Local Government Committee, 01 Sep 1999
Meeting date: Wednesday, September 1, 1999
Official Report
146KB pdf
Scottish Parliament Local Government Committee Wednesday 1 September 1999 (Morning)
[The Convener opened the meeting at 10:06]
Colleagues, I am sure that Bristow has been delayed as we have not had an apology from him, but I think that we should start.
I want to start the meeting in a formal way. Keith, I am sorry to put you on the spot, but you were unable to attend our first meeting, at which we all had to declare any interests. To keep us in order, I want to ask you to do that today.
The only interest that I have to declare—and I have already declared it in the "Register of Members' Interests"—is the fact that I am a councillor.
Thank you. In a sense, today's meeting is administrative. I hope that we are about to plan our programme up until as near Christmas as we can. Members will see in their diaries that we do not have a meeting next week and that it will not be possible for us to visit a council, a voluntary organisation or any part of civic Scotland that we may wish to visit because there will not be a meeting of the committee of conveners before then, and they are the ones who have to allow—in inverted commas—any visits to go ahead. So we will have a free day next Wednesday.
The first item on the agenda is the McIntosh report and consideration of priorities for the committee; but before we do that, members will see—on page 2 of the covering paper LG/99/2/1—an appendix that shows a possible interim programme. The Accounts Commission had been pencilled in for today's meeting, but it is not coming. Instead, it will come on 15 September—which is not next Wednesday but the Wednesday after. The Minister for Finance is now coming on 21 September. We will try to get Richard Kerley to come on 29 September, which would move the Minister for Communities to 5 October. Alternatively, we could reverse the order of those last two. My opinion is that we should invite the minister sooner rather than later. If members agree, the people and the dates I mentioned can be timetabled in. That would mean that our deliberations on the McIntosh report would be put back by a week.
I have received some correspondence that I will have photocopied and sent out to members. Councils have written to us saying that they would like us to visit them, and we have had a fax from the Citizens Advice Scotland saying the same thing and putting forward its case. Some of the correspondence is not relevant to this committee, so I will ask the clerks to have a look at it before sending it out to members.
There is also a statement from Jack McConnell on why the Executive has rejected the idea of having an independent review of local government finance. I will have that photocopied and sent to members of the committee in preparation for Mr McConnell's visit to us. We have also had correspondence from the chief executive of Fife Council. He has given us his comments on the McIntosh report. It is easy to read and I will also have that photocopied for members.
We said at our first meeting that we would have a library of such documents. This stuff will come to you with your mail. I will let the clerks know if I receive any reports or other documents and they will be able to tell members where to get hold of them.
We have also had a letter from the Electoral Reform Society, which would like to come and speak to us. I imagine that we would want to include that in our programme.
The Association of Directors of Social Work has also asked to talk to us, but we must look at our programme to see whether that would be appropriate, or whether we should ask it for a written submission. I am not sure that that would be particularly relevant to the McIntosh report.
We have also heard from the Federation of Small Businesses. The business rate—if we discuss it—is the obvious subject on which we would like some representation from the federation, but we will decide that as we go along.