Scotland Bill Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Official Report 357KB pdf

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Interests

Good afternoon. I welcome everybody to this first meeting of the Scotland Bill Committee. It is my very pleasant task to convene the opening part of the meeting—although my moment of glory will be fairly brief.

Before we begin, I ask members to ensure that any mobile phones, pagers or BlackBerrys are turned off—and I will allow a moment while everybody fumbles about to that end.

The first item on our agenda is the declaration of interests; all members have received a note of the process. All members are here this afternoon, which is commendable given the weather obstacles that we have faced in getting here. In accordance with section 3 of the code of conduct for members of the Scottish Parliament, I invite members to declare any interests that are relevant to the committee’s remit.

I will start with myself. I have no interests that are terribly relevant to this committee, but I will declare my former vice-chairmanship of the Steel commission on moving towards federalism. It was a Scottish Liberal Democrat group and it was a very prestigious precursor to the Calman commission.

In a similar vein, I should declare that I was very keen to see the Calman commission established; I gave a St Andrew’s day lecture to that effect in 2007. I also notice in the excellent briefing that we have received from the Scottish Parliament information centre that I was the sponsor of the motion in the Scottish Parliament on 6 December 2007 that proposed that such a commission be set up.

My interests are shown in the register of members’ interests, and none of them is especially relevant to this committee.

Like my colleague Brian Adam, I have no particular declarations to make. I was never part of the Calman commission—they never wanted me, anyway.

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I have no particular interest in this bill, other than ensuring that we achieve the good governance of Scotland in the future.

I echo those comments. I have no interests to which to draw the attention of members, other than those in the register of members’ interests.

Maintaining the tone of the good interests of Scotland, we will move on to item 2.