Justice 2 Committee, 18 Mar 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Official Report 179KB pdf

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Legacy Paper

Item 3 is our legacy paper. We have to finalise our legacy report in the light of the further information received from the police organisations and the Faculty of Advocates. We have also received a reply from the Minister for Justice on the committee's scrutiny of European issues. Do members wish to add anything to the paper in light of the additional information?

I am surprised that we have not received a response from the Law Society of Scotland, which I thought would have been quite keen to make an input.

Is there anything contained in the information that members wish to add to the legacy paper? Is there anything that the clerks think is worth drawing from the paper?

Members might find the comments from the Faculty of Advocates on the timing of legislation of particular interest. They very much chime with the committee's concerns, so members might wish to highlight the fact that it is not just committee members who share those views.

Is it possible to submit the letters with our legacy report?

Absolutely.

Why do we not just include everything and call that the legacy report? The correspondence is fairly short. Furthermore, a future committee might find it helpful to read what the various organisations think about stock taking.

It is important that we underline how difficult life has occasionally been made for us by having to get legislation through in a manner that is not satisfactory for proper scrutiny. The time factors that apply throughout the Parliament have to be reviewed.

The paper from the Faculty of Advocates says that the faculty's law reform committee is keen to have feedback from us about the degree to which a technical rather than policy-focused approach would help us. The committee should probably reply to the faculty about that.

We have had at least one meeting with the faculty in which we have talked about the relationship that it might have with the committee. We have made it clear that we would value closer liaison, which would allow us to talk through the issues of the day. There is often a question of finding the time to fit that in. We suggested that we could have an evening session over dinner twice a year, because people are usually around on a particular evening. That would allow people to eat and talk at the same time.

That brings up the prospect of having standing advisers. Although some flexibility is needed for each issue and the committee might want to have an individual expert on a matter, is there an argument for having four or five retained advisers?

Yes. I am glad that you have raised that.

Such advisers would not be here all the time, but we could tap into them as appropriate.

That is an excellent point, which I meant to suggest earlier. I have realised that we should have had an adviser on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. We did very well, but we would have benefited from a wee bit of assistance. That would probably apply to any weighty bill. Where could we add that in the report? Should it go with operational issues?

Yes. The committee advisers section of the paper from the Faculty of Advocates says that the faculty would be willing to act in that way, as I presume people from other walks of life, such as academia, would be.

We could construct a paragraph under the heading "Operational Issues" to say that we greatly benefited from the advisers whom we had and now take the view that advisers should be available for every piece of legislation, including statutory instruments. We could suggest a standing panel of advisers and the appointment of more appropriate advisers for specific matters. Organisations such as the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society might not have the status of advisers, but we would find it useful to keep up liaison with them outside formal committee meetings, to ensure that the committee has a rounded view.

That would also combat the problem of short time scales for dealing with legislation or decisions, because we would not have to approve an adviser. The advisers would be available if we needed to pick up the telephone to them and such help would be available to all committee members.

Given its remit, a committee on justice and home affairs will probably need such a resource.

Can I stress that I will be available next year at a cheap rate?

No.

Is everybody reasonably happy with the proposal?

I have an observation. My party colleagues on the Justice 1 Committee said that they had reached a different conclusion about whether two committees should be established. Nonetheless, they have not succeeded in persuading me that there should be one committee. I remain of the view that unless a radical change takes place in the approach to legislation, we need two committees. In practice, any liaison between the two committees appears to have been conducted in a way that has served the interests of good legislation and good research.

It helps to have that on the record.

The establishment of two committees has worked surprisingly well. I appreciate that other people have a different view on that, but I was a member of the old Justice and Home Affairs Committee from its inception and it was patent that that committee's work load was intolerable and could not have continued. A solution was needed. Whether having two committees was the solution is for people to have a view on, but it was obvious that the Justice and Home Affairs Committee could not function with the volume of legislation that it had, never mind what it would have had to deal with later—the work load that the two committees have had in the past 12 months. People who are thinking about not having two justice committees should also think about how such a work load would be split.

I also hope that in future people will not assume that the justice committees should deal only with criminal-law legislation. One of the system's successes is that, because of the way in which bills have been referred, we have been able to deal with civil and criminal legislation.

I think that that deals with our legacy paper—our words of wisdom for future committee members.

We now come to the important issue of when we are going out.

I am sorry, but we have one more quite important item to deal with.