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Will the member take an intervention?

I agree that we must protect our civil rights to protest, as the committee’s stage 1 report says. That is why we ensured that such activity would not be caught by the bill’s advertising offence. Amendments 6 and 7, in the name of George Adam, make that clear. I welcome the amendments, which signal the special value that we place on protecting those rights, and I hope that members will support them.

In relation to my amendment 1, the bill is essential to meeting UEFA’s commercial rights protections requirements to allow Scotland to host UEFA Euro 2028 in Glasgow. One of the requirements is that unauthorised advertising in designated areas must be an offence. The bill seeks to take a proportionate response to restricting outdoor advertising, and one of the ways in which it does that is by allowing existing advertising to remain in place as long as it is not in direct competition with one of the tournament’s sponsors or commercial partners.

Such areas of competition are identified in a list of product categories at paragraph 5(3) of schedule 3 to the bill. At its core, the exemption for existing adverts is a provision that we negotiated with UEFA for Euro 2020, and the provision now needs to be updated so that we can continue to meet UEFA’s hosting requirements. Engagement with UEFA since the bill’s introduction has identified some additional categories that need to be included if the provision is to operate as intended. Amendment 1 will give effect to that by amending the list at paragraph 5(3) of schedule 3.

I ask the committee to support amendment 1 so that the bill can fulfil its primary function—meeting UEFA’s hosting requirements—and, in so doing, enable Euro 2028 matches to be held in Scotland, with all the attendant benefits that will accrue from that.

I am happy to consider further how we advertise the charity exemption to alert organisations to the fact that they can take advantage of that. We can certainly give some thought to that but, as I have outlined, the legislation has to be tightly controlled.

It would also be untrue to say that small groups cannot register. More than one quarter of Scottish charities have an income of less than £5,000, and two thirds have no paid staff and are run by volunteers.

Amendment 3 would increase the risk that the exemption could be exploited by those who claimed to be raising funds for charitable purposes but who were, in fact, seeking a profit. The Scottish Parliament has previously legislated on charity regulation, in part to give us exactly the assurance that we need in this case—that we can have confidence in how funds are raised and used.

Furthermore, section 3 includes conditions that, if satisfied, will enable charities that are based outwith Scotland to benefit from the exemption, thereby ensuring that there is no discrimination between Scottish charities and other charities. Amendment 3 does not include a mechanism to determine whether bodies that are equivalent to community councils, for example, should benefit from the exemption.

On amendment 4, we have a track record of producing bespoke legislation for major events in Scotland. We have done so again, with this bill, to meet UEFA’s requirements, in accordance with UEFA’s timetable and within the constraints on parliamentary time, given the 2026 election. We are in regular discussion with the Governments of other host nations to ensure a coherent approach. We understand that the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive have no plans to introduce primary legislation, the Republic of Ireland has existing legislation that prohibits ticket touting, and the UK Government has indicated that it is still working through how best to deliver UEFA’s requirements.

I know that committee members will be interested in the UK Government’s announcement last month that it intends to explore possible legislative solutions to prevent live event ticket touting more generally. We will continue to engage with the UK Government as its proposals to address that issue and those relating to dynamic pricing take shape.

However, it is not for the Scottish ministers to make announcements for other hosting Governments. As such, we cannot commit to providing a meaningful report to the Parliament within the timeline that is set out in amendment 4, nor would it be in our gift to remedy that. There is a possibility that the UK Government will legislate for its jurisdiction beyond the proposed timeline for reporting.

Instead, I propose that amendments 10 and 12, which are on “Review of Act” and which will be debated later, provide assurance that the Scottish Government will report to the Parliament on engagement with the other host nation Governments as part of reporting on the impact of the legislation.

Therefore, I encourage members to resist amendments 3 and 4.

At the moment, the mandate letters from the Scottish Government to public bodies refer to the national planning framework—I am sorry; I mean the national performance framework. The letters also refer to the Scottish public finance manual, which—I have it in front of me—outlines the responsibility of accountable officers with regard to those issues. That work is done across Government, and that is how we manage it at the moment. As I said before, the review will look at any further reforms that are required to enhance that process and make it stronger.

The national planning framework also has the acronym “NPF”—that is what keeps confusing me. The national performance framework is reflected in the national planning framework, both of which are NPFs.

Yes, we are looking at that. We are also looking at how the Welsh are improving accountability and learning from their experience. That is being built into our on-going work, and the advisory group will no doubt look at that as well. I assure the committee that we are very interested in learning from the Welsh experience.

Our position is that we have no argument with the policy intention, in that we recognise that there are issues that need to be addressed. The phrase “implementation gap” has been used, and there are issues around scrutiny and accountability. The national performance framework was pioneering when it was introduced in 2007, and many other countries looked to Scotland to find out how we were doing things, as we set out long-term indicators for how to improve life in Scotland and Scotland’s wellbeing.

That was in 2007, and it is now 2025. We recognise that it is now time for improvement and that some of the gaps that Sarah Boyack and others have identified must be addressed. A number of organisations have said that they do not want overlap or duplication; if the bill was passed, we would have both the national performance framework and the duties under the bill. As the committee will, I hope, be aware, many organisations have expressed concern about overlap and duplication.

We recognise that there are issues that have to be addressed, and we want to explore non-legislative routes for doing so.

At the moment, there is a statutory underpinning of the national performance framework in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which I referred to in my opening remarks. It says that public bodies must

“have regard to the national outcomes”

in the framework. Overall, there are 30 bits of legislation across the Government that refer to sustainable development. That is already in place.

We agree that some of the issues that Sarah Boyack is concerned about and on which the committee is deliberating must be addressed, and that is why we are reforming the national performance framework in relation to scrutiny, accountability and other issues that people have raised in past consultations.

We do not have any objection to the idea that it can be strengthened. Today, we are discussing how to do that—whether to use legislation or whether to use the reforms to the national performance framework. For the reasons that I explained earlier, if we have a new bill that is not aligned with the national performance framework’s national outcomes, public bodies have expressed concern about duplication, overlap and potential confusion, because they will have to have regard to what is in the bill and to the national performance framework.

There is agreement that we need to strengthen accountability, scrutiny and so on, but the Government’s view is that we should explore the non-legislative route first. In addition, the Parliament has endorsed the report that said that commissioners with advocacy roles should be created only “as a last resort”. At the moment, that is being done not as a last resort.

Yes. The Deputy First Minister announced the intention to reform the national performance framework. With that in mind, we want to make it more impactful and effective and to consider the scrutiny and accountability issues.

Therefore, the next national performance framework will be a lot more robust. We will learn lessons and listen to all the responses to the consultations. This committee and others might also publish their views, all of which will be taken into account.