Finance Committee, 25 Apr 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Official Report 184KB pdf

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Accountability and Governance Inquiry

We press on to agenda item 3, which is our accountability and governance inquiry. We held an informal seminar yesterday to allow us the opportunity to discuss some broad themes before we start to take formal evidence, and I place on record our thanks to Professor Robert Hazell of University College London, Oonagh Gay of the House of Commons research service and Barry Wintrobe of Napier University Edinburgh for attending and giving us the benefit of their advice. I also thank the two MSPs who are not on the committee who attended—Jackie Baillie and Margaret Curran. It was an extremely interesting afternoon, was worth while and will be of considerable assistance to us when we take our formal evidence.

The submissions that we have received are on our web pages. We are expecting a small number of late submissions, which will be circulated to committee members and put on the web as soon as they are available.

At present, our evidence-taking sessions are scheduled to take place on 16 May, 23 May, 6 June and 13 June. As can be seen from the agenda, the committee will discuss later on whom it would like to invite to give evidence. That item will be taken in private at the end of the meeting.