Official Report 362KB pdf
Item 2 concerns the committee’s visit to Spain. I was going to say a few words about it but, given the time, I will defer those comments. Duncan McNeil might want to say something.
I just direct members to paragraph 30 of paper 4, which provides a great summary of our findings. It says:
“the meetings we held in Spain reaffirmed our view that implementing the principles of transparency and accountability in the inter-governmental processes which will underpin the further devolution of powers proposed in the Scotland Bill is not only necessary but also eminently achievable.”
That is what we found out in Spain. Many of the things that we have been thinking about during our evidence sessions are confirmed by the Spanish experience. It was heartening to see that Spain has overcome the difficulties and has applied processes to deal with new and evolving situations.
The key bits for me are in paragraphs 16, 17 and 18, which note that the Spanish constitutional court works alongside the bilateral committees and says that, if people feel that something is not operating correctly, they can take the issue to the constitutional court. The Cortes Generales can go directly to the court, and the autonomous bodies have to go through a more elaborate process. Paragraph 18 describes well the key learning around the transparency that exists in that arrangement.
The committee will meet again next week, when we will consider an update to the Scotland Bill.
Meeting closed at 10:44.Previous
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