Environment and Rural Development Committee, 15 Nov 2006

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Official Report 215KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Environmental Protection Act 1990: Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (Scotland) Act 2006 (SE/2006/164)

Items 3 and 4 are subordinate legislation. Strictly speaking, the code of practice is not subordinate legislation, but it is subject to annulment in similar terms to the process for negative instruments. The Subordinate Legislation Committee has considered the code and has no comments to make. Do colleagues have any comments?

No.

Okay. Are we therefore content with the code and happy to make no recommendation to the Parliament?

Members indicated agreement.

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Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (SSI 2006/530)

The Subordinate Legislation Committee has made no comments on this negative instrument.

I think that we should welcome the regulations. They are structured in such a way that there are broad principles set out at the start and also a number of schedules that I understand will make it easy for the Executive to perform updates on particular issues in the schedules rather than having to amend small bits of the legislation. Hopefully, the fact that everything has been brought together in the regulations will be helpful to users.

I agree with you about the layout, convener. Despite the size of the regulations, they are easy to follow. They are important and I am interested in the effects that they might have on small, rural abattoirs that might struggle to comply with them. I would have welcomed the chance to question the minister in that regard. I am never quite sure how the decision is made about whether an instrument will follow the negative or the positive procedure but, given that the issue is quite complex, I think that it is unfortunate that we will not have a chance to question the minister.

It is entirely possible to put the matter on our agenda for next week. Would you be happy if the committee were to receive a written comment from the minister on the issue that you raise?

Yes. I just want to see whether the question whether the small rural abattoirs will be able to comply with the regulations without too much difficulty has been considered.

Okay. Do members agree to ask the minister to write to us on that matter before the next meeting and to discuss the response at that meeting?

Members indicated agreement.

Sorry about that, colleagues.

No; the reason why we are being consulted is so that we can raise those kinds of issues.

As we agreed at our meeting on 1 November, we will move into private session to discuss our report to the Finance Committee on the 2007-08 budget process.

Meeting continued in private until 11:57.