Scottish Parliament Justice 2 Committee Wednesday 24 January 2001 (Morning)
[The Oldest Committee Member opened the meeting at 10:03]
Good morning and welcome. I want to start by questioning the method of electing a committee convener. If the oldest MSP present does not act her age, and if nobody can guess her age by looking at her, where is the justice in singling her out in this way when she is doing nobody any harm and wants just to totter off quietly into the sunset? Perhaps we should look again at standing order 12.1.6. Why should the meeting not be chaired by the youngest, or the baldiest, or perhaps the one with the most beautiful eyes?
Before I discharge the duty that my birth certificate has placed upon me and ask for nominations for the convenership of the Justice 2 Committee, I want to put on record my great regret that the Parliament took the decision to create a second justice committee. I believe that I am not alone in thinking that that decision was unwise and will not be appreciated or understood by the electorate or by professionals in the Scottish justice system. However, nothing is set in stone. The first devolved Scottish Parliament is still wearing L-plates and, should the experience of having two justice committees with identical remits teach us that one properly resourced committee with perhaps two sub-committees would be a more efficient and logical way of doing business, we should not shrink from saying so. I have consistently opposed the creation of a second justice committee but I accept Parliament's decision on the matter.
In a moment, I will ask for nominations for the convenership and deputy convenership, but first I want to state that my negative vote for a member will not reflect anything other than my disappointment that the previous agreement between business managers, which was applied to the election of other committee conveners and deputy conveners, has not been applied to this committee. My negative vote should not be taken as an indication of a lack of confidence in, or support for, the committee member who is chosen as convener. Instead, it will be a protest that my age enables me to make at what I consider to be a short-sighted and misguided way of dealing with the volume of work that was expected to fall to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee.
This old dear has now had her say. Do any other old dears—or young people—want to say something?
As a slightly younger old dear than Margo MacDonald, I too want to say that my remarks are no reflection upon either Pauline McNeill or Lyndsay McIntosh. I have made that plain to them informally and I want to make it plain formally now.
I, too, opposed the creation of the second justice committee and I know that three parties were against it in the Parliament. However, the main issue today is that the principle that has been applied consistently to the other committees for the allocation of convenerships and deputy convenerships has not been applied to the Justice 2 Committee. That those positions were not allocated in the same manner as previously was improper, whether the committee concerned was this one or any other committee that became the Parliament's 17th committee.
I, too, will therefore vote against the nominations for convener and deputy convener as a vote against the misapplication and distortion of a principle on which the Parliament has operated to date. I hope that the Parliament will return to operating on that principle, because, if we start to abandon the principles and guidelines, we will be in deep soup. We are not doing what the Parliament was set up to do.
Regrettably, I will vote against Pauline McNeill and Lyndsay McIntosh, but I hope that they appreciate why I will do so.