Finance Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Official Report 364KB pdf

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Members’ Bills: Financial Memorandums

Item 6 is consideration of our approach to scrutiny of the financial memorandums to eight members’ bills. The paper from the clerk suggests the level of scrutiny that we might wish to adopt for each bill and affected bodies from which we might wish to seek written evidence. Are members content with the suggestions in the paper?

I have two wee questions. The first is just for clarification. I think that a couple of the bills have a lot more to them than we might initially think. It has been suggested that we adopt level 1 scrutiny of their financial memorandums. Can we subsequently change that to level 2 scrutiny if we wish, when we have received the written submissions? I see the clerk nodding. That is fine.

Which bills are you concerned about?

One is the Protection of Workers (Scotland) Bill. By the way, the paper states that the bill was introduced by Patricia Ferguson, but it was actually Hugh Henry. The clerk might want to change that for the website record. It is in paragraph 24. The paper states that the financial memorandum to the bill states that it is not anticipated that there will be significant costs, but that there are uncertainties. I would like us to have some leeway so that, if we hear that there are large uncertainties, we can change our level of scrutiny.

I also worry a wee bit about Patricia Ferguson’s Property Factors (Scotland) Bill, because I know from experience that these things are never quite as simple as they initially seem.

My other comment is on the Criminal Sentencing (Equity Fines) (Scotland) Bill, which is Bill Wilson’s one. It is suggested that we seek evidence from the Confederation of British Industry. The suggestion obviously relates to our getting the employers’ point of view, but I am not convinced that the CBI necessarily represents all the employers who might be affected by the bill. Perhaps we should seek evidence from the Federation of Small Businesses as well, in order to get smaller companies’ views.

We will take those comments on board.

On the Criminal Sentencing (Equity Fines) (Scotland) Bill, should we not seek evidence from some of the trade unions as well?

Is that agreed? It is.

I agree with Linda Fabiani, but there are six organisations in Scotland that claim to represent businesses, so why do we not ask them all?

Okay.

Some of the expenditure that is mentioned is quite high. For example, the cost of one of the bills would be about £400,000 a year. I think that the committee should again issue an alert that, given the tightness of public funding, we expect value for money, a careful approach, and careful scrutiny of all such spending.

That concludes our public session.

15:24 Meeting continued in private until 15:38.