Agenda item 2 is consideration of another series of papers, which I hope that you have all read, on our private bills inquiry. There are a number of key decisions to be made.
The TWA-plus model is the right model. We need to do more work to pull it together and take it forward but, on the basis of the evidence that we heard, it is the right model. We should begin to work it through from now on.
I tend to agree with that. The bones are there but, as Karen Gillon said, the model needs to be pulled together and fleshed out. We might disagree about some of the minor elements, but the thrust is in the right direction.
I am still most attracted to the semi-parliamentary model. I can see the attractions of the TWA-plus model, but I seek scrutiny of the parliamentary sections—the "plus" part—of the model. There is an opportunity to create a model that has the correct level of parliamentary scrutiny but the simplicity of the TWA-plus model. I hope that we will evolve something between TWA-plus and the semi-parliamentary model: a semi-semi-parliamentary model, perhaps.
I take on board Mark Ballard's points, but there have been a number of meetings about the model and a lot of detailed scrutiny of it. The model addresses in thoughtful ways many of the concerns about the process that I had when I was a member of a private bill committee. Members will want to review some of the parliamentary aspects of the model, but the process that is outlined in the report is good and it closely matches my aspirations.
I think that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. The main area in which I envisage potential for disagreement or the need for changes is in relation to the role of Parliament in the matter. Without losing the simplicity of the system, I would like Parliament's role to be beefed up. There are some contradictions in the paper—for example, on the Parliament not approving the general principles but in effect taking the step that approves them. In reading through the report a couple of times, we can see areas in which there is conflict between recommendations. The model needs to be fleshed out, but the general thrust of it is correct.
The model based on the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act 1936 was always used in Scotland before and I cannot see much wrong with it.
Other members are inclined towards using the TWA-plus model, as suggested in our paper. It would be sensible if we agreed that in principle today. We are not agreeing the detail today—we are not approving everything in the paper—but we should agree things in principle.
The evidence that the committee received contradicts the legal advice that we have been given. It appears to me that the environmental statement is not as robust as we would want it to be. We should be a bit more explicit about what we want. I would certainly want the requirement to consult the environmental regulators to be included. However, we should indicate, perhaps in plainer English, what we expect from the environmental statement.
As I understand it, the aim of paragraph 31 is to set out more plainly what details are expected in an environmental statement. Such statements would obviously be different for different projects, but there would be some guiding principles. I imagine that those principles are already set down somewhere—correct me if I am wrong. I would assume that there is a formal procedure for compiling an environmental statement.
If all the information that is set out in schedule 4 to the Environmental Impact Assessment (Scotland) Regulations 1999 is required, why do we not just state that up front?
And the timescales?
They are two different things.
Yes. They are two different issues.
I thought that you were discussing everything in paragraph 31.
Sorry—the issue of the environmental statement is one thing, and it should be in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment (Scotland) Regulations 1999. We then have the consultation with the environmental regulators, which I think we all agree should be part of the process. Then there is the timetable bit.
Maybe I confused the issue. Paragraph 31 is necessary and the rule changes that result from paragraph 32 are correct. My concern is about paragraphs 33 to 36. We need to state boldly the points that the convener made, because our legal advice suggests that the process is not as robust as it seems to be.
Do we agree with my suggestion and Karen's on environmental impact assessments?
For clarification, the point that we tried to set out in the paper was that it is our clear legal advice that the current private bill system—in this case as set out in a Presiding Officer determination—does what the relevant environmental law requires. National legislation, when that is the mechanism for giving consent, is exempted from the relevant European directive, and the Presiding Officer determination, which is quoted from in paragraph 35, is a slightly indirect mechanism for imposing the requirement to provide the information that is set out in schedule 4 to the regulations. It does what is necessary.
We want a direct mechanism.
We are saying that we want the mechanism to be direct, rather than indirect.
Although the determination exists, people told us clearly that the requirement was not as robust as it would be for other processes. Therefore we need to make it more robust. If that means that we have to make it direct rather than indirect, we should do that.
Do you foresee problems with that? I am picking up a difference of emphasis. I want to be clear that what we are recommending is practical. It is desirable, but we want it to be practical.
As I understand it, the legal advice states that private bills can be exempt from the regulations, because they are national legislation. However, I am saying that although they can be exempt, they do not have to be, and we should say in our standing orders that we do not think that they should be. Is that clear?
Yes, so far as being more direct is concerned. If all you mean is moving something out of a PO determination into the rule directly, I do not think that that would make any difference. The requirement still has effect as part of the PO determination.
That is what we are doing. We want it to be up front. The problem is that the PO can change the determination.
I am sorry to labour this, but I am picking up something slightly different from Karen Gillon. I do not know whether I picked her up wrongly. There seems to be a difference in emphasis.
I am making the same point as Iain Smith. There is scope for a PO determination to say that private bills should be exempt. My view is that they should not be exempt and that we should state in our standing orders that we require them to comply with environmental impact assessments, as set out in the Environmental Impact Assessment (Scotland) Regulations 1999.
My question for the clerk is whether it is feasible to remove that discretion.
There are two things that we could do. First, we could take the content of the current Presiding Officer determination and build it directly into the rule, which would make it more permanent, but it would not change the nature of what promoters are required to do under the current system. Secondly, we could impose on promoters more of a full-blown environmental impact assessment process. There may be practical difficulties in doing that because, as I understand it, the process is iterative and takes place over a period of time. Meshing it with a private bill process would bring practical difficulties. We would need to examine that in more detail.
I understand the desire. I am hearing that there may be practical difficulties.
If the committee agrees what it wants to do in principle, the clerks can come back with a note on implementation for the draft report. If they come back and say that there are practical legal difficulties, the report can reflect that.
If there are practical difficulties, that would be useful. I accept what you are saying in principle, but I want to ensure that anything that we recommend stands up.
Absolutely.
I seek further clarification from the clerks. It seems bizarre to me that it is possible to exempt a fairly major railway scheme—such as the proposed Borders rail link, which is a long stretch of line—from a full-blown environmental impact assessment because it is dealt with by a bill that is passed by the Parliament rather than by a different process. If small local projects that have significantly less environmental impact than a large railway line need an EIA, large projects that are introduced by a private bill should also be subject to a full-blown EIA. As a Parliament, we need to find a mechanism whereby such projects are subject to that process, regardless of who introduced the bill in Parliament.
We all agree that that is what we are seeking to achieve, but we will obviously need to take advice on how we achieve it.
The paper helpfully raises many issues about the size of private bill committees, but aspects of paragraph 41 need firming up. I am reluctant to agree to the suggestion that the norm would be for private bill committees to have five members. First, parties will increasingly experience practical difficulties in finding that number of committee members. Secondly, I am not convinced about the assumption that the members would have more work if their committee consisted of three members rather than five. The reality is that the work falls on the clerks who provide questions and information. I am not convinced that reducing the number of members would mean a huge amount of extra work for the remaining few committee members.
For the avoidance of doubt, can it be explained why private bill committees could not have a membership of five with a quorum of three? I have concerns about reducing the membership to three because the quasi-judicial nature of the procedure requires, I think, all members to be present. Given that some private bill committees can run for a seriously long time, would we need a process whereby a committee member who became ill could be replaced? If the process is quasi-judicial, how could someone else become a member of the committee halfway through the process? Would we need to go back to the beginning? Would the bill fall? That is my concern about any move towards having private bill committees of only three members. Why can they not have a membership of five with a quorum of three? Can someone clarify the position for me?
Paragraphs 50 to 53 cover the issue. At present, if one member of a five-member committee drops out, the committee simply continues with only four members. If two members drop out, the committee ends up having only three members. If three members drop out, the process has to start again.
My understanding is that provision exists for the promoter to agree that a member who has missed meetings can return to the committee. Is that correct?
There is certainly provision that a member who has missed part of the evidence taking at consideration stage can continue as a member of the committee, subject to the agreement of the parties involved. That sort of provision is applied in more or less any judicial-type context to ensure that decision makers have heard and participated in all the evidence sessions.
So private bill committees usually have five members because that gives them room to drop to four or three members. If they were to start off with only three members, they would really struggle if somebody dropped out.
We will come on to that. According to the legal advice that we have been given, it is expected that a member of a private bill committee must be present to understand the evidence. I must say that I am not so certain that that is as necessary as in a jury trial, where things such as body language might form part of the evidence. I would have thought that it would be adequate for the committee members to have read the evidence. I cannot quite understand why they must be present at every single hearing to receive all the information.
We specifically considered that issue because there was evidence on that point. We received clear legal advice that, based on analogies with judicial process, it would be insufficient for members just to have read the evidence. Although the private bill committee process is only quasi-judicial, I understand that the advice was that the Parliament could be vulnerable to legal challenge if that process was not followed and a decision was taken that was seen to be unfavourable to one of the parties. I am not a lawyer and am only conveying what I was advised.
That exemplifies how ridiculous the current system is and why we need to proceed as quickly as possible to set up a new system.
An analogous situation might be local authority planning committees, the members of which must take into account all the information that has been received but are not required to be present throughout the entire meeting in order to vote. I am looking at Bruce McFee because I think that he was a member of a planning committee in the past.
Yes. I can think of situations in which it was probable that many members voted without even reading their papers.
Allegedly.
I avidly read every paper, but that is done. However, a person would be in severe difficulties with a licence application either in the licensing court or in respect of miscellaneous licensing. They would be debarred from voting if they had not been present during the evidence giving.
We cannot do anything about the matter anyway. It does not strike me that it makes a great deal of sense to proceed in such a way if the evidence is fully recorded substantially verbatim. It has been said that people cannot keep up to date with the evidence by reading it rather than by being present on every occasion, but that presents problems with three-member committees. There is the possibility of a member not being present and the whole thing collapsing.
At the moment, the same requirements exist for committees with five members. As far as I am aware, no one has dropped out of a committee so far. Practical issues are involved.
I understand from paragraph 37 that the bureau already has flexibility. The issue is whether a five-member bill committee can still carry on with four members if a member is ill or falls under a bus or a train and they simply drop out. If there is a three-member committee and somebody falls under a bus, it cannot continue with only two members. That is where the problem arises with a three-member bill committee.
Could it continue with two members? If the membership fell below two members—if there is only one member, in other words—it could not continue.
If the number of members fell below that, it definitely could not continue.
If there is a one-member committee, I think that proceedings might be subject to a judicial review.
On paragraph 41, is it fair to make a distinction between non-works bills and works bills on the basis that one is normally simpler than the other?
I suspect that it is more a question of the time that is involved. A non-works bill probably requires fewer meetings overall than does a works bill. It is therefore probably easier to get through without the risk of a member falling ill for a lengthy period.
That is right. The suggestion was not meant to be that that should be the only basis of distinguishing between them, but it might be one main factor. The number of objections—or, indeed, whether there are objections—would be the other main factor.
Do we know what bills will be introduced in May and whether they are works bills or to do with other private interests?
I think that three works bills are expected—the two airport link bills and the Airdrie to Bathgate railway bill.
I will have a final go. I do not think that we should say that the norm should be five members.
I am not suggesting that we should.
Paragraph 41 suggests that
I think that it will be exceptionally difficult—certainly for my party—to find six members with no interests who can take part in committees that deal with rail bills relating to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Airdrie and Bathgate. We should find a way that allows the bureau flexibility. If that means that we stick with the existing rule, we should do so. We should allow the bureau to use its good offices to determine whether the Parliament has enough members to fill these committees. We should look at the issue again as part of our wider consideration of the new process.
We can highlight the issues that we have discussed. Instead of saying that the norm should remain at five, we should highlight the fact that members could drop out.
Can I suggest that paragraph 41 would be clarified by the removal of the words "non-works" from the third line?
We are not talking about a committee report.
I know, but I am trying to think of a way of simplifying the matter. If those words were to be removed, that part of the paragraph would read:
Thank you for that helpful comment, Bruce.
Although the suggestions in this section are constructive, we need to get more clarity about the way in which members are disqualified because of their registered interests.
I recognise that that is a big issue in respect of those bills. The application of that rule would preclude any member who lives in Edinburgh or who has a residence in Edinburgh from serving on the Edinburgh airport rail link bill committee. The rule reduces the number of members who are eligible to serve on the committees to the members who live in parliamentary allowances zone B. The argument could conceivably be made that a member who lives in north-east Fife would also benefit significantly from having a direct rail link to the two airports. Perhaps they, too, should be disqualified from membership. Where do we draw the line when every single member has a theoretical interest in the airport rail links?
The purpose of the rule is to ensure that members who serve on private bill committees are not biased in favour of the development. I am thinking of the Robin Rigg Offshore Wind Farm (Navigation and Fishing) (Scotland) Bill. The policy on wind farms is a subject in which many people have an interest. How the hell can we get away from bias on subjects like that?
That bill was not about wind farms but about navigation rights.
I know; I was simply using the bill as an example. It is not possible to limit bias simply on the basis of the area that is the subject of a bill. That idea does not hold water.
There is also an issue with the regional MSPs—
There are lots of issues with them.
Thank you. If we take the Airdrie to Bathgate line, for example, the regional MSPs for Edinburgh, the Lothians, Glasgow and Central Scotland whose constituents would benefit would be knocked off that committee. Given that we are talking about areas that are "particularly affected" by a bill, a huge swathe of members would be knocked out.
We will all join if it does.
For example, the local government requirement for a declaration of interests says that if it gets to the point where a majority of the council has a similar interest, the category of interest no longer applies. For example, if all the council members live in council housing, they would not be ruled out of voting on housing rents.
Local government does things more sensibly; it divides interests into the categories of pecuniary and non-pecuniary. Although there is a fine dividing line, councillors would be expected to exclude themselves from making judgments even where they had no direct pecuniary interests.
Obviously, we have to work within the legal advice that we get. However, as a steer to the clerks, I suggest that we want to be flexible to enable as many members as possible to participate in the consideration of the bills.
We should consider what the situation in Westminster would be if a bill were required for major public works in London. TWA would probably cover that, but some projects are hybrids, such as the channel tunnel link, which goes into London. Would all members who have residences in London be excluded from considering that bill?
I do not know the answer to that question but I can find out what the comparable rules are in Westminster.
So your suggestion is that paragraph 45 is better than what we have at the moment, as it would lead to fewer members being excluded automatically.
Exactly. That is the intention.
But it might have the opposite effect. I think that the words "living in C" would quite clearly exclude members from Mid Scotland and Fife as well as all members in the Lothians from taking part in the consideration of the Waverley Railway (Scotland) Bill. At present, those members are not excluded.
We are suggesting that whether those members were ruled out would be a judgment for the Parliamentary Bureau to make and that they would not be ruled out directly by the application of the rule.
Are you suggesting that, currently, the application of the rule would rule them out directly?
That depends on how you interpret the words "area affected".
I understand.
We are all clear that we would like greater flexibility. We need to consider how that can be delivered by what is being proposed and ensure that we do not accidentally make the situation less flexible.
Is the idea that the member should be outwith the constituency or region whose electors might lobby on the matter and that the member's electors should not be in a position to lobby them on the matter?
That is the present guidance.
In other words, it is easier for a constituency MSP to avoid exclusion than it is for a regional MSP.
At the moment, if the relevant constituency is within the regional MSP's region, the member is excluded. MSPs from neighbouring constituencies are not excluded.
I can see the point of that.
If a member lived in Edinburgh as a result of their duties as an MSP, they would have a direct financial interest in a bill concerning, for instance, a tramline, if their house were on the route. However, I am not sure that there would be a direct interest if their house were anywhere else. I am not sure why they should be excluded from considering an issue that affects Edinburgh. That is the sort of issue that we need to clarify.
Presumably an MSP who was not in that region could say to people that they must go and talk to their own MSP.
Yes.
That would be the thinking behind this. Is that right?
Yes. There is a rule at the moment that directly excludes MSPs who represent any part of the area that is affected by the bill. If that definition is very narrow and—in a tramline bill, for example—includes only the area on the map that shows where the tramline will go and the limit of deviation of that line, only a very small number of MSPs will be excluded. However, the term is sufficiently vague that it could be interpreted as including people who are further afield but whose constituency will perhaps benefit economically. We are suggesting that the first bit of the definition should be narrowed down but that the bureau should have the discretion to be able to take into account those wider factors.
So are we agreed that the clerks will reflect on what we have said and will come back to the committee with a proposal—
I am uncomfortable with the phrase about
In this part of the report, we are trying to arrive at a similar position to the one that I outlined when we were talking about the previous issue. There will be a relatively narrow band of members who are directly excluded, which is why we have restricted the discussion to the direct financial interests of the MSP concerned. We have also suggested other mechanisms, such as those in paragraph 49, which might help to deal with that wider but more nebulous range of circumstances that might affect the perception of someone's impartiality.
The issue comes down to the proposed changes that will be in the registration of interests bill. Members have to make a judgment about public perception. If the public perceived that a member had a direct financial interest, the member would not stand for the committee.
Absolutely, so why wait until the member is a member of that particular committee? Paragraph 49 says that the member has to declare interests
That would have to be done through the informal mechanisms. Presumably the business managers would check with their member before they recommended his or her membership to the bureau.
We cannot have a situation where every MSP declares every interest of every member of their family, extended or otherwise, in the register of members' interests, but there is no way of knowing whether a member has a relevant interest unless they declare it. The only way a member will declare such an interest is if they are required to do so when they are involved in a particular bill. I suggest that the member should declare such interests to their whips when the whips ask them to be part of the bill committee.
The whips should specifically ask.
Yes, the whips should ask. If the member says that they have no interest but, because of the rule change described in paragraph 49, they seem to have a conflict of interest, there is nothing to prevent the Parliament from moving a motion of no confidence to remove the member from the committee or for the member's party to remove the member from the committee. However, how are we to know whether a member has an interest unless they are required to declare it in the register of members' interests? It would be a bit absurd if they were required to declare every interest that every member of their family might or might not have.
There must be a clear understanding of the position. We do not want to get to the first meeting of a committee and find that three or more members have to say, "Oh, by the way." The informal process has to be clear or we could end up in a ridiculous situation.
Rule 9A.5.4 gives flexibility. Any attempt to go beyond having
I do not think that we should remove paragraph 48. If someone has a direct financial interest, they should not be a member of the private bill committee. That should be explicit in the rules.
The second part of paragraph 48 refers to a member
We cannot have a situation in which a member who has an interest that affects their impartiality on a subject sits on a committee that determines whether that matter proceeds.
An interest could be the fact that they are a member of a political party that has been campaigning for—
If that is Mark Ballard's problem, he could address it in paragraph 49, which he has just approved.
A bit of common sense needs to be applied as to whether a registered interest affects a member's impartiality on a particular issue. Direct financial interests would clearly rule a member out and there is no reason why that should not be stated. In considering the membership of a private bill committee, the Parliamentary Bureau would take account of other factors, which business managers would consider when they recommended a particular member to be appointed to such a committee. We should leave it to the bureau to have that flexibility.
The third line of paragraph 49 refers to "previous public pronouncements". I would have thought that that was Mark Ballard's get-out-of-jail-free card.
It is bizarre to suggest that a member who has said in the past that they support a project cannot effectively scrutinise the relevant private bill. That would rule out every member from considering every bill on which they had made a manifesto commitment. That is a stupid rule and we need to get rid of it.
We should move to take it out.
The clerk wants to provide clarification.
The purpose of what we have outlined in paragraph 49 is separate from the issue of who is excluded from being a member of the committee. That will already have happened. One rule might exclude a narrow category of members; other members might subsequently be excluded by the bureau, which will exercise its judgment as to who is fit to be on the committee. The purpose of paragraph 49 is to instil public confidence, once the membership of the committee has been established, in the members of the committee through ensuring that they are open about previous public pronouncements that they have made, so that there is no secret about those. They can then carry on and scrutinise the bill.
You are not ruling out those members.
There is no suggestion that they are being excluded because of their public pronouncements.
That would allow people who would previously have been ruled out to be on a committee. I am thinking of, for example, Mike Pringle, who could have been included on the Waverley Railway (Scotland) Bill Committee, but was ruled out because of a previous pronouncement, although he could equally have been ruled out because of a constituency interest. The provision would allow someone in that situation to be a member of a bill committee.
How would a public objection to an individual's membership of a committee—the Waverley Railway (Scotland) Bill Committee or the committee dealing with the Airdrie to Bathgate railway, for example—be dealt with if it was lodged because the member had pronounced their support for improved public transport?
The Parliament would have to consider from a legal point of view whether it thought that there was any substance to the objection and whether the Parliament might be subject to judicial review if that member remained a member of the committee. There would be a legal judgment at that stage.
An MSP could be in breach of the code of conduct for members if they failed to register an interest that might affect their impartiality on a bill and the interest subsequently came to light. Such a breach would be dealt with by the standards commissioner.
Someone might have been going to a nice, wee, remote cottage for 10 years that had once been a station house on the Waverley railway or the Airdrie to Bathgate line and that would have a railway running right past it if the line reopened. That individual could object to the appointment to the private bill committee of an MSP who had indicated support for improved public transport, on the ground that the MSP had an interest in the matter. That could hold up the process.
We could come up with all sorts of hypothetical situations and reach a point at which every Liberal Democrat MSP was ruled out of membership of, for example, the private bill committee for the Edinburgh airport link, because they had made public statements in favour of the project. In the case of the Borders railway, every Green MSP and probably every Labour MSP would be ruled out, so virtually nobody could serve on the Waverley Railway (Scotland) Bill Committee. That would be a ridiculous situation. I am not sure that a judicial review of the Parliament's decision would be successful if policy pronouncements were the issue. A member would have to have a more direct interest.
Surely if someone applied for a judicial review on such a ground, their challenge would be successful only if it was proved that the MSP had failed to exercise due scrutiny of the bill as a result of the pronouncement that they had made. It would have to be demonstrated that the MSP had failed to take into account or analyse impartially the evidence that they had received, as would happen in a judicial review in relation to any bill—that is my guess of how the process would work.
However, some thought must be given to how we would deal with an objection by a member of the public to a MSP's serving on a committee. If not, the process could be held up while we scrambled about to find ways of dealing with the situation. Perhaps the clerks could come back to us on that.
That is a matter for lawyers, rather than clerks, but in general terms it seems to me that any system that requires politicians to act in the quasi-judicial capacity that is inherent in the private bills process is potentially vulnerable to the problem that members raised. The problem already exists. The best protection that members can have against a successful legal challenge is a robust procedural mechanism for ensuring that members who have an obvious conflict of interest are not appointed to private bill committees in the first place and that interests are clearly declared in public. By putting in place such mechanisms, members do as much as they reasonably can do to ensure that they are safe from legal challenge.
Members act in a quasi-judicial capacity at the consideration stage of the bill, by which stage the Parliament has already approved the general principles of the bill.
Since our most recent meeting, the Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee has referred an issue to us. We are asked to consider whether consultation guidance should be included in our inquiry as a priority. To be perfectly honest, it is not entirely clear to me that the matter requires a change to the standing orders, so I am not sure that we need to consider it at this stage.
Are you talking about the Edinburgh Tram (Line Two) Bill Committee?
No, the Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee.
The covering paper says "Line One", but the submission itself refers to line 2.
All the papers that I have are about line 1.
Oh well. It says—
Sorry, I see the one that you mean. The extract from the Official Report refers to line 2.
The problem is that the replacement paper that I was sent was the same as the original.
The referral is from the Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee, although the extract is perhaps from the debate on line 2. I am not sure about that—we will check.
The second issue, which is slightly more complex, relates to financial resolutions. We have a letter from the convener of the Finance Committee and a fairly detailed note from the clerks on the issue, which are both in paper PR/S2/05/4/13. The clerks highlight potential problems with the Finance Committee convener's request. I recommend that we send a response to Des McNulty that is in line with the clerks' comments on the potential problems. In essence, the Finance Committee's role relates to the general budget and there may be problems if that committee were designated a role in the formal private bills process. Do members have any comments?
The letter exposes a flaw with the current process. If the Executive spends £300 million here and £150 million there as a result of private bills, that has an impact on the Executive's other budgets, but there is no parliamentary scrutiny of the expenditure. That exposes why we need a new process. A council can introduce a private bill even though it is putting in a minimal amount of money and the vast majority of the expenditure is from the Executive. In that situation, the Parliament has little, if any, control over the money.
I accept that, but the counter-argument is that the money is highlighted in the available budgets and the Finance Committee can scrutinise that aspect of the Executive's budget separately. Do members agree that, at present, we do not wish to change the procedure, given that we will cover the issue when the proposals for legislation are introduced? The clerks have highlighted several potential difficulties.
I agree, as long as we can flag up the issue when we consider the proposed changes and ensure that it is taken into account.
We will deal with it.
As part of the new solution, we need to have a process in which the Parliament can scrutinise fully the financial implications of private bills, as we do with the financial implications of other bills.
There are no new priorities, only new solutions.
Indeed. Do members agree to leave the issue for the moment?
I apologise—I missed out the second issue in the letter from the convener of the Edinburgh Tram (Line One) Bill Committee, which was about late objections. Do members wish to consider that as a priority issue?
I thought that that had been resolved earlier.
This is the second issue that Jackie Baillie raised. She feels that there are problems in the current rules for late objections. At present, such objections can be lodged up to the end of the preliminary stage. On the basis of her committee's experience, she is concerned that the current rules can force a private bill committee to hold an extra meeting at very short notice, simply to consider whether to allow a late objection to proceed. It seemed as if some small changes to the rules could ameliorate the situation and ease the pressure.
Should we not consider that issue along with others? For example, if we are talking about appointing reporters, there will be particular rules on late objections and evidence.
The suggestion is a relatively minor amendment that would allow late objections to be considered at the consideration stage rather than at the preliminary stage. That would probably ease things for the three bills that are coming up. We could therefore consider that minor change as one of our priorities. It will not have a major effect on how bills are dealt with.
I presume that the bill committee will determine whether there is a good reason why the objection was delayed in the first place.
The suggestion is that, rather than the committee having to decide whether to admit an objection during the preliminary stage, before the preliminary stage debate—which would require an extra meeting—it could do so at the start of the consideration stage.
If the objection was to the general principles of the bill, it would be redundant to discuss it at that stage.
Yes, it would, but I am not sure that the bill committee would be keen to accept a late objection to the general principles of the bill.
I am a bit confused by paper PR/S2/05/4/11, which seems to cover some of these issues. Are we going to discuss them at this meeting?
That paper is a summary of the evidence that we have had to date. We are considering whether to add the issue of late objections to our list of priorities—agreed at our previous meeting—for the debate on 11 May and therefore for the draft report. We can consider all the other issues later, as we reach our final conclusions.
If we confirm that we are happy with that change, will it help the three bills that are coming up?
Yes.
And it will be for the bill committee to decide whether to accept that there is good reason for the lateness of the objection.
Yes. It seems that members are content that we should add that issue to our list of priorities.
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