Justice and Home Affairs Committee, 29 Mar 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 29, 2000

Official Report 204KB pdf

---

Stalking and Harassment

Members will be aware of the announcement of a consultation on the law relating to stalking and harassment and on potential changes to the law. "Stalking and Harassment: A Consultation Document" has been published and I have looked through it. It lays out clearly the issues and the variety of options that may be available in Scots law.

I think that the committee needs to make some input into the consultation exercise. I propose that the committee appoint a reporter to deal with the issues that are raised in the consultation paper and to report back to the committee so that it can take a view. In effect, appointing a reporter would take the issue off the agenda. The committee would consider the issue when it received the report, rather than schedule meetings at which it would hear evidence. It is important that we make an input. There will be other consultation exercises for us to deal with, such as that on freedom of information legislation. Indeed, another consultation, on judicial appointments, was announced, but we did not have time to put it on to the agenda for this meeting—it will be on the agenda for our next meeting.

Is it agreed that we handle this matter by appointing a reporter?

Members indicated agreement.

The next question is who the reporter should be. I propose that it should be Pauline McNeill, if she is happy about that.

Of course.

That is exactly what I wanted to hear. Does anyone else have a strong view about this? There is no reason why Pauline McNeill has to do this on her own—the committee may feel that there should be a second reporter. [Interruption.] The clerk is hissing at me that it would be better if there were just one reporter, but that does not preclude other interested members of the committee joining Pauline in whatever she does. Pauline should keep the committee advised of meetings that she sets up so that members who wish to attend can do so.

In effect, we are moving the issue off the official agenda. Other committees have used reporters for the same reason. It is agreed that Pauline McNeill will be the reporter on this issue. In a sense, it is now up to you where you go with this and how you deal with it, but the deadline for submissions is 9 June.

There are no more items on the agenda and it is bang on 11 o'clock—which is something of a miracle.

What are we doing next week? I know that we do not yet have an agenda, but could we have a wee clue?

We will deal with the Carbeth hutters and there will be three Scottish statutory instruments on legal aid before the committee. We will not be short of agenda items.

I know that, but it is nice sometimes to know roughly what is planned.

We will debate the Police Grant (Scotland) Order 2000, three SSIs, the Carbeth hutters and there will be an item on judicial appointments similar to the discussion that we had during the stalking and harassment consultation.

Are we taking evidence on, or merely debating, those issues?

We need to discuss the appointment of a reporter. If the Minister for Parliament comes back to us, the committee will, effectively, be working on nothing but legislation when we come back from the Easter recess. There will be only tiny spaces for the committee to do anything else.

The committee has been named as the secondary committee on the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill. I propose to restrict the committee's input to that debate to the specifics of the criminal offences that would be created by enactment of the bill. The committee will not have anything to do with the principles of the bill.

The committee must also contribute to the debate on the budget procedure—that will take at least two meetings.

A new bill is being introduced that has not hitherto been officially announced by the Executive, although we all know that it is coming. It is not only being introduced after the Easter recess, but it is expected that its passage will be completed by the summer recess. There are behind-the-scenes negotiations about how that is practically possible.

We have yet to find out to which committee the Abolition of Poindings and Warrant Sales Bill will be referred for stage 2 consideration. As we were the lead committee at stage 1, it would be fair to bet that it will be fired back to us for stage 2. That work severely limits the committee's select committee function. The only way we will be able to function at all in select committee mode will be by appointing reporters.

Meeting closed at 11:02.