Meeting of the Parliament 24 April 2025
Of course, I may have a perspective on those matters, but I think that it is important to acknowledge that I stand in the chamber as a Scottish Government minister, as Mr Kerr recognises. I do not think that it would be appropriate for me to use the platform to set out how the Parliament should go about scrutinising the Government—frankly, that would be a rather obtuse position for me to take.
I observe—although it relates to different subject matter—that some time ago, we were debating the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Bill. Daniel Johnson, who is not in the chamber for this debate, spoke about the appropriateness of the executive taking forward some of the propositions in the bill and asked whether it would have been better for the legislature to have done that. In response, I made the point that that was in the hands of the Parliament. I respectfully suggest that those are things that the Parliament is capable of looking at, and I note the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee’s work on such matters.
I should probably address the committee’s report, so I will return to it. The report offers a definition of framework legislation. There is nothing that I find particularly objectionable about its definition—it broadly reflects the definition that the Government proffered. However, I am very clear that it is rather more important that in future the focus should not be on whether any particular bill is defined as framework legislation; it should be on the quality of the justification for and the information on any proposed powers provided by the Scottish Government to the Scottish Parliament to enable it to undertake its scrutiny role.