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I am afraid that this is the start of quite a long run of amendments from me, but not all of my speaking notes are too long.

In this section, amendments 2, 9 to 12, 17, 19 to 25, 36, 42, 48 and 49 all simply insert the word “national” at various points in the bill. The intention is to ensure that there is absolute clarity that, when the legislation talks about the Gaelic language strategy, it is talking about the national strategy for which ministers have responsibility and which is replacing the national Gaelic language plan that exists as a result of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005. There are lots of other documents that will be referred to as strategies, plans and so on that will be produced as a result of the bill, so the intention is to ensure that there is absolute clarity in that regard. That is the rationale behind all of those amendments, which I hope is simple and agreeable to members.

In the conversations that I have had—albeit, they have been largely informal—no one has raised concerns with me. As it happened, the institutions that I engaged with the most turned out to be those that had Gaelic language plans, and it was perhaps more of a struggle to engage with institutions that did not have plans in place. I will be the first to admit that I have not spoken to every institution in that regard, but no concerns were raised with me about the amendment, which I lodged relatively early in the process. Certainly, no objections have been raised with me by Colleges Scotland or Universities Scotland, which I raised the matter with previously.

On amendment 68, past experience is much of the reason why we are here discussing this bill, and it is relevant to the discussions that have just taken place between Michael Marra and the cabinet secretary about the urgency of the matter. Past experience tells us that there will probably often be reluctance to fulfil the duties and that they will not be prioritised in the way that we would wish to see. Amendment 68 simply gives ministers stronger enforcement powers in that regard. They are largely replicated from the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, so they are not unprecedented. To a significant extent, the powers are copied and pasted from a set of enforcement powers that ministers already have.

Although is to be hoped that we do not get to the point of needing to use such powers, as I said, past experience indicates that their use is not unlikely. I want ministers to be able to take effective action if any public body is failing in the duties that Parliament has placed upon it. Even putting aside the content and purpose of this specific bill, I would want ministers to be able to rectify that situation. That is the rationale behind amendment 68.

I move amendment 33.

That was the final question that I wanted to ask. Otherwise it has all been well covered.

My question is on that point, because a lot of the larger substantive issues that I was going to ask about have been well covered already.

It is not about the relative worth or otherwise of the policy, because I understand that that is not for the witnesses to comment on, but about the transparency and presentational issues around things such as the hospitality relief. As you point out, Graeme, a huge number of the businesses that would be eligible for that already receive substantive relief through SBBS, and many of them receive 100 per cent relief. Is there a presentational and transparency challenge here, given that reliefs are layered on top of each other and there is a fragmented NDR relief landscape?

If I could just cut in, I said that the course review explains what the issues are in relation to the answers that came back. The core question is this: why did those answers come back? If we accept your premise that the cause of the issue was underperformance by pupils compared with previous years, then yes—your job is to explain the SQA’s processes, procedures and quality assurance, and you have done that. Surely your job as chief examiner is also to look into why there is unusual underperformance. This subject was clearly an outlier. If it is not the chief examiner’s job to look into why pupils underperformed to such an extent this year, whose job is it?

I will rephrase that, because that was my first question. Do you think that it is your job to understand why pupils underperformed? We can set aside the process issues with the SQA as an organisation. Is it your job, as the chief examiner, to understand why there was underperformance, if this year was such an outlier?

Excellent—thank you.

This has been touched on quite a few times already, but I want to come back to the case load issues that social workers have. Stephen Smellie, you mentioned in your opening comments that the reality is that a lot of social workers do a huge amount of overtime, and many families do not get to see their social worker from week to week or, sometimes, for even longer periods of time.

I will ask this question in two parts. Would anybody like to expand on the comments that Stephen made at the start about the reality for social workers who have a case load beyond their capacity, and consider what the present system should be doing formally about that?

Given the reality, which is that caseworkers are working overtime and families are not getting to see them, what policies and processes are in place for when a case load is far beyond capacity? Is there nominally—at least on paper—a process for dealing with that? If so, is that process not working? Is there an assumption that case loads are always manageable?

I will follow up on that point. The financial context, especially over the past three years, has been one in which there have been significant in-year cuts to budgets. Money that has been allocated at the start of the financial year has not been distributed. Willie Rennie mentioned the whole family wellbeing fund. I imagine that the answer to this question is relatively obvious, but it is important to get it on the record. What impact is the current public finance situation having, in particular on our ability to deliver effective preventative spend?

To follow up on the issue of expectation, is it an issue that budgets are often set in the knowledge, almost from day 1, that the money that has been allocated is never going to be distributed? Let us say that a promise is made that £10 million will be provided for project X, but, realistically, only £6 million is ever going to be available. Would it be more helpful to say from the start that it is going to be £6 million, not £10 million, or is there something helpful in encouraging the system to be ambitious? What would you require to make the kind of change that is needed? What would you do with £10 million if you had it?

Part of my frustration with a lot of this is that it appears that a huge amount of time is wasted and morale is drained when people expect to be given resources to deliver something and they are either not given them at all or they are given something far less and they have to rewrite a plan that they have spent time developing.

I will turn to a different topic, with a question that is primarily for Fraser McKinley—it is about the progress framework. On the Plan 24-30 website, the last line on the relevant page says that the framework will be available

“by the end of 2024.”

Is that still the expected timescale? Will we see it in the next fortnight?