Justice 1 Committee, 22 Dec 2004
Meeting date: Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Official Report
285KB pdf
Civil Partnership Act 2004
I refer members to the note that has been prepared by the clerk on the Civil Partnership Act 2004, and to the correspondence that we have received from the Deputy Minister for Justice, which gives details of the enactment of the legislation—to put it on record, there is now a Civil Partnership Act. Members will note the comments in the minister's letter of 29 November thanking the Justice 1 Committee for its careful scrutiny. You will notice that a number of the issues that we raised during our scrutiny of the bill and of the corresponding Sewel motion have been taken up by Westminster in some shape or form. I wanted members to be aware of that and to note that the bill has now come into force.
I put on record my absolute delight that the Civil Partnership Act 2004 is now law. I am not quite telling members to buy their hats yet—but it might not be a bad idea.
This has worked out well: the committee's work has been taken forward via the Executive into the process at Westminster. However, it has become apparent that there is not really any formal way of doing that, although I know that some of us were informally making sure that Westminster colleagues knew that both the Equal Opportunities Committee and the Justice 1 Committee of the Scottish Parliament had done work on the bill. I wonder if there needs to be some tightening up of Sewel motion procedure in general. There have been a number of occasions when Scottish parliamentary committees have done quite a lot of work to ensure that the relevant Westminster committees took issues into account, rather than just leaving matters to the Executive. Initially, I found it difficult to get the message across informally to people at Westminster that we had done a substantial amount of work on the bill.
We find from the briefing note and letters in front of us that, as a result of our work on the issue of religious premises, for example, not only did the Executive draft an amendment to the Scottish provisions, but the English and Welsh provisions were also amended, resulting in the adoption of a much clearer position. That is a direct result of our work here. We have to have mechanisms in place to ensure that such things happen all the time and are not dependent on whether a minister or an Executive official is minded to do something.
It was also good that Scottish Executive civil servants were involved in drafting the Scottish parts of the legislation. They did a tremendous job on a complex and difficult piece of legislation. Perhaps that should happen with other pieces of UK legislation that have a substantial effect on Scots law.
This is an example of a situation in which legislation can be affected if time is taken to work through it and if the appropriate channels are used. However, I cannot imagine a formal mechanism. The situation is almost akin to what we do when we scrutinise European legislation, when we simply pick up certain points that we think are important and try to influence the process. It is up to us to push at the open door. The only way in which a formal mechanism could be arrived at would be by including it in the concordat.
I would expect that, whoever the minister is, if technical and fundamental changes are being made to Scottish provisions, Scottish officials should be on the case as a matter of course. That would seem to be the easiest route for everyone. It makes sense.
I underline what Margaret Smith said. The process was a good example of a successful intervention. However, it still seems to be the case that the press, for example, will raise this piece of legislation as an example of something that we did not deal with when, in fact, the Equal Opportunities Committee took a lot of evidence on it and reported to Parliament before the Justice 1 Committee dealt with the matter. We should flag that up.