Objections
I welcome everyone, including members of the public, to the meeting and apologise for being late—the Audit Committee meeting overran. Brian Monteith will be here as soon as he has wound up that meeting.
I remind members to switch off their mobile phones and pagers.
Agenda item 1 is consideration of objections. Members have a paper on the objections; it is more of a folder than a paper as some 47 admissible objections have been received. They have been placed on the committee's website and I thank all the objectors for their efforts.
At the preliminary stage, we must consider all admissible objections and reject any if we think that the objectors' interests will clearly not be adversely affected. That is the test that we must apply. Paper GARL/S2/06/2/1 asks us to agree that we will be in a position to judge whether the objectors' interests are clearly adversely affected once we have taken sufficient evidence on the bill at the preliminary stage. Once we have decided on each objection, we will inform all the objectors accordingly. Do members agree to that approach?
Members indicated agreement.
All the objections have been forwarded to the bill's promoter. There is an onus on the promoter to talk to objectors at as early a stage as possible, with a view to trying to resolve the objections. Therefore, the promoter will no doubt be in very close contact with objectors throughout the preliminary stage. At our previous meeting, we requested regular updates from the promoter on its negotiations with objectors. The committee fully expects to see progress being made by everyone who is involved in the process.