Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you, convener, and good morning to everyone.

As a former member of the committee, I am only too aware of its importance in scrutinising legislation.

When we met in February, we were preparing ourselves, both in the Scottish Government and in the Parliament, to deal with the measures in the United Kingdom Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. We anticipated that they would give rise to a high volume of subordinate legislation. The final version of the legislation in the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 means that the volumes will not reach the scale that we expected. Nonetheless, ministers need to be assured that devolved provisions are appropriate, and officials will continue to apprise the committee of expected future volumes in order to assist you in managing your business.

Although retained European Union law implementation has not been as expected, the Parliament continues to process a significant amount of legislation. I record my thanks to the committee and its officials for the constructive manner in which we continue to work with each other in what is an extremely busy and challenging legislative programme.

The Government continues to deliver on its commitment to deliver more Scottish Law Commission bills. I am pleased to note that the committee has been able to lead scrutiny of two bills so far in the current session, including the Trusts and Succession (Scotland) Bill, the stage 1 debate on which will be held this week. I hope that that will continue. As you know, our programme for government confirms that the next Scottish Law Commission bill for introduction will be the judicial factors bill, and the Government expects that it will be suitable for allocation to this committee.

We remain committed to continuing to reduce the backlog of published reports. By the next parliamentary session, we should have addressed the backlog and be focused on recently published reports.

As the committee knows, I take the quality of the instruments that we lay very seriously. It is important that there are as few errors as possible. I am therefore pleased to note that, in the past quarter, no instruments have been reported on serious grounds.

I continue to value the close working relationship that I have sought to build with the committee, and I hope that it continues in the future. I look forward to hearing from everyone on the committee today, and I am happy to take any questions. Otherwise, I will go now.

Greig Walker might have something to add from his experience of retained EU law.

I have no further detail on that. I can come back to the committee with further detail as soon as we have it.

If that were likely to happen, I would probably say so in my one-to-one conversation with the committee convener. From memory, I do not think that there is anything of significance coming up for the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, although I always use the line—kidding on—that the committee is going to get all the legislation that is coming through and the full number of SSIs. On the whole, I do not see anything for this committee. I think that I can guarantee that at this stage, but I will confirm with Steven MacGregor that that is indeed the case.

Rather than repeat myself, I will get Steven MacGregor to add to that.

I cannot really talk about the situation 20 or 30 years ago, because I was in primary school—at least I was 30 years ago, anyway. No—I am lying, actually. I forget that I am getting older.

I cannot speak to the past, but the situation now is exactly as Rachel Rayner has said. Decisions are made case by case, so that we can justify the reasons why we take an approach and why we see it as being important. In many cases, that might be because stakeholders need to play an important part in the bill; in other cases, it might give us the added flexibility that we need in order to deliver what we want to deliver.

On the whole, however, using a framework bill is not our go-to place; our idea in creating a bill is not automatically to make it a framework bill.

Having worked with you since 2016, I know that you are not exactly quiet when it comes to stating your opinion. The whole point of Parliament is that members can express opinions such as the one that you just expressed. I go back to the fact that there is always the same debate with framework bills: some people see them as a power grab by the Government and some people see them as a way to create, with stakeholders, flexibility in the design of a service—social security being an example—to ensure that we deliver what we set out to do in the policy.

I assume that we would work with stakeholders on the proposed agriculture bill. There is no point in an agriculture bill without there having been full stakeholder engagement or an element of co-design. We will need to create flexibility to ensure that the bill works, because—you will know this better than I do, Mr Mundell—it will affect people’s livelihoods and how they go about their business. It will still give us the framework, and I understand—

At the end of the day, Mr Mundell, you have given your point of view. I do not necessarily agree with it and I have already stated how I believe the bill should go forward.

This is an on-going debate. The good news is that, as I said when I answered Mr Balfour’s question, we are not doing the same thing all the time. It is not our go-to to say, “There’s a framework bill; let’s just hang everything on that.” We do not do that; we work bill by bill. If I can assure you on any point, it would be that that is how we look at it.

I take on board your opinion and I might discuss it with my officials but, on the whole, we try to make sure that Parliament has as much scope as possible to scrutinise legislation.

We have been having the same debate since the first time I sat in front of the committee, and the same was probably happening before I became Minister for Parliamentary Business.

Again, we come back to situations in which the UK Government believes that a piece of legislation that it has made has no Scottish element, but my officials say that there is, so there will be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing. The other problem is that we receive the information an hour—if we are lucky—before the press release on the bill is sent out. That is quite challenging for us, because we have to get officials to say whether there is going to be an LCM and, if there is, whether we are going to be for it or against it. We have to make a case for the decision and we have to justify it.

It takes time for us to do that. If we got information a wee bit more quickly, things would be a lot easier for the Government, and we could give Parliament more time to scrutinise legislation. I remind everyone that the King’s speech is just around the corner; we do not know what will be in it, so there could be more such situations.

UK Government and Scottish Government officials talk to each other all the time and try to make things work. I have asked officials about this; I have heard members’ arguments and what you all say about LCMs, so I have been asking whether things have been like this since devolution began. I have been told that it has always been an issue, but that it happened less in the past. It seems to have become more prevalent now.

Why are we not being told the information sooner? Why are things being left until the last minute? Why, with some of the legislation that is being scrutinised, is there a belief that there is no Scottish element to it? Sometimes our officials have discussions with UK officials who tell us that legislation will not affect us in any way, shape or form; that argument can go on for quite a while.

I am not sure whether there might be a political element creeping in from Westminster, but we are trying to do all that we can at official level and at ministerial level. I assure members that, when I talk to my counterparts, I am trying to make sure that we make the process work a lot more easily. However, for some reason we seem still to be getting things an hour before the press release goes out.

You bring up an important point. In my time on the committee, we never had any legislation to do, which was always strange coming from other committees that had legislative programmes to deal with.

Because of its remit, it is good for the committee to get its teeth into such bills, which are technical. Who better to do it than the members of the DPLR Committee? Everything that you deal with, day in and day, out is highly technical.