Finance Committee, 24 Apr 2001
Meeting date: Tuesday, April 24, 2001
Official Report
122KB pdf
Voluntary Sector Funding
Agenda item 3 is on voluntary sector funding, on which Donald Gorrie will give us an oral report.
I had a long and useful telephone conversation with Jackie Baillie, who was supportive of the committee's intention to pursue the matter of voluntary sector funding, given that our efforts will tie in with those of her officials. It is proposed that we should work up a remit for such an inquiry and, as a courtesy, run our remit past her to see whether she has comments to make.
I have since held two meetings with parliamentary officials from the clerking team and the Scottish Parliament information centre. We discovered that the timetable for the Executive's investigation appears to be shorter than we had been led to believe. The Executive's consultation is to finish at the end of July. Under the rules, the consultation cannot start later than 9 May, or some time around then—that is the date that we worked out—as it must last 12 weeks. We hope that, any day now, the Executive will produce its consultation document.
It was suggested that the most sensible approach would be for us to wait until that document was published. That will enable us to target our efforts to fill the gaps that the Executive does not cover. In the meantime, we will work up questionnaires that we can send out to groups that members have visited already and to other people. That will allow us to obtain responses quickly to feed into the Executive's work and to lay the foundations should we, or the Parliament, wish to pursue the matter. We hope that before the next meeting we will know the remit of the Executive's consultation, so that we can say how best the committee's inquiry could fit in with it. We will present that to the committee in a fortnight's time.
Could you do that in writing?
Yes. The only snag will be if the Executive is slower than we anticipate in producing its consultation document. In that case, we may have to decide whether just to go with our remit anyway and hope for the best.
We could handle a small delay in the Executive's response but, if the delay is longer, we will want to look at the issue again. However, will we receive a report from you in writing on 8 May?
Yes.
Can the Executive's consultation document be circulated? Not all members may want it, but I certainly want to see a copy.
The clerks will ask that copies be sent directly to us; we do not expect Donald Gorrie to do that. I thank Donald Gorrie for his report.