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The final agenda item is our good friend, the sift. The issue of the sift was discussed at some length at the committee's away day, a week to 10 days ago. A paper on it will be produced by the clerks in the near future. It is a complicated issue and we must work out new mechanisms to achieve our objectives. At the away day, several members had different views on how best we might sift the EU legislation that comes before the committee.
I spent some time going through the sift document and kept picking up things that I felt sure would be of great interest. However, I am a bit concerned about the likely content of those papers. One of the things that annoyed me was the fact that I kept coming across the same paper on various pages, as papers are allocated on a committee basis. I suggest that there might be some advantage in having a sift paper that simply lists the items from one to 214—or however many items there are—with the committee column used to allocate a committee to each item as the list progresses. That would save quite a lot of paper, for a start. It would probably also make easier reading for the members. Individual committee lists could still be produced for the committees, but we would be able to make fairly swift judgments on the contents of the papers.
I am happy to take that on board. I remind members that, at the away day, all members of the committee were invited to submit any ideas that they had directly to the clerks, who are preparing a paper.
Do any other members feel as I do when they go through the sift document? Does anyone else have difficulties in dealing with it?
I will allow members to speak if they wish, but at the away day we expressed our concerns over the way in which the sift process is handled, given the amount of work that it involves and the need to prioritise.
A typical example of the difficulties that we face is the fact that we are given a 24-page document—albeit containing many repetitions—outlining the titles of various documents. It takes long enough to read the headings, never mind the actual documents. Most of the papers are probably very worthy, although there will be a certain amount of dross, and buried among the mass of papers there could well be something that could spell difficulties for some sector—large or small—somewhere in Scotland. We must devise a system for identifying such things early on and ensuring that the people who are affected are consulted. The committee and the Executive can then have their input to make the best of a difficult job. That is our big task. However, we cannot do that as individual members. We depend on specialists, the clerks and interested parties and businesses to spot that stuff early on. We must find a better system.
I thank members for their comments and remind the committee that this agenda item is the sift document that is before us. We can delve further into the issue of the sift process when we receive the paper on the matter from the clerks. Stephen Imrie has a point to make.
It is just a minor point. One of the reforms to the sift paper that the clerks are going to suggest is exactly what Mr Home Robertson is suggesting. It should be possible to identify which documents, out of the 24 pages of documents, could be considered of special importance, although there is obviously a question mark over the criteria that would be used to identify documents of special importance—perhaps such documents would be green or white papers. Members discussed several ideas at the away day, and it is my intention to put those—plus any other comments that members have on the sift paper—together in the paper that we will produce for the committee.
Thank you, Stephen. Before closing the meeting, I place on record the fact that Margaret Ewing submitted her apologies during the course of the meeting. The next meeting will be on 23 September at 2 pm in committee room 1. If members could remain behind for a couple of minutes to discuss some housekeeping issues, I would be grateful.
Meeting closed at 16:21.
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