Official Report 446KB pdf
Under agenda item 4, we are considering one document, on which issues have been raised.
Environmental Standards Scotland Strategy 2026-2031 (ESS/2025/01)
This document is a revised strategy for Environmental Standards Scotland and is subject to a bespoke procedure for parliamentary consideration under the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021.
Paragraph 1 of schedule 2 of the 2021 act contains a detailed list of information that the strategy must set out, concerning how ESS intends to go about its work. It appears to the committee that some of the required information is not included in the strategy.
Some of the information appears to be contained instead in separate guidance that ESS has produced. The 2021 act requires all of that information to be in the strategy that is laid before the Parliament. Putting the information in a separate document, which is published on ESS’s website, does not fulfil that requirement.
Accordingly, does the committee wish to report the strategy on the general reporting ground, in that some of the information required by paragraph 1 of schedule 2 does not appear to be contained in the revised strategy?
Members indicated agreement.
Does the committee also wish to highlight to the lead committee in its report a more minor point—that the revised strategy suggests that ESS scrutinises all organisations that perform functions of a public nature, without making clear that there are exceptions to that?
Members indicated agreement.
The next meeting of the committee will take place on Tuesday 11 November.
Meeting closed at 09:32.