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I will just caveat that point—it is up to the Parliament, as always, to make the decisions. We are a major part of it, but we all need to talk to one another.

On that point, if you will indulge me, convener—

I still believe that it will achieve what I hoped it would achieve. At the same time, some interesting things came from the consultation—and I have hinted at the point about 16 and 17-year-olds, which was a shock to me.

On the whole, we should be okay in relation to the timescales. The proposed bill is workable, which we should all be happy with. As I have said right from the beginning, members here will be the first to know and I will be in touch with you. As I am sure you know, there will be “no surprises” for you—to quote the Bute house agreement.

That was one of the issues that came up during our consultation on the election reform that we are considering. You brought up that point in the debate early on when we were talking about the consultation. Interestingly, one of the issues that we also discussed—you have not mentioned this, but it is one of the ideas in the consultation—was about having 16 and 17-year-old candidates, which you clearly did not think was a good idea.

When we spoke to young people during the consultation, they came up with a very similar point to the one that you have just raised. I spoke to one woman, in particular, who said that she was politically motivated and had written a national newspaper article about her political beliefs but was attacked on various social media platforms by middle-aged men who told her that they knew better than her. Her request to me was that we need to get politics sorted before she would consider standing, and she is politically motivated.

It is a valid point that there is a level of abuse. I know many female colleagues who have left and gone on to other careers because of the way we do our politics and what has happened online. Again, it comes down to how we interact with one another in the chamber. That is reflected in society as well, and it is where some of the issues might come from in certain cases.

Social media does not help—it is like football, where one crowd supports one team and the other crowd supports the other team, and there is nothing in the middle. As we all know, in order to get anything done in the political world, we need to meet at one point and agree on something.

You have highlighted many of the concerns. We have been looking at the issues arising from the consultation, and we are now going through the detail. I will engage with you and some of your colleagues as we go through the process for the new electoral reform bill.

As members will know, my wife and I are a package in the political world of Paisley. My wife has had abuse just for being my partner. There has been talk about her disability and the fact that she is a wheelchair user. Unfortunately, that is the world that many of these keyboard warriors inhabit, but it is not the real world. We need to show leadership and say, “This is how we actually do politics.”

We had that discussion with the Electoral Commission yesterday.

That will be interesting, because, as we all know, in a national election, people will turn up at various polling stations wanting to vote, and on some occasions they might not be on the voters roll.

Interestingly, during the Rutherglen by-election, I canvassed at a door where the individual was on the voters roll but was convinced that he was not—unfortunately, he was a Scottish National Party voter, which was concerning. That goes back to my argument that we need to ensure that we engage with people so that they know that they have that right and can access it.

As you and I know, there is also an issue with regard to certain cohorts in certain parts of constituencies—in your constituency, my constituency and probably every constituency in Scotland. There are certain people who do not register or who have fallen off the register.

A two-pronged approach can be taken. It is up to us, as politicians, to engage with the public and ensure that they want to get involved in the democratic process, but there also needs to be a process that ensures that those people are registered.

Is there anything else that Iain Hockenhull wants to add at this point?

I hope that, over the years that we have worked together, Mr Kerr is aware that I tend to try to find a solution. Believe it or not, Mr Kerr and I do not pick a fight with each other all the time—we do sit down and discuss how we can find solutions to many of the challenges that we face.

It is down to us. I want to be able to sit here, in front of you, and say, “Here’s the issue—I think that I can address it this way. What do you think? I don’t believe that I have a monopoly on all good ideas, so what do you think and how can we deal with this?”

Probably in general. We had a very good working relationship with the previous commissioner. Special measures have been in place during all the time that I have been in post. That happened before I was minister, though. I should add for the record that we have had a 60 per cent increase in the level of requests that we are getting and that, since June, we have a response rate of 97 per cent.

On the relationship with the previous commissioner, he had a job to do and we were not doing as well as we should have been doing. We took that on board. We had got to the stage where there had to be a change of culture within the Scottish Government as an organisation to view dealing with FOI as part of the day job, not just something that we do in addition to our work.

As you will understand, it is not easy to get that kind of culture change in any organisation. However, we have managed to turn that around. I had a meeting with the new information commissioner a number of weeks ago, and he explained that he was quite impressed with how the Government has turned things around on FOI.

To be brutally honest with the committee, when I came in as minister, two and a half years ago, I was concerned about the issue because it was probably one of the weaker aspects of where we were at that fell into my portfolio. In the modern world, FOI is one of the most important things. Open government is part of my remit, and there is nothing more open than access to information through FOI.

On the whole, we have got to a place where we, as an organisation, are dealing with the issue a lot better, and I see us continuing down that route. As we move forward, I would like to get to a place where we consider proactive publication of some things so that, if someone submits an FOI request and something is available, I can say, “Look at page 35 of this document on the website and you will find your answer there—we published it in June last year,” or something like that. The concern with that is that I might be accused of data dumping, because there is too much. I am trying to find a balance, but that is the place where we would like to be.

I will bring in Jill McPherson, in case she wants to add anything.