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On the more positive side, what if the said individual, after seven years, is doing a fantastic job and has all the leadership requirements that Mr Kerr is looking for? All of a sudden, they cannot stand any more and continue with the job that they are doing. Would that not limit the individuals, in terms of people with the ability who might want to go for the role?

From my perspective, it seems that you have already cut out quite a few people who would actually go for the role. I remember my time in public appointments in the local council, where a submarine commander applied for every senior job in the council. I am not sure whether he had the leadership qualities, or whether he could pick up the bins on time, but the whole idea is that there are people who have leadership qualities and could possibly bring something other than education experience to the role.

I appreciate that I have gone off at a tangent from my initial question, but Mr Kerr knows what I am like. There are other people who may have the leadership qualities for the role. Would your amendments not limit the potential for qualifications Scotland to appoint a dynamic person who had the skills to take the organisation forward?

Finally, one thing that kept coming up was the exclusion process. We heard from Dr Brown Swan, who highlighted the fact that the exclusion process lacks transparency and proper procedures, creating “uncertainty and confusion” for both legislators and business. Even those involved in business, such as Marc Strathie, raised concerns, highlighting that businesses face “uncertainty”, particularly around the exclusion process.

Is it not the case that the internal market act has created uncertainty for business, instead of the certainty that it claims to bring?

On that point, we have received evidence that the act itself

“positions the devolved governments as junior partners”.

Mr Kerr seems to think that it is a good idea for us to be the junior partners, but—as you rightly said, cabinet secretary—that is not the way in which the devolved Assembly in Wales and the Parliament in Scotland were set up. That is not the way that it was meant to be. We were told of the idea that we were meant to be equals in the whole process. I do not know whether Mr Kerr is saying that Scotland should go back in its box. Surely we should look to the history of this place and say that the internal market act is an attack against our Parliament, in particular by the previous Government, although who knows what the Labour UK Government is going to do? I do not think that it knows.

Thank you, convener.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. It is funny; no matter how long I have been here, it never ceases to amaze me how we can all sit through the same evidence sessions and have vastly different views on what the actual evidence said.

At the very first meeting that we had on this subject—which was on 6 March, with the academics—Professor Thomas Horsley said that the UK internal market act framework was imposed without consensus from all the constituent parts. That backs up a lot of what you have said today. He also said that the UK Government has a problematic role as both regulator and central gatekeeper, which is another key issue that a lot of people have brought up in evidence. Professor Jo Hunt said that, with the UK internal market act, there was hasty implementation without proper stakeholder consultation, and that the top-down control undermines the devolution principle—and the evidence goes on.

The point that I am making is that it is amazing how we can sit through all this evidence and all come up with different things—but that is politics for you; people will do that.

What I got from businesses, particularly at last week’s meeting, was that they just want politicians to get on with it and tell them the rules and regulations. They see some problems with the UK internal market act, and they see the UK as a massive market and as part of their business, but they just want us to get on with it. I asked whether they believed that politicians should just get on with working together to create common frameworks, do exactly as Mr Harvie has said, and negotiate—a word that seems to be foreign throughout the world these days—and come to some kind of compromise. Surely that is the sensible way to go about business—the sensible way to do this—and the evidence that we have received backs that up.

Thank you.

We used to talk about hard-to-reach parents and children. We do not use that language any more, but those are the ones who are not engaging. Mums and dads are not joining the parent council and are not engaged with the school. I agree that those are the people we need to get to. How do we get to them? How do we get to the young person who might be bright and gifted but is from one of the poorer areas in Scotland? We are not even getting the chance to give them the opportunity of a university place because, even from primary school, it becomes challenging and difficult for them.

You have already answered this question three or four times, but it seems that it is now our practice to ask the same questions three or four times as we go along. Is the SSI not an example of the Government seeing an issue with the sharing of data and finding a solution? When answering that question, please do not blink or shake your head, or the convener will ask you outside for a square go.

I find it hugely frustrating that we hear about data issues, the Government does something about that, and then we seem to go down a rabbit hole at committee, instead of talking about the efforts to make sure that 25,000 children are not going hungry. That is part of the issue. Do you not agree that, when we discuss such challenging issues, we need to do so with a level of maturity so that we can talk about the end game and what we are trying to deliver?

On young people feeding into the process, we took stage 1 evidence on the Education (Scotland) Bill and kept hearing that the landscape is massive. We have parents, teachers and people in higher and further education. They all want some space and to be able to do what they need to do.

Of course, the fact that children and young people are part of that was brought up as well. We were told during the evidence that there was no place for children and young people to engage—no, to be more accurate, we were told that it would be better if we could find a way for them to engage more with the process. How do we improve that?

Work of that kind has happened all over the country, but St Mirren is the local football team in my constituency, and the local authority there has worked with it and with football camps and street football. I have been regularly to one of the meetings in a particular area of my constituency, and—for want of a better phrase—some of the young men turn up in all kinds of states, but they engage with the coaches because they want to. A former chairman said to me, “When are you going to second some educators and social workers to the football club?” That is not such a crazy idea as it was when he initially said it, because it goes back to your argument that that is where young people are.

It is about schemes such as that, which are more focused on the education side of things, and on getting young men—that is mainly who that work reached—away from being drunk on a Monday night, and about looking at education and at trying to engage with them.