Chamber and committees

Like many staff, your investigators and staff are sometimes at the front edge of that.

Before I close this part of the meeting, is there anything else that you would like to add?

No problem, Annie—technology is what it is.

Commissioner, you have talked about the budgetary challenge—your resource challenge. You have a request in at the moment and were gleeful at the passing of the budget last night, although the funds have probably come from somewhere else. Is the resourcing model working and will it work going forward, or should the Parliament and the Scottish Government look at the model for the commissioner?

Our next agenda item is consideration of the Scottish Elections (Representation and Reform) Act 2025 (Consequential Provision) Regulations 2026, which are subject to the affirmative procedure.

We have an opportunity to take evidence from the minister before we consider whether to recommend to the Parliament that the Scottish statutory instrument be approved.

I welcome to the meeting Graeme Dey, Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, who is joined today by Scottish Government officials Andrew Proudfoot, who is the Parliament team leader, Parliament and legislation unit, and Rebecca Reid, who is a solicitor. Good morning.

I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Again, we find ourselves in an interesting position in which we are invited not to put in the bill something that we recognise as important. My amendment 218 would require the Scottish Parliament to review the act. Of course, any committee of the Parliament has an innate right to investigate anything within its remit that it wants to. However, the purpose behind the amendment is to mark the importance of the issue. I am always cautious of the dangers of binding a future Parliament—I agree with Ross Greer on that—but I am more than happy to bind a future Government.

The minister is right that there are two aspects. There is an overarching responsibility relating to how the bill is progressing, but there is also an obligation, through post-legislative scrutiny, to drill down into what is happening with a piece of legislation and to consider whether it is operating as the Parliament envisaged when it was passed, or whether unknown unknowns or known unknowns have come into view.

To be fair, all the amendments in the group articulate a review of the bill. The minister rightly has concerns with regard to amendments 219 and 220, because they would overlap with reviews that are being considered or other elements that will be looked at. However, it is important to have a review because, as we have heard, there are areas in which the bill has not yet envisaged reviews taking place and that the minister would like to happen.

Albeit that my amendment 218 would place a burden on the Scottish Parliament, the advantage is that it would place a duty on others to instigate the review. The questions that the members of the committee that would do that would ask themselves are articulated at a very high level in the amendment, which would allow that committee to scrutinise as it wishes to do.

That intervention is incredibly helpful. If amendments 219 and 220 appear in the bill at stage 2, that will allow progress towards what I hope will be a cross-Parliament agreement on post-legislative scrutiny.

With that, I seek to withdraw my amendment 218.

Amendment 218, by agreement, withdrawn.

Amendment 219 moved—[Ross Greer].

I am not being in any way disrespectful to Police Scotland, but is the challenge not that it will always be easiest for a provider to continue with an existing process? The amendment suggests that we shift the argument to say, in effect, that a police station should become the last resort, and that every other option should be considered first. I think that that needs to happen. I accept the minister’s articulate discussion of the issue and I note that the group that she mentioned is meeting, but is this not fundamentally about flipping the question over and challenging Police Scotland on why it could not facilitate the use of, for example, a hospital or a house? I realise that weekends and evenings will be difficult times, but if we agree that the use of a police station should be the exception rather than the rule, how long does the minister envisage that it will take to reach that position?

This last group brings us on to consideration of something that I am pleased to see appearing more frequently in legislation: a section on post-legislative scrutiny, which, in this case, would appear in a part of the bill entitled “Review of the Act”.

My amendment 218 explores the interesting idea of how the Parliament can be involved in post-legislative scrutiny of the bill once it has been enacted. I have taken such a recourse because the Government has sometimes raised challenges in respect of post-legislative scrutiny, the importance of which is now understood by all.

The proposal in my amendment 218 is to place a duty on the Scottish Parliament to arrange for one of its committees—I say that quietly, because it would be the future version of this committee that would probably have to pick it up—to report on the bill. In looking at all the amendments in the group, I see that there is a desire to have a review, and the minister has articulated today a number of other areas in which reviews will be necessary.

We have a 2030 deadline for the Promise, so it is important that the pressure to deliver on the Promise is articulated in the bill. There requires to be a level of urgency so that after a review, if any disappointing evidence comes out of it, there is still time to put it right.

There are two levels to John Mason’s question. Generally with regard to post-legislative scrutiny, doing it too early is a waste because you have no idea how the legislation is being implemented. The second part is the challenge that we face with this bill, which is that there is an agreement to keep the Promise by 2030. If we head down the wrong road, even by accident, we will use up vital time that we need.

The time limits are important. They are driven by the deadline for the Promise—such deadlines do not necessarily exist in other legislation, but the deadline is incredibly important when it comes to the bill. Therefore, we must articulate the reviews with that in mind. It would be pointless to have a review in 2035, as it then might be, horrendously, an autopsy rather than a review.

There are pressures, which I think are reflected in all the amendments in the group. I am interested to hear from the minister and other members about where we can properly land so that the Promise can be kept at the forefront of people’s minds, as it absolutely must be, and so that, if errors or omissions occur, we have the opportunity to identify them early and rectify them before 2030.

I move amendment 218.