 Welcome to the 13th meeting in 2015 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, and let me remind everyone as usual to switch off mobile phones as they may affect the broadcasting system. We have received apologies from Patricia Fagerson and Dave Thompson, and I welcome Mark Griffin to the meeting who is substituting for Patricia. The second item of business is for the committee to agree to take agenda item 3 in private, which is an item for us to consider the evidence that we are about to hear from the minister on consolidation bills. Members agree to take this item in private. Agree. Thank you. We are agreed. Agenda item 2 is for the committee to hear from the minister for parliamentary business on consolidation bills. We are joined today by Joe Fitzpatrick, the minister for parliamentary business, Stephen McGregor, head of Parliament and legislation unit, Cabinet, Parliament and Governance division, and Graham Fraser, who might introduce himself since he is not on our list. Graham Fisher is from the legal directorate of the Scottish Government. Thank you very much indeed and welcome all of you to the meeting. Members will recall that the minister wrote to the committee in June this year to ask us to consider the rules on consolidation bills. At our meeting last week, we decided to discuss the letter further with the minister. Minister, do you wish to make any opening remarks? Very briefly, to say that we see this as a, what we are proposing, a very minor change to the rules. It falls on from the changes that have been made to the DPLRC around law commission bills, and we think that it is making the most of the particular expertise, technical expertise, that that committee is developing. Right, colleagues. Let's ask him questions. Perhaps minister, just a sort of basic one, is it envisaged that there will be much in the way of consolidation bills that might be brought forward? Obviously, the consolidation bill that was in the programme for government in terms of bankruptcy consolidation now is absolutely the right time for us to be doing that consolidation. The changes to the policy have been made, so this is purely technical, purely consolidation at the right time. In an ideal world, I think that we would do a lot more consolidation than we managed to achieve. There has been in the entire period of this Parliament just one consolidation bill so far. I think that the time between consolidation bills has been longer than we would have hoped for. In this particular case, we have just, in the last 12 months, legislated on the subject, so there is no substantial suggestion that there would be any risk that there would be a need to change policy as part of the consolidation. Definitely not. It is coming absolutely at the right time for consolidation right after the policy changes. Obviously, by their nature, consolidation bills shouldn't have any major policy changes within them. There can be minor technical suggestions from the Law Commission, but only minor. Thank you. Good morning. I read that we might need to have a separate committee for this. Do you think that that's not necessary as you have a consolidation? What was the reasoning behind that? The original reasoning behind having an ad hoc committee might have been that when obviously I was not a member of the Scottish Parliament, when the original standing orders were drawn up, it might have been that when they looked at the committees that the Parliament had at the time, there might not have been any one committee that had the XRTs across the piece that you could have said that's where it goes. That's changed. DPLRC has, since the Law Commission, and probably prior to that, has become a committee that has developed its technical skills, its expertise in that area in a way that it now is the natural home to look at those technical bills. Right. That committee wasn't formed beforehand, was it then? It was not formed at the beginning of the Parliament. It was a different committee and it wasn't able to take on the Law Commission right bills. It didn't have those roles. It's worth just making the point that the DPLRC, its predecessor, the Subordinate Legislation Committee are actually part of the Scotland Act. Ah, thank you. There are a required committee. Mary. Thank you, convener. Just to very briefly, one of the concerns that's been raised is if the DPLRC hears those bills, the link between the Subject Committee and Consolidation bills will be lost. How do you foresee that being overcome? I think that there's probably a number of ways to overcome that. The DPLRC committee could invite the Subject Committee if they wanted to send a representative. That would most similarly mimic the situation with the ad hoc committee rules that stand there just now. Not certain that's entirely satisfactory. They have one member from the Subcommittee expressing a view. What might be better and perhaps more flexible would be that the DPLRC would invite the Subject Committee to offer a view. The whole committee would be able to look at the bill and say, actually, that is entirely technical or whatever their view is, but we'd allow the whole committee to offer a view and that might be a more flexible way forward. Additionally, any member can attend any committee. If there was a feeling that there was a need for the voice of the Subject Committee to be on DPLRC, that rules already allow for that. One of the things, minister, in looking at the standing order changes that would be necessary to give effect if we were to accept what's before us, we could have the option either to replace the existing provision by a referral to DPLRC or alternatively—I haven't discussed this at this stage, I stress—or alternatively to change the standing orders to create the option for the business bureau to refer it to the DPLRC but to leave the existing provisions in the standing orders so that, on a case-by-case basis, if it were felt that there was a strong need for policy involvement, you could do things in a different way. How would you feel about that? Flexibility is always a useful thing within our standing orders. I can't envisage how you could have a consolidation bill that would have significant policy content because then it wouldn't be a consolidation bill, but I would be relaxed about the committee's review on how you were able to frame the standing orders. When looking at it appeared that providing the option rather than replacing, perhaps addressed some of the concerns when I looked at it that the committee had about replacement and removing. We haven't come to a conclusion on that, so we will need to discuss that. The situation is that the option is not there and the bureau has to create an ad hoc committee that has the difficulty of pulling people together, basically based on the timetables that allow their other committee commitments rather than on expertise that we have within the DPLRC committee. Do any more of our colleagues wish to ask anything? Any further words you wish to say to us? No, thank you very much for taking the time. Well thank you very much minister. I'm sorry to drag you along for the relatively brief, but I think that it's quite important to get some things on the record in what is an important matter of procedure and hopefully we can do some more consolidation in the future. Oh sorry. Just to say, I thought that the most important point you made was that you'd have to pull people together from other committees if you wanted to do an ad hoc committee, which is why this idea is so good, because otherwise people might not be available who had the relevant expertise, is that right? I think that that would be one of the concerns that I would certainly have, is it? Okay, got that, thank you. Right, well on that basis thank you minister and officials for attending, and I now move the committee into private session.