Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Bill Consultation Analysis Report - Introduction
Acknowledgments
1. The Scottish Government would like to thank all individuals and organisations who took the time to consider and respond to the legislative proposals in the consultation paper for the proposed Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Bill.
Responses
2. The Scottish Government issued a consultation paper along with a draft Bill on 13 January 2009. The consultation was published on the internet and open to the general public. However, we targeted a number of organisations, legal academics and practitioners that we thought might have an interest in the Bill and drew their attention to the publication of the consultation document. They are detailed at Annex A to the Consultation paper. Although the 12 week consultation ended on 12 April 2009, we accepted later responses from the Scottish Law Commission (SLC) and the Court of Session Judiciary (the Judiciary).
3. We received a total of 17 individual responses (see Annex A). Only one respondent asked for both their personal details and response kept confidential, all others agreed to their personal details and responses to be made public and these have published on the Scottish Government website. The nature of the submissions varied with some providing one word responses and others more detailed discussion of sections of the draft Bill. Not all respondents answered all questions. In the circumstances, and particularly given the small number of respondents, any interpretation of the proportion of responses in agreement or disagreement must be approached with caution. Due to the small number of responses to each question, we do not think that it is appropriate to present the results in percentage form.
Discussions with stakeholders
4. As part of the consultation process we held a consultation event in Edinburgh on 19 March 2009. It was attended by a number of academics, legal practitioners, representatives from the Scottish Parliament, SLC and the Lord President's Office. The delegates are listed in Annex C. The event took the form of a discussion forum where debate on the Bill's provisions was encouraged. There were many interesting points raised during the discussion which has assisted us with our analysis of the consultation responses.
Findings
5. This report provides an analysis of the Scottish Government consultation on the draft Bill. As the responses are technical and often complex in nature they are not repeated in the report. The body of the report provides a summary of the key issues identified by the consultation process. Annex A gives details of who responded to our consultation and which questions they responded to. As it will be noted, not all respondents answered all questions and the number of responses for each question varies. Annex B provides a list of the questions and indicates the number of respondents who agreed or disagreed with the questions.
- The respondents to the consultation generally agree with the purposes and approach taken in the Bill. There were no novel or substantive issues raised in response to the consultation.
The Scottish Government is considering the findings from the consultation on the Bill and these will inform our development of the policy.