Official Report 131KB pdf
Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005: Draft Guidance for Licensing Boards and Local Authorities (SE/2007/9)
We have received a few responses to points that we raised last week. The first response is to SE/2007/9, which is draft guidance on the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005.
This is the third draft of the guidance. After we first considered the guidance, we wrote to the Executive, saying that, perhaps because the document was long and complicated, we had spotted errors that it had not spotted. We sought assurances that the Executive was confident that future drafts would contain no further errors, particularly substantive errors. The Executive officials responded to us, saying that they were confident that there were no further errors in the second draft; yet, last week, we sent them the errors that had been identified by the clerk to the Glasgow licensing board. The Executive has accepted that those are all serious errors, and it has withdrawn the second draft of the guidance and laid a third draft.
You are correct in saying that the Executive officials assured us that there were no substantial errors in the document. However, I do not see any problem, as we will look at the guidance again next week. We can write to the Executive officials, asking that they look again at the draft guidance to ensure that there are no additional errors.
That is fine and I am happy to do that; however, we should also ask how they could say that there were no further substantive errors. I do not know how many errors there were, but six paragraphs of the draft guidance were affected. The errors that were uncovered last week by the clerk to the Glasgow licensing board were quite serious, and some of them seemed to change the effect of the act as we understood it when we passed it. I would like a detailed response from the Executive officials on how that situation developed and how they could assure us that everything was fine, yet subsequently accept the fact that there were multiple errors in the draft guidance.
Okay. In the light of what you have said, we will not report to the lead committee or Parliament until next week, when we will have received a response from the Executive.
I would prefer that.
Is that okay, Ken?
Yes.
Strathclyde Passenger Transport Authority (Constitution, Membership and Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Amendment Order 2007<br />(SSI 2007/23)
We asked the Executive why the order reduced the membership and, more important, how it envisaged that the reduction in membership of the SPTA from 34 to 20 would be achieved. The Executive has given quite a full response, which members will have read. The matter hinges on the May election, after which it will be over to the councils to allocate the respective numbers. Do members have further points to raise on the order?
No.
We will report that further information was requested and was supplied by the Executive. Is that okay?
Who are we reporting to? The lead committee?
Yes, and Parliament.
Local Electoral Administration and Registration Services (Scotland) Act 2006 (Commencement No 2 and Transitional Provisions) Order 2007 (SSI 2007/26)
We asked the Executive to explain why it was necessary to cite section 62(1)(b) of the 2006 act as an enabling power in addition to other sections and, given that citation, why the order had not been made in the form of an instrument subject to annulment. On reflection, the Executive has agreed that it was unnecessary to cite section 62(1)(b), as the order could have been made without reference to that power.
No.
I am still concerned. We have previously raised the mixing of procedures in one instrument. Although that may not give rise to any legal problem in relation to this order, there is still a dichotomy. If we did nothing, we would be breaking the rules in relation to some parts of the order; however, if we subjected the whole order to parliamentary procedure, we would be breaking the rules because some parts of the order are not subject to parliamentary procedure. Once there is a single instrument, it cannot be amended or split, so it seems odd that the Executive continues to do things in this way.
Yes, it has. Do you want to elaborate further on information that we should pass to the Parliament?
We should mention what has been happening. Although this particular order might be okay, we should draw attention to our more general concern about the way in which the Executive has been operating. That concern should also be included in our legacy paper.
We could summarise paragraphs 20 to 22 of our legal brief, in order to explain our concerns further. Would you be happy with that?
Yes, and we should also include the point made in paragraph 25—that although the legal validity of this particular order will not be affected, our concern is a serious one.
We might as well write to the Executive and point out that its guidance suggests that it should not do what it has done, and that it did so twice in the past couple of weeks. We should probe the issue further by saying, "This is your guidance—are you going to continue doing what you've been doing?"
As I say, we can use paragraphs 20 to 25 of our legal brief as the basis of our letter.
Sulphur Content of Liquid Fuels (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (SSI 2007/27)
Members will remember that we asked the Executive why regulations for England and Wales defined "new plant" and "existing plant" whereas the regulations for Scotland did not. We now find from the Executive's response that the definitions do indeed appear in the Scottish regulations, but in a different place.
In our report, we will simply say that we requested further information that the Executive then supplied.