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Mr Swinney, I want to ask about something that witnesses have raised and that we have not covered yet: the idea that we should introduce sunset provisions in both primary and secondary legislation. What are your thoughts on that?

I can comment on them all. SSI 2021/478 is not contentious, so I will not say a great deal about it. It relates to a technical issue in the chamber. MSPs were unable to vote on a previous set of regulations, which therefore expired. The regulations have now been relaid—that is now out of the way.

However, I take a different view on the other regulations, which came in over the festive period and which relate to leisure, sporting events, theatres, pubs and night clubs. Members of the public and the people who are involved in those sectors know very well what happened. Sporting events were closed down; the football calendar—certainly, the Scottish Premier League—was put on pause—[Inaudible.]

We have just been discussing the made affirmative procedure. My view is that the use of that procedure for those regulations was not appropriate. They would have benefited from some scrutiny but they had none. Parliament could have made time for the use of the affirmative procedure. We have acted—[Inaudible.]—at times previously. The affirmative procedure is the better procedure to use in such instances. On that basis, I will be moving against SSIs 2021/475, 2021/496, 2021/497 and 2021/498.

Yes, thank you. Can I carry on, convener?

Thanks very much. I will spare the officials from now on, which they will be pleased to hear.

I note the Deputy First Minister’s comment that he does not want the use of the made affirmative procedure to become normal. Well, it has become normal. If we look at some figures, we see that, since the start of session 4 up to the end of 2019, the made affirmative procedure was used nine times. Then, from 20 March 2020 to 2 December 2021, it was used 132 times, the vast majority of which were for coronavirus regulations. The percentage of those that were reported—generally for mistakes, which is what this committee picks up on—was 11.6 per cent. That is quite a high number.

It has become normal because the Government has got into the habit of using the procedure—and it is a procedure. If I can put it in layman’s terms—I will ask Mr Swinney to respond to this when I have finished—the Government has been ramming through laws at breakneck speed with little to no oversight. It is an affront to democracy. In fact, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee at Westminster called it “government by diktat”. I agree with that.

When, retrospectively, the laws eventually come before Parliament, there is very little debate—in fact, there is no procedure in this Parliament for a proper debate. All that is very unsatisfactory. Do you recognise the problem? If so, what do you intend to do about it?

Ms Rayner might want to say something, convener.

I welcome the Deputy First Minister to the meeting. We are all grateful that he is here, and I am interested to hear what he has to say.

Mr Swinney, I note that you have brought three officials with you, and I wonder whether we could start off by hearing from them, because they are the people who have to draft the laws, which is being done at breakneck speed a lot of the time. Before I question you, Mr Swinney, could we hear something from the officials about their experiences of having to make legislation during the pandemic at great speed?

It would be helpful if such statements were made. It would be even more helpful if the Parliament was allowed to take a view on any such statement, but I suppose that having one would be a good first step, because ministers would at least have to justify their position.

When the vaccination passport scheme was introduced, the committee took a view on the matter. The scheme had been planned and trailed for several weeks, but it was put through the Parliament under the made affirmative procedure. Our view was that the Government could not say that that was urgent, because it had been planned for weeks. That is a good recent example of why it is important for ministers to justify their view that something is urgent.

On parliamentary oversight, the Deputy First Minister says that Parliament gets a vote. It does, but that happens only after the law has come into effect. That is the wrong way round. A lot of the time, we could use different procedures. We do not always need to use the made affirmative procedure. Parliament could take a view on a measure before it comes into law. Does the Deputy First Minister agree that more regulations could be introduced using the affirmative procedure, which would allow the Parliament to vote on measures before they become law?

I thank the Deputy First Minister for his comments. He described my comments as “ludicrous”—that is his view. I referred to coronavirus in my opening comments; it is quite clear that that is the reason why the Government has been using the made affirmative procedure—nobody denies that. The question that the committee is addressing is whether, as we move on, it should become a habit.

Using the made affirmative procedure has become a habit—various witnesses have described it as such. Sir Jonathan Jones QC described it as a “bad” habit and said that bad habits are hard to break. It is not only the Scottish Government—the Westminster Government has also got into that habit, and the same debate is going on down there. The question for this Parliament is, moving on, what do we do? As the Deputy First Minister appeared to recognise in his opening remarks, we do not want this approach to become the norm.

One of the issues that we have addressed in taking evidence is the reality that, in order for the made affirmative procedure to be used, all that needs to happen is that a minister—it could be Mr Swinney—decides that something is urgent. They do not need to justify that or to come to Parliament to say why they think that it is urgent; they simply need to decide in their own head that it is urgent and, with the flick of a ministerial pen, something will become law. There is no scrutiny of that.

I will put to Mr Swinney a question that has come up in evidence to us. Moving on and forgetting what has gone before, should ministers have to come to Parliament—either the full Parliament or a committee—to justify why they think that something is urgent?

I am very grateful—I am aware that I have taken up quite a bit of time.

I completely agree with the Deputy First Minister: we do not want to have to wait 54 days to put through regulations that have a certain degree of urgency about them. It is a question of Parliament being flexible and perhaps coming up with a bespoke procedure. I will leave my comments there, because other members have things to say.

Thank you.