I very much welcome the statement by Nick Ramsay, and I congratulate him on the way he has chaired the committee over the last few months. Sometimes, though, the Public Accounts Committee feels a bit like a treadmill: the auditor general produces a report, we get a presentation, the Government civil servants and other witnesses come in, we produce a report, which is then sent off to the Government, which responds, and then we start again like some form of infinite computer loop. The opportunity for committee-led inquiries is a good one, and a very important one. I think the one thing that really is important is that we don’t duplicate what is being done by other committees. That is one of the problems of public accounts because it is so far ranging and can cover anything done by the Government, or by the Assembly. It can be able to do things, only to find that, at some later stage, another committee has started off doing exactly the same thing, or has planned to do such a thing. I think that it really is important that we have a system by which we ensure that, if some other committee is doing it, either the Public Accounts Committee takes the lead on it or the other committee takes the lead on it. But I don’t think we’ve got enough time or people in order to do something twice.

I know that we all have our own interests, and we all have our own past experiences, and I think it really is important that we give other Members, not on the committee, an opportunity to suggest committee-led inquiries. Perhaps the Chair can say how people can do that. I could probably keep it going with my own suggestions over the next five years, but I don’t think that I, or any other Member, no matter who they are or where they serve, have all the knowledge and experience or a monopoly on good ideas. I think that there should be an opportunity for any Member here to be able to suggest to the Public Accounts Committee an area where it would be beneficial for them to do a committee-led inquiry. We may, Chair—under your direction—not take it up, but I think Members throughout the Chamber should have the opportunity to be able to put forward suggestions, because they may well have a better suggestion than those of us on the committee. So, can you say how that can be carried out, so that Members can have an opportunity to put ideas forward for what we could look at?