Subordinate Legislation Committee, 18 Sep 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Official Report 147KB pdf

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National Health Service Trusts (Membership and Procedure) (Scotland) Regulations 2001 (SSI 2001/301)

The committee would like to congratulate the Executive on the regulations—we could send our congratulations in a nice wee card. The committee is pleased to note that, in effecting the amendments that are contained in the regulations, the Executive has chosen to consolidate the five previous sets of regulations relating to the membership and procedure of national health service trusts. The previous relevant regulations are all revoked. Such a measure is tidy, which is what we like. Our congratulations to the Executive should be noted, given that we will, I imagine, raise questions about other parts of the regulations.

There may be an issue of drafting, but I leave that to the committee to decide. It appears that paragraph (5) of regulation 12 partly repeats paragraph (1) in relation to the regulation's application to committees. It might be useful if the Executive explained what, if anything, the provision relating to the application of the regulation to committees adds to the similar provision under paragraph (1).

The consolidation of the existing sets of regulations is a good thing, but the explanatory note does not highlight all the amendments that have been effected. It would be nice if the note drew those together.

We could also draw the Executive's attention in the usual way to some typographical errors.

The usual way being through an informal letter. At some point, we will need to ask the Executive about that recurring problem. Presumably, having so many errors in drafting wastes somebody's time.