Item 3 on our agenda concerns the timing of lead and secondary committee stage 1 reports on bills. The matter was raised with me in a letter from Pauline McNeill, the convener of the Justice 2 Committee, who is represented here this morning by the committee clerk, Gillian Baxendine. We have also invited the clerk and convener of the Rural Development Committee to take part in our discussion on this item. Our aim is to get a grasp of the issues and to identify ways of handling any procedural difficulties that may exist. Gillian, will you explain briefly the issue that you would like to bring to the committee's attention?
I convey the apologies of the convener of the Justice 2 Committee. She is unable to attend because she is in Glasgow this morning.
Has Pauline McNeill ventilated the issue with the conveners liaison group?
I do not think so.
I am not trying to trip anyone up. I simply want to establish whether this is a matter for the Procedures Committee or whether committee conveners might resolve it among themselves. After we have heard the issues, we may decide that the latter option would be best.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to appear before the committee. This is an important question and it is right that we should address it.
I presume that, in the case of the secondary committee report that was published in advance of your committee's report, your purposes would have been served equally well if that report had simply been made available to you. The publication of the secondary committee's report would scarcely have been an issue. Were the people from whom you were gathering evidence positively influenced by the fact that they had had access to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee report?
I am not sure that the publication of the secondary committee's report made any difference. Frankly, anyone who was keen to make use of that report to lobby us as the lead committee would have taken enough interest in the Justice and Home Affairs Committee's evidence gathering to have been able to lobby us anyway. In essence, the secondary committee's report was only a confirmation of the submissions that were made during the evidence-gathering sessions. If that report had not been published, I doubt whether anybody's attitude would have been altered. However, the fact that the report was published allowed people to come back to individual members of our committee in the certainty that they had in their possession the Justice and Home Affairs Committee's official committee report plus its conclusions. I do not think that that would or could have been used to exert undue influence.
I did not suggest that. I was simply getting at whether it would have been equally advantageous to your committee to have had that report kicking around for weeks or even months in an unpublished form and not in the public domain.
That could be true, but if such a report is kicking around—especially if the bill is controversial—we run the risk that it will be kicking around not just among the committee members.
Granted. Finally, before I open up the discussion to other members, I want to be sure of one thing. In the case of the National Parks (Scotland) Bill, I seem to remember that the Rural Affairs Committee and the Transport and the Environment Committee divided the content of the bill between them. Therefore, although the Transport and the Environment Committee was reporting to the Rural Affairs Committee, which was the lead committee, in a sense the committees were acting independently. Whether that was a good decision still remains a sore point in some quarters.
It was a brilliant decision.
In the other example that you gave, which concerned the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill, was there a clear-cut division between the committees on the content of the bill?
Yes. The Justice and Home Affairs Committee confined itself to the legal aspects and implications of the bill, so one could argue quite strongly that there was a clear division between the committees.
Do members have any other comments or thoughts?
It is important that committees agree at the outset which of them will cover which areas. When the Parliamentary Bureau is presented with a bill and is asked to designate the lead committee, we do so on the basis that a certain committee might be the most appropriate lead committee.
I should give the clerk an opportunity to respond.
Perhaps I can clarify the usual practice. Usually, we would liaise with the secondary committees and ask for a report, which would be available by the time the lead committee considered its report. When we publish the lead committee report, we usually publish all the secondary committee reports as annexes, with whatever cross-references the lead committee wishes to make. However, the package is usually integrated, so that the lead committee can benefit from the views of the secondary committees when it reaches its conclusions.
That leaves the opportunity for the lead committee to cross-reference, with agreement or disagreement. However, that would be possible only if the secondary committee had published its report in advance. My understanding of the practice in most committees is that, as a general rule, the secondary committees agree to submit their report a certain time—two or three weeks—in advance of the final meeting of the lead committee on its report. Is that the general rule?
The secondary committees usually agree to provide their report as a private document to the lead committee. Usually, the secondary committee report would not be made public until the complete final report was made public. However, it would be available to the members of the lead committee as a private document. There have been some exceptions, the main one being the budget reports to the Finance Committee, which are all published and available on the website at the same time as they go to the Finance Committee.
The procedure seems to imply the requirement for every committee to discuss every report in private, whether the committee wishes to do so or not. That seems excessively prescriptive. I know that most committees discuss reports in private, although we have taken a huge amount of evidence about that being bad practice. The Procedures Committee has never produced any legislation reports and we have never discussed or produced reports in private—we do it all publicly. If we were to be designated as a secondary committee on a bill—because it involved parliamentary procedures, for example—I would be very reluctant to be driven to meet in private if we felt that such matters should be discussed publicly. My concern is the prescriptiveness. I do not necessarily want a response to that comment. I am simply thinking through the matter as we go through the discussion.
On the points that Fiona Hyslop raised, I cannot see how the publication or otherwise of a secondary committee's report prevents the lead committee from discussing the report publicly or privately or cross-referencing as much as it wants. I cannot see that it makes a huge difference whether the secondary committee's report is published. It certainly did not make a huge difference in this instance or, indeed, in the other two instances that I highlighted.
Why was the decision taken to publish the Rural Development Committee's report in advance of the Justice 2 Committee's report? Was the Rural Development Committee aware of any concerns of the Justice 2 Committee about that? If so, how was the situation resolved?
Yes, we were aware that the Justice 2 Committee was concerned. However, my deputy convener, Fergus Ewing, and I had informal discussions with our clerks and the Justice 2 Committee's clerks. The Justice 2 Committee's slight concern was made known to us, but no objection was made known. Indeed, in discussing the issue, we realised that standing orders did not prevent us from publishing our report before the lead committee's report.
I have two comments, one on the specific issue and the other on the general issue. On the specific issue—the particular case that we are discussing—I am uncomfortable about the fact that the matter is on our agenda today. The specific instance raises questions for me that are similar to those raised by Ken Macintosh. I wonder why the circumstances arose and why the respective conveners and clerks could not resolve the issues in advance of or during the process.
The fact that the issue has been referred to this committee implies that it ought to be a matter for standing orders. I am not convinced that that is the case. The issue might legitimately be a matter for guidance. Much parliamentary guidance does not originate in this committee. We are often asked to comment on and approve changes to guidance when it relates to standing orders issues. However, guidance comes from the clerking department, not from this committee.
You referred to the two precedents that I highlighted and said—rightly—that the secondary committee had a specific remit to consider. We had identified a specific remit with our colleagues on the Justice 2 Committee, so we did not make a general report on the bill. I should have made that clear, but I did not.
All three situations were broadly similar. The committees divided the work among themselves and did not examine overlapping areas.
I suggest that we ask the conveners liaison group to discuss best practice, with the view from the committee that we are reluctant for the issue to be returned to us for any change to standing orders.
I was trying to steer members away from recommending that we approach the conveners liaison group. It is for the participants to raise the issue. I see no difficulty with your suggestion, provided that we do not convey a request for the group to ask for standing orders to be changed. We should say, "Here is an issue that was referred to us. We think that you might want to consider it, but you should resolve it yourselves." Is that acceptable?
The matter is up to the two conveners who are involved. If they feel strongly that the situation occurs regularly throughout all committees, they are free to take up the issue with the conveners liaison group. If, however, the issue is particular to the instance concerned, we hope that the two conveners can resolve it themselves without pulling the rest of the Parliament into a procedural change.
That is a good point at which to leave the subject. I thank Alex Fergusson and the clerks for their time.