Education Committee, 14 Jan 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Official Report 365KB pdf

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Item in Private

Good morning and welcome to the meeting. I am sorry for the slightly late start: I was caught on the phone just before I was to come to the committee room. I ask members to ensure that their mobile phones are turned off.

Agenda item 1 is consideration of whether to take in private item 4, which is on our draft stage 1 report on the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, in accordance with committees' normal practice. Do members agree to take that item in private?

It will probably be no surprise that my general view is that we should consider draft reports in public unless we have a good reason not to. The last time we considered whether to take an item in private, our discussion related to a draft report on the budget and I asked the committee to reflect on whether we had to take the item in private. I do not think that the stage 1 report contains anything that would lead to difficulty.

Partly because of the way in which you chair the committee, convener, we have evolved a co-operative way of working, which would not be prejudiced if we took the item in public. If we could continue the tone of our discussion last week, there would be no problem with discussing the report in public. I suggest that we take the item in public rather than in private.

Are there any different views?

I have no problem with the suggestion.

The usual practice is to consider draft reports in private, but I am content to abide by the majority decision.

It is fair to say that the decision is evenly balanced. The Conveners Group has discussed the issue and the Procedures Committee continues to consider it. I would prefer to have a standard parliamentary approach to draft reports, but I detect that the committee's view is that we should consider the draft report in public.

I agree, but I am slightly uneasy. I suggested to Fiona Hyslop last week that we could have discussions in public because the committee has not had a disagreement that it could not resolve—today will probably be the day when that happens.

It might be.

The signs are good that the discussion will be as constructive as all our sessions have been. However, when I thought about the issue later, it seemed to me that holding only some sessions on draft reports in public might flag up the ones that we consider in private as being particularly difficult or exceptionally problematic. This is a slightly tricky area. Although I had thought that we should deal with the matter case by case, I can see that that lack of consistency could be a problem.

Having said all that, as a previous member of the Procedures Committee, along with Fiona Hyslop, I think that we should assume that our meetings will be held in public as often as possible, including—where possible—when those meetings involve discussing draft reports.

My view was slightly changed by last week's meeting, in which we dealt with the issues in public in a satisfactory manner. On the other hand, I am conscious that for some bills—such as the bill in the previous session that involved the dispute about stock transfer—there are advantages to meeting in private in order to get a coherent committee view. However, my assessment is that, on this occasion, we should continue to meet in public for consideration of our draft report on the bill. Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.