Education Committee,
Meeting date: Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Official Report
265KB pdf
Subordinate Legislation
Joint Inspections (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2006 (Draft)
Good morning colleagues; welcome to the 11th meeting in 2006 of the Education Committee.
For our first item of business I welcome Robert Brown, Jackie Brock from the children and families division of the Scottish Executive and Douglas Tullis from the office of the solicitor to the Scottish Executive. Members will recall that the minister undertook at our meeting on 19 April to lodge an amending instrument after the committee noticed defective drafting in the original draft regulations.
I ask the minister to make his opening comments, after which we will move to members' questions.
I will be very brief. As you said, convener, this is a follow-up to the meeting that took place on 19 April. I said at that time that we would sort out the deficiency that came to light in the course of the Subordinate Legislation Committee's scrutiny of the matter. The amendment was lodged on 20 April and it is now before the Education Committee.
The amendment is very simple; it is to insert "(1)" after "5" in regulations 11(a) and (b). It has the effect of ceasing to create an offence where we did not want one for people who did not have the appropriate documentation. It was a technical omission.
The fact that the committee approved the regulations the last time they came before it has allowed the first joint inspection for child protection services to begin this week in East Lothian. I am grateful to the committee for its co-operation in allowing that to happen. We all wanted to ensure that the inspection process was not held up any longer, and that has been result of the committee's forbearance.
It is not necessary to say anything further. For the committee's information, following consultation, ministers have approved the code of practice. A copy was issued to the committee on 8 May and one has been placed in the parliamentary library.
Thank you, minister. Are there any questions or comments?
I do not have a question, but I am pleased that ministers have responded to the Subordinate Legislation Committee. Perhaps, in future, ministers might bring forward draft instruments to committees for their consideration. The Subordinate Legislation Committee is about to make that suggestion.
That is absolutely right, but there was an element of urgency about this matter that lay behind the pressure to get it right. It was a good exhibition of the procedures of the Parliament's committees identifying issues—defects in this case—and helping the Executive to sort them out.
I ask Robert Brown to move motion S2M-4299.
Motion moved,
That the Education Committee recommends that the draft Joint Inspections (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2006 be approved.—[Robert Brown.]
Motion agreed to.
I thank the minister and his team for coming along this morning.