Seòmar agus comataidhean

When you say “citizens panels”, I assume that you are talking about the assemblies.

There are other—

The direct answer to that is no, at this stage, but it is something that we have in mind to work out. One of our responses to the IPDD working group was that we are looking to get a central unit within Government that will be able to go out to the various directorates and quantify that cost. The whole point is to make sure that the very idea of open government is at the heart of each portfolio and directorate, so that they think that it is a normal part of their day-to-day work and not just something extra that has been added in from above. However, I understand that we still need to get a centralised team that is able to correlate all the information, so that I can come to you and say, “Well, that costs £X”.

Okay. To answer your first question very quickly, as I said, the £2.3 million is not our budget for public participation, so that is not the case.

How do we manage to bring it all together? As I said earlier, one of the things that came out of the IPDD working group was the fact that a lot of good work was happening in pockets all over Government. It was a case of us finding a central group that would bring all that together—how much the costs are and what we are doing—so that I can sit in front of you and say that we are doing X and Y in various directorates. We have decided that we are going to put that team in place, in order to make sure that we have that information and can do that. Can I tell you right here and now what is happening in various other places? Probably not, and definitely not off the top of my head. The whole idea is to get the culture of public participation into every part of Government. You will understand that, in an organisation of the size of the Scottish Government, that can be quite challenging.

I have experience of that, because freedom of information requests are part of my portfolio. I have seen what happens when you make such a culture change, as we have done recently, and you make sure that such activities are pushed as part of the day-to-day work of Government and not an addition. Getting the mentality of, “This is what we do. This is part of the job,” into the organisation as a whole is extremely important.

Do these things happen overnight? No, but I as minister, and Doreen Grove and her team, push for that in Government all the time. We have committed ourselves to having a centralised team. At a time when we are looking at taking resources away from various places, we will invest in that team in order to make sure that we get the detail.

Again, we are talking about a mix-up of terms and everything else with this subject. The budget line entitled “Public Information and Engagement” refers to marketing and communications, rather than public participation. That is at £2.3 million for 2023-24, compared to £2.8 million in 2021-22 and £2.7 million in 2022-23. That is not the budget for public participation; it is the budget for communications and marketing. It is nothing to do with citizens assemblies or anything like that.

I welcome you to the committee, Ms Villalba, as I think that this is the first time that I have seen you in it.

Officials from the Scottish Government and the UK Government meet each other regularly, and they have the opportunity to share information and ensure that we try to make things work. However, one of the things to be aware of is the fact that we are dealing with UK legislation a lot of the time or, because it comes from the UK Parliament, it is theirs to deal with.

We need to find a way—I am trying to make this point in a non-political way, because my job is basically about process and making everything work—for the UK Government to remember that we are here and that we have our processes that we need to deal with. We also need to ensure that there is communication between officials and between me and my ministerial counterparts.

We try to make that work, but it does not always work. If I were sitting here speaking from the UK Government’s perspective, I would say that we have a Parliament in Westminster and that we have to go through its processes. At the same time, the Scottish Government would say in response to that, “Well, yes, but, equally, this affects us, so we need to actually have the opportunity to have the time to go through our own processes as well.”

On the whole, we tend to work very well together, but there can be some hiccups along the way. There might be a situation in which the UK Government does not think that there is a Scottish element or something that affects the Scottish Government. It will be our officials who will say that we need to look at that, and there might be a bit of debate on the issue. Steven MacGregor can give some further detail on that.

To be perfectly honest with you, it is a bit of both. We have officials working together all the time, as I have already said, but there is also the fact that, when the UK Government makes an announcement and goes forward with legislation, it is its legislation. We just need to make sure that we make the UK Government aware of the Scottish element.

Could things be better? There is always room for improvement in absolutely everything in life so, yes, we probably could find a way to work that would make things run more smoothly. However, because of the technical aspects of a lot of this, that can be quite difficult. From the number of notes that I have seen flying back and forward between the two Governments, I can see that people end up having to deal daily with things that had not been thought of and which could cause a problem.

Obviously, if someone is drafting something in the UK Government, they think purely from their perspective about how they are going to push things forward, and they may perceive that there is no kick-on to us in Scotland. We see officials in the Scottish Government saying that that is not the case, and there might be a wee bit of debate—a wee bit of to-ing and fro-ing on who is correct in that scenario.

That brings us back to accuracy and how we can provide information to the committee and the Parliament to the best of our ability. I will bring in Steven MacGregor again to add to that.

Part of the reason why I do not want to say something when I do not have the full detail for the committee is because that would set hares running. As you say, it is not a highly political bill, but I want to ensure that the it is right because my job is about process and I have to ensure that I am not the one who gets the process wrong.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to everyone.

As a former member of the committee, I am only too aware of its importance in scrutinising legislation.

When we met in February, we were preparing ourselves, both in the Scottish Government and in the Parliament, to deal with the measures in the United Kingdom Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. We anticipated that they would give rise to a high volume of subordinate legislation. The final version of the legislation in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 means that the volumes will not reach the scale that we expected. Nonetheless, ministers need to be assured that devolved provisions are appropriate, and officials will continue to apprise the committee of expected future volumes in order to assist you in managing your business.

Although retained European Union law implementation has not been as expected, the Parliament continues to process a significant amount of legislation. I record my thanks to the committee and its officials for the constructive manner in which we continue to work with each other in what is an extremely busy and challenging legislative programme.

The Government continues to deliver on its commitment to deliver more Scottish Law Commission bills. I am pleased to note that the committee has been able to lead scrutiny of two bills so far in the current session, including the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill, the stage 1 debate on which will be held this week. I hope that that will continue. As you know, our programme for government confirms that the next Scottish Law Commission bill for introduction will be the judicial factors bill, and the Government expects that it will be suitable for allocation to this committee.

We remain committed to continuing to reduce the backlog of published reports. By the next parliamentary session, we should have addressed the backlog and be focused on recently published reports.

As the committee knows, I take the quality of the instruments that we lay very seriously. It is important that there are as few errors as possible. I am therefore pleased to note that, in the past quarter, no instruments have been reported on serious grounds.

I continue to value the close working relationship that I have sought to build with the committee, and I hope that it continues in the future. I look forward to hearing from everyone on the committee today, and I am happy to take any questions. Otherwise, I will go now.

Greig Walker might have something to add from his experience of retained EU law.