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This intervention can replace the contribution to the debate that I was going to make, convener.

In relation to amendment 288, would Katy Clark agree that institutions—schools, in particular—should have a duty of care to anyone who walks through the doors? I know that there is no intention to exclude anyone, but, to take schools as an example, I note that, although a school absolutely has a duty of care to its pupils and to its teachers, it also has a duty of care to its support staff.

In relation to violence against women and girls, I am particularly conscious that it is often women on the school support staff who are shown the least respect and who have to endure the most unacceptable sexual harassment. If we are heading towards a blanket duty of care—and I am glad that Katy Clark has lodged the amendments—we should ensure that that duty is to everyone who steps through the door of any of these establishments and, in particular, to all members of staff.

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for that. On that basis, I will not press amendment 2 to a vote.

Amendment 2, by agreement, withdrawn.

Schedule 1—Qualifications Scotland

That is a fair point from the cabinet secretary. I expressed scepticism at the time—I will need to check whether that is recorded in the Official Report or whether my comments were made in another setting—about the refreshed national improvement framework being the driver for change and based on a consensus around a refreshed vision for education.

Although there are areas to welcome in the national improvement framework, it does not adequately address Liz Smith’s point about a shared refreshed vision for Scottish education as a whole. The framework has some specific areas around which we would probably find consensus, but if we had that refreshed vision and consensus around the core principles of the system, it would make it easier to address some of these quite knotty questions. I do not think that we have quite achieved that.

I will finish on that point, convener. I tried to finish five minutes ago, but I am glad that I did not because I think that the interventions have added significantly to the debate.

I agree absolutely. It comes back to a point that a few of us raised earlier, and not just in relation to the bill. The fact is that, we are four years into this parliamentary session and multiple areas of education reform have been carried out simultaneously. We have had the national discussion about the curriculum, Professor Hayward’s review and we have the set of governance reforms that are contained in the bill. In addition, we now have what we did not expect to have at the start of the session: the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, which addresses some of the issues around the skills landscape.

Throughout the process, a number of us have raised concerns that the sequencing of all that is challenging to the point of creating areas in which it is impossible for us to address the issues adequately without knowing what the outcomes of other elements of the process will be. I do not think that there was ever a perfect way to do that, but, at some point, there needs to be a chronology or a sequence, and we need to make those decisions. Part of the issue is that, at this time, some of the processes seem to have gone nowhere.

On the national discussion and the broader vision, the idea of trying to coalesce around some kind of consensus on the curriculum and on the core ethos of Scottish education seems to have disappeared. I do not see what the outcome of the national discussion was. If we achieved consensus on a refreshed vision for Scottish education, it would probably make it easier for us to answer some of the specific questions of governance, structure and function.

The frustration across the committee is clear. Indeed, I share the frustration with the Government that this issue has been considered for so long—yet here we are at stage 2 without the Government having put forward a satisfactory solution. However, as has been mentioned, it is worth reflecting on the fact that, even after the significant volume of evidence that we, as a committee, took at stage 1, we could not collectively come to a clear, satisfactory conclusion on the matter. Clearly, this is the single most challenging issue with regard to the bill.

A majority of committee members and, I think, a majority across the Parliament want there to be a greater distance between the accreditation function and the rest of the functions that are currently proposed for qualifications Scotland. However, all the options that are in front of us have significant pitfalls.

Putting the accreditation function into Education Scotland would do the opposite of creating that greater distance, because, in essence, it would give the function to the Scottish ministers, and that would undermine the principle of what we are trying to achieve.

My initial preference was to move accreditation to the SCQF Partnership. However, as I started drafting amendments to that effect, it became clear—as has been made clear from a lot of the issues that have been raised today—that the SCQF Partnership is not the right home for it, not least because that organisation is a charity, not a public body.

I will come back to this point when we get to the relevant group later, but I will say now that we need to look at the status of the SCQF Partnership. The body is integral to the Scottish education system. As successful as it is, it is not part of our public sector and is not accountable in the way that the rest of the public sector is. That is not a criticism of it but a question about its status.

Obviously, we cannot simply remove accreditation from qualifications Scotland and not put the function somewhere else. I am interested in Pam Duncan-Glancy’s proposals on curriculum Scotland. I am wary of them, to be honest, but we will get into the substance of that in a later group of amendments.

I am willing to reconsider the options on accreditation once we have had the debate on whether to set up a new body. Like John Mason, I sit on the Finance and Public Administration Committee. It recently considered similar issues, particularly in relation to proposals for new Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body-appointed bodies. It proposed a moratorium on their establishment, to which Parliament agreed.

I absolutely agree with Stephen Kerr’s point about the need for a more granular discussion of the issue. This debate has been incredibly valuable in that regard. A range of new information on potential costs has been put on the record this morning, not least by the cabinet secretary. We need more discussion at that granular level, and I certainly want a greater understanding of some of the specific issues that have been teased out.

I repeat what I said earlier in an intervention on the cabinet secretary and what Martin Whitfield has also said: there is clearly a collective desire for us to reach a satisfactory conclusion. There is also clearly a recognition that none of the options that are in front of us is perfect. Given that, I suggest that none of the amendments be pressed at this stage if the Government can commit to facilitating discussion, for all interested members, to enable us to try to coalesce around a satisfactory solution—it will not be perfect—ahead of stage 3. If we cannot do that, I and other members will have to pick the least imperfect of the options. At the moment, I would probably lean towards placing accreditation with the inspectorate, imperfect as that option is. However, I do not think that we have to choose that at this stage. I think that we can come to a more satisfactory conclusion at stage 3, if we can have those further detailed discussions between now and then.

I will pick up on the points that were raised by John Mason and Liz Smith around parliamentary process. I take on board what Mairi Spowage said about not wanting to get too far into the wider discussion about parliamentary reform.

David Bell, your submission made quite an interesting and important point on capacity. The number of MSPs is the same as it was in 1999. The Parliament has far more responsibility and, as you hinted at in your submission, a higher proportion of members are ministers. Fewer members are, therefore, available for scrutiny. At the same time as we are talking about improving the budget process, other discussions are under way around the fact that we do next to no post-legislative scrutiny. That is a significant problem. We clearly need more time to debate some of the portfolio-specific issues around the budget. Liz Smith highlighted that the way that we do that at the moment does not work. There are ways to improve, tweak and reform the processes. If you want to address whether we have the right number of MSPs, feel free to do so, but, without getting into that directly, is there a fundamental capacity issue here? Does the Parliament have the capacity to do the kind of effective budget scrutiny that we are all discussing?

Mairi, I am interested in your thoughts on this. Last year, the Fraser of Allander Institute was commissioned by Alcohol Focus Scotland, I think, to work up proposals for a public health levy. Was that indicative of the wider engagement of advocacy groups, NGOs and so on with some of the knottier issues around tax and where resource comes from? Have you noticed more engagement?

I absolutely agree with that. There is a wider challenge on the legislative side as well, particularly during the second half of the parliamentary session, when lots of bills are coming through. We have had a challenge with capacity, as the Parliament’s legislation team has been supporting a number of amendments that members want to lodge. A wider conversation needs to be had, and a quarter of a century into devolution is probably the right time to have it.

David, I will pick up on another point in your paper on which, unusually, I am more optimistic than you are about the effects of recent changes to the process and the culture around it. The committee’s challenge to organisations that submit written or oral evidence to us is that, if they want more spending, they need to identify where it will come from. You suggest—not unfairly—that that has a dampening effect and potentially mutes non-governmental organisations and other organisations that would struggle to be able to do that.

On the other side of that, it is in part because of the pressure from this committee that we have seen a higher quality of work on tax policy from those organisations that have the capacity. The Scottish Trades Union Congress started off publishing papers that were optimistic in their assumptions about revenue yield, but they have improved over the years.

If we put the important challenge to those organisations—that, if they are quite legitimately saying that we need to increase the Scottish child payment, for example, we also expect them to say where the money should come from—is it inevitable that they should do that work, or is there a role for organisations such as the OBR, the SFC, SPICe and so on? Earlier, we talked about the OBR’s public information work. Is there a role for organisations in and around the Parliament to support those who would want to take part in that conversation but do not necessarily have the expertise, the knowledge or the capacity?

I point out that, although the Scottish Government operates an open government licence, almost none of its non-departmental public bodies or executive agencies do so. There is an immediate copyright blockage, even if you just want to scrape public data off their websites.

I agree with that, absolutely. One of the best—if not the best—quality budget debates that we have had in this Parliament was in either 2017 or 2018, in the year in which the Scottish Government asked all the parties to put forward tax proposals. It then gave those to the SFC to come back with projections on them. That is the only year in which Opposition parties were invited to do that, and it improved the quality of the debate significantly. It is a shame that that did not then become a regular part of the budget process.

I have one final question about data and its availability. It is an issue that this committee keeps coming back to, it is in your report and every other committee touches on it. We produce and collect a vast amount of data, yet we consistently come up against the problem that it is not the right kind of data, that it is not what we actually wanted or that the data may well exist but it is not accessible to those who need it.

David Bell, in your paper you point to the national performance framework review as being a space in which that can be addressed. Is the NPF the right space for the Government to try to marshal the data that is available in the public sector in, or does something separate need to exist? Does there need to be clear overall ministerial responsibility for public data? I will not suggest a commissioner or anything like that; we already have a Scottish Information Commissioner, and this committee has strong views on having more commissioners. Is there a space or a point person or something that is needed to address that issue?

I am not convinced that just allowing the NPF review to take its course will necessarily address the issue. We will be back in the same place of collecting a vast amount of data, most of which we do not use and is not particularly usable, and we will either not collect or not be able to access the data that we really need.