Official Report 271KB pdf
Agenda item 4 is consideration of a draft annual report for the parliamentary year from 11 May 2015 to 23 March 2016. Under rule 12.9 of standing orders, the committee is obliged to report to the Parliament at the end of each parliamentary year on its activities during that year. We have before us a draft annual report for the parliamentary year 2015-16.
Do members have any comments on the draft report?
I just have a very minor comment. I think that the last sentence of paragraph 3 should read, “The bill will be debated at Stage 3 on 22 March 2016”, rather than the current wording.
Indeed. I am sure that that is the standard form of words, and I am sure that we will adopt that.
Do members have any other comments on that item or—given that this is the final item in the public part of what is likely to be our last meeting in the session; we may have one next Tuesday if required, but that seems unlikely—on any other matter?
I will just say that, notwithstanding the fact that we have been busy, it comes as quite a surprise to me to discover that we have considered 323 statutory instruments in the year, as well as everything else that we have done. I put on record my thanks to our clerks and legal advisers for all the help that we have had in our consideration of those matters.
I thank all the committee staff for helping me to get up to speed very quickly. I really appreciate all the effort that has been put into all the reports and the additional support that has been provided, which have been very helpful.
I take the opportunity to contribute to ensure that we have unanimity in our praise for our clerks and advisers, which is hard earned and well deserved.
Indeed. As the convener, I echo that.
If it is possible for me to embarrass our clerks and legal advisers, I will willingly do so. I do not know whether they are embarrassable—maybe, as people who have advised MSPs for a while, they have ceased being embarrassable—but I think that they are absolutely fab. They have done an extraordinarily good job, not just for the committee but for the Government, in picking up all sorts of stuff that normal people do not pick up. Their patience is obvious and their skills are, frankly, proverbial. If that embarrasses them, so be it.
Given that this is the final opportunity to do so, I would also like to thank those around us: the official report, those in broadcasting and those who attend to all the technicalities, which seem always to work. We are extremely grateful. I thank our security officers—there is one here who represents all the others—for giving us an environment in which we can hold our discussions.
I also thank Joe FitzPatrick and his predecessors as minister with responsibility for parliamentary business, because there has been a dialogue with the Government. I am sure that Euan Donald, our clerk, would recognise that his counterparts in the Government listen to what he says and that we have a dialogue, which enables many of the changes that we propose to be achieved.
I hope that I have not left anybody out.
Finally, I thank my fellow members for their diligence over the past session. We have been incredibly busy, but the fact that we are a small crew has made it work very well. That has been the case only because members have engaged with the committee’s work enormously well. Thank you very much.
I would like to thank you, convener, for your sympathetic and intelligent convening of the committee over the past five years. I think that you have done a very good job. It is down to you, in large measure, that the committee has worked so well together and has by and large—in fact, almost without exception—spoken with one voice. I think that that is down to your thoughtful and sympathetic convening, so I thank you for your convenership of the committee over the past five years.
Hear, hear.
Thank you for those kind words.
That brings us to the end of agenda item 4, and I move the meeting into private.
09:39 Meeting continued in private until 10:09.