Justice 1 Committee, 16 Jun 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Official Report 159KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Community Right to Buy (Forms) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/233)<br />Community Right to Buy (Ballot) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/228)

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Community Right to Buy<br />(Specification of Plans) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/231)<br />Community Right to Buy (Compensation) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/229)

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Community Right to Buy (Register of Community Interests in Land Charges) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/230)<br />Crofting Community Body Form of Application for Consent to Buy Croft Land etc and Notice of Minister's Decision (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/224)

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Crofting Community Right to Buy (Compensation) (Scotland) Order 2004<br />(SSI 2004/226)<br />Crofting Community Right to Buy<br />(Grants Towards Compensation Liability) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/225)

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Crofting Community Right to Buy (Ballot) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/227)

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the 24th meeting of the Justice 1 Committee this year. It would be very helpful if members could check that their phones are switched off before we begin.

Item 1 is subordinate legislation. It looks as if we have quite a bundle of statutory instruments to deal with. There are nine in total, which are all subject to the negative procedure. I invite members to comment on any of the statutory instruments, which relate to the crofting community right to buy and the community right to buy under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. We have before us for information an extract of the relevant report from the Subordinate Legislation Committee. Members will find that the instruments are mostly straightforward and deal with administration of provisions of the 2003 act in the nine applicable areas.

I wish to put on record the well-documented fact that the Conservatives have opposed this legislation. I accept that the purpose of today's consideration is to fulfil the will of Parliament in putting the legislation through, but I want to record the fact that we were opposed initially to the principle of the legislation and remain so.

The subordinate legislation deals, in effect, with something that has already been agreed by Parliament, as Margaret Mitchell has indicated. I am a member of the Subordinate Legislation Committee and can tell this committee that, although a number of issues were raised under virtually all the statutory instruments, they were mostly technical, and were to do with drafting. As is clear from the extract of the Subordinate Legislation Committee's report and its debate on the instruments, we felt that their underlying principles and objectives were not affected by minor technical drafting errors, most of which have been accepted by the Executive. The Subordinate Legislation Committee did a good job in pointing out the errors, which will, I hope, help to avoid similar errors in the future. Apart from that, the SIs are fine.

In that case, is the committee happy simply to note the statutory instruments?

Members indicated agreement.