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I do not have that information to hand. The Government is working with the parliamentary timetablers on the passage of the legislation but, depending on the nature of the process that we go through, I suspect that we may find ourselves in a different timescale.

We do that in the delegated powers memorandum, and I rehearsed that with Mr Simpson. Fundamentally, judgments on such questions are informed by advice that the Government receives from its chief medical officer, who has a role in statute to provide such advice to Government. The chief medical officer’s views already drive a number of provisions that are in statute and have nothing to do with the bill. The chief medical officer takes a view that is based on his or her professional assessment of the situation that we face, and I would argue that that is exactly as it should be, so that we are influenced by high-quality, independent clinical and epidemiological advice about the situation that we face.

I make the point in trying to answer Mr Hoy’s question—I understand exactly why it was asked—that it almost invites me to define the indefinable, because we do not know what might come our way. If we did not feel that over the past two years, we certainly have felt it over the past two weeks in relation to the awful situation in Ukraine.

The construction of our statute book on many public health issues, which often hinges on the chief medical officer’s advice, is designed to give us the ability to interrogate and interpret events as they unfold and then come to a view on what merits the necessary action by ministers. The challenge of any part of legislation is to make sure that that advice can be offered, that it can be considered by ministers and that Parliament can exercise accountability over that judgment.

What if we encountered an unwilling partner?

Obviously, there is an argument for sunset provisions. The difficulty is that we cannot, for example, predict the moment at which we might face a pandemic, how long it will go on for, or whether—to be blunt—it will coincide with the intricacies of parliamentary sitting arrangements. We could find ourselves in a situation in which we have a gap in the statute book because Parliament is not sitting, but there would be a necessity for us to undertake particular provisions. It is about taking an orderly approach to ensuring that the statute book is in a fit state to respond to different challenges.

It would have to be considered at that time. Obviously, there are certain arrangements in the bill that mean that if, for example, the made affirmative procedure is applied but the Parliament does not support or endorse the provision, it will lapse after a given period of time. Those provisions are built into legislation at the time of its design. However, there is the provision for ministers to consider any other provisions of that nature that might come forward and which members might wish to add to the bill during its passage.

We might have to identify areas as being related to outbreaks, or we might have to restrict access to them if we are trying to prevent the spread of the virus in the same way as we had to do, regrettably, during the pandemic.

Time and again, we are going to come back to the crucial point: do we want a statute book that is fit to handle such circumstances or do we want to have to do things in a hurry? Mr Sweeney has, quite fairly, said to me that we need a process of thinking through what we need to do in certain circumstances. I am simply asking whether, on the basis of our past experience, we want to prepare the statute book for that. That is the crucial point.

That is the subject of a regular process of review, which, ultimately, involves Cabinet decisions and the statements that the First Minister has made to the Parliament on a regular basis. The process involves analytical work that is undertaken within Government to consider a range of perspectives on the state of the pandemic, such as its seriousness and the level of threat to public health. Essentially, that leads to the production of the “Coronavirus (COVID-19): state of the epidemic” report, which is published on a regular basis and is publicly available.

A group at a senior level within the Government considers that report and explores the four harms—which we have described and which committee members will have heard me talk about before—which are the direct Covid health harm, the non-Covid health harm and the social and economic harms that are caused by Covid. That group is populated by the chief advisers to the Government: the chief economist, the chief social policy adviser, the chief medical officer, the chief scientific adviser, the chief educational officer and the chief social worker. All those individuals consider that material and provide advice to the Cabinet, which makes a judgment about whether regulations are proportionate.

That is, ultimately, a judgment to be made. Indeed, the Government made it explicit last Tuesday, in its strategic framework update, that that is, always has been and always will be a judgment. However, ministers recognise—appropriately, given that all our decisions are justiciable—that we must be satisfied that the stance of regulations being proportionate can withstand legal challenge, should that arise. The Government takes such issues very seriously in its deliberations.

It all leads to a set of decisions that are taken by the Cabinet and then reported to the Parliament. Accordingly, any legislative measures that flow from that are brought to the Parliament in the fashion with which the committee will be familiar.

My reading of the Information Commissioner’s communication with the Government indicates that the issues that the Government has to address are about the explanation of the approach that has been taken to information handling, not the information handling itself. The remedial action that the Government has to take is to explain better to members of the public why their information is being handled as it is being handled. The issue is not the means of handling the information.

As to my knowledge of the situation, I became aware of the concerns of the Information Commissioner’s Office on, I think, 28 or 29 September. I would have to verify exactly which day it was, but it was one of those two.

Mr Hoy will be aware of the contents of the Information Commissioner’s letter to us last week. Obviously, the Government will take all necessary steps to ensure that we address those issues, but I stress that they are about the explanation that is given to the public about the basis on which and the way in which information is handled.

During the course of the pandemic, on what I consider was a regular basis, the powers were certainly used in respect of observing the requirements that we expected to be in place in order to maintain public health in the education community. At times, they were used to specify what could and could not happen in schools. At the height of the pandemic, the education continuity directions were used to specify that, for example, children of key workers could be educated or supported in schools, whereas other children could not be. At times, the powers were also used to specify our expectations about educational provision.

The powers certainly have been used over the course of the pandemic. On the question whether they will need to be used in the foreseeable future, I point out that they can be used only when there is a public health imperative that enables them to be used. Their existence and significance relate to the fact that, in my view, we must have a statute book that enables us to address the circumstances as we face them.