Justice and Home Affairs Committee, 26 Apr 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 26, 2000

Official Report 263KB pdf

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Future Business

As members will recall, discussion of future business was initially intended to take up the entire meeting but has now been reduced considerably, mainly in recognition of the fact that it is highly unlikely that in the near future we will be able to do anything that appears on the list that is before us.

The document that outlined all the bits and pieces that have been suggested to us as items for future consideration was circulated to everyone. It includes all the things that members raised at the very first meeting of the committee as well as issues that have been suggested by other MSPs, outside organisations and members of the public, and some other matters that have come up in the course of our work.

We have a little bit of time, so we can discuss how we should proceed. We are in some serious difficulty as regards the forward programme. The programme for Easter to summer 2000 gives us very little leeway to take up any other matters. Members will have received a note from the clerk about future business.

I received the dates of the meetings only today.

That is because the dates have been changed because of the move to Glasgow. I was given a rather peculiar grid, which I gave to Andrew Mylne in order to clarify the dates. Things have been rather difficult. We did not know whether we were spending two or three weeks in Glasgow. We have tried to shift meetings, because we cannot afford to lose them.

On that point, why have the meetings in Edinburgh on those two Mondays? We do not usually meet on a Monday.

Parliament is meeting in Glasgow during those two weeks. On Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday, members are expected to be in Glasgow. We would struggle to get through to Glasgow for the Wednesday afternoon if we were meeting in Edinburgh in the morning. That would be particularly difficult for members who were planning to take part in debates. The pressure on committee meeting rooms and staffing means that we have been pushed into a Monday slot.

I had no idea that we would be meeting on a Monday. I have my hands full on those days.

The problem is that if we do not meet on the Mondays, we run the risk of losing those meetings altogether. The alternative programme that was offered to us was to have meetings that were only two hours long. That would not allow us to do our work. If we stayed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays we would lose about a third of our meeting time. We are in an extremely difficult position and one that does not suit me better than anyone else.

Would it not be possible to meet in Glasgow on the Wednesday morning?

No. Wednesday mornings are being used for chamber work. The Parliament will be meeting all day Wednesday and Thursday when it is in Glasgow. That means that we would lose one of our Wednesday meetings altogether because committees cannot meet at the same time as Parliament. All the committees that were due to meet on either of those two Wednesday mornings will either have to lose those meetings or meet at other times. It is a difficult situation. In order for us to do what is expected of us, we need to have meetings in both those weeks—we cannot afford to lose meetings.

I am being advised separately that the Executive is considering having all-day Wednesday meetings for the last couple of weeks before the recess to get through all the business. We are so up against it in terms of time that we might find ourselves struggling.

Effectively, we are being asked to deal with an increasing work load in a decreasing amount of time. We are being presented with Hobson's choice.

I use Mondays for constituency business and have appointments pencilled in until the summer. Displacing those will cause problems.

There is nothing I can say other than that I am in the same position. The alternative would have been to reduce the meeting time of this committee by about a third.

Why not meet on Tuesdays?

Because we are not the only committee that would be affected by Parliament meeting all day Wednesday. All of the Wednesday morning committees will have to find some other time to meet. They cannot all meet on a Tuesday.

One of our meetings was supposed to be a Tuesday meeting anyway. If we have a load of work that we are being told we have to do, we will have to make that clear to other committees. We should not give in to them. If anyone should get a space on a Tuesday, we should. I am prepared to say that.

If the conveners liaison group's decision had been adopted, we would have lost a third of our meeting time because the other committees preferred not to meet on a Monday. The only way for us to avoid meeting on Mondays would be to lose a third of our time.

If that happened, the Executive would just have to lose a third of its business. If we are to do the work, we should be given the time. It is the Executive's business. The Executive is insisting that we deal with the legislation.

What can I say? We will simply be told that we have the time: Monday.

How did you get on when you made representations to the Executive about the amount of work that is being piled on us? We are getting stuck with stuff that was not even in the Executive plan.

The process of negotiating some kind of solution is on-going. The minute I have something concrete to tell the committee, I will do so.

I appreciate the difficulty that you are in, but the Executive has to realise the difficulty that we are being placed in.

Absolutely. If the committee wants to make a stand on this point, we should discuss that now. I am not sure how we will proceed if the committee refuses to meet on those two Mondays, but I can communicate that to the Executive.

We have already had almost to agree that we will not be able to carry out our forward plan and examine things that we wanted to examine. The forward plan is history—we will not be able to deal with it this side of the recess. At what stage do we draw a line in the sand and take a stance? We cannot be the only committee that is getting dumped on like this, but we must be the foremost.

We could all talk about how inconvenient all of this is. We all have things planned. For instance, I had agreed to chair a conference for the whole day on one of those Mondays. However, we must appreciate the logistical difficulties associated with the Parliament's having 16 committees.

We all agree that we have an incredible work load and that there are other matters that we want to discuss. We should bear it in mind that the less time for which we choose to meet, the more we will be able to do only the business that we are given. That will be to the detriment of the committee and the way in which the Parliament works. We should be careful about taking a stance, as Lyndsay McIntosh suggested. That would be cutting off our nose to spite our face.

For the committee's information, the breakdown of the differential work load of the committee has been done—I am grateful to whoever spent the time preparing it. It shows the marked change that has taken place and bears out members' concerns. During 1999, we spent slightly more than half our time—52 per cent—doing work on our own initiative. This year, since 11 January, that proportion has fallen to 14 per cent. Eighty-six per cent of the committee's time has been devoted to business that has formally been referred to it by the Executive or some other outside source—that figure will include petitions and members' bills.

There is no sign that that situation can improve under the present structure. That has serious implications for our proposed list of subjects for future inquiry, as well as more generally for the ability of committees to operate effectively. First, we need to consider the forward programme. Let us put the issue of meeting on Mondays aside and consider what potential there is, if we accept that forward programme, to do anything beyond what is listed, which is almost entirely legislation.

I wish to make a personal comment. Those two weeks—happily in my view—are Glasgow weeks. To come through here and go back again costs us about four hours in travel time. I probably have the scope to rearrange my diary to allow me to attend meetings on those Mondays, but not to spend four hours travelling on each day. I offer a concession from a west of Scotland point of view: provided we confine ourselves to meeting in Glasgow on a Monday afternoon, I will be able to adjust my diary. I do not quite understand the full implications on staffing of committee meetings overlapping. Is it the case that the clerk is servicing other committees? Do the problems that overlapping causes relate to space or the official report?

There are problems with space and with the official report. Not all committees have dedicated clerking teams and many share clerks.

Do we have a dedicated clerking team?

That is neither here nor there. The problem is the imposition on the whole work load.

There is no ideal solution. There are two options: either we meet on Mondays or we reduce our meeting time by a third during the fortnight concerned.

What about the venue for the meetings on Mondays?

I do not know whether the question of the venue can be considered. Do members feel happier about meeting in Glasgow?

Several members indicated disagreement.

This is where we run into difficulties. The venue will not make much difference for some people.

As a convener, I know that it is very difficult to set meetings by committee.

We should leave it up to the convener to do her best in the circumstances we find ourselves in. Whatever we come up with, it will not suit everybody, so we should let the convener get on with it and set the meetings.

Says one convener to another.

I can feel one of my turns coming on.

An issue of principle is involved. Like Phil Gallie, I could change my diary, in exceptional circumstances, to try to fit in; I would be willing to do that. A compromise will be involved for all of us, whether or not we move venues. However, in relation to Gordon Jackson's point, we should just get this sorted out. The committee has agreed to meet every week the Parliament meets; that was a concession for many of us, because it meant that we had less time to do other things. We committed ourselves to that, but no allowance whatever is made for the amount of time we spend in the committee—we do not even get a cup of coffee. [Laughter.] To be serious, we get no priority in terms of meeting space, and no allowance is made for the work we do, even though we are handling more legislation than any other committee, with the possible exception of the Rural Affairs Committee.

We were due to meet on the Tuesday, and that concession should be made to us for the sake of our programme. We should not reduce the number of weeks. We were due to meet on Tuesday 16 May—that is our slot—and that should leave us with one Monday meeting, which will be an exception to the rule. We will also have additional hours when we are meeting in Glasgow. If we do not make our position clear, this will carry on for the next four years.

Meeting on the Monday is not the problem, for any of us. I could rearrange my diary for the rest of the year, but the problem arises if I am coming here on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday—that means four days' travel, or four times four hours. The problem is the management of our time and our parliamentary activities, not the fact that we have to meet on Mondays. The problem for me, and for others, is that we also have to come to Edinburgh on Tuesdays for other committee meetings. We need to be economical with our time. I speak only for myself, but I can devote that amount of time to the Justice and Home Affairs Committee only if some concessions are made regarding other parliamentary committees, to give us some sort of—

One of the difficulties is that I cannot simply sit at the conveners liaison group and lay down the law by saying, "I want it this way for the Justice and Home Affairs Committee and the rest of you can go hang." The group decides things jointly. That approach simply would not work.

I have raised, in some quarters, the need for a general acceptance of the requirement for flexibility to be built into the system to allow a committee, such as this one, to get favoured treatment in some cases. In two years' time, it might be not us but another committee that is in this situation. The difficulty is that our structures do not operate on that basis, and every other convener could—and will—have an argument about the priorities that their committee is involved in and the impossibilities that they face in timetabling their work. Members may find that difficult to accept in relation to some other committees, but those committees, and their conveners, feel exactly the same. We are in the business of competing demands, and that is extremely difficult to manage.

We must try to come up with a best scenario out of those that are available, none of which are very good for all of us. Kate McLean knows how difficult that can be. At the conveners liaison group, I am competing with other interests, and we are not given a favoured place.

Surely a simple way of deciding whether a committee should be given precedence would be on the basis of the amount of parliamentary business that that committee is having to deal with.

It is clear that we are dealing with a lot of legislative business on behalf of the Executive, and that should be taken into account.

That is the case, and I hope that some consideration is being given to it, but it is also the responsibility of individual committee members to put on the maximum pressure they can where they think it will be most effective. I do not need to spell that out.

The problem does not come from the other committees; the problem comes from the change in the programme of business going through the Parliament. This Parliament is a rolling Parliament: we do not have to complete all parliamentary business in any one year. If the managers of the Parliament are saying that they want to force through business, they will have to recognise that some of their business will have to suffer in other areas. That is where the problem lies. If the committee takes a stand on that issue, we will not be having a go at the other committees, because this is nothing to do with the other committees. We will simply be saying to the business managers that they will have to consider the facilities that the Parliament was given when it was set up.

Do members have proposals as to what—

I certainly do not want to turn you into a moaning Minnie when you go to the conveners liaison group, but the Executive has to realise that—

Can I stop you right there? The Executive is not represented at the conveners liaison group.

Is it not?

No.

Is there no way of channelling our concerns? I am sure that the other conveners share them.

Of course there is a way of doing that—but I am not in control of the Executive's legislative agenda. No member of this committee is. Some members of the committee might have a greater capacity to exert pressure on relevant ministers than others, but I am not in control of that agenda.

If committee members want to take a stand, I need a concrete suggestion as to what that stand should be.

I stand by Phil Gallie. I suggest that we do something along the lines of what he said. Can we, as a committee, write to the business managers, and state clearly that, because of the scheduling, it is becoming impossible for us to deal with the level of business that is being passed on to us before the summer recess? It would then be up to the managers to decide what business could not be put through before the summer. It would be up to them to decide what they want to be chopped off, because we cannot deal with it all. Give them an ultimatum: decide what you want to chop off, because we cannot do it all.

I can tell the member what the response would be: that none of the business is dispensable.

Should we suggest the things that we think the committee cannot deal with before the summer?

I can write to the managers in such terms, if that is what the committee wants—and I can predict what the response will be. However, I would prefer to work these things out in a less overt way.

I do not suggest that we should write to the Executive to say that it will not get its business done. However, we are entitled to write to say: "If you want your business done, make sure that we have the facilities, the time and the place to do it." The Executive is entitled to ask for business to be done, and we are obliged to do it, but it is monstrous for us to be told that we cannot even have our Tuesday meeting. I can understand why the Wednesday meeting might have to change to Monday but, when the Executive wants all its business to be done, for us to be told that everything has to go to Mondays, that we are bottom of the list, and that there is no accommodation, is outrageous. Whoever is responsible should be told in the strongest possible terms that we are not happy.

And that we want something done about it.

That is the harder part.

I do not want you just to tell the managers that we are not happy and them not to do anything.

It is not our fault that they have not tooled up for the amount of work that they want to get through.

Whether we like it or not—and I would be the first to say that I do not like it—the Justice and Home Affairs Committee is nowhere regarded as some kind of king committee that can get its own way whenever it wants, which is how it will be seen. At the moment, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee is no greater or lesser than any other committee in the Parliament. When decisions are made, we are simply put into the pot along with all the others. I agree that that position will not be tenable for very much longer, given our work load. However, that is the position that we are in; that is our difficulty. As I have said, the Executive is not represented on the conveners liaison group.

I think that we should go along with Gordon Jackson's suggestion: if the Executive says that it wants the work to be done, it needs to give us a wee bit of assistance. We are not asking for special treatment; we are just saying that we need the facilities. We are already putting in a lot of effort into making sure that—

What does that boil down to? Shifting Monday meetings back to a Tuesday?

The first thing it boils down to is that we should have that slot on Tuesday as a point of principle.

We can try.

How can it be demonstrated that there is a commitment to give us what we are asking for unless something shifts?

We can try, but it will throw everything into complete confusion.

There is complete confusion already. I will try to reschedule my appointments—as I am sure will Maureen Macmillan and Phil Gallie—but I cannot give a guarantee that that will be possible.

Potentially, we could have exactly the same problem before the recess. I am advised informally that the Executive is considering meeting all day on the last few Wednesdays before the recess to finalise business.

That is exactly why we should get things sorted out now.

Therefore, at this stage we should flag up the fact that we will not tolerate being pushed into Mondays then either. I must inform members, however, that the Presiding Officer will come back with the same point that he has made to me privately—that Mondays were not meant to be constituency days; Fridays are meant to be members' constituency day.

I object to the lack of notice. All of a sudden, we are faced with having to cancel appointments. I would appreciate more notice.

I am sorry to prolong this discussion. I have a great deal of sympathy with what Pauline McNeill said but, if we insist on a Tuesday, those of us who are on other committees will run into problems, because they are already scheduled for Tuesdays.

There will be huge scheduling difficulties if we dig our heels in.

It is the existing Tuesday meeting that we want to keep, not the Wednesday meeting.

Pauline McNeill's suggestion is that, if we cannot meet on Wednesdays, we should insist that the meeting be transferred to a Tuesday.

Pauline was saying that we were due to meet on Tuesday 16 May.

I mean for the last few Wednesdays.

The final Wednesdays are a slightly different issue, because that is not yet a formal proposal.

We are not getting terribly far. We are spending a lot of time whingeing. We must at least have a look at the proposed subjects for future inquiry. There is also the list of petitions that are in progress, need to be completed or are yet to be discussed. The Carbeth hutters' petition can probably come off the list. The petitions from the Dekkers and Tricia Donegan can be dealt with together. The committee must also discuss the petitions by James and Anne Bollan and by a group called Concern for Justice. We also have petitions from Eileen McBride, James Ward and Contact Rights for Grandparents. Three of those petitions have yet to be discussed at any level by the committee. On others, we are waiting for responses. An instrument under the negative procedure, on the Census (Scotland) Regulations 2000, has been referred to us, and we also have a long list of issues and concerns that have been raised with us or by us during the past nine months.

At this stage, there is not much more that we can do. We can go through some of the issues and amalgamate some and prioritise others. We could say that we will not get round to some of them, but that we want to keep half a dozen on the list, or we could say now which of those issues we would want to proceed with if and when we ever got some time to do so—as members know, we can sometimes find some bits and pieces of time. Perhaps we should just pick one of them. However, we must remember that we will be trying to continue with the prisons issue.

If we had to choose one issue to consider, it should be access to legal aid. The worst way in which to be denied access to justice is through not being able to afford it. I am concerned about legal aid for victims' families in fatal accident inquiries. I was involved in a case that is now all over the press—that of the death of Amanda Duncan in Dundee, in 1997. I am also concerned about non-harassment orders, whereby women do not have access to legal aid, which puts their lives in danger.

We have heard today that the budgets are underspent, and that money would be available if the system was different, which would allow people easier access to legal aid. If we had time to consider any issue, that is probably the most important one that the committee could address.

I have no objection to that. If one issue must be chosen, access to justice is a good one to choose. It is a big issue, however: there is much evidence to be taken and work to be done, and we would probably not be able to focus on any other issue.

At the risk of being repetitive, I would like to put on record the fact that reading the list again makes me think of what is happening. There is a range of issues that we should be discussing, and on which the committee would make a difference. This sort of committee was to designed to do that, but we are being burdened with legislation—although burdened is perhaps the wrong word to use. We will become a legislative committee to the extent that we simply will not function and do the job for the Parliament and the people that the committee was meant to do. When I read the list, I become aware of that. I assume that the whole committee wants to make it clear that we are not entirely happy with that situation.

Does anybody have any other suggestions? Scott Barrie and Christine Grahame talked about legal aid early on, and I also wanted legal aid to be addressed.

I recognise the importance of the issue of legal aid, particularly in respect of the civil implications. However, I am also concerned about another issue. The police are under scrutiny for their self-regulation, although the procurator fiscal also deals with that matter. Many people have contacted me about the Law Society of Scotland and the fact that the legal profession is self-regulating. When we consider the self-regulation of the police, we might also consider the self-regulation of the legal profession.

I agree with the point that Gordon Jackson made. It is frustrating to see on that list the issues that we should be addressing, but which we are not addressing.

I agree with Kate MacLean that legal aid is a priority issue for all sorts of reasons, and hope that we can find time to address that. If we had to narrow our attention to one issue, I would not be unhappy for it to be that one.

We must also find a sub-issue to continue with our inquiry into prisons. If we were to leave that alone, it would not look very good. We started to prod away there, and we need to find a thread—even if it is a sub-issue—that we can all agree on, to carry on that inquiry.

I suggest that, as we will consider our draft report next week, we address that issue in the context of that draft report. Because we have already made the decision to continue with our inquiry into the Prison Service, I have not included that issue on the list.

I would be happy with that.

I shall not repeat what everyone else has said about the committee's timetable, but I feel that much of our work concentrates on criminal law. It is important to emphasise that the committee also deals with civil law. Following the answers that I received about the civil courts, I intend to undertake more research. I do not think that they are meeting the 12-week targets. There are other issues that are related to the civil courts, regarding cancellations—particularly as they deal with personal injury. Civil law is an important area of the law, and minor changes need to be made to speed up the court process and ensure that people get a better deal from the system.

I realise that there is a problem of priority for now, but I would like to put the matter on the agenda for consideration some time in the future. We have to bear it in mind that we are supposed to be dealing with civil law as well as criminal law. A reminder of that would not go amiss.

I second Pauline McNeill's comments.

That narrows it down to two or three potential subjects. Legal aid has received the most immediate support for discussion; given that so little time is available, it is probably academic at this stage. However, we should revisit the three issues when we have more time, whenever that might be.

I remind members that next week's meeting will be upstairs in the Hub. At least it is not as far away as the Festival theatre. For broadcasting reasons, the meeting cannot start earlier than 10 am, so we are losing half an hour. That is a logistical problem that I wish the committee did not have to be subjected to.

What are we doing then?

There are some slight problems with next week's meeting. The Sheriffs Association has declined the offer to come and talk to us. The Law Society of Scotland is likely to send someone, but that is not yet confirmed. The Scottish Legal Aid Board cannot come to give evidence on the budget next week. This is the other problem: given the nature of the notification for witnesses for the budget scrutiny exercise, it is very difficult for people to come.

Can you clarify what you meant when you said, "The Sheriffs Association has declined"?

The Sheriffs Association has declined to be involved.

Is it allowed to do that?

The concern of members of the Sheriffs Association is about commenting on the budget in their position as sheriffs.

I have some sympathy with that.

We should note the ease with which we can stray into policy issues, and sheriffs are of course not meant to be political.

Could we ask the police to come?

The expectation was that we would receive evidence on the budget from three different organisations. In fact, it looks as if only one of those organisations will be able to attend. I am not sure whether we can get the police to give evidence, but we have invited lots of people and are waiting for confirmation.

We will be doing more budgetary work next week. At the moment, that is all that is on the agenda, so we might be able to discuss the draft prisons report. Some of the petitions might well get on to the next meeting's agenda so that we can clear some of them out of the way and initiate responses and so on.

The draft intrusive surveillance bill is not expected to be published until 5 May. We will have to look out for that, and members should get hold of it when it is published.

I wish to raise a point about the meeting on Wednesday 10 May. We have invited the Minister for Justice, who has told us that he can give us only one hour and that that hour can be only between 9 am and 10 am. That will also be part of the budget exercise, and we are negotiating about the time. I have to say that I do not think that the time that we have been offered is very helpful, as the whole budget exercise is being imposed on us by the Executive. It is incumbent on members of the Executive to make themselves as fully and freely available as the committee thinks necessary. Members should mark in their diaries that there is a possibility that that meeting, on Wednesday 10 May, will have to start at 9 am.

I will see you all next week.

Meeting closed at 12:24.