Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 23 Apr 2002

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Official Report 224KB pdf

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Items in private

We are now in public session. Everyone should ensure that their mobile phones and pagers are turned off.

As I have to do for the record at every meeting, I welcome Cathy Peattie, who is the substitute committee member for the Labour party. She is substituting for Karen Gillon, who is on maternity leave. I also welcome Brian Adam, who has been appointed by the Finance Committee as its reporter on the budget process.

I seek the committee's agreement to take in private item 4, which involves the appointment of advisers for the School Meals (Scotland) Bill; item 5, which concerns drafting a proposal for a committee bill; and item 6, which is our consideration of our work programme.

I am still concerned that we are taking too much of the agenda in private. For example, I really do not understand why we need to discuss our work programme in private. I understand that item 4, on the appointment of advisers, has to be taken in private because of financial considerations. Last week, I also reluctantly agreed to take our consideration of the commission bill proposal in private because we will be discussing timetabling and staffing issues. However, I would have thought that our discussion of the work programme should be on the record to allow people to read the Official Report, find out our concerns and feed into the process.

Are members happy with that suggestion?

Members indicated agreement.

That is a wee success for you, Mike. Well done.

After that noble contribution from Mike Russell, I should tell the committee that, just as we arrived at the meeting this afternoon, we received documents for consideration in relation to the annual expenditure report. As a result, I suggest that we should have 10 minutes to read through them.

Who has written the briefing note? Is it Arthur Midwinter?

Yes.

I apologise to people who have just come in, but I have to suspend the meeting so that we can read the documents.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—

I thank everyone for their patience, particularly members who are visiting the committee this afternoon. Apropos of our previous discussion on the work programme, I suggest that we put that item after item 3, which is our consideration of petition PE427. That will allow us to deal with the items in private without having to go back into public afterwards.