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Good morning, cabinet secretary. I suspect that the regulations have been designed with a view to bringing about quality changes in practice that will make a difference to vulnerable individuals. What changes in practice do you envisage may come about? How will that be monitored?

That is really helpful. If I appeared distracted during your reply, that is because I wanted to check the name of a project. [Interruption.] That was not very professional. I will tell you why I was looking at my phone. Last week, I invited to Parliament members of a project called “Financially Included”, but its name had escaped me. It deals with economic abuse of women; it supports women to escape such abuse and put their finances back on track having suffered it.

I was very interested to hear what you said about that kind of abuse and exploitation. Can you say any more about how that could help women in particular? You could do that now, or perhaps you could contact the committee after the meeting. I am conscious that economic abuse is a key issue in the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. If you want to address that now, it would be quite nice to get it on the record this morning. I apologise for that distraction, but I wanted to check that I had my details right about the question that I was about to ask.

There are two aspects. Whether there is any value in an advisory group advising Government ahead of a new benefit being finalised, launched and rolled out is a separate matter from an advisory group making expert recommendations to Government about who qualifies for any new benefit. I will therefore separate those for a wee second.

Given all the caveats that Mr Griffin has made about wanting reassurance about what any Government advisory group would look like, would he accept that it would be possible for the Scottish Government to draw on expertise from across the country and all the areas required to inform what any new employment injury assistance would look like? I know that his preference would be to set that up by statute, but that would not be required for that function to be fulfilled.

I have some technical questions, to complete our scrutiny.

It is proposed that SEIAC be established as a body corporate with a duty to audit its own accounts. I could not previously have told you this, but in researching for your bill, I found that that is unusual for advisory NDPBs. Other bodies do not do it that way, but SEIAC would. Why the difference?

Could it make recommendations, though?

The final point that I will make is that we heard last week that the reason for some of the delay was the prioritisation of the Scottish child payment in this Parliament, which led to slippage elsewhere. I suspect that the Government’s proposal is being introduced now given the tight timetables that Government is on, which Mr Griffin mentioned. Now would be the time to do it. Nonetheless, I take on board the points that Mr Griffin made.

Thank you. Our committee will, of course, pursue that.

I have a supplementary on the convener’s questions, but I first want to ask briefly about something that you said in your last answer, Mr Griffin, just for a bit of clarity. You mentioned increasing entitlement and recommendations. Do you mean recommendations on changing the eligibility criteria to increase entitlement, or do you mean scientific and wider evidence that the threshold has been met and that certain conditions and categories in the workforce should receive the benefit? Are you talking about changing the eligibility criteria or about scientific and wider expert evidence that the eligibility criteria and threshold have been met?

I apologise for cutting across you, but it is worth noting that the Health and Safety Executive would not come to give oral evidence to the committee. Also, the HSE’s written evidence is pretty incomplete and insubstantial, although it mentions the fact that it has a pretty close working relationship with IIAC. Therefore, it would need to have a pretty close working relationship with SEIAC or whatever was put in place in Scotland. However, the HSE is pretty much silent on that and will not give a view on it, so I am a bit dissatisfied.

My line of questioning is not about criteria and eligibility for a new benefit; it is about the preventative work. If research and evidence at a granular level were to make a compelling argument for employment law or health and safety legislation to be changed on preventative grounds, should the proposed body not have the power to make pretty strong recommendations on that? Would it not be helpful if those powers sat in the Scottish Parliament? That is the essence of my questioning.

I know that we are nowhere near that situation at the moment, but it is good to talk, minister, as you know. Has there been any initial dialogue with UK Government officials, even at this stage? In particular, I am conscious that, as we heard last week, environmental NGOs believe that there should be a qualified automatic exemption to the internal market act for public health and environmental purposes. Is there an on-going dialogue with the UK Government ahead of the front loading of a lot of the work that we have heard about?