Hansard

As noted at the end of our stage 1 report, the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee is satisfied that the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill is a single-issue bill that provides a technical fix to tidy up the statute book following the rulings of the Court of Session on 18 February and 22 March 2022. As such, we are content to recommend that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the bill.

Although the Scottish Government did not consult on the bill due to its single-issue nature, the committee agreed that it would be helpful to issue a short call for views to allow interested parties to share their views. The call for views ran from 8 to 29 January and received 56 responses, all of which were published. A breakdown of the responses is set out in paragraph 20 of our stage 1 report, and we are grateful to all those who have provided their views.

Twenty-five respondents supported and understood the bill, recognising that it is in line with the court ruling, but added extra commentary. For example, For Women Scotland questioned what discussion there could be on the minister’s legal obligation to comply with the court order, while others, including Close the Gap and the Young Women’s Movement, noted that the court ruling was based on legislative competence, rather than whether the definition was wrong. Others agreed with the bill but were disappointed with the court ruling.

It is worth noting that 21 of the responses misunderstood the purpose of the bill. It might be worth considering the level of messaging around what, on the face of it, is a fix to update the statute book, focusing on the fact that it is technical and on helping people to better understand its purpose.

In oral evidence, we explored with the cabinet secretary why it had taken the best part of two years from the court judgment to introduce the bill. She explained, in line with the policy memorandum, that that time had been taken to explore whether there was another legislative vehicle through which to make the change. That included, for example, considering whether it could be incorporated in another bill, but that was not possible.

In a written submission, the Scottish Trans Alliance and the Equality Network queried whether an update to the statute book could have been made using subordinate legislation, but that, too, was not viable, as the only regulation-making powers in the 2018 act are in sections 8 and 9, whereas the court ruling related to the definition of women as set out in section 2 of the act. The Scottish Parliament information centre advised us that it was not aware of a provision under any other act that would allow for the 2018 act to be amended.

There was general acknowledgement that the process for exploring options and then drafting and introducing a bill, plus subsequent scrutiny of a technical fix to update the statute book, can be time consuming. A couple of areas of learning for the Government and the Parliament are to consider the level of messaging to help people to understand the purpose of bills, particularly technical ones, and to explore whether there are, or could be, less time-consuming processes by which such technical fixes could be addressed.