Home Energy Efficiency Scheme Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/188)
Item 3 is the Executive response on the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme Amendment (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/188). The committee asked three questions, which were about progress towards consolidation of the principal regulations, why consolidation has been delayed and whether the disparity with the situation in England and Wales, where changes have been made, was due to a lack of resources in Scotland. The reply is that the changes are in their initial stages and that the Executive is having problems with resources. What are the committee's views?
We discussed these regulations last week. The fact that the Executive has acknowledged that it has a resource problem is in its favour, but if it has such a problem, it really must tackle it. It is not reasonable to leave the situation in such a mess, with consolidation barely having been progressed in the past three years even though the Executive had indicated that it was imminent. I am glad that the Executive has acknowledged the issues that we raised with it, but I would have liked a much firmer response on when it will deal with them and a timescale for the completion of the consolidation. We do not have such a response, and I can see the matter drifting on for years yet. That is a bit disappointing, to be honest, but we can only draw the response to the attention of the lead committee and the Parliament.
I wonder whether we could do two things. First, we could draw the lead committee's attention to what we have discussed, the Executive's response and our concern. Secondly, we could write back to the Executive to try to get a firmer timescale for consolidation, because it is important. Is that agreed?
I also wonder whether we should pursue the resources issue and, if so, how best we could do that. Perhaps we should have a meeting with the Executive about that fairly soon.
Do we have enough information for such a meeting? Might it be more appropriate to get some information from officials about the difficulties that they are having? I do not know the structure of the Development Department, but we know that the Health Department has difficulty updating statutory instruments. It may be that there is scope for us to do some investigation by letter before we start to have meetings the purpose of which is not entirely clear other than to say that something should be resourced. It might be better to focus on particular areas of difficulty, which might also help Executive officials to clarify the matter in their minds.
We have certainly noticed the difficulty with consolidation.
I support Murray Tosh's idea. It would be helpful if, before we decide what to do, we received a response that detailed the resource issues and problems, whether they are temporary or longer term and whether they occur in certain areas and not in others. Murray Tosh is right that, until we have those answers, it would be premature to have a meeting.
That seems sensible. Are we agreed?
We will put that in a letter.