Justice 1 Committee, 18 Mar 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Official Report 138KB pdf

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Convener's Report

I welcome members to the seventh meeting in 2003 of the Justice 1 Committee and remind everybody to turn off their mobile phones and pagers. No apologies have been received.

Agenda item 1 is the convener's report. The Executive's response to the committee's report on the regulation of the legal profession inquiry has been received—members should have paper J1/03/7/13, which makes interesting reading. The Minister for Justice broadly welcomes the committee's recommendations, although the Executive does not support the committee's view that there should be a single gateway for complaints handling.

The committee has also received a response from the Law Society of Scotland—paper J1/03/7/20—on the scheme of delegation for complaints handling, which makes even more interesting reading. I think that we have upset the Law Society a little. The successor committee must consider whether to pursue those issues. This is certainly not the end of the matter.