Finance Committee, 10 Sep 2002
Meeting date: Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Official Report
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Work Programme
Item 2 is the work programme, which covers the period from today until 17 December, when we will have our final meeting before Christmas. Although the programme is pretty full for most of the period, it does not include consideration of financial memoranda for bills that have not been introduced, as the date of their introduction cannot be known. That might mean that we have to find space in the programme for other items.
I understand that the Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill was introduced yesterday. Should we decide that we want to take evidence on it, we would have to do so in the next few weeks. I suppose that ideally we would want to avoid having to schedule in additional meetings. The schedule sets out meetings fortnightly and, if we want to consider bills between now and Christmas, we would almost certainly have to schedule in two or three additional meetings, depending on the level of scrutiny that we want to give the bills.
I draw to members' attention the informal meeting that has been arranged for 25 September to discuss with Peter Peacock the 2002 spending review. We might want to do further work on the spending review after that meeting, so that might affect the programme. Members have received a paper from Professor Arthur Midwinter on the end-year flexibility statement that was made in June. I suggest that any issues from the paper that members want to discuss be covered in the session with the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services. Given that the informal session that we had with Peter Peacock in May was valuable to members of the committee, do we agree to have another informal session with him, without prejudice to any formal questioning that we might want to conduct in future?
Members indicated agreement.
If we want to consider bills, we will revise the programme. Are members broadly content with the programme as it stands?
Members indicated agreement.