This search includes all content on the Scottish Parliament website, except for Votes and Motions. All Official Reports (what has been said in Parliament) and Questions and Answers are available from 1999. You can refine your search by adding and removing filters.
The danger is that the data-sharing agreement becomes the de facto default when it comes to gathering information, rather than the decision makers looking further afield to other information that might be slightly harder for them to gather because it is not covered by information-sharing agreements, but which is more useful for making decisions.
Crucially, though, and as the Local Government and Communities Committee discussed last week, such leadership must be used to help to de-risk projects. That was the key message that came across from the committee’s witnesses.
Do you fear that the transitional agreement will, de facto, become permanent? We are talking about five years, but do you think that things might never really move forward, or are you confident that the arrangements will, ultimately, deliver for fishing communities?
It means not only that we do not get independent scrutiny being carried out on behalf of the client but that the whole architecture profession has become de-skilled. Architects are not seeing their designs being built; they are seeing them only on the drawing board.
Finally, our general law of delict, which includes all legally imposed civil liability, contains a principle called the de minimis rule, which states that trivial defects cannot be sued for, anyway.
It has a disciplinary committee, but we cannot act in any way on an organisation is not a member, which has been the case for every one that has been de-registered so far. That is our concern.
Taking into account all those circumstances, we decided that the best thing to do was to get a working arrangement that de-risked the tension between those two sides.
I do not doubt that there are significant risks—indeed, that must be de facto the situation with something of this level of complexity—but do you think that the actions that Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government are taking are adequate to identify and mitigate the risks outlined in the report?
The other legislation that local government in particular uses frequently is the so-called de minimis regulation, which allows a public authority to award up to €200,000 over a rolling three-year period to any undertaking that is engaged in economic activity for any purpose, subject to a few safeguards.