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This item is to allow the committee to consider the Scottish Government’s response to its stage 1 report on the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Bill. It is expected that the committee will consider stage 2 on 23 February.
First, I welcome the response from the Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism, which accepts what the committee has said. I raise the relatively small point that there will be some printing changes, which—I am given informally to understand—relate only to punctuation.
When such printing changes are made—even though there is no decision for us to make, and I accept that that is the case—it would be helpful if we had a very brief response from the Government noting that they are going to be made and giving a broad description of what they are. That would mean that, if changes occur that have unexpected effect or if people notice them, it can be seen where they have come from.
I have not encountered printing changes at this stage of the passage of a piece of legislation before. Although I am perfectly comfortable about them, I am being my usual pernickety self about process.
I support what Stewart Stevenson has said. It might be worth the minister referring to the point in the stage 3 debate or elsewhere, to reinforce the view that, while the amendments that have been made are to punctuation, there is no policy intention to change any of the meanings that might appear to have been changed.
It would be helpful to have on the record that the previous acts should be the point of reference for the proper meaning, notwithstanding the changes of punctuation.
My understanding is that we have not yet seen the changes that have been proposed, so we cannot comment on whether they are punctuation only, although that is clearly the expectation.
I had at one point suggested that we have an amendment that took out all the particular bits of punctuation, but our processes do not allow that because the changes have to be brought forward at the correct point of every bill. It would be madness to have amendments for dots and commas, but we will have to see whether we can sort this out.
I share the expressed view that we should somewhere have in black and white what has been changed, even if it is not formally approved within the process.
There is no question but that a change in punctuation can change the meaning of a piece of legislation. Although I am sure that the Government will have taken all precautions not to change the meaning by inserting punctuation where before there was different punctuation or none, it would be good to have on the record that it has addressed that thought.
It is interesting to note that, in principle, punctuation is not supposed to be capable of changing legislation, but there may be occasions when it does.
I was just going to make that point. I understand that punctuation must be ignored when reading legislation, in the same way that the headings are not part of the legislation and add nothing to the meaning. That is my understanding, but I am not a lawyer, and I will always defer to those who give me legal advice.
I am happy to be corrected on that. If I have raised a spurious point, then so be it.
I do not think that you have raised a spurious point. There might be occasions when punctuation inadvertently changes legislation. Without the punctuation there is more than one meaning, and there might be more than one meaning with the punctuation. The courts might have to sort that out.
I will be slightly more positive. I think that the Government’s response is very positive and that it is an endorsement of the committee’s work. Although there are clearly lots of ways that the bill could have been structured, I think that we are all now agreed that restructuring the bill at this stage is not a good idea. The Government has taken on board the point about abbreviations and the comments that we made about the use of the words “forthwith” and “or”. I think that that is a positive response.
I am sure that the Government will have noted our observations about the minor printing changes. Are we content to note the response from the Government?
Members indicated agreement.
Thank you very much. That completes the agenda.
Meeting closed at 11:31.