Holyrood Acts should be reviewed once in force, MSPs report
A post-legislative report on each Act of the Scottish Parliament, three to five years after implementation, should be published by the Scottish Government, a Holyrood committee has recommended.
The Parliament's Standards, Procedures & Public Appointments Committee also proposes that Holyrood committees should normally have a maximum of seven members, as opposed to nine as is currently the case with most committees, to ensure members can engage fully with their committee's work and achieve focused and effective scrutiny of Government.
In its report on Holyrood committee reform, published today, the committee however says that it has not been persuaded by arguments for the introduction of elected conveners, believing that there is nothing to indicate that it would enhance the effectiveness of committees or conveners.
Regular post-legislative scrutiny of Acts has always been envisaged for the Parliament, but never yet implemented. Today's report concludes that a further step is needed to build this scrutiny routinely into committees’ work, hence the recommendation for a report by ministers within three to five years of royal assent being given to an Act.
The effect of having smaller committees would be that members each serve on only one committee, if the next Parliament aimed for around 14 committees. The report states that continuity of membership is desirable. It comes down against significant changes to the way in which the remits of subject committees are decided, except for the Justice Committee, "which, in every session of the Parliament to date, has been more consistently burdened with legislation than any other committee". As happened in a previous session, it proposes that for next session the Parliament consider establishing two Justice Committees, but this time with distinct remits – analogous to the split in the House of Commons between Home Affairs and Justice.
No view is reached on whether the Parliament will have enough members to do its work, once it takes on the significant further powers in the Scotland Bill. The committee recognises that there are arguments both ways.
Convener Stewart Stevenson MSP commented: “The aim of any change must be to make committees more effective at scrutinising legislation and Government policy, and holding the Government of the day to account.
“We believe there are already many examples of committees working with great effectiveness – challenging the Government, questioning ministers, airing public concerns.
“Our recommendations, and a greater emphasis on post-legislative scrutiny, will see committees working at this level of effectiveness, more of the time.”
The committee hopes that its report will lead to broad agreement on the steps needed to increase committees’ effectiveness in the next parliamentary session, and that its proposals can be implemented from the outset.