Seòmar agus comataidhean

Committee, I will turn back to the panel—this is an evidence session. Would you like to comment on that, Dame Susan, or are you satisfied that you can respond to us, to assist us? You can see where our challenge is on the figures and the statistics.

I am grateful for the invitation to this meeting, convener.

It is still morning, cabinet secretary, so I wish you a good morning. I will pick up a couple of small points for clarification. You talked about the UNCRC as one of the issues to be considered with regard to ensuring the compliance of legislation going forward, but you could not give the same reassurance with regard to legislation that is going through at the moment. In some cases, you have already reached out to third parties for discussions; I am thinking of, for example, the Promise bill. Are you envisaging a specific date after which all legislation will have to undergo UNCRC consideration, or do you expect to have an individual discussion on every piece of legislation that is introduced?

I am grateful for that response.

I apologise, Evelyn—Professor Childs would like to come in as well.

Evelyn—back to you.

Edward Mountain, do you have any questions?

Should proxy voting exist for those occasions when an individual has to step away from being an MSP for a period of time, be it short, long or otherwise? Remote voting could be used if they still wanted to participate and represent their constituents, even though they were not necessarily in this place at that time.

So, if the response to that question is that there is a permissive allowance to vote remotely, that meets the requirement.

We will. Thank you very much, Edward.

Thank you very much.

I will go first to Evelyn Tweed, who has a series of questions. As usual, the convener’s plea at this stage is that not everyone need answer all the questions. However, if you have something to contribute, please feel free to do so.