Transport and the Environment Committee, 14 Feb 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001

Official Report 306KB pdf

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Committee Effectiveness

We move on to agenda item 4.

The paper on committees was discussed and agreed at the conveners group and deals with a number of working practices that we believe may increase the effectiveness of committees. The paper will go before all the Parliament's committees and we are invited to consider its contents. Do members have any views, or are they happy simply to note the paper? Murray Tosh is exceedingly happy to note the paper.

We must make more effort in organising the dates of our meetings. I note that the paper says that the pattern of meetings will move to a fortnightly one, but I believe that there are better ways of organising the dates of meetings than we operate at present. There are regular clashes of meetings for some members.

I have made the clerking team aware of those clashes. Unfortunately, that takes us into difficult territory, as there is little scope for altering the dates of meetings. We will continue to raise the issue, as some members are on more than one committee and sometimes clashes arise. Des McNulty suffers from that frequently.

The paper says a lot of good things, but I am concerned that it refers to our work being "supported by clerking staff". We must examine closely the strain that we put on the clerking staff. While they can, and do, undertake a lot of work, sometimes we spread the clerking resources thinly. We should consider augmenting the number of clerking staff.

Your point is well made, Nora, and will form part of our response—I see Shelagh McKinlay nodding vigorously. I will ensure that members' views are reported back to the conveners group.

As there are no further points, we move into private session to discuss who sent whom a Valentine's card. I am kidding.

Meeting continued in private until 13:10.