Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. On balance, that gives us three votes for satisfied and four votes for not satisfied with the statement of reasons. The committee is therefore not satisfied with—[Interruption.]

I am sorry—I have not voted. I, too, am not satisfied. However, there is a good piece of work to go ahead with, and the committee will have a particular interest in that area. I encourage Rhoda Grant to engage with the Government, but that is up to her. If she sees fit, she could consult further and bring back another proposal. That would be within the rules.

However, as my vote is for not satisfied, so there are four votes for not satisfied and three for satisfied. The committee is therefore not satisfied with the statement of reasons.

That concludes consideration of this item. I thank Rhoda Grant and Nick Hawthorne for attending.

Under the next agenda item, we will take evidence as part of our pre-budget scrutiny. We will hear from two panels of witnesses. I welcome our first witnesses. I give a virtual welcome to Councillor Alison Evison, the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and I welcome, in person, Nina Munday, the chief executive of the Fife Centre for Equalities and Paul Bradley from the policy and public affairs team at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.

I refer members to papers 3 and 4. I thank all the witnesses for their helpful written submissions. I invite each witness to make a short opening statement.

Yes, you can make a comment prior to voting.

Thanks very much, cabinet secretary. I think that committee members are content for now. We have other business to cover in private session. Thank you for making it through the session without having a coughing fit. You said that you would write to the committee with one or two pieces of information, so we look forward to receiving those and being kept up to date on the other matters that you talked about.

We will now move into private session.

We can come back to Pam Gosal now.

Welcome back. We move to our second panel of witnesses. I am pleased to welcome Shona Robison MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. I also welcome two Scottish Government officials: Trevor Owen, the head of the mainstreaming and strategy unit, and Emma Harvey, the head of the finance and business support unit, who are both from the directorate of equality, inclusion and human rights.

Cabinet secretary, do you want to make a brief opening statement?

That was not, in fact, my question. My question was whether the fact that the Government has made a commitment in such clear terms, in the agreement between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party and in the cabinet secretary’s letter, changes things. It was about whether, in light of that knowledge of the Government’s proposal, folk should be able to say whether Rhoda Grant’s bill should go ahead.

I feel that Fulton MacGregor might well press that area of questioning in our other evidence sessions.

I thank all three witnesses for taking the time to join us and for their really helpful evidence. We could have spent the whole afternoon chatting with you. There are a lot of issues to discuss, and the evidence from all three of you has been really complementary.

I suspend the meeting briefly for a changeover of witnesses.

I will bring in Maggie Chapman, after which I will bring in Pam Duncan-Glancy, who has some supplementary questions on this general area.

Do you not think that the fact that the consultation was carried out at the height of the pandemic would have made it difficult for some of those organisations to respond, because they were working in a different way?