Justice Committee, 26 Jun 2007
Meeting date: Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Official Report
204KB pdf
Serious Crime Bill
We move to agenda item 3, on the Serious Crime Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation. The clerks have issued an extensive paper, but we do not need to spend a great deal of time on the matter today.
For the benefit of new members, I note that such Sewel memoranda are not uncommon in the Parliament; they come before us frequently. The majority of them are not controversial and are agreed on the nod. Margaret Smith will confirm that the more controversial memoranda are usually discussed at the Parliamentary Bureau and are allocated a debate in the chamber.
In respect of the two bills that we were invited to consider today, we are almost talking in a vacuum. Briefing paper J/S3/07/2/1 invites members to consider the two legislative consent memoranda in question. Because this is the first time that new members have been involved, I will explain the process in some detail. These LCMs are going nowhere. The committee was originally expected to consider two LCMs—on the Serious Crime Bill and on the Victims of Overseas Terrorism Bill—to which the clerk's paper refers. However, the Victims of Overseas Terrorism Bill has now fallen, so the committee is not required to do anything about it.
On the Serious Crime Bill, the briefing paper explains that the cabinet secretary does not intend to lodge a legislative consent motion. However, the committee is still required to report on his memorandum. As I said, we are talking in a vacuum; these LCMs will not proceed, and I assume that members will take the view that the committee report should be extremely brief and simply note the position. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Assuming that the cabinet secretary turns out to be wrong and the issues covered in the LCMs proceed, will the committee have an opportunity to revisit them?
We are tied in with what the Westminster Government does. If it takes the view that it is not going to support a bill, despite its merits or demerits, it is a dead issue as far as we are concerned. If the cabinet secretary takes a view on a bill that the Westminster Government is in favour of proceeding with, there will be consequences and political debate about what happens eventually. However, these are minor matters. In all the years of the Scottish Parliament, perhaps three or four LCMs have been the subject of controversy—if that.
To stick with the procedural point, although this might not happen in the next four years, if the issues covered in the LCMs were to rise from their supposed ashes, would we have dealt with them for the final time today or would they come back later?
If there was any dispute about what should happen, the matter would require to be determined by Parliament.
If the Commons was to pass the Serious Crime Bill as amended by the Lords, Westminster would have legislated in a devolved area. It happened once in the area of housing legislation, and we had to go through a process of giving retrospective consent. We would have to go through that process.
Thank you for that.
That concludes the formal part of the meeting. I thank the public for attending. We now move into private session to deal with the various housekeeping matters to which I referred earlier.
Meeting continued in private until 12:58.