Audit Committee, 25 Nov 2003
Meeting date: Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Official Report
165KB pdf
“Moving to Mainstream”
Agenda item 5 is to inform members how the work arising from "Moving to Mainstream: The inclusion of pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools" is progressing. Committee members have received a paper that explains that I met the conveners of the Procedures Committee and the Finance Committee to talk about how we are interested in taking the matter forward, how that might impact on the Finance Committee's procedures further down the line and how the Procedures Committee might be involved if we recommended any changes to the operation of the Parliament's committees.
The outcome of that meeting was that it was felt that this committee's main interest in the matter is how amendments that come before committees might affect costs, which is the point that Audit Scotland drew to our attention in its report on the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000. The convener of the Finance Committee pointed out that, since that report, a number of changes had been made in that committee's procedures, particularly for financial memoranda, and said that he could make that information available to us. He felt that, as the Finance Committee deals with financial memoranda whereas most committees have to deal with amendments to bills from time to time, it was proper that we consider amendments. As a courtesy, I felt it proper to agree that, were we to come up with any suggestions that might involve another committee, we should make that committee aware of what we were thinking and invite its comments. The view was that that was quite a long way off, so there was no need for the Procedures Committee to become involved at this stage.
That is the position that we have reached. We will receive information from the Finance Committee on how it has attended to the issues and then, in the new year, we can begin to consider how and from whom we might take evidence for our report. As there are no questions, I take it that members are agreed to proceed on that basis.
Although we are running a little bit behind time, it is important that we have a comfort break. We will break for 10 minutes at the most before we move into private. It is only a five-minute break, but I know that you will be five minutes late after that.
Meeting suspended until 10:52 and thereafter continued in private until 12:24.