The Parliamentary Bureau has designated this committee as the secondary committee for the Police and Fire Services (Finance) (Scotland) Bill. We are not obliged to report formally on the bill. The lead committee is the Local Government Committee, which will have a number of evidence-taking sessions in which it will hear from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Executive and from the police and the fire services.
If the Local Government Committee flags up some issues as a result of its inquiries, can we have them sent to us so that we can decide whether we should take another look at the bill? Of course, we might be happy simply to leave the bill with that committee.
I am sure that our clerks will liaise with the clerks of the Local Government Committee. I am not clear about the time scale for consideration of the bill. I assume that we will have time to do what Mr Davidson suggests after the summer.
I believe that the Local Government Committee will start taking evidence before the summer recess, but will have at least one evidence-taking session after the summer recess. I imagine that the deadline for the end of stage 1 will be mid to late September.
It would be helpful if we could have an update on that at our first meeting after the recess.
The provisions in the bill seem to be sensible and long overdue.
The bill is in line with what is happening in the spending departments of the Scottish Executive.