Committee
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee 27 March 2014
27 Mar 2014 · S4 · Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Item of business
Legislative Procedures
I do not believe that we should truncate stage 2 or stage 3; I want to make that categorically clear to the committee. However, I do not see any reason why we could not have more time to complete the process, from introduction to completion. For example, Cabinet Office and Scottish Government guidance recommend that a minimum of 12 weeks should normally be allowed for a consultation period. However, of the four important bills that the Finance Committee has dealt with as lead committee this session—one bill concerning freedom of information and the others concerning tax—the total consultation period varied between five weeks and nine weeks. I understand that the suggestion is that we should consult at the same time as the Scottish Government is consulting. I do not think that that is practical, because the Scottish Government’s consultation is about whether legislation should progress and what the shape of that legislation should be, so the Finance Committee obviously has to come in at a later stage. It is important that we have the opportunity to issue a call for evidence, receive evidence from as many sources as possible, consider that evidence and decide who we want to bring to the committee for oral questioning. We must also take into account the fact that, if the consultation period is too short, we sometimes receive written evidence after we have started the oral evidence sessions, which means that people who may have cogent arguments and good ideas are almost excluded from the process. If the committees have more time, the stage 1 report becomes more robust, and that feeds through to stage 2 and stage 3 and makes the whole process much more effective. That is why we think that extending stage 1, without having any adverse impact on stage 2 and stage 3, is important. As I mentioned, for the Scottish Government to take four months for a consultation and then expect us to truncate the entire process for that bill from consultation to oral and written evidence into three months over Christmas and new year did not make any sense to us. Greater thought must be given to what lead committees do at stage 1. 10:00
In the same item of business
The Convener
SNP
Agenda item 2 is our inquiry into procedures for considering legislation. We are taking evidence from our panel: Claudia Beamish MSP; Nigel Don MSP, the conv...
Richard Lyle (Central Scotland) (SNP)
SNP
Good morning, lady and gentlemen. I have three questions to pose to you. First, the legislation process in the Scottish Parliament has three stages. In princ...
Nigel Don (Angus North and Mearns) (SNP)
SNP
I seem to have been deputed to go first. The model is perfectly workable and a fairly good one. I have not seen any evidence or come across any thinking in ...
Kenneth Gibson (Cunninghame North) (SNP)
SNP
I agree with a lot of what my colleague Nigel Don said. First, I should say thank you very much for inviting me to your committee. It is very strange to be a...
Claudia Beamish (South Scotland) (Lab)
Lab
Good morning. I, too, am pleased to have been invited to give evidence, which will be brief, as it is about a specific area of concern in relation to only on...
The Convener
SNP
Before we move off that subject, I wonder whether I am being led by what I have just heard to the idea that stage 3 is in fact two stages. There is the Parli...
Nigel Don
SNP
I take what Claudia Beamish has just said. The final part of the process probably should be ratification, more or less. We have had our fingers burned by mak...
The Convener
SNP
Perhaps I should be more specific. Is the debate not actually stage 4?
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
I sometimes wonder whether there is any real purpose to that debate. It can be a big anti-climax. Often, we have battled through a load of stage 3 amendments...
The Convener
SNP
Would the debate be of greater value if the Parliament had the amended bill before it when it had that debate?
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
That would certainly be better than having the debate immediately after consideration of amendments, because the dust would have settled and that would give ...
The Convener
SNP
I do not want to put too much of my personal bias into my questioning, but you might see some of it.
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
I think that it is quite obvious and blatant, convener.
Cameron Buchanan (Lothian) (Con)
Con
As a relatively new member, I find it rather baffling when we get to the mass of amendments at stage 3 and we are given a piece of paper telling us how to vo...
The Convener
SNP
To be clear, I was simply suggesting that we rename the debate as stage 4, not that we change what is done.
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
You have opened a can of worms, convener. We are all thinking on our feet about how we would like to change that. I am here to talk about the Finance Committ...
The Convener
SNP
Right. I will return the questioning to Richard Lyle.
Richard Lyle
SNP
I want to go back to a point that Cameron Buchanan just brought up. In the debate on a grouping, one member might speak on behalf of other members. That is w...
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
Again, I speak in a personal capacity, but I think that the issue with that is the complexity of the bill. The Presiding Officer has to get the amendments th...
Richard Lyle
SNP
To what extent does the legislative process encourage engagement from interested parties?
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
You are giving me the stare, Richard; I suppose that means you want me to answer. I think that it does. There is certainly an issue in that the Parliament h...
The Convener
SNP
Ms Beamish does not have 15 years of entrenchment, so she might bring a new perspective. Would you care to comment?
Claudia Beamish
Lab
The Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee tries to ensure that we look at new groups, such as new charities like Nourish, which works acros...
Nigel Don
SNP
I should make the point that, although I am here in a personal capacity, I will not attempt to separate my being a convener from my position as an MSP, altho...
Richard Lyle
SNP
We have strayed into the territory of my final question, which is mainly on timescales. What are your views of the timescales that are allowed for stages 1, ...
Kenneth Gibson
SNP
I do not think that stage 1 scrutiny is given enough time. In this parliamentary session, the Finance Committee has been the lead committee on four pieces of...
Nigel Don
SNP
I do not disagree with anything that has just been said. However, my perspective is more about the time between stage 2 and stage 3, which has considerably c...
The Convener
SNP
You say that we may not need to change the standing orders but, if we were to do so, we would be able to suspend them if Parliament judged that that was nece...
Nigel Don
SNP
It depends which way we want to do it. If the standing orders were changed to make more time available, they could be suspended in order to bring things forw...
The Convener
SNP
You referred to the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee’s timetable for getting engaged in what is happening. Do you think that the process provides su...