Seòmar agus comataidhean

I was certainly not inviting an additional point of order before decision time. [Laughter.]

That you enjoyed it might be the kindest comment the committee has ever received. We will not go further than that.

I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow those attending the evidence session to leave.

What does “physical attendance” mean in the bill?

Are members content to delegate authority to me to sign off the terms of the report?

Members indicated agreement.

I absolutely concur with what Bob Doris has said. There are various ways of looking at post-legislative scrutiny, and the bill could perhaps be a vehicle for considering the matter more widely across the Government. He is right to point out that there is also a challenge in relation to the capacity in the Parliament to carry out post-legislative scrutiny successfully.

Good morning. Before I start, I refer to my declaration of interests in the register of members’ interests in relation to wind power interests that rest on land, for those who know.

It has been an interesting opening to this group with regard to post-legislative scrutiny, which has been an important matter for the Parliament during this session. A number of the proposed amendments in this group take different approaches to the issue. I very much welcome Bob Doris’s comments and Mark Ruskell’s comments on behalf of Ariane Burgess with regard to the level and intent of reporting that we need. However, I feel that there is also a need to back that up with post-legislative scrutiny so that the Parliament can have a full and proper say, but only when there is evidence before it about how well or otherwise the bill is working.

My amendment 383 contains a very widely drawn provision that invites the Government to consider post-legislative scrutiny. Without trying to anticipate anything that the cabinet secretary will say, I have already had useful discussions with her and her advisers with regard to the right format that the proposed provision should take. Only once we know what the bill looks like post stage 2 will we be able to come to a view and determine what form of post-legislative scrutiny would be best.

Amendment 385 has its roots in the very unfortunate events, which are almost two decades old, relating to my constituent, Andrew Stoddart, who farmed at Colstoun Mains in East Lothian. When previous legislative amendments that were made in relation to how farmers could operate on land were held to be illegal, there were consequential financial losses that were truly devastating to, I think, nine farmers. The number affected was very small, but the consequences of those actions were enormous and are on-going. Therefore, there is an interest outside of this place in how legislation is scrutinised and in how we deal with how legislation will work in practice before it is progressed, and in whether there are any further challenges for our farming community and farming families with regard to tenancies and ownership.

A substantial part of the bill deals with tenancies and ownership, but as Andrew Stoddart has told me on a number of occasions, when the matter was last dabbled with, the effects for those families were catastrophic. I merely put that on the record as one of the reasons for lodging a number of my amendments. I also point out that the period for which my question to the Scottish Government about what the consequential costs of that action were has remained unanswered is the longest period for which a question of mine has remained unanswered—the question dates back to the first few months of this session—so I might renew my pursuit of details on that.

To sum up, my amendments invite a discussion to be held once we know what stage 2 produces by way of amendments to the bill, so that we can provide for effective and meaningful post-legislative scrutiny that is based on evidence that will be collected on how the bill operates in practice.

I will leave my contribution there.

The cabinet secretary speaks to the challenging situation in which families found themselves, as they were trapped between two institutions that were unable to adequately compensate them for their losses. Her point about the challenge that exists for whoever is in government is pertinent, given the unforeseen consequences that can, unfortunately, arise very quickly.

I want to look into what should and should not be in the legislation and the suggestion that it should be iterative. The Government is content for the process to sit in primary legislation. The suggestion in the Government’s memorandum is that there should be provision to extend the occasions when it may be triggered and that we should leave an opportunity open for that to appear, presumably through secondary legislation. Is that correct?

I move on to a challenge that we have heard a lot about, which concerns the parity between the routes of being elected regionally and being elected as a constituency MSP. Graham Simpson has said from the outset that, under his bill, there should be parity between all MSPs, because there is parity when we come into this place and take our seats in the chamber, irrespective of how we arrived there. What is the Scottish Government’s view on that? MSPs are all the same when we are sitting in the chamber, but does parity also relate to the journey that we took to get here, via the regional list or the constituency list? Can we say that there absolutely is parity in the chamber but that there is no parity for the purposes of how we travel here—which there is not?

Does the Scottish Government have a view on the percentages that would occasion a recall? For a constituency MSP, the proposed threshold is 10 per cent. For a regional MSP, it is 10 per cent overall and 10 per cent in three constituencies in the region.