Social Justice Committee, 23 Jan 2002

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Official Report 85KB pdf

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Away Day

Item 5 is the committee away day. Committee members have a paper that details the draft programme. I ask for views on the programme.

We must decide whether to invite the ministers on the evening of 10 February. We have already had a discussion about that and agreed that it would be useful to invite them. They have offered to give a brief presentation on their future work programme and how they envisage work in the social justice field will be developed over the next period. That would inform our work on the next day.

I am happy to take comments on any of those points. We must also agree on how the event will be facilitated. We talked about that and it was suggested that Lee Bridges would facilitate it, if that were agreeable.

We must also think about what will happen to the meeting on 6 February. It has been suggested that we could postpone that meeting, as we would be committing to committee time on the Sunday and Monday. If we needed to slot in another date we could do so later. I think that 27 February is free if we felt that it was necessary to do that.

Are there any general comments on the draft programme?

I like what Lee Bridges, I presume, has written. Paragraph 7 of the paper is important. As it says, we should have a

"positive product by the end of the away day"

rather than let the work slide afterwards.

I have two points. One is about on-going monitoring of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001—we may have raised that issue before. It would be helpful to have a paper that flags up, for example, subordinate legislation on X and advice notes on Y.

That will be part of the research that we have commissioned.

My other point may be addressed at the away day. We have found social justice targets a little tricky because of the difficulty of measuring them. An eye should be kept on that issue in our discussions on such matters. One of the committee's functions is to hold the Executive to account for its delivery in relation to targets. We need to get inside the Executive's thinking a bit and find out whether there are mechanisms that allow us to monitor how the social justice programme progresses. That is linked to the budget in the same way.

On the facilitation of the away day, I agree with Linda Fabiani that we need to have a positive product at the end, but I also appreciate that there will be an awful lot of work for the clerks on the day—so much will be happening on the Sunday night and on the Monday. If we had an interim report at the end of the day and a fuller report at our next committee meeting, that might give the clerks a little bit more time to do the work.

We must find a balance. We could sit and chew the fat all day but find that, at the end, that all melts away and does not impact on anything else. The work should be focused. That is why we are taking time out to go away and do it.

Sometimes such things are done by a rapporteur, whose job is to try to summarise the conclusions that come out of the work. Might that be a role for one of the members?

Although Lee Bridges will facilitate the away day, he will not also clerk it. A clerk will be there to do that job, which is separate. We might want to think about how to manage that when we are at the away day.

Do we agree the suggestions that are made in the paper?

Members indicated agreement.

Before we go into private session, I have something to say. Members may be aware—if they are not, I inform them—that Lee Bridges is leaving the committee. Today's meeting is his last one. He has a free transfer—on to bigger and better things, I trust.

On behalf of the committee, I thank him very much for all his work and support, certainly over the period that I have been on the committee. If anyone needs a model for an excellent clerk, they should read over the work that we have done in that time.

I wish Lee all the best. I am sure that he will miss meetings of the Social Justice Committee in much the same way as one misses toothache when it is gone.

Thank you.

Meeting continued in private until 10:34.