There are quite a lot of issues there.
First, there is no doubt—John Finnie and I will testify to this—that the previous Justice Committee was really a legislative machine. Our workload of 17 bills was really oppressive, inquiries were squeezed and it was virtually impossible for us to carry out post-legislative scrutiny.
One of the pluses or strong points of the committees was supposed to be their ability to hold the Government to account in order to improve legislation. There really was not any opportunity to do that in the previous session, and there has been no emphasis on that in any session of Parliament. I therefore very much welcome Stewart Stevenson’s suggestion that post-legislative scrutiny should feature in our work programme, and I hope that it will.
Rather than just reacting, it would be excellent if the committees could operate as they were intended to and could look at issues that they deem to be important and worthy of being brought to the fore by being the subject of an inquiry.
Another thing that I will put into the melting pot is that, in the whole history of the committee system, only one piece of legislation has been generated by a committee, although I could be wrong about that. [Interruption.] Stewart Stevenson, our numerical expert, tells me that there have been two. However, in 16 or 17 years of the Parliament, that is a pretty poor record. Therefore, another thing that our committee could consider is legislation that the Government does not have in mind but which we think is important and should be brought to the fore.
We have some good ideas for the planning day. I do not want bids from all over the country for which part we should visit—no doubt they would be from the Highlands and Islands down to the Borders and Dumfries. Perhaps we can work that out when we discuss the issue more fully on 28 June. I seek members’ agreement to do that, and to have the business planning day.
As regards the issue that Douglas Ross raised, we received correspondence this week from the clerks—we all got it at the same time, so I did not have any prior knowledge of it—indicating that the report into the counter-corruption unit by Derek Penman, which was expected in spring, is delayed and is now expected to be published before the summer recess. I think that Mr Penman has said that it will be published in time to be put before Parliament, but not necessarily in time for the committee to look at the issue. If we want to ensure that it is published in time for us to take evidence on the Tuesday, it would be a good idea if the committee agreed to write to Mr Penman suggesting that he makes the report available on the Monday. If there are good reasons why that is not possible, at least he can give us those reasons.