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Chamber and committees

Justice 1 Committee,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 10, 2006


Contents


Annual Report

Item 2 is consideration of our draft annual report, which has been prepared by the clerks. I invite members to comment on what, if anything, they would add to it.

We should add to the list of visits our visit to London to discuss the Scottish Commissioner for Human Rights Bill.

The Convener:

Yes, we should mention that we had that visit to London to meet the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I suggest that we also mention that we visited the offices of the Scottish Criminal Record Office.

I wonder whether we should mention subordinate legislation. The two items that stick in my mind as quite notable are the instrument relating to disclosure and the order relating to legal fees. Perhaps we should mention them specifically.

Stewart Stevenson:

It would certainly be worth mentioning in general terms how much of our time secondary legislation has taken up. As well as the headline stuff that comes to the notice of people outside the committee, we deal with subordinate legislation, which takes up a bit of preparation time prior to committee meetings and during our meetings.

Was the convener thinking of commenting on situations in which we have been faced with decisions that have, in effect, been taken and simply notified to us so that we can ratify them after the event?

The Convener:

Those are two separate points. I agree with Stewart Stevenson's point in that 33 negative instruments is a lot. Officials have quite frequently had to assist us with them because of their complexity. I suggest that it would be worth mentioning the kind of instruments that we have dealt with. The two that I mentioned dealt with the most notable issues, both of which we might need to reconsider in future. We do not have much more space in the report, but I think we can squeeze that in.

If members have no other comments, are they happy to agree to the annual report of the Justice 1 Committee?

Members indicated agreement.

The size of our annual report looks like virtually nothing compared with our workload over the year, but I am sure that it will be duly noted that we have met for more hours than any other committee—

Once again.

The Convener:

I am glad that the deputy convener has backed me up by pointing out that that has happened once again.

As the committee agreed previously, we will now deal in private with item 3, which is a discussion of our general approach to writing our report on the Criminal Proceedings etc (Reform) (Scotland) Bill.

Meeting continued in private until 13:26.