Hansard

Group 4 contains amendments that will mainly adjust the wording of the bill to bring it closer to our policy intentions and to provide consistency in the language in different sections. The essence of community planning under the bill is that public sector bodies should work together and with communities in order to improve outcomes for those communities. The bill should place duties on community planning partnerships and on community planning partners, but not on community bodies themselves. Section 4(1) places a duty on community planning partners and community bodies to “participate with each other in community planning”, and “community planning” is defined in section 4(2). Amendments 1015 to 1018 will adjust the wording to avoid placing duties on community bodies. Amendment 1015 will replace section 4(1) with a provision that imposes a duty on community planning partners to carry out community planning “for the purpose mentioned in subsection (2)”. Amendment 1016 will amend section 4(2) to provide that the purpose of community planning “is improvement in the achievement of outcomes ... resulting from, or contributed to by, the provision of services delivered by or on behalf of the” community planning partners. Amendment 1017 is consequential to amendments 1015 and 1016. Amendment 1018 will place a duty on community planning partners, when “carrying out community planning,” to “participate with each other, and ... participate with any community body” that wishes “to participate in community planning” in a way that enables those bodies to participate to the extent that they wish to do so. Unlike section 4 of the bill as introduced, amendment 1018 will impose no duty on community bodies to participate in community planning. Amendments 1019 and 1020 will make minor drafting changes to the definitions of “community planning partnership” and “community planning partner” in section 4(4). They will have no substantive effect. I turn to amendment 1026. Under the Historic Environment Scotland Act 2014, historic environment Scotland is established and “has the general function of investigating, caring for and promoting Scotland’s historic environment.” Historic environment Scotland will become fully operational on 1 October 2015. It will be a valuable community planning partner; indeed, the 2014 act places a specific duty on historic environment Scotland, in exercising its functions, to “have regard ... as may be appropriate in the circumstances, to the interests of local communities.” Having the role of a community planning partner will be one important way in which that duty can be delivered. We therefore consider it appropriate to include historic environment Scotland in the list of community planning partners in schedule 1. Amendment 1027 will replace section 5(2)(a) with a reworded provision. It is a minor amendment, and will have no substantive effect. Amendment 1028 is consequential to amendment 1027. Section 5(1) provides that “Each community planning partnership must prepare and publish a local outcomes improvement plan.” Section 5(2)(a) provides that this plan must set out “each local outcome to which the community planning partnership is to give priority with a view to improving the achievement of the outcome”. Amendment 1032 is another amendment that seeks to simplify the language in the bill by adding consistency, so that we refer to “person” in both the first two subsections of section 8, which imposes governance duties in relation to the facilitation of community planning and the carrying out of community planning functions by community planning partnerships. Section 8(1) refers to “each community planning partner”, whereas subsection (2) identifies “The persons” referred to as community planning partners in subsection (1). Amendment 1037 is consequential to amendments 1015 and 1016, and reflects the fact that community planning will now be defined in section 4(1) rather than in section 4(2). Amendment 1038 relates to section 4(6), which gives the Scottish ministers powers to make regulations modifying the list of persons in schedule 1 who are community planning partners to “add a person or a description of person,” or to remove or amend an entry. That also relates to section 8(3), which gives the Scottish ministers powers to make regulations to “add a person or a description of person” to the list of community planning partners with governance duties, or to remove or amend an entry on the list. The bill currently proposes that the regulations on exercise of those powers will be subject to negative procedure. In my response, dated 19 December 2014, to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee report, I indicated my agreement with its recommendation to change that to affirmative procedure. Amendment 1038 provides that regulations that modify the list of community planning partners or the list of governance partners will be subject to affirmative procedure and therefore to a higher level of scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament. 10:15 Amendments 1039, 1040 and 1041 will add to the list of consequential amendments to other legislation arising from schedule 4. To help the committee, I will briefly summarise what the amendments will do. Amendment 1039 will ensure that references to community planning duties in the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 relate to duties under this bill, and not under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003. Section 99 of the 1973 act places a set of general duties on local government auditors, one of which is for auditors to satisfy themselves that the local authority is complying with its community planning duties. Section 102 of the 1973 act provides for the controller of audit to make reports to the Accounts Commission on how a local authority has discharged its community planning duties—it is important to bring that up to date. Amendment 1040 will alter section 57(2)(a) of the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, which allows ministers to “by order, amend, repeal, revoke or disapply any enactment” in certain situations. One of those situations is where ministers consider that the enactment prevents local authorities from discharging their community planning functions under section 15(1) of the 2003 act. As the bill will repeal part 2 of the 2003 act, amendment 1040 will remove the redundant reference. Amendment 1041 will update references to community planning in the Fire (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012. In both acts, those references to community planning apply to two issues, the first of which is in relation to local plans where proposed new section 41E of the 2005 act will require the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to produce a local fire and rescue plan for each local authority area. Similarly, the 2012 act will require the relevant local police commander to produce a local police plan for each local authority area. In both those cases, the plans must, among other things, set out how fire and rescue and policing priorities and objectives will contribute to delivery of any relevant local outcomes that have been identified by community planning. Amendment 1041 will update statutory references to community planning for those purposes. Another issue arises in relation to delegation of functions. The 2005 act requires the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service to delegate certain functions, including community planning functions, to a local senior officer. Likewise, the 2012 act requires the chief constable of Police Scotland to delegate his or her community planning functions to the local commander for an area. Amendment 1041 will update statutory references to community planning for those purposes. Amendment 1042 will repeal section 57(2)(b) of the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, which, under section 57(1), allows ministers to “by order, amend, repeal, revoke or disapply any enactment” in situations where ministers consider that the enactment prevents community planning partners from discharging their community planning functions under sections 15 and 16 of the 2003 act. The community planning provisions in the bill will replace those in the 2003 act; schedule 5 will repeal part 2 of the 2003 act, and as a result section 57(2)(b) of the 2003 act will become redundant. We consider that there is no need to replicate that provision for community planning duties in the bill; section 97 will provide ministers with the means to cover that situation through a general power to “by order make ... incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional or transitory provision”. Having gone through all that, I ask the committee to agree to the amendments. I move amendment 1015. Amendment 1015 agreed to. Amendments 1016 to 1018 moved—Marco Biagi—and agreed to.