Local Government and Communities Committee, 01 Apr 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Official Report 161KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Local Government Pension Scheme Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2009<br />(SSI 2009/93)

Do members agree that they do not wish to make any recommendations to Parliament on the regulations? Members have a copy of the regulations. There are no concerns from members at this stage.

There are.

There are now; there were no concerns before the meeting started. I remind members that it would be helpful to the clerks and me to get advance notice of concerns, although I have no objection to Mr McLetchie raising concerns now.

I just have an observation about the regulations. They make no fewer than 13 drafting corrections to the various instruments that collectively comprise the local government pension scheme. That is partly due to the vigilance of the Subordinate Legislation Committee, which identified and commented on some of the drafting errors when the original Scottish statutory instruments were laid.

It strikes me that, although such pension schemes are extraordinarily complex, it shows quite a high failure rate to have 13 errors and to have to introduce another set of regulations at the last minute—especially bearing in mind that the scheme comes into effect today. That raises the question whether the Scottish Government has enough staff on the job putting together these complex schemes to ensure that they are correctly drafted at the outset. There just seems to be a very high number of errors. All the regulations are to correct errors; there is no new provision of any substance in them. They are errors, pure and simple—and there are 13 of them.

We can note that and make our concerns known. We can write to the Scottish Government.

Perhaps drafters do not get as much practice drafting legislation any more, which might lead to such problems.

It might be a result of fatigue from the previous session.

Are there any other questions?

Members indicated disagreement.

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Representation of the People (Absent Voting at Local Government Elections) (Scotland) Amendment Order 2009<br />(SSI 2009/94)

Do members agree that they do not wish to make any recommendations to the Parliament on the order?

Members indicated agreement.

I do not think that I got such agreement on the Local Government Pension Scheme Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2009. I shall take it that I got agreement, along with the comments that were made.

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Planning etc (Scotland) Act 2006 (Saving and Transitional Provisions) Order 2009<br />(SSI 2009/101)

Do members agree that they do not wish to make any recommendations to the Parliament on the order?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you all for your attendance. Enjoy the Easter break. I know that you will all be hard at work.

Meeting closed at 10:59.