Meeting of the Parliament 25 September 2024
Moving an amendment to the business motion is not something that I do lightly, but I do so because I passionately believe in Parliament giving its members ample time to scrutinise legislation. We should all know that rushed legislation can be bad legislation.
First, let me say what the minister’s business motion seeks to do. It seeks to set a timetable for dealing with the Climate Change (Emissions Reduction Targets) (Scotland) Bill. In trying to amend the business motion, I am interested only in that timetable; I am not interested in the bill itself, save to say that it is an important piece of legislation.
The minister wants us to have the following timetable. Stage 1 would be on Thursday 10 October. Should the bill pass that hurdle, stage 2 would be completed by Tuesday 29 October. Members will immediately realise that that takes in our two-week October recess. That is an issue that we should seek to avoid, but we can probably live with it.
With stage 2 having been completed by 29 October, the minister then wants stage 3 to be done and dusted on 31 October. That gives members and officials just two days to turn around amendments to a bill in which there is a great deal of interest. Parliament can act at pace, and it has done so on occasion in emergencies, but the only reason why we are being asked to do so on this occasion is to spare the Government’s blushes. That is because, under the law as it stands, which the bill seeks to amend, the Government has to produce a draft climate change plan by the end of November, and it is nowhere near doing that. That is the Government’s problem, which, quite frankly, is the Government’s fault. Parliament is not here to spare the Government’s blushes or to get it out of a hole. We are here to do our jobs properly.
The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee has been very careful not to express a view on timetabling, but it has written about
“the importance of there being adequate time between stages 2 and 3 for the implications of any stage 2 amendment agreed in committee being carefully considered.”