The next item of business is consideration of a Parliamentary Bureau motion. I ask Joe FitzPatrick to move motion S4M-13267, on the approval of a Scottish statutory instrument.
Motion moved,
That the Parliament agrees that the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (Part 2 Extension) Order 2015 [draft] be approved.—[Joe FitzPatrick.]
Alison McInnes has indicated that she wishes to speak against the motion.
16:58
We do not support the Scottish statutory instrument. When the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Bill was first debated in the Parliament, Scottish Liberal Democrats raised our serious concerns about the powers that part 2 would confer. Section 10 allowed ministers to
“make any provision which ... would improve the exercise of public functions”.
That included
“modifying, conferring, abolishing, transferring, or”
delegating
“any function”.
It also included abolishing, creating or amending the constitution of public bodies.
Part 2 allowed potentially radical changes to a number of bodies to be made without any ability for Parliament to make amendments. Instead, changes were to be brought to Parliament by statutory instrument. As Jeremy Purvis said at the time,
“Parliament will have a final say, but it will not have a full say in potentially large scale changes”.—[Official Report, 25 March 2010; c 25018.]
The cabinet secretary assured the Finance Committee that the powers in part 2 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 had been used in
“a relatively small number of orders ... to make important but small-scale changes.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 20 May 2015; c 2.]
He thought that that should “provide reassurance” that the powers should be extended for another five years. I do not agree. I do not doubt his good intentions, but I point out that scale is in the eye of the beholder.
We remain opposed to the powers as set out in part 2. They are too wide. The powers were used to bring forward an SSI to abolish prison visiting committees. To my mind, and to many prisoners and organisations, that was not a small-scale change. Visiting panels played an important role in the lives of people serving prison sentences and their families. That change should have been subject to thorough, proper parliamentary scrutiny, not made through an SSI.
Today’s SSI is about not simply how the powers have been used to date but how they could still be used. We are right to work to ensure that the Parliament has all the scrutiny and amending powers that it requires. A continuation of the order-making powers undermines our powers in Parliament. For that reason, Scottish Liberal Democrats will not support the SSI.
17:00
Alison McInnes said that she did not doubt my intentions in introducing the order to extend the provision that Parliament put into primary legislation back in 2010. Back then, these were the words of her former colleague Robert Brown, who I think doubted my intentions:
“John Swinney seems to want the royal dispensing power that was claimed by the Stuart kings and which led to their removal in 1649 and again in 1688. I wonder whether he, like Charles I and James VII, regards Parliament as an administrative inconvenience.”—[Official Report, 7 January 2010; c 22581.]
I will list for Parliament the instances on which the powers have been used. They were used to declassify the General Teaching Council for Scotland as a public body and turn it into an independent, profession-led organisation—that is hardly the royal dispensing power of the Stuart kings. They were used to transfer the functions of the Public Standards Commissioner for Scotland and the Public Appointments Commissioner for Scotland to a new Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, at the request not of ministers but of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body—hardly the royal dispensing power.
The powers were used to create the roles of prison monitoring co-ordinators and independent prison monitors and to transfer the roles and functions of prison visiting committees, to which Alison McInnes referred. They also provided the basis for measures to provide more confidence in the working relationship between landlords and tenant farmers; enabled ministers to recover the costs of Education Scotland carrying out inspections of independent further education colleges and English language schools; helped to streamline and simplify the planning system in two specific areas; and allowed NHS National Services Scotland to provide shared services across the public sector with a view to improving efficiency and productivity.
We took the powers to enable us to undertake modest public service reform without resorting to primary legislation. We gave that commitment in 2010. The eight occasions on which we have used the powers are evidence that we have used them judiciously and wisely, and we seek Parliament’s consent to extend that for five more years. I assure Parliament that I have no aspirations to exercise the royal dispensing power; I wish only to exercise due administrative efficiency over the public sector in Scotland.
The question on the motion will be put at decision time, to which we now come.