Seòmar agus comataidhean

You have mentioned the domestic abuse protection legislation as incurring a cost, and you have talked about the age of criminal responsibility legislation. Within the relevant financial memoranda, there will have been a prediction of what the cost of that legislation would be for policing.

I am very grateful to you all for those answers.

Good morning. On the rebranding point, which George Adam made well, I note that Fiona Robertson of the SQA told the committee that the bill creates a new organisation that has the same functions, not only in broad terms, but in quite specific terms, as the existing organisation. If it will be the same organisation with a new name, but with the same people and the same specific functions, how can you, as cabinet secretary, be sure that the issues that arose will not happen again, and that the trust that you demand will be earned and maintained? How will it be monitored?

Finally, the financial memorandum sets out the costs of the reforms, but it focuses on the obvious structural costs and concludes that they will fundamentally be “similar”. If it is accepted that the activity cost is fundamentally the same before and after reform, does that not bring us back to the point that I made at the start of this evidence session? We will have the same organisations with the same costs and, therefore, the same outcomes.

Indeed.

You mentioned that changes to qualifications could happen. Do you have any concern that doing what the bill does in isolation from, or at least separate from, the other reforms that have been recommended—the Withers reform, the Hayward reform and the Muir reform—risks the reform being piecemeal and siloed, rather than holistic across the sector?

Do you want to add anything, cabinet secretary?

I have a final question on that topic, cabinet secretary. Under the bill, the chief inspector would also have to establish a strategic advisory council, which would consist of those who would be impacted by the chief inspector’s functions. What would that look like on a practical level? How would the advisory council support and, indeed, critique the chief inspector in practice?

The removal of the inspection function will leave a legacy body to support the curriculum. The committee has heard wide views on that remainder body, the possibility of overlapping roles and lack of clarity with other organisations. Is the bill sufficiently clear on that? What role will the stakeholders that Clare Hicks listed earlier have in developing the governance of the remainder organisation?

Yes.