotland that the convener talked about earlier. It says that it is very difficult to get staff, even when offering £12 an hour, and that there are significant challenges with recruitment and retention. That leads me on to my question: can we afford to run the national care service, if we get to that point? I would like to hear your reflections on that.