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Do you want to make any comments, Peter?

Convener, I reference my entry in the register of members’ interests.

There are quite a few points to pick up on, but let me be absolutely clear. You see it as appropriate to do your campaigning—we accept that, when an issue has come to light, campaigning is absolutely legitimate; nobody has any issue with that—through the mechanisms of the Parliament, including the public petitions committee, which you mentioned, and through members, in order to create that groundswell of opinion, instead of going direct to the media. What are your reflections, from an ethical perspective within the legal profession, on a situation in which a lawyer who is a close friend of a Government minister is able to use that route to seek a public inquiry?

Yes, Michael Clancy said that it was unclear whether a lawyer would be exercising their freedom of speech. Compass Chambers said that it would not represent a conflict of interest if the lawyer was advancing their client’s position.

I will link it to the financial element. Lawyers will be advocating for their client’s position. We could make a case that the more successfully they advocate for that position over the maximum length of time, the more appealing it is for them. The convener has already raised our perception of the lack of financial controls. A lawyer could attach themselves to an inquiry that they were able to trigger through successful use of the media. If the inquiry was on-going for a long period of time and the lawyer potentially sought to extend its scope, thereby increasing the length of time that the inquiry would take, the result would be huge fees for the lawyer concerned, which is an appealing position. Can you understand from a public perception point of view why that sort of example would pique the committee’s interest and, ultimately affect the perception of the success or desirability of public inquiries?

That is good to hear. That is heartening for the committee, notwithstanding the huge sums that have been spent thus far.

The point is that the Government states that this will be a hypothecated tax, that is, that all the money that is brought in—whether it will be £30 million remains to be seen—will be recirculated and reused. That is why I did not understand the term “quasi-hypothecation”. In fairness, if it was your colleague who came up with that term, I would be entirely happy for you to write to the committee if you want to give a further explanation. It seems quite clear that it will genuinely be hypothecated. Often, it is not clear, but in this case, it seems to be clear, so is there anything else that you want to add?

You say in your submission that

“Compliant developers today should not be paying for poor practices by the construction industry of yesteryear”,

and you have been very critical about corner cutting in your exchanges with the convener, but my gentle challenge is, given that, why should either the UK Government or Scottish Government pay?

On that point, Mr Henderson, you mention in your submission special purpose vehicles, which there has been quite a discussion about. You say that they are currently a concern. The Government is aware of the potential risks around the use of SPVs, but it would be useful to hear a bit more of your thinking. You only allude to it in your submission.

Why is that the case? I am entirely happy for you to refer to either of your officials on that. I know that I have asked the question before.

We focus on what we measure and, by continuing not to measure or collect the data, we end up with a skewed picture. I read the update the other day, and I got quite excited when I saw a bit about a case study on women, but then it drifted off into some other irrelevant stuff. It looked as though it was a bit of a sop: a case of saying, “We had better stick something in here”, rather than a systemic approach.

In fairness, I concede that that is the case in relation to not only data about women but disaggregated data in general, and there could be other areas in which it could be vital. We have had a conversation about the different enterprise agencies, and we know that having the data in different areas gives different insights, which are so important. It is a general frustration. We know, for example, that the measure for the gender pay gap excludes part-time workers, yet the vast majority of them are likely to be women. It is also about income tax receipts, income inequality, entrepreneurial early-stage activity and three-year survival rates. I want to know how those are for women. So, why not have that data?

I understand that clearly. The work that Ana Stewart is doing is fantastic.

That takes us back to a point that the Deputy First Minister made about where you get insights. Women’s Enterprise Scotland commissioned some work, which I think the Scottish Government was behind, that studied female business leaders experiencing burnout. A key finding was about the lack of access to capital for women entrepreneurs over a long period of time. That survey started being about one thing but gave a critical insight into something that we know is an issue. We always need to have that lens because we cannot afford to let so many of our population not contribute to our economy when we have such a compelling mission as set out in the NSET.