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You have said that you are not an arbiter and that you cannot get involved in dispute resolution. In your report, you said:

“We have not attempted to draw firm conclusions about the future direction of travel for the UK internal market.”

I will play devil’s advocate: what is the point of the Office for the Internal Market?

Why would I ask you for advice? By the sounds of it—again, I am playing devil’s advocate—I cannot see a huge amount in the report. It mentions the peat industry. How many other industries have engaged with you on a regular basis? Has any survey work been done to find out how many businesses know of your existence?

As I did earlier, I will play devil’s advocate. A number of issues have been raised in the discussion, but I will start with the proposal to have a commissioner, as it has just been raised.

There has been talk that we should all be thinking about future generations. I do not disagree with the need to do that—I think about them every single day. There has also been a lot of talk about the number of commissioners that we have and the proposals to have even more. Many folk out there among the public—and the public are the most important people—think that commissioners are a complete and utter waste of time, in most regards, and that, with regard to the issue of accountability, which Dr Long and Mr Ryder-Jones mentioned, it is politicians who should be accountable. Is creating a commissioner taking away the accountability that every one of the politicians around this table should have?

Again, I am playing devil’s advocate here. We could set up a future generations commissioner who is a horizon gazer, if you like, and comes up with all that might need to be done—the long-term thinking—but we could still be stuck in a rut because we have a UK Treasury that gives only one-year funding and no long-term funding like that which exists in other places, including Singapore. How will all of that work when that commissioner can do nothing about UK Government policy and UK Government spending? What is the point?

Does anybody else want to come in?

Would you want the commissioner—not the Parliament or the Government—to develop the standards?

I am asking about businesses, although I might come on to officials in a little bit. Taking an example of some of the areas that have been dealt with lately—although avoiding the DRS—say that I have a business in the area of fireworks and have concerns about how I can sell in the UK. Why would I come to you as a body for advice when I know that you are powerless, because you are not an arbiter and you cannot do dispute resolution? What is the point?

As a minister—I speak as a former minister—why would I take advice from your organisation and not go directly to the businesses or take advice from the civil service in such matters? I am trying to figure out what the point of the organisation is if it deals only with advice, it is not an arbiter and it cannot resolve any disputes. Let us be honest, in the interactions between Governments, what is required in some regards is dispute resolution rather than advice.

We have not seen any wither away.

I want to see massive institutional change, but we better not go there.

I will return to another important point that you made earlier, Dr Long. I am paraphrasing, but you said that there is already a range of duties for bodies to act sustainably. One good example of an area in which we have done well, but not quite as well as we could, is fair trade. The Economy and Fair Work Committee has been looking at procurement, but there is no particularly great definition of fair trade.

How do we move forward with meaningful measures? Would it be a good idea to look at the range of duties, tidy up definitions and get them right where they are not quite right, to ensure that folk are living up to their responsibilities?