The second item on our agenda is to consider whether to have a committee away day. Members will have received a paper from the clerk and will see that I propose that we decide in principle whether to have an away day, with the exact date, time and venue to be confirmed later. The clerk has laid out the various discussions that we could have. I think that an away day would be valuable; we need to consider a number of procedural issues, based on the committee's experiences in this first year of the session. An away day would also help us to begin to identify some of our priorities for next year.
My only comment is on the timing. The proposal is that the away day be in the last week of August or the first week of September, which will be a rather busy time for us all, if we are moving our offices to the new building. It is also the first sitting week of the new parliamentary year.
The first meeting of the Parliament in the chamber is actually in the following week, in the second week of September. Also, we will not—as far as I know—have access to the offices in the last week of August.
It will be difficult to find a date that suits everybody over the summer. Inevitably, people have commitments or—dare I say it?—holidays. To be frank, I would prefer us to have our discussions in committee. I understand that, between now and the beginning of recess, our agendas may not be as heavy as they have been, so I would prefer us to have discussions when everybody can be here. After all, if one person cannot make it, that person will be disenfranchised from the discussions. During the parliamentary year, we all expect that we should be at committee meetings.
We will discuss dates in the future. The clerks advise me that it would be difficult to get all the required information together before the recess. From the timetable that we have already discussed, members will be aware of the business that is forthcoming. We have some very heavy agendas.
We will be in touch with members to establish the dates.
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