Education Committee, 16 Jun 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Official Report 315KB pdf

---

Item in Private

Good morning. I welcome everyone to the 17th meeting of the Education Committee in 2004. We are meeting in public, as I always have to say at this point, so I ask everyone to ensure that their mobile phones and pagers are turned off.

Item 1 is consideration of whether to take item 5—consideration of the draft report on the child protection inquiry—in private. Can I have views on that?

We should take that item in private.

I disagree—we should discuss it in public.

I have no problem with discussing the child protection inquiry report in public, unless there are major objections to that.

This is the usual discussion that we have on items in private; I confess that I find it difficult to find the right approach to it. There are some advantages to discussing draft reports in private. That has been my view from the beginning, although the discussions that we have had in public have gone reasonably well.

There is a divided view, so we will vote on the question. The proposal is that the report be discussed in private. Are we agreed?

No.

There will be a division.

For

Brown, Robert (Glasgow) (LD)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James (Lothians) (Con)
Brankin, Rhona (Midlothian) (Lab)
Murray, Dr Elaine (Dumfries) (Lab)

Against

Byrne, Ms Rosemary (South of Scotland) (SSP)
Ingram, Mr Adam (South of Scotland) (SNP)

The result of the division is: For 4, Against 2, Abstentions 0.

Proposal agreed to.