Communities Committee, 10 Sep 2003

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Official Report 119KB pdf

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Work Programme

The next item on our agenda will lead to more substantial discussion. Members have received a paper on the committee's work programme. We hope to agree the programme and to publish it on the committee's web page. Whatever programme we devise will be subject to the vagaries of time and events. I invite comments on the programme. I will take general comments first but, if members wish to go through the programme paragraph by paragraph, I will be happy to do that.

I asked for clarification of this at our recent away day. My experience with the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill was that we did not give it enough time in committee, so I would like to know exactly how many bills this committee will be dealing with. I would like to give each bill an appropriate amount of time. The work programme mentions bills in six areas: antisocial behaviour, planning, housing, tenement law, charity law and domestic sprinklers. I think that there will also be some members' bills. Can you clarify whether the committee will deal with six Executive bills and potentially four or five members' bills? I would like that to be made clear before we discuss the programme further.

We expect that if the proposed bills on those matters are introduced during the four-year session, they will come to the committee. I am not sure whether the Parliamentary Bureau has agreed to that, although I think that it has agreed that the antisocial behaviour bill will come to us.

It would be helpful to be given an idea of what we are doing in the coming year.

The only bill mentioned in the First Minister's speech setting out the legislative programme that is likely to come to the committee is the one on antisocial behaviour. It is up to the Parliamentary Bureau to decide which committee the bill will go to but, given that antisocial behaviour is within the committee's remit, it is highly likely that it will come to the committee for consideration in the autumn.

The other bills that are mentioned in the work programme are possible pieces of legislation that are identified within the partnership agreement. We have flagged them up now to let the committee know that it is likely that they will come to the committee at some point in the session. The work programme covers the four years of the session rather than the first year.

I understand that the planning bill will come to the committee at the beginning of next year. Is that accurate?

It is expected that there will be a planning bill, but the timetable has not been outlined. We expect that when it is introduced it will come to us. We will have to decide how to handle it in our detailed work programme.

In this paper on the work programme the clerks have tried to scope out the matters that we might be expected to deal with over the next four years. If the bills were all to come to the committee next week, it would be legitimate for us to report that we would find it difficult to consider them. We are trying to get a sense of the shape of our work over four years.

Do we strongly expect that the antisocial behaviour bill will come to the committee? It should do, but I saw a comment in the press that the Justice 1 Committee or Justice 2 Committee might think that it is in its remit because it will change the law.

The logic of that position is that one of the justice committees would have to take every bill and that no other committee would deal with any bill. As is reasonable, other committees may have an important role as a secondary committee. We will have to plan with other committees to decide which committee takes evidence and how that is reported to the lead committee to ensure that we—if we are the lead committee—have all the evidence.

Are we likely to be the lead committee?

I think that it is highly likely, given that the Minister for Communities has responsibility for consultation on the matter and for the bill. Our remit broadly matches that of the Minister for Communities.

I may be wrong, but I think that Parliament has given its approval to our being the lead committee on the antisocial behaviour bill. Did that not go through Parliament in the past couple of weeks?

I am not aware of it having done so.

I am sure that we will be the lead committee.

The work programme indicates that over the next four years we will have to deal with many important pieces of legislation. We can look forward to four years during which we can involve ourselves in the day-to-day issues that affect communities throughout the country.

Without doubt the most important piece of legislation for the general public is the antisocial behaviour bill. I want us to concentrate on that in order to do it justice. We should get out to communities to meet ordinary people who can give examples of their experiences.

We will deal with that approach separately under item 4.

Our work programme will surely be dominated by the antisocial behaviour bill over the next year. As we discussed at our away day, the bill and the inquiry into the social economy will be enough to take on in the coming period.

I have a couple of questions on the work programme.

This point might relate to the paragraph of the work programme on homelessness or to the paragraph on affordable housing. Will we have an opportunity to consider the important issue of the supply and availability of social housing, particularly in the light of the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Act 2003, which is very much to be welcomed?

As Cathie Craigie mentioned, it is recommended that the committee hold an inquiry into the social economy. Would that inquiry be for one year, or is it anticipated that it would take longer?

At some point over the next four years, I would like the committee to look at poverty in some depth, possibly as part of our deliberations on the antisocial behaviour bill. As we saw in the presentation from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, poverty is an important issue.

First, on whether we should have an inquiry into affordable housing, we agreed in our earlier discussion that all the suggestions were useful, interesting and important. There is no suggestion, as may have been implied elsewhere, that the committee does not want to inquire into those matters. The previous committee did a lot of work on housing. In our discussion, we agreed that we need to ensure that our inquiries are substantial and that we should identify one issue as our first priority. However, that does not mean that everything that the committee does will be tied up for the next four years.

I do not envisage that our inquiry into the social economy will last four years. It has been suggested that we take initial evidence to get an idea about what the remit of the inquiry should be and what it should focus on, given that there are different bits that are equally important. From my perspective, the mutual and co-operative aspect is central. The inquiry will not take four years, but we will be judging the social economy to be our first priority and the one that we will start with.

We have a continuing interest in housing matters and in poverty issues because they are part of our remit. We will have an opportunity to interrogate the Executive on them through the budget process and we will have a similar opportunity to reflect on them through our post-enactment scrutiny of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. Therefore, it is not as if housing is getting chucked on to the back burner. It will remain a live part of our work.

As Mary Scanlon pointed out at the away day, it is important that the committee has a substantial inquiry that involves people. If one member is abandoned to do everything on their own, that can put them under phenomenal pressure and perhaps not give us the right kind of material to work with. What we want to do is the way forward. However, the other issues are still important and we will always want to keep them in mind. We will regularly monitor them and reflect on whether what we are doing is what we aimed to do.

Pursuing that subject, I support the suggestion that our main inquiry should be into developing the social economy.

On housing, perhaps the convener and the clerk can give me guidance as to whether it would be possible for the committee to ask for written evidence on housing finance from Shelter Scotland, the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland and anyone else who is relevant. That could then inform our discussions on the budget. If we are to tell the Executive that it must put more investment into housing, it will be useful to have some information. That would be helpful but would not take up too much time.

Those organisations can make written submissions at any time and in fact they are proactive in having a dialogue with the committee, which is why we have the list of suggestions for inquiries. We would encourage that.

Next week, we will be provided with a paper on how we will deal with the budget. One proposal that we will examine is that we should not only seek written evidence on the budget from such organisations but perhaps hear oral evidence. That would give them the opportunity to make the points that they want to make and us the opportunity to reflect on what they have to say.

I want to raise one other small point on planning. There are two aspects to planning: the physical aspect, which is to do with the environment and so on, and the human aspect, which involves the role of councillors. In fact, I am going to see the deputy minister with responsibility for local government on an issue that has been raised with me, which is that councillors on planning committees are emasculated. I raise the issue because planning involves both the Local Government Committee and the Communities Committee, and I do not know how we would deal with that. I am not suggesting that we should not look at planning, but we would need to take account of the way in which the issue involves the Local Government Committee.

Do you mean when a planning bill is introduced?

Yes.

There will be opportunity for secondary committees to make their considerations. My experience from the Local Government Committee is that where people thought they had input, they could seek the opportunity to provide a report to the lead committee.

If there are no further comments, are members agreed that the work programme is a useful way forward?

Members indicated agreement.

We also have to agree that the work programme be published on the committee's web page. People are waiting with bated breath at this very moment for it to be published. Are we agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

It might be worth saying that the clerks take the view that if we are to undertake all the work that has been outlined on the work programme, we will have to meet weekly.