Subordinate Legislation Committee, 28 Nov 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Official Report 140KB pdf

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Instrument Not Subject to Parliamentary Procedure

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Regulation of Scallop Dredges (Scotland) Revocation Order 2006 (SSI 2006/549)

The order revokes the Regulation of Scallop Dredges (Scotland) Order 2005 (SSI 2005/371), which set out the technical standards with which a scallop dredge must comply if it is to be used in Scotland.

We considered the original instrument on 5 September 2005 and asked the Executive whether it had complied with the requirements of the European Commission's technical standards directive, as failure to have done so would have meant that the relevant legislation was unenforceable. In response, the Executive indicated that it was consulting its English counterparts and would to write us again in due course. On that basis, we reported to Parliament that we had questioned whether the regulations were intra vires and whether they might raise a devolution issue on the ground of their possible failure to comply with European Community law.

The Executive has now written to us explaining that, after lengthy consultation with the relevant UK departments, it accepts the committee's view that certain parts of the order do, indeed, fall within the scope of the directive and should have been notified to the Commission under article 8 of that directive. The Executive proposes to notify the standards to the Commission in accordance with the directive and has made the current order, which revokes the previous one.

It is nice to be proved right, is it not? I am slightly concerned by the length of time that it has taken for the Executive to come to its decision. It has just been good luck that no enforcement action has been taken during the intervening period; otherwise, a series of other problems could have been raised by the fact that enforcement action had been taken under regulations that were, frankly, not fit for purpose or, at least technically, in breach of EC law. I wonder whether we could get further information about the timescale that has been involved. I do not know the circumstances in which enforcement action might have been taken or what the outcome of that would have been.

Okay. We will ask about the time that it has taken for the Executive to respond.

Can we also raise with the Executive the technical matters that are mentioned in paragraphs 240 and 241 of the committee's legal brief? I dare say that those are not matters of massive public interest. Nonetheless, I would have thought that, in drafting an order that replaces an earlier, flawed one, the Executive would want to be scrupulous in getting every detail correct. It might be appropriate to make those observations and see whether the Executive feels that any further explanation might be useful.

Are those the paragraphs to do with the explanatory note?

Paragraph 240 talks about the failure to accompany the revocation order with an Executive note, and paragraph 241 contains three technical points that may replicate some of what is in paragraph 240. In the round, those paragraphs detail a number of technical imperfections in the order.

Okay. We will write to the Executive about those issues formally rather than informally.

Members indicated agreement.