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Thank you very much—that was useful.

You will have heard one of the questions that I posed to Professor Muir earlier. In my view, some of the criticism that has been made of the bill is more about the frustration of those who are looking for changes that really could not ever be legislated for around leadership at qualifications Scotland, cultural change and so on. There is a question for us in Parliament about what we can do with the bill—what amendments to it are necessary—versus the wider scrutiny role that we play in relation to the non-legislative parts of the reform agenda.

What are your views on that? Specifically, are there areas of reform that would require legislation that you are surprised are not in the bill? Vice versa, are there areas of the bill that are not required for legislative change or, on Professor Donaldson’s point, would provide too much restriction in the future and result in a lack of the flexibility that you are talking about?

I am particularly keen to hear more of Professor Donaldson’s thoughts on the inspectorate, but I realise that other colleagues will be going into that in more detail.

Barry or Mark, do you have any thoughts on that point?

I want to pick up the point about the danger of a tick-box exercise. I think that Sarah Davidson mentioned it most recently, but everybody has mentioned it at some point. I wonder whether a tick-box exercise would at least be better than where we are now. At the start of the evidence session, Max French listed various Government strategies and policy documents that have been published recently without so much as even a tick-box reference to the NPF. As much as I accept that the ideal situation would be something more like what happens in Wales, where such an approach is deeply culturally embedded in Government, if we at least took some mechanistic approaches, it would move us a little further on.

The Scottish Government has handbooks and protocols when it comes to the drafting of bills. I find it hard to see how it would not be possible to say that, if, for example, a strategy document is significant enough that it needs ministerial sign-off, the protocol for that would include a requirement that the relevant NPF outcomes are referenced. Yes, that would be a mechanistic exercise, but, given where we are now and the fact that we are not even doing that, would a mechanistic approach not at least represent progress?

Thank you very much.

Alison Hosie, on the comment that you made about the lack of appetite, or the idea that the Government is rolling back a bit on the principles around the wellbeing economy, was that a reflection on the Government right now—as in the Administration over the past six months—or is that a wider reflection?

David Melhuish’s point about planning led me to think of a question. I am interested in folk’s thoughts about reform of the level at which Government power is set. Planning is a good example. Planning fees are not set by councils; they are set nationally, and many councils make a loss, which does not incentivise them to resource their planning departments properly. That has a knock-on effect of significant delays for developments. The issue has been consulted on recently, so we might well see progress on that.

There is perhaps a wider question, however. If we are talking about public sector reform and efficiency, do you have any examples around tax spend, a final levy or a charge such as planning fees and whether those powers are at the right level of government to get the most efficient return?

The proposal that the Fraser of Allander Institute has developed for Alcohol Focus Scotland is that the money would be ring fenced for drug and alcohol partnerships, or at least for health and social care partnerships. There would be some element of ring fencing to ensure that the money goes into prevention, treatment and so on that are specifically related to the harms caused by alcohol and tobacco.

At the moment, the value to retailers of minimum unit pricing is about £30 million a year. I think that it surprises quite a lot of people when they find out that the additional amount that is paid as a result of MUP does not go back to the public sector or the health service but is retained by the retailers. Given that we are talking about health-harming products that have not only a significant impact on people’s lives—that should be the focus today—but a really significant cost to the health service, is it not only fair to have a consequential levy or surcharge, or however it is phrased? That is particularly the case given that, at the moment, with MUP not being in place in the rest of the UK, retailers in Scotland pocket an additional £30 million a year as a result of MUP that they would not get otherwise? The proposal is that that money—we could set it at a rate that generates about that amount—goes back into the health service.

I think that it is from Alcohol Focus Scotland.