Standards Committee, 24 Oct 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 24, 2000

Official Report 98KB pdf

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Work Programme

The work programme was last reviewed in June. Members have a paper that notes progress on the register of staff interests and on our inquiry into models of investigation. However, there is much work ahead of us in the coming months.

The clerks have prepared a provisional schedule of business to be considered at the meetings timetabled until the end of January. That timetable may need to be flexible, as we may have to consider reports from our standards adviser, Garry Watson, arising from any complaints made during that period.

I do not want to plan too many meetings. We may be able to incorporate the agenda for the meeting on 7 November into subsequent meetings. One of the two December meetings could be treated similarly, although we should perhaps keep the meeting on 19 December, as we will have the lobbying information by that time. The date for responses is 5 December, so the information would not be available for a meeting on 5 December.

The programme looks reasonable and, as long as it is flexible, we can deal with anything that may arise. I still have concerns about the clash between meetings of this and other committees. I know that you have tried to resolve that situation but perhaps we could change the time at which we meet so that members can attend other meetings later in the morning.

We will review the timing again to try to ensure that as many members as possible can attend. Half the members of the committee are not here this morning, not due to any fault of their own but because of the scheduling of meetings.

I agree. We are almost inquorate today and if I had chosen to go to the Equal Opportunities Committee we would have been inquorate. We have important work to do, and we may be parachuted into an investigation of a complaint. We cannot continue with the clash of committee meetings. Members of this committee tend to be members of the business bureau or the corporate body as well, so Tuesday is a heavy day. Meeting on a Wednesday would ease some of the pressure.

I raised this issue again at the most recent meeting of the conveners group and was given an undertaking that the schedule would be reviewed by the Christmas recess. I hope that we will be able to move our time of meeting back to Wednesday mornings. I am continuing to emphasise the problems that arise when we have to meet on Tuesday mornings.

Meeting closed at 10:47.