Subordinate Legislation Committee, 30 Sep 2008

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Official Report 125KB pdf

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Regulatory Framework Inquiry

I welcome everyone to the 27th meeting in 2008 of the Subordinate Legislation Committee. We have received apologies from Gil Paterson, Jackie Baillie and John Park. I ask everyone to turn off any mobile phones, BlackBerrys and so on.

We have all read the regulatory framework inquiry paper, which I thank our team for producing. It seems to be a fair record of what we talked about on our away day. It lists several recommendations on the forthcoming legislative reform bill and recommendations from the Subordinate Legislation Committee's 12th report of 2008, "Inquiry into the Regulatory Framework in Scotland", which were the subject of further discussion at official level over the summer. We then had our away day and here we are today.

No-one has any comments at this stage, but we have to make a number of decisions. I will take the committee through the questions one by one.

Are members agreed that the committee should write to the Minister for Parliamentary Business, noting and welcoming the Government's commitment to introducing the bill and also noting that the committee will, of course, scrutinise the bill carefully?

Members indicated agreement.

Are we agreed that proposals for a process for the post-legislative scrutiny of Scottish statutory instruments should be discussed more widely within the Parliament, and particularly that they should be shared with other subject committees through the Conveners Group?

Members indicated agreement.

Are we also agreed to pursue the option of strengthening the scrutiny of compliance with the 21-day rule, rather than introducing a new category of emergency procedure?

Members indicated agreement.

Do we agree to invite the Minister for Parliamentary Business to give evidence following publication of the draft bill, and to amend the wording of recommendation 12 for the purposes of future discussion?

Members indicated agreement.

Finally, are we agreed that we will not pursue the case for a system of conditional annulment, to note that further discussions will be held about a system to enable minor technical changes to be made to instruments, and to publish an annual report to detail the progress made by the Scottish Government against commitments and other issues and trends relevant to the work of the committee?

Members indicated agreement.