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The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that food prices had a large downward trend effect on the overall annual inflation rate under the consumer prices index including owner occupiers’ housing costs—CPIH—in January 2024. No official forecasts are available for energy and food inflation, so this a challenging area to consider.

With the greatest respect to Ms Clark, I would say that the whole point of the debate on Tuesday was to point out that there will be no change at Westminster to assist with energy prices or to help people with the continuing cost of living crisis. It was therefore important to have a debate on the fact that there is an opportunity for change, but it can come only with independence.

The First Minister is keen to continue to look at that, as he has said previously. The real challenge that limits our ability to do that will be that we continue to have to mitigate some of the worst excesses of Westminster policies. For example, there is already £127 million in the 2023-24 budget to mitigate some of the UK Government’s welfare reform. Quite frankly, I also class the Scottish child payment as mitigation, because if the UK Government took forward an essentials guarantee, for example, and universal credit and other benefits were at a fit and proper rate to allow people to live with some sort of dignity, the Government in Scotland would not be continually asked to protect people from the poverty levels that they are experiencing.

We will continue to look at what can be done, but it is difficult when we continue to mitigate Westminster welfare policies. It is difficult to see how that will change, given the restrictions on the Scottish Government budget. However, we will continue to do everything that we can, and we will continue to look at that as part of each budgetary process.

The main and, indeed, only purpose of the bill is to remove that redundant definition. As I said in my opening remarks, following the court’s action, the definition does not have any legal standing, but we gave a commitment to the court that we would remove the definition, so it is important that we do so.

You raise an interesting point. The process of introducing a bill to Parliament can be time consuming, but it is the process that we have to go through. This is an example of the way that it has to be done for a very small technical fix.

That raises another interesting point. When we all consider what should be in primary legislation and what should be in secondary legislation, a discussion about getting specific details in a bill is quite rightly sometimes had. I am not saying that that is the case for this bill, but Mr Stewart raises a wider point about how quickly we can make changes. Obviously, changes to adapt to circumstances, events and so on can be made more quickly if they are made through secondary legislation.

However, as I say, that is not the case with this bill. The bill deals with a specific issue that originated in the courts and needed, rightly, to be dealt with through primary legislation. I will ensure that colleagues are made aware of that wider point.

I touched on that point briefly. It was important that we considered whether we could use another legislative vehicle, such as another bill that was going through Parliament. In many ways, that would have been an easier process than introducing a whole bill to do just this one thing, but that was not possible. We were very aware that we had made that commitment as a Government, so it was therefore important to move forward with it. We endeavoured to find another way, but, once we found that no other routes were open to us through primary legislation, I felt that it was important that we took the decision—unusual though it is to have such a small bill—to do it this way, rather than continue to wait to see whether the change could be attached to another bill.

As Meghan Gallacher rightly points out, there was no formal consultation. The bill is a technical fix to fulfil a commitment that we made in court, so the Government did not feel that we needed to go through a full consultation process. In the time that has elapsed since the court ruling, the Government has had discussions with a variety of stakeholders who have differing opinions on various equalities issues. If those stakeholders wished to bring the matter up, we would have had those discussions with them. In the context of the bill, we felt that there was no need to have a formal consultation, given that it is a technical fix.

Yes.

The Government has no intention of amending the bill. It is short enough and has only one purpose, and we intend to carry on with the bill as introduced. Of course, the legal definition of women stands as it is in the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004. The legal definitions are there for all to see. There will now be no definition in the 2018 act.

In many ways, there would be no legal effect. I will clarify that: there would be no legal effect. In no way is there a legal necessity for us to carry this through. This is a tidying-up exercise, but, if the definition remains on the statute book, it could be confusing even though it has no legal effect. People with wider knowledge could read something in the 2018 act that they know that the court judgment has dealt with, and that could lead to confusion, so it is important that we tidy it up.

Thank you, convener. I congratulate you on your new role.

It is a pleasure to be before the committee to speak about the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, which seeks to remove the section 2 definition of “woman” from the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. The bill follows decisions of the inner house of the Court of Session, which were effective from 19 April 2022. The court decided that the section 2 definition was outwith the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and was, accordingly, not law. The court decided that the section 2 definition has no legal effect, and that has been the position since 19 April 2022. At that time, our counsel told the court that we would remove the definition. The bill, if passed, will provide clarity by removing the redundant definition from the statute book.

I appreciate that introducing such a small bill is very unusual. We have looked at other planned legislation, but we did not find a suitable vehicle for making the change. Furthermore, the change needs to be made through primary legislation rather than through secondary legislation.

This short bill therefore simply makes a small technical fix to the statute book by removing the redundant definition, which will ensure that no one is misled. The bill does not change the policy intention of the 2018 act; we still need the boards of public bodies to better represent and reflect the population of Scotland. As I have said, the bill simply clears up the statute book to ensure that it is not misleading. Removing the definition from the statute book will eliminate the possibility of any confusion for readers of the 2018 act who are unaware of the court orders in 2022.