Rural Development Committee, 19 Nov 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 19, 2002

Official Report 349KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Plant Health (Phytophthora Ramorum) (Scotland) (No 2) Order 2002<br />(SSI 2002/483)

Item 5 is consideration of SSI 2002/483, which relates to plant health. Given what appears in brackets in the order's name, I will not follow my usual tradition of pronouncing the full title. The Subordinate Legislation Committee has considered the order and has raised a number of points for our consideration. The relevant extract from the Subordinate Legislation Committee's report was sent to members by e-mail yesterday and hard copies of it have been circulated today.

I feel obliged to point out that the order represents another example of an item of subordinate legislation that has breached the 21-day rule, in that it was brought into force two days after being laid before the Parliament. The committee has raised serious concerns about that issue on previous occasions. A letter from the Executive to the Presiding Officer accompanies the order, which explains that the order relates to an emergency procedure that has been introduced in response to a European Commission decision. The Executive was given insufficient time to comply with the 21-day rule, because although the decision was published only on 20 September, there was a requirement that it be brought into national law by 1 November. That being the case, I am slightly sympathetic to the Executive's need to break the 21-day rule.

As no member wishes to comment, I can take it as read that we do not wish to make any further comment on the order to the Parliament. We should take all decisions after 5 o'clock at night.

I would like to raise a housekeeping point.

That would be in order.

My office was informed that there was a waiting list of eight people for the public seats for today's meeting. I have noticed that, since 2 o'clock, half the seats have been empty. That is unacceptable. I ask the clerks to complain to whoever arranges the tickets for the public seats, because some of my constituents were refused tickets.

I have experienced a similar problem. It is a fair comment that we should consider how the seating is allocated, as a number of people have been refused tickets.

I have another housekeeping point, which is of some importance. As other members have said, the Official Report of today's meeting will be examined carefully, particularly in relation to the ASP and scallop matters. I hope that the industry representatives who were here today will have an early chance to study the responses that the minister gave, so that when we come to produce our letter, we will have the benefit of their input and reflection, in so far as that is possible. Can we see whether we can get the Official Report of today's proceedings as high up the batting order as possible?

I think that it is already high up the batting order—my information is that it will be available on Monday.

I agree with that, but I think that the Official Report of the meeting should be made available to any fishing representative, not just to the ones who were here.

It will be available to those who wish to access it as of Monday. On that happy note, I close the meeting. Thank you for your forbearance.

Meeting closed at 17:39.