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Why are we considering the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill only today, given that today is the deadline for stage 3 amendments? Frankly, that does not give the committee enough time to properly do its work.

I am talking about not policy, but planning and timescale.

The committee has not seen that yet.

I have a comment about the Scottish Law Commission. You will know that the committee works closely with it, as we do with you. Mr Sweeney highlighted that the Law Commission has felt some frustration for a number of years about the amount of work that it puts into developing proposals, a lot of which sit gathering dust. From the committee’s point of view, it would be useful to have some kind of timetable from you, even if it is just to say whether there is a chance of progressing each proposal.

That is good. That would be useful.

You are right about the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill. I had a quick look at it. It is quite daunting, but we will get stuck in and do a proper job on it.

My area of questioning is on something that you mentioned earlier: the frustration that you and your officials feel about having very little time to scrutinise UK bills. We have found the same thing with Scottish bills. We had a case of that last week, with the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill. The day before the stage 3 debate, the committee received a letter telling us about possible new powers relating to the establishment of a food commissioner. We had no time to consider that.

As you said earlier, today the committee will look at the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill following stage 2. Stage 3 amendments have to be laid by noon today, but we are discussing the bill only at this meeting. If the committee decided that there should be an amendment, we would, by the end of the meeting, have less than an hour in which to produce one. That is not acceptable, is it?

We do not set the timescale—you do. Things need to improve; we should not be in this position.

My question is not about policy but about giving the committee enough time to deal with whatever is in front of it. I have not mentioned the policy behind the bill.

Lovely, thank you.

In saying that you are happy to have further dialogue, you have probably answered the question that I was going to ask. We can probably reach an accommodation between your desire to be able to act quickly and my desire to have more parliamentary scrutiny—we can meet somewhere in that regard. I am happy to take you up on your offer.

Before the meeting, Mr Rowley and I made a pact that, if he was brief, I would be brief. I knew that he could not stick to his end of the bargain—but rightly so, because he had some really important points to make, which I agree with.

I sit on the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. I am not representing it here, but, as this committee knows, the DPLR Committee produced a report, which this committee has seen, into the delegated powers in the bill, and we made some recommendations. I will take members through them before I speak briefly about my amendments in the group.

The first recommendation was

“that the Scottish Government”

should bring

“forward amendments on each power which can be exercised subject to the made affirmative provision”.

Our main area of concern was the use of the made affirmative procedure, so we recommended

“that Scottish Ministers provide a written statement prior to the instrument coming into force providing an explanation and evidence as to why the Scottish Ministers consider the regulations need to be made urgently when using the made affirmative procedure”.

We also recommended

“that Scottish Ministers include an assessment of the impact of the instrument on those affected by it”

and

“that statutory instruments made under the powers are subject to a sunset provision.”

I lodged some amendments for yesterday’s Criminal Justice Committee meeting that reflected those recommendations, and I have done the same for this meeting.

If members read amendment 10, which is the first of my three amendments in the group, I am afraid that they will struggle to work out what it does. I have a long and technical explanation, which I will spare you. In essence, amendment 10 removes the ability of ministers to use the made affirmative procedure—it is quite blunt. If you agree with that, that is all well and good and the other amendments fall; if you do not agree with that, we have some alternatives.

The alternatives are amendments 11 and 12. Amendment 11 says that, if ministers think that the regulations should be made “urgently”, they should explain to the Parliament why that is so—with evidence—and there should be a vote on the regulations. As the committee is well aware, using the made affirmative procedure does not allow for a vote—stuff just goes through without scrutiny. The amendment reflects the recommendations of the DPLR Committee.

Amendment 12 says that there should be a statement with evidence, an assessment of the impact of the regulations and a sunset clause period of a maximum of one year. Given that I am a very reflective sort and that I listen to arguments—I listened to those of Mr Swinney’s colleague Keith Brown yesterday and to those of Mr Swinney today—I think that amendment 12 probably goes a bit too far in that it would impose the sunset clause for one year across the board. Having reflected on that point, I think that Mr Swinney’s amendment 28 is probably better than amendment 12, so I will not press it. However, I will move amendments 10 and 11.

I will end there—I promised to be brief.