Agenda item 4 is consideration of the committee’s draft annual report, which is intended to be a largely factual and statistical account of our workload over the past year. I intend to go through it page by page. If members have a comment to make, they should tell me which paragraph on the page it relates to and what change they would like to make. I hope that we can agree the report at this meeting, but, if needed, the clerks will capture members’ comments—I love that word “capture”; it makes me feel like a net—and forward a revised draft to members by close of play today.
As I have said, I will go through the report page by page, not paragraph by paragraph, but if anyone wants me to stop, they should look at me nicely and I will do so.
Do members have any comments on page 2? No? What about page 3?
In the last line of page 3, should there not be “(FBU)” after the word “Union”?
So you want to put that in to explain the later reference to “FBU”.
Yes.
Strictly speaking, it should be “FBU Scotland” rather than “FBU”.
Okay—FBU Scotland. Thank you very much. Do members have any comments on page 4?
The end of paragraph 12 mentions
“the inability of the single police and fire services to recover VAT.”
Can we make it clear that that refers to recovering VAT from the United Kingdom Government?
Well, it is a reserved matter, so I do not think that we need to do that. I am neither here nor there about it. Do you want to add “from the UK Government”?
Is that right?
What do you mean?
Well, it is Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—[Interruption.]
Bear with me a minute, please. Our correspondence on the recovery of VAT was with the UK Government.
Yes, but it is just UK Government legislation.
HMRC is part of the UK Government.
It is not.
Do we want to refer to “the inability of the single police and fire services to recover VAT from the UK Government”?
No.
I do not like it.
Okay, then. We will just say “the inability of the single police and fire services to recover VAT”—period. I am not going to have a firefight about it. Now you see why it is not worth while taking these items in public—we have all these discussions about a comma and so on.
We are not in public, are we?
We are indeed.
Do members have any comments on page 5?
I am still on page 4, convener.
You are still on page 4. What do you want to say?
I find it strange that paragraph 13, which relates to women offenders, does not mention Polmont at all.
We did not know about Polmont. The committee was not told about it.
No, we were not.
We were told during—
It was two days later.
Could you please speak through the chair instead of having little conversations with each other?
Sorry, convener.
We were not told. An announcement was made after the cabinet secretary came before the committee. That paragraph, therefore, is accurate. As a legacy report, it must be about what the committee has dealt with, not extraneous matters.
You are looking at me in a quizzical fashion, Christian.
I just find it strange, because the committee heard about it and therefore it should be in the report.
Well, we did not actually hear about it.
This committee heard about it.
No, Christian. The announcement was made after the cabinet secretary came before the committee; in fact, it was made a day or two later, if I recall. It was not made to the committee.
So the cabinet secretary did not talk about Polmont to the committee afterwards.
No.
Not in this session.
No.
Right. I should have come to the meeting more prepared, then, because I find it strange that he did not say it.
But you accept what we are saying.
I accept what—
Thank you very much. That’s that page gone. Do members have any comments on page 5?
I have a comment about paragraph 16, convener.
Let me have a look at that. What do you want to do?
I just think that putting the word “independent” in “‘independent’ counsel” in inverted commas almost makes it look as if we do not think that the counsel is independent.
That is fine. I think that you are right, and I am happy to take out the inverted commas.
On paragraph 17, we do not say that we gave—
Which line are you on, Christian?
The third line of paragraph 17 refers to
“Europe’s response to the migration crisis”.
Are we not going to say that we passed that on to another committee?
I am trying to remember whether we did that. [Interruption.] We did not formally ask the European and External Relations Committee; I think that we—[Interruption.] Maybe Roddy can help me out here.
I cannot remember, to be honest.
Perhaps we could insert a sentence saying, “The European and External Relations Committee also looked at migration.” Could we slip that in?
Members indicated agreement.
We can put that in somewhere. That is that dealt with. If there is nothing else on page 5, do members have any comments on page 6? I have just turned the page over, and I can see that Mr Finnie is already at the stump.
In the very last sentence of paragraph 20, might it be helpful to clarify that the debate mentioned took place in the chamber?
Yes. If we are talking about a debate, it will have been held in the chamber, but perhaps we have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s here.
Anything else? If not, that is our consideration of the annual report concluded. Thank you very much.
We will now go into private session, but before we do that—[Interruption.] I ask broadcasting to put the little mike switch on again.
I just want to thank everyone. I am not saying this to curry favour—there is no point now—but this is the fourth committee that I have convened and I think that you have been terrific. We have worked really hard; you have had an awful lot of work to do, and you have still been a delight to convene. I do not want members to respond with what they think about my convening—I will find that out when we are not in public session.
I also want to thank our clerks and the Scottish Parliament information centre. We have had a really heavy five years. I cannot remember who has stayed the committee’s five-year course—three of us, at least, so they will know what we have had to deal with. We are about to consider our legacy paper, but I think that there is an issue of the Justice Committee being overwhelmed with legislation and being deprived of the opportunity to foray out and do some inquiries. However, we will come to that later.
That is now on the record. Before you say anything unkind about me, I move the meeting into private session.
10:12 Meeting continued in private until 11:32.Previous
Subordinate Legislation