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Plant Health (Phytophthora ramorum) (Scotland) Order 2004 (SSI 2004/488)
The committee will remember that we raised two points on the order. Our legal advice suggests that both points need to be drawn to the attention of the lead committee and the Parliament on the ground of defective drafting. Paragraph 27 of the legal advice states:
No, that is fine.
Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 (Notice of Potential Liability for Costs) Amendment Order 2004 (SSI 2004/490)
Members will remember that we were concerned about the order, because there could be a two-week period in which a person could move into a new property and would not be provided with a list of future renovations. I do not know what the committee thinks about the Executive's response, but I do not think it got to the nitty-gritty of what we said was the big difficulty. I got the impression from the letter that new owners would have been liable anyway and therefore the point that we raised is not such a big issue. Nevertheless, given that the heading to the notice is "Notice of potential liability for costs", I would have thought that it was important that as many as possible of the potential costs be on the notice.
I was not here last week, but given how difficult it is to get information in the period between agreeing purchase and moving into a property, the law should make it perfectly clear that any purchaser moving into a house with potential liability is entitled to the relevant information. The order should therefore be drafted in such a way that purchasers can get the information that they need.
I gather that if we wrote to the lead committee explaining the difficulty, there would still be time for it to be rectified.
Good.
The legal advice states:
I am told that it would be helpful if our letter to the lead committee could state specifically what needs to be done in relation to amending the commencement of the order. Is that agreed?
We will be as specific as we can be.
Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004 (Commencement No 1) Order 2004 <br />(SSI 2004/487)
The legal advice suggests that we draw the order to the Parliament's attention on the ground that it was made in the form of a statutory instrument when, arguably, the enabling act did not authorise that at the time. We discussed how that arose last week. In our discussions with the Executive we also asked whether the error might be picked up by the new tracking system or other monitoring systems. I gather that the tracking system might not pick up such errors, but the checking that should be done should pick them up, so I hope that this will not happen again.
This is not a pressing matter, but perhaps at some stage we could get a briefing on how the tracking system and the checklist system will work, so that we are better aware of what hoops the Executive sets itself to jump through.
Yes. I should say that we have a new clerk with us this morning. Unfortunately, Alasdair Rankin, who was anyway going to move to another committee shortly, has had a slight accident with his bicycle. We send him all our best wishes.
Having said that we have a new clerk, are you going to name her for the record, convener?
My name is Ruth Cooper.
Welcome to the committee. Can we expect that when the current clerk is transferred to another post, you will be his successor?
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you for interrogating the clerk, Murray.
It is always nice to get clerks and advisers on the record.
I have worked with Ruth Cooper before, so I know that we will be well serviced with her on the committee.
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