Environment and Rural Development Committee, 06 Sep 2006
Meeting date: Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Official Report
108KB pdf
Regulatory Framework Inquiry
Colleagues have received correspondence from the Subordinate Legislation Committee and its draft report into the regulatory framework in Scotland. As colleagues will recall, we made comments in writing to the Subordinate Legislation Committee at the early stage of its work last year. I gave evidence on the committee's behalf to the Subordinate Legislation Committee in November.
Colleagues have in front of them a paper that outlines the main features of the new scrutiny procedure recommended by the Subordinate Legislation Committee. There are specific issues on which the Subordinate Legislation Committee seeks comments. In the report from Mark Brough, we have a note of our previous comments on the issue so that members can see to what extent the committee's views have been taken on board. Most of our comments have been taken on board. There are one or two extra issues on which we did not comment. It is more a case of whether members are happy with where the Subordinate Legislation Committee has got to.
One of the biggest of the recommended changes is the suggestion that while a division should remain between technical and policy scrutiny, the process should be changed. Although the committee would still get a Subordinate Legislation Committee report, there would be no requirement for the committee to consider that report before it submits its own report. That is the biggest procedural change, which leaves the issue of how something should be resolved. I would like clarification on how the process works. The Subordinate Legislation Committee suggests that it would be possible for draft instruments to be changed by the Executive on very minor technical grounds, for example where there has been a mistake, a typo or a basic error. We would support that, because in the past we have supported the policy behind a statutory instrument only to end up having to deal with it twice because the first version contained a basic error. Such a change would be helpful to the system. My only question is who decides what those issues are.
Does anyone have any comments on the rolling consolidation issue?
I was not on the committee when it considered the issue previously and my only comment is on the exceptional Scottish statutory instrument procedure for emergency or urgent instruments. I have no problem with the procedure other than to say that it should not be overused and that an issue should not become an emergency simply because the Executive has not got its act together in time to get the instrument ready when it should have done. I would want the use of the procedure to be monitored. I have no objection to it as an entity; it is just that it should not be an overused entity.
It would be up to the Presiding Officer to accept such an exceptional SI. The idea of monitoring the procedure is good, because it would keep everybody on their toes. We shall pass those two comments to the Subordinate Legislation Committee.