Health Committee, 13 Dec 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Official Report 89KB pdf

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Health Bill: Legislative Consent Memorandum

Item 3 is a legislative consent memorandum, the new way of dealing with what we more popularly know as Sewel motions. Members have received a paper indicating that it was anticipated that a legislative consent memorandum on the Health Bill would be lodged by the Scottish Executive. The brief paper circulated contains information about the content of the memorandum and the new arrangements for handling those issues. The memorandum was lodged on 8 December and copies have been distributed for information.

Circumstances are such that the Executive requires a debate on the matter on 18 January 2006. We have to produce a report that will be available five days before that, on 13 January. That leaves only one possible date on which we can deal with the issue, which is 10 January, the first Tuesday back after the new year, a date on which I had indicated that we would not meet. We will now have to meet on that day, as that is the only meeting at which we can deal with the issue.

The clerk to the Subordinate Legislation Committee has confirmed that that committee will consider the legislative consent memorandum at its meeting on the morning of 10 January, and we will have to timetable our committee's consideration for that afternoon. We cannot deal with the memorandum before the Subordinate Legislation Committee. Our initial idea was that we might deal with it on 20 December, to get it out of the way, but we are not able to do that, so we are left with only one option.

I consider the situation extremely unsatisfactory. If this is the new way of dealing with those motions, it looks from the outset as if it will be as difficult as, if not worse than, the old way. I intend to communicate to the appropriate authorities my view that it is unacceptable that committees are bounced into dealing with such motions at short notice and when there is only one possible agenda on which such a motion can be placed. I hope that our experience with the first legislative consent memorandum does not mean that we will face the same kind of thing when we deal with such memorandums in future. That is the current position.

With regard to future meetings, it is worth reminding members that stage 2 of the Human Tissue (Scotland) Bill will begin at the meeting on 20 December. The deadline for amendments to part 1 of the bill is this Thursday, 15 December, at noon.