Official Report 76KB pdf
The first item on the agenda is the draft committee report on private legislation in the Scottish Parliament. Changes have been made to the report. The paper before us is essentially a summary of those changes, which are the shaded sections in the annexes. We are asked to comment, and once we have done so and received clarification, to approve the report and its onward submission.
Gone.
We come now to annex B, which is draft amendments to the standing orders. I have three queries, but we can address them rule by rule.
I think so. If necessary, we could clarify it and pad it out in the guidance that will be prepared on the standing orders. If you read paragraph 5 immediately after paragraph 4—
I did.
Paragraph 4 states that
Are there any questions on rule 9A.8 or 9A.9? I wondered about paragraph 3 of rule 9A.9, which refers to
I suggest that there may be a difference between what we are doing here, which is setting out the right to be heard, and the fact that there is discretion to invite. The committee has the discretion to invite anyone it wants to hear. We were trying to set out where, in the interests of fair procedure, we recommend that there should be a right to be heard. On the amenity interest, it is always open to the committee to consider such objections, and whether it wants to hear from those objectors.
I understand and accept that.
One or two issues of public bill procedure are being considered in the context of the review of standing orders. Our suggestion is that, if we make amendments to the part of standing orders that deals with public bills, we should consider whether parallel amendments should be made for private bills.
Why is the rule so inflexible? Why do we say that a manuscript amendment may not be moved? There might be occasions when everybody in the room thinks that it is a good idea. Why do we have this inflexible, mandatory negative, instead of saying, for example, that such an amendment should not normally be moved, or that it may be moved by agreement? We might end up with a standing order putting a mandatory block on something that everyone thinks is a good idea.
That issue has been raised in the context of public bills. At the moment, the standing order rules for public bills state that a manuscript amendment may not be moved at the final stage. I think that the clerks have been sent away to do some more work on that, before coming back to the Procedures Committee. The proposal is that, if the Procedures Committee decides to change the rules for public bills, we would make that change for private bills as well.
So changes would be made in tandem?
Yes. That relates to the point about the European convention on human rights that has come up before. We will not try to resolve that now, but will do so in the context of the whole system.
That is fine.
In relation to amendments being selected or not—whether they are manuscript amendments or otherwise—is the Presiding Officer protected from any action? If an organisation were promoting a private bill on which lots of money hung, and the fact that an amendment was not selected greatly prejudiced its position, would it have any redress against Sir David Steel, or is he iron-clad?
Carol McCracken will tell us whether the Presiding Officer is iron-clad.
He is not. Decisions such as a decision by the Presiding Officer to select or not select an amendment are open to judicial review. The main ground for that would be the ground of reasonableness. The Presiding Officer would have to justify a decision not to select the amendment.
There does not appear to be a rule 9A.13—I do not know whether that is because of superstition or because of a sequencing problem. I am sure that it will be taken care of.
I started the meeting rather sharpish, Donald. Did you have any other points on the draft standing orders?
No—this sort of thing is not my scene.
Do members then approve the report and the two annexes—although I think that we need approve only annex B? Can we agree all that and recommend the report?
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Standing Orders