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Okay. Obviously, you will have looked at the directorates and the SFC. Do you believe that they have sufficient internal staffing capacity to support the skills alignment activities?

Good morning, Mr Griffin. Before we go into issues of oversight and governance, I will echo the convener’s remarks about the late emergence of the shared outcomes framework. You have pulled the rug from under our feet to some extent in this session, because we have not had time to study the framework, but yet you are referring to it, almost like Chamberlain, saying, “Here it is, peace in our time between these two bodies”. On the announcement yesterday about the independent adviser’s report on education, if that is the sort of slap-dash, last-minute and inconsiderate way that the Scottish Government is operating, it is perhaps no surprise that we are increasingly seeing reports coming to the committee that identify serious and systemic failures in the operation, delivery, governance and oversight of key public services.

Before I turn to the questions that I have prepared—which I think are now redundant, in some respects—I want to go back to leadership, because I do not think that you fully answered the question from Mr Beattie. The second key message of the report says that

“The Scottish Government has not provided the necessary leadership for progress”

and that

“Many obstacles remain and present risks to progress. The Scottish Government now needs to take urgent action to realise its ambitions for skills alignment.”

Do not forget that we are talking about £2 billion of taxpayers’ money and two very large organisations—SDS and the SFC. I am looking at exhibit 1—the organogram. At the top of the tree is the Minister for Further Education and Higher Education, Youth Employment and Training. Is the failure of leadership ministerial, institutional or systemic, or is it a combination of all three?

We might have you back at committee.

Are you saying that it is politically unpalatable to extend the legislation beyond those points?

The measures in the bill on early release from prison and young offenders institutions are exceptional because they specifically relate to Covid and they are time limited. I go back to your opening remarks. If you want a statute that is fit for purpose, why would you not want to have the capacity to release prisoners early in another pandemic situation, or beyond 2025?

If your first priority is to safeguard the public, including those who are in prison, surely you would want to keep that power on the statute book to utilise at some point in the future.

I am not sure that I necessarily follow the logic of that position.

Mr Simpson referred to the measures on private sector tenancies. The draft strategy consultation paper “A New Deal for Tenants” is out for consultation until 15 April 2022. I am slightly at a loss in working out why provisions that effectively pre-empt that consultation are included in the bill. Would it not be far better to remove those provisions from the bill and include them in future housing legislation, so that you can be cognisant of the consultation responses?

Do you accept that it is difficult to legislate on a Donald Rumsfeld approach of known knowns and known unknowns? There has to be some specificity, so is there more that you could do in the bill to flesh out what you mean by a public health emergency or threat? It could otherwise be open to misinterpretation by future Administrations.

The Parliament will do that, but the courts might also scrutinise the legislation or the implementation or enactment of that legislation at some point.

What seems to distinguish the bill and the measures that it would effect is that we are passing it into law on a permanent basis. We could have tried to challenge many of the measures that have been brought in during the pandemic, but article 15 of the European convention on human rights gave you the safeguard and the certainty that the measures could not be challenged, because it says that Governments can act

“in exceptional circumstances ... in a limited and supervised manner,”

free

“from their obligations to secure certain rights and freedoms under the Convention.”

One element is the “limited and supervised” aspect, but passing the bill as permanent legislation will mean that you lose the time-limited element. Are you certain that article 15 would give safeguards if the bill was passed into law?

I have two or three general questions before I go on to specific questions on the delegated measures. The bill will be on the statute book beyond the present Government’s time and, although I would not want to question this Government’s character or motivations, we are giving future Governments considerable powers. A lot of that rests on the definition of a public health emergency or threat. We know about Covid, but will you give us other examples of where a public health emergency or threat might arise?