Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee
Meeting date: Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Official Report 525KB pdf
Contents
- Attendance
- Subordinate Legislation
- Land Reform (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1
- Petition
Subordinate Legislation
Sea Fishing (EU Control Measures) (Scotland) Order 2015 (SSI 2015/320)
Water Environment (Relevant Enactments and Designation of Responsible Authorities and Functions) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2015 (SSI 2015/323)
Tuberculosis in Specified Animals (Scotland) Order 2015 (SSI 2015/327)
Welcome to the 30th meeting in 2015 of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee. This week, the committee continued its fact-finding visits on the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill and met the keeper of the registers of Scotland. The committee is grateful to the keeper and her colleagues for their time and the interesting and helpful views that they provided.
I remind everyone to switch off their mobile phones, as they might affect the broadcasting system. However, members of the committee often use tablets to consult digital versions of our committee papers.
Agenda item 1 is consideration of three negative instruments. I refer members to the paper and ask for comments.
There appear to be further drafting issues in these orders. It might be worth reminding the relevant department that that delays the passage of statutory instruments; in the case of at least one of these instruments, that causes problems regarding the implementation of important changes. Bad drafting is not a victimless crime.
Indeed, no. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee noted that the Government should and will bring in amending orders soon. We should note that.
Michael Russell is right to raise that issue. I have not been on the committee for the whole of this session so I do not know whether such errors occur regularly. Do they? It might be something that we should log for our legacy report for the next session of Parliament.
09:45
That is a good question. I do not think that there has been too much of a problem recently, but it was an issue about three years ago. Perhaps we could draw the Government’s attention to the Official Report of this meeting so that it is aware of our concerns about these things. We are often given reasons informally, relating to staffing levels and so on. We need to know about such things.
Does the committee agree that we do not wish to make any recommendations in relation to the instruments?
Members indicated agreement.
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Attendance