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The First Minister is keen to continue to look at that, as he has said previously. The real challenge that limits our ability to do that will be that we continue to have to mitigate some of the worst excesses of Westminster policies. For example, there is already £127 million in the 2023-24 budget to mitigate some of the UK Government’s welfare reform. Quite frankly, I also class the Scottish child payment as mitigation, because if the UK Government took forward an essentials guarantee, for example, and universal credit and other benefits were at a fit and proper rate to allow people to live with some sort of dignity, the Government in Scotland would not be continually asked to protect people from the poverty levels that they are experiencing.

We will continue to look at what can be done, but it is difficult when we continue to mitigate Westminster welfare policies. It is difficult to see how that will change, given the restrictions on the Scottish Government budget. However, we will continue to do everything that we can, and we will continue to look at that as part of each budgetary process.

That is an important point. Given everything that we have done in the past on social security, I hope that Mr O’Kane is reassured that we always endeavour to work closely with people with lived experience. We will continue to do that on those types of assistance and on other parts of policies to do with care experience.

It is an important point that we need to listen to, and I am happy to give that reassurance. If the cross-party group wants to be involved in that, I am at its disposal.

The member raises an important point, and I appreciate that carers have asked the Government to consider it. At present, there is no legal requirement for Scottish ministers to increase the earnings limits for benefits delivered under the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 or under UK-wide legislation, but carers believe that it is exceptionally important for us to consider it.

The committee will be aware that, overall, the most important aspect for which the Government has responsibility is the safe and secure transition of payments. As we move through case transfer for carers, we are keen to prevent a two-tier system, whereby some people are on one earnings threshold due to some regulations, while others who have not had their case transferred yet would be on a different system. That is not a place where we want to be.

Following case transfer, the way in which the UK Government looks at earnings limits and so on might not be the most appropriate or robust way of making earnings measurements in Scotland; it will require further analysis. When we get to the point of case transfer completion—once a safe and secure transition has been completed; I reiterate that we are on target for the completion of case transfer by the end of 2025, as we had planned—that will be the time to consider it.

The member will be aware that carers themselves took part in the consultation on carers, and they discussed the different priorities. The Government wished to have a realistic discussion, noting that we might not be able to do everything all at once, because of financial and resource limitations. We are, however, committed to considering that approach for the increase of earnings thresholds for Scottish benefits once the case transfer is complete, using the discussions that have already taken place under the carers consultation and keeping the discussion going as we move to case transfer completion.

If you look at the scope of the bills that Parliament has passed, you will see that there was no available alternative. In many ways, the decision was to not continue to wait until an appropriate bill came along but to make sure that we lived up to the commitment that we had made in court.

As I said in my previous answer, the definition of women is based on what is in the Equality Act 2010 and the Gender Recognition Act 2004. That is the legislative basis of the definition, which we will refer to for the workings of the act.

The main and, indeed, only purpose of the bill is to remove that redundant definition. As I said in my opening remarks, following the court’s action, the definition does not have any legal standing, but we gave a commitment to the court that we would remove the definition, so it is important that we do so.

In many ways, there would be no legal effect. I will clarify that: there would be no legal effect. In no way is there a legal necessity for us to carry this through. This is a tidying-up exercise, but, if the definition remains on the statute book, it could be confusing even though it has no legal effect. People with wider knowledge could read something in the 2018 act that they know that the court judgment has dealt with, and that could lead to confusion, so it is important that we tidy it up.

Thank you, convener. I congratulate you on your new role.

It is a pleasure to be before the committee to speak about the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, which seeks to remove the section 2 definition of “woman” from the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. The bill follows decisions of the inner house of the Court of Session, which were effective from 19 April 2022. The court decided that the section 2 definition was outwith the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and was, accordingly, not law. The court decided that the section 2 definition has no legal effect, and that has been the position since 19 April 2022. At that time, our counsel told the court that we would remove the definition. The bill, if passed, will provide clarity by removing the redundant definition from the statute book.

I appreciate that introducing such a small bill is very unusual. We have looked at other planned legislation, but we did not find a suitable vehicle for making the change. Furthermore, the change needs to be made through primary legislation rather than through secondary legislation.

This short bill therefore simply makes a small technical fix to the statute book by removing the redundant definition, which will ensure that no one is misled. The bill does not change the policy intention of the 2018 act; we still need the boards of public bodies to better represent and reflect the population of Scotland. As I have said, the bill simply clears up the statute book to ensure that it is not misleading. Removing the definition from the statute book will eliminate the possibility of any confusion for readers of the 2018 act who are unaware of the court orders in 2022.

As Meghan Gallacher rightly points out, there was no formal consultation. The bill is a technical fix to fulfil a commitment that we made in court, so the Government did not feel that we needed to go through a full consultation process. In the time that has elapsed since the court ruling, the Government has had discussions with a variety of stakeholders who have differing opinions on various equalities issues. If those stakeholders wished to bring the matter up, we would have had those discussions with them. In the context of the bill, we felt that there was no need to have a formal consultation, given that it is a technical fix.

Yes.