Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2015
Let me start with Rob Gibson’s point about best value. The usual question that is asked about any legislation is whether it makes a difference and is seen to do so. There is a redundant school in Shetland that has not been used as a school for a long time. The council in my area sold it to the largest developer—or the one that paid the highest fee—instead of letting a voluntary group use one of the school buildings. It was a canteen, but I will not bore the chamber with what it was all about. If this legislation can enable that community group to buy that asset and use it for their activities, it will have achieved something purposeful and be well worth passing.
I cannot, and neither will I attempt to, go through the legislation in the way the minister did in his opening remarks, but I agree with the tenor of his observations. He described the legislation as “extraordinary”, and the one parliamentary observation that I will make is about when we pass enormously wide catch-all legislation; we used to criticise Westminster Governments of all persuasions for passing the annual “Miscellaneous Scotland Bill”. This bill strikes me not as being miscellaneous, but as being detailed and complex but nonetheless wide-reaching, and I am sure that the Government will want to reflect on the process that allowed it to be that.
My highlight of the day was the allotments debate. It is just as well that Rab McNeil is not still the parliamentary sketch writer for The Scotsman—Alex Fergusson and Sarah Boyack will remember those halcyon days when Rab used to look down on our seats when the Parliament chamber was up the road. I do not think that Cameron Buchanan would have survived his sketch tomorrow morning. Sadly for the minister, the bill would no longer have been the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill; it would have been the “Allotments Bill”, the “Swede Bill” or something like that.
The ministers have made a lot of progress—in my day just one minister would have dealt with a bill such as this. One irony was our getting a briefing last night from Peter Peacock, who used to grace the front bench in past Governments. Peter used to handle such bills—the whole bill, with goodness knows how many sections and paragraphs and so on. He used to provide briefings to the rest of us who subsequently took bills through Parliament. He did that because he paid huge attention to detail and could hold the attention of parties across the chamber. If Marco Biagi follows that approach, he will do well as a minister. The effectiveness of Peter Peacock was down to his ability to produce detailed legislation and make it understandable to us all. His briefing was a masterwork of its kind. One Peter Peacock piece commended the support of all parties for the Government’s amendments at stage 3, subject to “the following comments”: then there were two pages of comments. That was very Peter Peacock, I thought.
I recognise that ministers accepted amendments from across the chamber when considering how best to improve the bill. Hitherto, I had thought that the best example of that, going back through Parliament, was the first cut at land reform legislation, which some—dare I say it?—older colleagues will recall. That bill became very different from the original that was proposed to Parliament. Again, that was because of a point that the minister rightly made: so many groups and interested parties made observations to say, “That isn’t good enough” or “That needs to be altered”. That is seen in how ministers have reflected on the observations. To some extent that was also the case with the amendments on fans that Alison Johnstone persuasively supported in committee and this afternoon.
Alex Fergusson made a point about clarity. I did not necessarily agree with the specific arguments that he pursued, but—Michael Russell is no longer with us, but I think Rob Gibson made the same point—when colleagues from the Government seats are saying that some of the provisions may end up in court, we must be careful that we have got it right, because that is not a good sign for any legislation. I appreciate that it is a small part of the bill, and I am sure that the minister will reflect on that with his good legal counsel, the Lord Advocate and all. It is important that we avoid situations in which we must say, “Good gosh! We’re going to end up testing that in the court.” I am sure that that is not the minister’s intention, and that he will do his best to avoid it. That must be a lesson for drafting any such legislation.
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