Criminal Justice Committee [Draft]

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 11, 2023

Official Report 712KB pdf

Priorities in the Justice Sector and an Action Plan

The next agenda item is consideration of an update to our action plan. This item was delayed from our previous meeting. In the spirit of saving time, rather than considering the action plan page by page today, I ask members whether they are happy to let the clerking team know if they have any queries about, or additions or amendments to, the action plan. We can come back to the action plan at a future meeting. Do members agree to that?

What is the timescale for that? When do the clerks need to know about any queries or amendments?

We do not have a specific timetable. Members can send those over the next few days, but do so at your leisure because I am not sure when we will be able to reschedule consideration of the action plan, given the amount of evidence that the committee will be taking in the next week or two. Therefore, there is a reasonable timeframe for any responses.

Are you happy with that, Russell?

Yes, thank you.

In essence, what we are doing is ditching the item from today’s agenda, because we are out of time, but that does not mean that it should go completely offline. The action plan is one of the few documents that we share quite widely with the public and stakeholders on the progress that we are making as a committee, so we should revisit it—probably in great detail—but we need to afford it proper time. I would rather do that than it simply become a paper trail of correspondence between members and the clerks. For the purpose of updating people, we should have an open public session on it so that people can follow what we are saying.

I agree. For clarification, I intend that, when we can put the item back on the agenda, we will absolutely do that. I agree—I do not want it to be a bit of email correspondence from now on.