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Agenda item 3 is consideration of whether to take in private a briefing from the Finance Committee's adviser at our next meeting, which is on 27 April. I intend that item to be placed at the beginning of next week's meeting so that we can inform ourselves before we talk to sportscotland and the minister.
As I intimated to you at the beginning of the meeting, convener, I feel slightly concerned about the item in the papers that we received today that said that neither of the two candidates to whom the position of financial adviser to our committee had been offered had been able to take up the post. My concern is that, although I am a committee member, I learned about that through publication of the public papers. I would have appreciated an e-mail to let me know that in advance.
There was a delay in getting hold of the first potential adviser whom we identified. When we did so, we found that he had changed employment to the extent that he could not act as adviser. By that time, we were close to the beginning of the recess. We tried to contact the second potential adviser, who was also unavailable. I take your point that we could have told members about that by e-mail in the week before the recess. We undertake to do that should a similar situation arise again.
Is it too late to take on anybody else? We are at the start of the process, which runs for a considerable time.
We could consider that. We are due to report to the Finance Committee by 18 May. To an extent, the budget process never stops. We will need to consider how we proceed. I do not want to do that without an adviser, but at present we have no opportunity to follow the necessary procedure to identify another adviser and to report to the Finance Committee on time. I thought that at least having the advantage of Professor Midwinter's advice would be better than no input.
We have a good paper from Stephen Herbert of the Scottish Parliament information centre. He is here in the room, so I will not say anything unpleasant about him—as if I would. Could he give us more advice than normal, given that we have a gap?
Yes. We will ensure that Stephen Herbert attends for the item at next week's meeting. Do members agree to take that item in private?
The final decision is on whether we will consider in private our future work programme at our next meeting. I have put that on the agenda because the committee has existed for almost a year and I thought that now was a good opportunity for us to take stock, to examine whether any of our decisions about our work programme need revisiting and to decide whether we want to delete or add anything. That will give members the chance to say how they wish the committee to proceed in the coming year. Do members agree to take that item in private?
Meeting closed at 16:36.
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