Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Official Report 522KB pdf

Subordinate Legislation

Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 (Commencement No 8 and Consequential Provisions) Order 2015 (SSI 2015/397)

Our final agenda item before we go into private session is subordinate legislation. I think that we have more or less caught up with our timetable.

The order was intended to commence the remaining provisions of the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 and to extend the multi-agency public protection arrangements beyond registered sex offenders and restricted patients to include certain high-risk offenders.

As members can see, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the order to Parliament’s attention. Its main concern is that the order was laid under the wrong procedure—negative instead of affirmative. The Scottish Government has acknowledged that and has laid two replacement instruments. The DPLR Committee was also concerned that the Scottish Government should have formally revoked the order, but the Scottish Government considered that that was not necessary. All that is set out in some detail in the clerk’s paper.

Just before the end of 2015, the Minister for Parliamentary Business wrote to the DPLR Committee, and the Justice Committee was copied into the letter, which has been forwarded to members. The letter essentially restates the Scottish Government’s view that no further action on the order is necessary.

The order was put on our agenda because the advice that the convener received was that it was necessary to do that under standing orders. However, despite the continuing disagreement between the Scottish Government and the DPLR Committee, both sides agree that the order is not law and will not become law. Replacement instruments have been laid and will come to this committee in due course, at which point we will be able to consider the issues of policy rather than of procedure.

My suggestion is that we make no recommendation on the order. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

It is pretty rich that we have had such a mix-up about this. It really is unfortunate and quite unacceptable.

Yes. I do not think that we have any comments on the order, but it seems to be very remiss of the Government to submit an order under the wrong procedure.