I invite Professor Midwinter to join us at the table. The second agenda item is to consider a paper from the Scottish Parliament information centre and the clerk on the post-enactment scrutiny of financial memoranda. The paper outlines the recurring concerns that the Finance Committee has raised on the standard of information that is provided in financial memoranda. It also notes the difference between the cost of pieces of legislation proposed in financial memoranda and the subsequent actual costs. Options for further action on the issues are detailed in paragraph 15. I propose that we follow all the courses of action that are suggested. Do members agree?
One issue that has struck me in my limited experience of the Finance Committee is that many of the financial burdens of legislation are borne by local authorities. Local authorities are often concerned about potential cost implications. I suggest that we have an evidence session with COSLA or local authority representatives to consider specifically how legislation impacts on local authority budgets.
We can add COSLA to the list—that is covered in the second bullet point in paragraph 15. One caveat is that COSLA is notorious for not being as good at responding as timeously as it might to proposed legislation that will have a significant financial impact. COSLA has often come in late in the day or has not flagged up the issues. The evidence session might be an opportunity for us to raise those concerns.
I suggest to Ross Burnside from SPICe that he might like to read a book by Bob McDowell, who is on Scottish Enterprise's international advisory board and who is the senior vice-president of Microsoft, on the subject of post-implementation audits. It has a lot of good pointers.
Do members agree to follow the course of action that is laid out in the paper, with the suggested change?
We now go into private for agenda item 3, which is consideration of a paper from the budget adviser on the review of the Scottish Executive's management of public finances.
Meeting continued in private until 13:06.