Official Report 217KB pdf
Agenda item 3 is on the Procedures Committee's report on the founding principles of the Scottish Parliament. The correspondence from the Procedures Committee was circulated to members with the approach paper. Do members have any comments on the paper?
Point 5 concerns the evidence that we took this morning. What, if anything, will we do with that evidence? Can we report back to the Procedures Committee to say whether any issues arose from it? I mentioned MSP training and MSP staff training and we might want to revisit a couple of other points that were raised in the evidence-taking session. We could ask what the Procedures Committee could do to improve matters in that respect. We could also let it know that we are happy with what it is doing.
You are absolutely right, which is why I suggested to Duncan McNeil that we want to keep up to date with the policy as it develops. The fact was alluded to that an audit is to be launched. Perhaps when there is to be an audit of a particular area—disability or equal pay, for example—we could ask the Procedures Committee to check out particular issues. However, that committee's work is, like ours, on-going, so we will need to touch base on a regular basis.
We have not had a chance to discuss formally what we heard this morning, but I presume that we can already identify issues. For example, child care vouchers were mentioned; we heard that the vouchers were being considered and that there had been an oversight. We could note that and agree that we are moving in the right direction. Perhaps the clerks could come back to us on the points that Marilyn Livingstone and I made about MSP staff, as well as on other points, and we could feed back comments and perhaps forward them to the Procedures Committee. I say that with the proviso that we should return to any issues when the relevant audit is conducted; I am still concerned about a few things on the basis of what we heard this morning.
If members wish, the clerks can produce a summary of the evidence that was presented today and flag up the issues that members wanted to pursue. We can raise those issues in our response to the Procedures Committee.
That would be good.
Do members agree that I should write to the convener of the Procedures Committee about how we are dealing with the correspondence?