Questions, questions

I see that the membership of the Calman Commission has been announced. (NB the passive voice.) It seems to be a suitably representative selection of the great and the good, if a trifle heavy on the number of Lords. More arguably, it seems a bit light on technical expertise in the form of retired civil servants or academic constitutional experts.

On seeing the list, my first reaction was to wonder who would actually be doing the work. Official committees and commissions do not actually write reports themselves, you know. The great and the good are busy people. Commissions such as that of Calman require a secretariat to write papers for them, to arrange their on-site visits, to pay their expenses. But none of the press reports I have seen mentions a secretary.

Which led me to contemplate from whence such a secretariat would come. Clearly, it would be most inappropriate for it to be provided by the Scottish Executive, which currently owes its political loyalties to SNP Ministers. The Scotland Office might be an option, but there is nothing on its website to indicate that it proposes to take an active role. Similarly with the Scottish Parliament, even although the Commission has been established following a resolution of the Parliament. And we know that the membership has presumably been determined by trilateral negotiation among the unionist parties. But who actually made the appointments? It's all a bit of a mystery.

Then there is the absence of a website. Maybe the Commission is just a little slow in getting itself organised, but the establishment of a website must surely be one of the first tasks of any newly appointed body. And the location of the website would have given us a clue as to who was in charge.

Perhaps there are straightforward answers to these questions and I am making mountains out of molehills. Can anyone out there steer me towards some answers?