Justice 2 Committee, 14 Jun 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Official Report 111KB pdf

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Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000

Item 4 concerns the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Act 2000 and the committee's possible post-enactment scrutiny role. Members have received a helpful paper from the clerks on the matter, with a recent and helpful letter from the Deputy Minister for Justice attached. The letter gives a clear indication as to where matters have reached. The committee needs to decide whether to take further action on the issue and, if so, when it would care to do so. The background paper from the clerks suggests that we might

"consider inviting the Minister and the Adults with Incapacity National Practice Co-ordinator to give oral evidence to a meeting of the Committee towards the end of the year."

The committee might instead wish to consider taking evidence from a wider pool.

One technical issue is being dealt with through amendments to the Smoking, Health and Social Care (Scotland) Bill, and the clerk has pointed out to me that, on legal aid, to which the minister's letter refers, the necessary amendment regulations have now been laid. I seek members' views.

I suggest that we follow the first option detailed in the clerk's note. We should wait until an appropriate moment towards the end of the year to ask the minister and the adults with incapacity national practice co-ordinator to give us further evidence as to the progress that has been made in all the areas that are outlined in detail in the note. At that stage, we will be able to assess the progress that has been made in some areas that are only now moving towards some kind of resolution. It would be appropriate to defer the matter until the end of the year and then take further evidence from the minister and the co-ordinator.

That is a helpful suggestion.

I am happy with that.

That is a sensible way to proceed. We shall defer action on the matter until the end of the year, when we propose to take evidence from the minister and the national practice co-ordinator. On the basis of that evidence, the committee can make a judgment as to what more it wishes to do.