Subordinate Legislation Committee, 24 Jun 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Official Report 164KB pdf

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Committee Projects

Members will recall the legacy paper produced by the previous committee, under Margo MacDonald. It makes various suggestions about how the committee should proceed. Members have also been given a timeline of how the committee might progress the various suggestions.

Three different areas of work are proposed in the note from the clerk. The first is to do with changes to chapter 10 of standing orders. The second is an inquiry into the regulatory framework in Scotland. The clerk has suggested that the inquiry might be modest or extensive. It could fit into the other inquiry—the third area of work—which is the statutory instruments bill.

In addition, we will want to consider when we could have a conference involving other committees in different parts of the world that are grappling with similar issues. We have to consider where that conference would fit into the timeline in the note from the clerk.

I am not clear what our role would be in the inquiry into the regulatory framework. It would seem to be a research project that we would commission, so I am not clear why it would take as long as is indicated in the note.

I was under the impression that we could not control the timetabling of the conference. Would that not be done by some other body? Would there be a series of running meetings?

The clerk will give us more detail, but there is a continuing process with other committees in other parts of the world, and such conferences are held regularly. We might fit into that.

Therefore, if we want to have the conference here, we might have to move when we detect the momentum for such a conference, or risk losing the opportunity.

Possibly.

The inquiry into the regulatory framework could be conducted as has been suggested—the committee could simply commission a paper—or the committee could be more active and invite witnesses from various jurisdictions that have adopted frameworks that are different from ours, considered innovative ideas and introduced them to their regulatory systems. The question is how much the committee wants to get involved.

At the moment, I would not know what to ask or where to probe. I might get a better idea were research available first. If we are to undertake the inquiry, we will have to do quite a bit of research anyway.

I agree. We are at an early stage and one thing that the committee could do now would be to ask for a scoping paper that would set out the issues with which other Commonwealth countries, for example, are grappling and what they have done with their regulatory systems. That might give us an idea of how to proceed.

Could we have such a scoping paper in time for the away day at the end of the summer?

That might be a bit too soon, but a paper could certainly be made available before the Christmas recess.

Would we ask the Scottish Parliament information centre to produce a paper or would we employ someone?

Those are possibilities. We could suggest various people, but SPICe would certainly be an option.

SPICe will be working through the summer, so could we at least get an early starter paper from it? That would be useful. Apart from Gordon Jackson, we are all fairly new to this.

I can certainly take up the issue with SPICe.

Most of my experience of the regulatory framework has been at the other end—having to implement regulations and then consider where they are defective, overprescriptive or whatever. It is high time that consideration was given to the framework. I would hate our consideration to be sketchy because of constraints of time or work pressure, so it is worth considering whether we want to undertake the inquiry as a full committee, whether we want to commission a separate project altogether, perhaps overseen by two members of the committee, or whether we want a combination of the two. If we are going to do it, let us do it properly. Such an inquiry is long overdue, so let us not skimp on it. The alternative would be to do something very short and sharp and acknowledge that it only skimmed the surface—perhaps by simply considering good practice from elsewhere—before moving on to other work. I accept that the statutory instruments bill inquiry is probably the more important piece of work for this session.

Does Gordon Jackson have any ideas?

I am not sure. I went to the conference in Toronto and what came across in particular is that the reform of regulatory systems is a big topic, especially in the English-speaking world and in Europe. The issue is reforming such systems so that they have a clear logic that ensures that only necessary regulations are drafted and that people are not overburdened with regulations. I found the conference quite technical and struggled sometimes to follow what was happening.

It was suggested that Scotland might host the next conference. That was suggested partly because people liked the idea of coming to Scotland. David Mundell attended the previous conference, which was in Australia. I am not sure whether there is an organising committee for another conference. There was a kind of looseness about that matter. Perhaps the clerk can help.

I agree that that matter was left rather open at the end of the Toronto conference.

It was left hanging.

Yes. However, I think that it was suggested that the Scottish Parliament might want to host the next conference.

Absolutely. The conferences are not organised like most international conferences, which tend to have a body—for example, the International Bar Association—that organises a conference every two years or so. The conferences on government regulatory systems are slightly more ad hoc. However, some conference delegates wanted regulatory agencies to get together every two years or so to assess their progress.

The conference was extremely useful. I think that the Executive should have sent somebody, but it felt that it did not need to attend the conference. In fact, the Executive could have learned a lot and should have had people there. The conference would have been more useful to the Executive than it was to me because it would have informed the Executive about how best to draft regulations, whereas it informed me only of how to criticise the job that the Executive does in that area.

It would certainly be useful to have a conference on regulatory systems in Scotland. Such a conference would be good for the Scottish Parliament. I am a great fan of the idea of the Parliament taking its place on the world stage and telling people not only that we are here, but what we do. I am sure that we could organise the next conference. The question is what we do in the meantime. I like the idea of having an inquiry into the regulatory framework, although I take Murray Tosh's point about that being an area for experts. Westminster seems further ahead of the game than we are. Is that a fair comment?

I am not entirely sure. The Cabinet Office has a regulatory impact unit that examines the stock of regulations for internal consistency and to see whether it is growing and how far the various regulatory regimes can be combined. Something is definitely going on in that unit. The Scottish Executive has an equivalent unit but, because I have insufficient information, I am unsure about what it does. I am not sure whether the Executive unit analogues what happens in the Cabinet Office unit.

Canada has what I think is a sophisticated system, in which every regulation must go through a particular unit, which vets each regulation and asks whether it is necessary or merely adds a regulatory burden. The unit strikes a balance between overregulation and necessary regulation.

I am just going round in circles; I do not know where I am heading. An inquiry into how we deal with regulations would be useful and could be linked into the international scene, where there is a lot to learn.

The trouble is that we work as a committee and stand apart from the Executive, which is right in a sense, because we are the Parliament, rather than the Executive. However, the Executive needs to come on board. We can talk all day about regulations, but what we say is never translated into practice, even when the Executive links into what we are doing. The Executive will always draft the instruments.

Is there a precedent for a joint inquiry by the Executive and a committee of the Parliament?

I am not aware of any precedent.

Is it competent for us to consider that? Can we ask? I take Gordon Jackson's point, which partly goes back to what I said about the quality of the drafting. There is a Chinese wall between the Executive and us, or perhaps even between the Executive and the advisers to the committee. To get the sort of improvement that we are looking for, we need better dialogue and discussion of the issues. On reducing the burden of legislation, there is no point in saying that we passed only X number of bills, if the number of regulations and statutory instruments flowing from the bills increases exponentially. The burden is de facto greater than it was before. That is where we need to consider the impact of the regulatory framework.

There are two points: there is Gordon Jackson's point about how we could learn from what is happening at Westminster and there is Christine May's point about how we perhaps need to liaise more with the Executive. Does Mike Pringle have other points to raise?

No. I agree with the points that have been made.

I suggest that we get a starter paper from the Scottish Parliament information centre to get as much information as we can about regulatory frameworks. We can consider what is happening in the UK and in the Commonwealth. I do not know whether members think that we should consider the European dimension; obviously there are examples there of devolved Parliaments. We could perhaps ask Alasdair Rankin to take on board some of the points that have been made this morning and we will discuss them at the first meeting after the recess. We can all have a think about the area as well. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Do we require to meet during the recess? Does the Executive stop issuing instruments for a while?

Yes. Apparently everything stops—the process stops at least.

The Executive can continue to draft instruments in the recess, but it cannot lay them before Parliament. The 40-day scrutiny period will start on the first day back after the recess for any instruments drafted during the recess.

If the convener wants us to have a meeting during the recess, we are all absolutely at your service.

Is that at any time?