Finance Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Official Report 451KB pdf

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Decision on Taking Business in Private

Good morning, everyone, and apologies for the brief delay. Welcome to the 21st meeting in 2012 of the Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee. I welcome everyone back from the summer recess, and I also welcome to the public gallery Jane Hutt AM, who is the Minister for Finance and Leader of the House in the Welsh Assembly Government. I understand that the minister is meeting the cabinet secretary and was keen to attend our meeting. I hope that you find our work of interest, minister.

I remind everyone to turn off mobile phones, pagers and BlackBerrys. I will just check—yes, mine is definitely off. We have received apologies from Gavin Brown MSP.

Agenda item 1 is a decision on whether to take in private items 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Are members agreed?

Can I raise something? Some of us were talking about how, in the early days of the Parliament, there was a presumption against taking items in private. It is not just this committee—in general, we seem to be sliding into taking quite a lot of items in private. Do we need to discuss things such as the work programme in private? Could we not put such discussions on the record?

I understand that Labour members have been raising that issue in all committees. We are 16 months into the session and, before today, no one has raised the issue at this committee.

Obviously, it is a matter for the committee to decide whether to take items in private. As a rule, the reason why agenda items are put forward for a decision on their being taken in private is to allow the clerks to provide frank advice in the accompanying papers. If items are taken in public, the paper—for example, on issues such as suggestions for witnesses—would be public as well. Taking items in private allows the clerks to provide full and frank advice to the committee on work programme areas.

So if we do not go into private it makes the clerks’ job more difficult.

There are some papers that we cannot discuss if they are not taken in private. One example is the paper on the Commonwealth games. If we did not discuss it in private, it would be withdrawn from the agenda. Are there any particular items that you feel we should not discuss in private?

I fully understand the issue in that case—there is no way that that paper could be discussed in public.

However, I can recall a time in the 2003 to 2007 session when members of the convener’s party argued that discussion papers and committee reports should be discussed in public. There has been a slight change of direction. There are areas in the work programme that could be of public interest, relating to how, in general, the committees are considering going forward and the issues that they want to take up. There is a degree of public trust in that.

The cabinet secretary is waiting. Jim Johnston suggests that we discuss this issue at the end of the meeting before we reach the item on the work programme. We can go on with the meat of the agenda. Would you be happy for the other items to be taken in private?

Members indicated agreement.

The Convener: Michael?

Yes, fine.

Okay. We will discuss that when we come to it and we will not keep our guests waiting any longer.