Meeting of the Parliament 22 February 2017
As convener of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee, I will make the following comments on the United Kingdom Parliament’s Digital Economy Bill legislative consent memorandum. The committee was concerned about the extremely tight timeframe that it was given for consideration of the memorandum. I say for the record that the committee received no advance notice from the Scottish Government that the memorandum was likely to be laid before the Scottish Parliament.
It appears that there are two areas of the bill for which the consent of the Scottish Parliament is required. The committee is satisfied with the first provision, which will allow Scottish ministers to lay down fees for the Lands Tribunal for Scotland to charge for hearing disputes under the electronic communications code.
However, in relation to the provisions in part 5 of the bill, on data sharing across public bodies, the committee was unable to examine the policy implications of the concerns that were raised by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Furthermore, it believes that the data-sharing provisions would fall within the remit of other committees that have had no opportunity to consider them during the process.
The passage of this memorandum demonstrates, I believe, the limitations of the Scottish Parliament in respect of scrutinising LCMs within the very tight timescales with which committees are often presented. For that reason, the committee chose to note the memorandum rather than to pass comment on it. I will make no further comment, but I welcome the discussion that will be had on the subject.
16:50