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Committee members have received copies of two separate draft guidance notes on guidance and orders. Views are invited. There is a substantial amount of documentation for us to consider. Members may wish to consult organisations before committing themselves to making comments. I am interested in initial comments and discussion about how to proceed.
I wonder, because the draft guidance is lengthy, whether it would be possible for the committee to have sight of responses to the consultation on the draft guidance as they come in, rather than in a big package at the end, so that we can use them to inform our opinions.
I had thought that the committee might consider part of its role to be to pursue issues that organisations raise in their responses to the consultation, rather than prejudging the outcome of the consultation.
I agree. We should examine the consultation responses and the views that are expressed to find out what the key concerns are, rather than try to predict those key concerns. Otherwise, we may find ourselves going off at tangents and addressing issues that may be of interest to us but not to the wider world.
If we could see responses as they came in, identifying the key concerns would be made easier, but there may be a procedure that prevents our doing that.
I am not sure whether we can do that. I have discussed with the clerks how to manage our response. The meeting at which we will need to make any comments that we want to make is on 6 February. I do not know whether we will be able to respond. We may want to make an initial comment and consider later what the consultation has pulled together. I suppose that that would fit in with our other post-enactment scrutiny.
I thought that the deadline was 15 March.
Yes, but because of what is already in our timetable, the last meeting at which we will realistically be able to draw comments together and submit a response will be on 6 February.
Perhaps that is the solution.
We know some of the main organisations and umbrella bodies that are likely to respond to the consultation. Perhaps we should just contact, for example, the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Shelter Scotland—the big organisations that consistently gave us good evidence during our consideration of the Housing (Scotland) Bill—and ask whether they would be willing to give us copies of their responses.
The timetable is still quite tight.
It is tight. Is there any way that we could swap our work programme around? We are talking about having to respond in only four weeks' time, but that date is about six weeks before the deadline for responses. In the evidence that we have taken for the voluntary sector inquiry, concern has been expressed about short timetables for consultation. We are in effect imposing such a timetable.
The clerk advises me that we could reconsider our timetable and consider fitting in a response in March, which would push the timetable back a bit. We should also contact organisations and say to them that, if they think that it is appropriate for us to have sight of their consultation response to inform our response, we would find that helpful. However, we should not couch that request in such terms that the organisations think of their having to respond to us as another burden. We will examine our timetable again to find out whether we can slot in a time to reflect on the draft guidance.
We should also remember that the Executive makes it clear in the letter to us and the consultees that the draft guidance is work in progress. The guidance is not the final draft. I imagine that, when the Scottish Executive publishes the responses to the consultation, we will get an opportunity to consider the matter again, before the orders are finally laid before Parliament.
It has also been suggested that we go back to our stage 1 report and find out whether there is a match between the issues that we flagged up in that report and the draft guidance.
Two things are worth doing. Yes, we should examine the stage 1 report, but a lot also emerged during the nitty-gritty of stage 2 consideration. The problem is that there is a lot of material. I do not know whether others tend, like me, to forget some of the issues that emerged at the time until they are thrust in front of us. Perhaps the Scottish Parliament information centre could draw out the issues for us. That would be helpful. There are issues on the implementation of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001, such as the time scale and problems with the documentation. Those are the sort of matters about which the SFHA and other organisations will be concerned.
On your point about written comments, it is accepted that committee members should be proactive and give the clerks comments. We may wish to look back at particular concerns and match those with our concerns. The committee must do that.
That would be worth while. As we consider the draft guidance, I am struck by the fact that the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 is the tip of the iceberg. There is still all the guidance and advice. Much of that is technical and does not raise policy issues, but it is nevertheless important. Somehow, we must fit into our procedures a schematic way of identifying the key issues on the implementation of the act and of having an input. Otherwise, our role will become merely to rubber-stamp, which is not ideal. It is important that we get a handle on the best way to bring out the issues that will be of importance and which we can influence.
We agree, then, to revisit stages 1 and 2 to look for issues and to examine how those match the draft guidance. We will reconsider our timetable to find out when we could slot in a return to consideration of the draft guidance. We will write to relevant groups to ask whether they want to give us sight of their consultation responses. We will also spend a bit of time at our away day thinking about how we want to manage the process in the light of the comments that Robert Brown has just made. Are we agreed?
Meeting continued in private until 10:56.
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