Procedures Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 23, 2000

Official Report 195KB pdf

---

Consultative Steering Group (Key Principles)

We move finally to item 6, which is the report on the inquiry into the application of the consultative steering group's principles in the Scottish Parliament. The report looks quite bulky because it contains the previous report at the back. There is a note of the points that we want to include in the paper. We are also invited to agree a list of points on the scope of the inquiry, the draft timetable and the news release, which is very early in the process—we will not do that for some considerable time. It is there so that everyone can see what the thinking is.

John, do you want to say anything about the report?

Not really. It is meant to be helpful and to address the specific items that were raised previously. It is an opportunity for us to get the committee's collective views on whether we are going in the right direction.

When we discussed the matter previously, there was a sense that we might be rushing things. We now have a time scale, which provides for a report around the middle of next year. The bulk of our work will be done later rather than earlier. Stage 1 of the work will take place in the autumn.

The material is on the right lines. There was some discussion last time about whether the advertising of the inquiry to solicit people to write in should be written in the language of The Herald or the Daily Record. This could be construed as being written more in the language of The Herald, which may be the right decision.

I hope that we will throw our bread in the water and invite any individual to write in and actively solicit responses from all the groups that have dealings with the Parliament. I spoke at a breakfast meeting this morning, which is not something to do lightly or unadvisedly, especially when one has just come off the sleeper from Westminster. There was a lady there from Amnesty International or some such organisation who has had a lot of dealings with the Parliament and was very positive about our procedures. People such as her have an informed view, which we should solicit. The report is good stuff.

We should approach all the organisations who have dealt with us to get their response on, for example, how they were handled and how their evidence was dealt with.

I will now invite someone from the Scottish Parliament information centre to come to the table to tell us about the scope of the inquiry and the timetable.

It made sense to us to have a first stage at which we could examine what has already been done in academia or in other research forums that we can draw on to inform the inquiry and ensure that there is no duplication of effort. I know of several things that are going on. This is a good opportunity for us to examine research in more detail and report back to the committee. After the recess, the committee can decide whether it would like to take things a stage further.

There can be a general call for evidence and committees can invite specific groups. We also propose research to get to groups that are not particularly well informed about the Parliament or the consultative steering group and which would not usually take part in consultation. We hope that the committee will find it useful to explore those issues in a more formalised and researched way.

That is very fair. The groups that should have contacted us but have not are very important. We have obviously failed if that has happened and we should explore why.

If we have agreed the scope, the timetable and the news release, we have agreed everything that we need to agree and we can conclude the meeting. It has been exceptionally long and I attribute that entirely to the absence of Michael Russell, but there you go. Thank you all for your attendance.

Meeting closed at 17:11.