Transport and the Environment Committee, 09 Jan 2002
Meeting date: Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Official Report
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Scottish Water (Proposed Board)
Item 2 is consideration of a response from the Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Ross Finnie, to a letter that I sent at the request of the committee following our previous meeting. Our letter concerned the appointment of members of the board of Scottish Water. At that meeting, committee members expressed concern about the late notification of those appointments and the fact that the appointments were made prior to the Transport and the Environment Committee's stage 2 consideration of the relevant section of the bill.
Members have a copy of the letter from the minister, which expresses regret that the letter of 18 December was late in reaching us. The minister acknowledges that more notice should have been given of the intention to appoint. His letter indicates that the Executive made its decisions out of a desire to make the transition to Scottish Water as smooth as possible. The minister also indicates that he believes that he tried to respond to the Transport and the Environment Committee's recommendations that a majority of non-executives be appointed to the new board. He also recognises that the committee or the Parliament may wish to enshrine in statute that non-executive majority. Later today, we will be considering amendments that may well put such a provision into the bill.
The letter sets out the minister's response. He indicates regret at the way in which the information was given to the committee. I expect that we will not have similar problems in future. Members may make brief comments if they wish to do so, but I would not like us to get too deeply involved in the issue, because many of the issues in the letter will be discussed in our debate on the bill.
I reiterate the point that the announcement should never have happened as it did. Some of the arguments that the minister has put forward to explain why he did what he did do not stand up. He says:
"Crucially, for Scottish Water's top management team to be in place … a number of the external recruits announced on the 19 December needed to give notice to their current employers in December."
He goes on to say that it was reasonable to announce the full board membership at that stage, but he did not have to do so, as the recruits whom he mentions are employees, not board members. He could have held off until our debate today.
In the third-last paragraph, the minister talks about using his judgment and says that he hopes he has got it right. I hope that the message from the committee is that he must wait upon the consideration of the committee on matters such as this, rather than using his judgment and hoping that he gets it right.
To a large extent, I agree with what Fiona McLeod says. Although I accept the minister's reasons for making a pre-emptive strike, as it were, the reasons for the letter of 18 December reaching us late were entirely foreseeable, given that he was in Brussels. We know that people tend to get back late from such meetings and that letters do not get delivered on time, despite everyone's best intentions. As a general principle, Ross Finnie, other ministers and their civil servants might wish to ensure that such foreseeable problems are dealt with and that important letters such as this one are delivered timeously to committees.
I commend you, convener, for the letter that you sent. It expressed the committee's views clearly. The committee was annoyed. There are two important issues. One is the issue of discourtesy to the committee, which is partly to do with the lateness of the letter's arrival. Whatever excuses the minister makes, the way in which the matter has been handled is a discourtesy to the committee.
There is also an issue of principle. Making appointments before a bill has been considered is a bad principle. I hope that ministers will recognise in future that that bad principle should not be upheld. Ministers should not make appointments to boards before the legislation is in place to create those boards. Even by waiting a couple of weeks, that situation could have been avoided, as we would have got through the stage 2 process. There has been a level of pre-emption in this case that goes beyond discourtesy. It is bad practice, and we should identify it as bad practice that should not be repeated.
I agree entirely.
I do not think that we want to labour the issue any further. Many of those points will be covered again during the debate on several of the amendments that we will be considering today.