Subordinate Legislation Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Official Report 254KB pdf

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Instruments not subject to Parliamentary Procedure

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Forced Marriage etc (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 (Commencement) Order 2011 (SSI 2011/352)

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Act of Adjournal (Criminal Procedure Rules Amendment No 6) (Sexual Offences Prevention Order) 2011 (SSI 2011/355)

The legal advisers have raised no points on either the commencement order or the act of adjournal.

Members might wish to note that the criminal procedure rules of 1996, which SSI 2011/355 modifies, have now been amended on 60 occasions. We might wish to consider whether to include the matter in a wider review of consolidation. We hope to return to that subject next week—or very soon, anyway.

Is there any guidance, or should there be guidance, on the number of changes that we should regard as a threshold? Sixty seems an inordinate number.

We are exploring that and we will bring the matter back for discussion soon. It might be that, although there have been 60 occasions when one paragraph has been deleted and replaced by something else, it is entirely obvious what the rules say. Otherwise, the rules might be a complete mess. Those are the kind of things that we need to explore. I take your point, and we are working on it. We hope to return to the subject soon.

Thank you.

14:34 Meeting continued in private until 15:00.