Seòmar agus comataidhean

When I first got involved in Government, all the acronyms and so on that are used came as a bit of a shock, so I am aware that we need to ensure that things are in plain English. I do not want to get to a place where I understand Government lingo but we are not getting our point of view across.

The figure would probably be about 15. With some UK Government situations, one of the challenges is how long it takes for information to get to us, which slows up the process. However, on the whole, we are probably looking at 15 SI notifications.

As always, there is on-going discussion with the UK Government. An example that I provided earlier is the proposed UK retained EU law bill—in whatever form it takes—which could be a major issue for us. It could have an effect on us and give us problems; we do not know what the bill will do.

During my time as the Minister for Parliamentary Business, there has not been much in the way of co-operation on such issues. It is probably more likely that we will receive information either just before the bill is published or when it is published.

That would make it challenging.

Officials from the UK and Scottish Governments will always be in dialogue with each other. There will be official-level dialogue all the time and dialogue at ministerial level. The difficulty is when it comes to publication of a bill, and we get it at the very last minute. We then end up in a process in which this committee, for example, is rightly waiting for us to give it information. This committee will not be scrutinising the bill in question, but if it were, it would want us to get information to it as quickly as possible so that it could scrutinise it.

At the time same, my officials will need to sit back with the bill. Rachael Rayner will need to make sure that it is legal from our perspective and that it works with Scots law. Gordon Johnstone also needs to go through absolutely everything, and Karen Auchincloss, as head of the Parliament and legislation unit, needs to make sure that we have a spot in the parliamentary chamber to do that.

That all works perfectly when there is respect and we get bills early. I do not know whether it is a new thing, but recently, in my time, we have been getting everything at the last minute. I do not know whether Karen or anyone else can tell us whether there was a “before” time when we might have got things sooner.

I cannot give you the timeline off the top of my head but I ask Karen Auchincloss to give you more detail.

That goes without saying. As I said earlier, they already have a good working relationship, which we want to ensure continues. That is important for both sides, because the committee has a heavy and detailed workload.

The bill is going through the Parliament and there may be an SSI in September, but it is about as and when we need legislation—if we need it. At this stage, nothing has been written in tablets of stone.

That would be helpful, Mr Sweeney, and would give us the opportunity to see where there are problems—because if you do not tell us that there is a problem, we will not know, and we will continue to do the same things.