Meeting of the Parliament 09 November 2022
The convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee imposed an unnecessarily short amendment deadline on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill at stage 2. I am told that there are around 100 amendments and that more would have been submitted had the deadline not been so restrictive.
The motion sets a deadline for finishing stage 2 on 23 November. That has already caused the convener of the committee to inform members that consideration will be completed in just two sittings and that a two-tiered speaking allocation system will be in place, dividing those who have amendments in their name and those who do not. That is clearly a restriction on scrutiny.
Imposing the short deadline is utterly needless. It just creates the prospect of getting things wrong.
My amendment would allow for two more sittings to consider the proposed amendments properly. That should not be controversial, because we have plenty of time in hand to do so. However, when I suggested that to the Parliamentary Bureau, I was battered down by the Government. The Scottish National Party wants to rush the bill through before Christmas.
I have tried to get to the bottom of why it might be doing that, and I have received increasingly unconvincing answers from the Minister for Parliamentary Business. For example, last week I was told that there was a programme of legislation to get through, so we needed to get this bill out of the way quickly. However, the Parliament’s legislation tracker shows that, other than the GRR Bill, there are just two bills with a deadline approaching in the next four months. That leaves plenty of time to consider the bill properly.
This week, the minister suggested that, because the bill deals with vulnerable groups, we must get it passed as soon as possible. However, those groups have been waiting for years for reform. I am sure that they will be the first to say that a couple of weeks extra, to make sure that we get the bill right, is more than worth it.
We must strive for high-quality legislation. We do not want this Parliament to become an embarrassing case, studied at universities worldwide, of how not to do gender reform legislation.
So, why the rush? The reasons that have been given do not make sense, and I am not sure that even the minister believes them.