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My sense is that the commissioners who come before my committee understand that they are working within an envelope. However, the experiences that they have had show, in essence, that the vehicle that was expected to work within that envelope was perhaps not as fit for purpose as it should have been. There have been proposals from both commissioners about how they can streamline, not by cutting corners but by making their organisation more efficient. There is an obligation on them to do that.

As for the risk of the exponential spread of commissioners’ costs, you need to look at what the commissioners do. For example, freedom of information is important in Scotland, and FOI requests are used a lot. There is a criticism whereby people suggest that it is the same group of people who constantly do it, but the FOI legislation is about moving to a period of transparency at the point of delivery, to actually reduce the number of FOI requests. So, there is a route map, but it requires a change in groupthink in certain organisations.

The Ethical Standards Commissioner is the backstop for the ethical standards that we, along with councillors and various public appointments, should be acting to. You have to ask whether we need someone to judge that, and historically, sadly, it is useful to have someone to be that judge or assessor. A funding requirement goes with that, because the cases are becoming more complex with the existence of social media platforms and things like that.

Again, the easy answer is that there is a set budget and that is it. The real answer is to ask what we want them to do and to empower the committees not to step on their independence but to provide that critical oversight to see where there is value for money. That then goes back to the blockage point that I was talking about. In a sense, there are aspects that are falling between the paving stones, which we have seen can cause massive problems. If they were avoided and had been avoided for a period of time, maybe we would be in a different position with regard to the outlay.

In some ways, there has been a frustration with the freedom of information and the Information Commissioner because an expectation has been created of an entitlement to information that is perhaps not accurate.

This goes back to whether the Information Commissioner can do themselves out of the freedom of information job. A substantial part of their work is shifting that fundamental balance, in essence, to publish and open up so that the information is there and constituents—and I am thinking here about my own case load—and others have the best understanding possible of a decision.

The Ethical Standards Commissioner’s role is slightly different. On one level, it is for elected members to get it right and to understand the importance, the privilege and the Nolan principles that we talk about. The Commissioner was to be the independent guardian of those for the people of Scotland.

If we look purely at the responsibility for the standards of elected members, the Ethical Standards Commissioner would be more than happy to do themselves out of a job. However, that onus rests elsewhere.

I will not suggest any wording.

The word “wee” is doing a lot of lifting there.

I welcome Graham Simpson to the meeting. We have been taking evidence from the minister. I understand that you have some short questions on issues that you would like to explore, so I give you the floor.

I will move on to the EMB—in particular, the evidence that we have that significant work is continuing on how it should be constituted and what the legal entity should be. There is a suggestion that the schedule for that will come at stage 2. Can you give us an update on where you are on that, and on what the legal entity will look like?

That is excellent—I am grateful. Welcome to the committee.

No. I have asked who should take responsibility for elections a number of times. It seems that we are still quite a long way even from an internally agreed position, and yet that is one of the fundamental changes—albeit that it is probably of little interest to most people, as long as it works right. It would be helpful to know whether you have a time in mind at which those discussions will to come to a fruitful—

That is fine.

That is helpful. To refer back to the pilots, that is the one element in the financial memorandum that has an indication of potential additional costs; however, that seems to be phrased purely with regard to salaries. Does the Scottish Government not envisage any additional costs in the setting up and running of the legal entity—in particular, if the Scottish Parliament becomes involved at some level?

I will refrain from exploring the fact that, if the funding is not guaranteed, we could have problems if we set out that provision in the bill.

I will put it another way. Will the Scottish Government be in a position to give a better view of the financial implications once it has identified and chosen the best vehicle by which to make the board a legal entity?