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Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee 17 March 2016

17 Mar 2016 · S4 · Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee

Item of business

Annual Report

Don, Nigel SNP Angus North and Mearns Watch on SPTV

Indeed. As the convener, I echo that. If it is possible for me to embarrass our clerks and legal advisers, I will willingly do so. I do not know whether they are embarrassable—maybe, as people who have advised MSPs for a while, they have ceased being embarrassable—but I think that they are absolutely fab. They have done an extraordinarily good job, not just for the committee but for the Government, in picking up all sorts of stuff that normal people do not pick up. Their patience is obvious and their skills are, frankly, proverbial. If that embarrasses them, so be it. Given that this is the final opportunity to do so, I would also like to thank those around us: the official report, those in broadcasting and those who attend to all the technicalities, which seem always to work. We are extremely grateful. I thank our security officers—there is one here who represents all the others—for giving us an environment in which we can hold our discussions. I also thank Joe FitzPatrick and his predecessors as minister with responsibility for parliamentary business, because there has been a dialogue with the Government. I am sure that Euan Donald, our clerk, would recognise that his counterparts in the Government listen to what he says and that we have a dialogue, which enables many of the changes that we propose to be achieved. I hope that I have not left anybody out. Finally, I thank my fellow members for their diligence over the past session. We have been incredibly busy, but the fact that we are a small crew has made it work very well. That has been the case only because members have engaged with the committee’s work enormously well. Thank you very much.