Our final item is the committee's forward work programme. Members have before them a paper, which sets out the areas of business that we must tackle over the coming six months. A provisional schedule of meetings is also attached.
One of the dates that we have listed for a meeting is Wednesday 6 June, which I suspect might be the day before the general election—but then again, you never know. I am conscious of the fact that we are due to hear the standards adviser on inquiries that he might undertake. Given that we wish to address such matters as quickly as we can and get them out of the way, for various reasons that we have discussed before, we might wish to timetable a meeting before then. I do not want to push the standards adviser to come forward before he is ready, but we might want to flag up to him that that meeting will probably be a lighter meeting than normal. We might wish to make it clear that it would be good to get his report before then.
Are you suggesting that we remove the meeting on 6 June from the timetable?
No. I am just concerned about—as we discussed before—how important it is that members know which way we are going, if there is an allegation against them. It would therefore be good to get the issue out of the way.
My advice is that members can be briefed individually on the matter.
Could the matter be reviewed when an announcement is made about the date of the election? If the day of the election is around the time of one of the meeting dates, it would make sense to shift the date to another Wednesday.
We will, at our next meeting in two weeks, review the issue in the light of circumstances.
Meeting closed at 10:25.
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