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 paper 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. Although the 12 week consultation period ended on 12 April 2009, the Scottish Law Commission ( SLC) and the Court of Session Judiciary (the Judiciary) sought an extension and we agreed to accept late responses from these respondents.
3. We received a total of 15 individual responses ( see Annex A) during the consultation period and accepted late responses from the SLC and the Judiciary. Only one respondent asked for both their personal details and response to be 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 to certain questions and others offering more detailed discussion of sections of the draft Bill. Not all respondents answered all questions. We have indicated in Annex A which questions each respondent chose to reply to. 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.
4. We received 2 further responses; one from Mr Francis Bennion on 11 May 2009. Mr Bennion suggested that the relevant parts of the code as detailed in Bennion on Statutory Interpretation (5th Edition, 2008) be included in the Bill. The Faculty of Advocates submitted a response on 18 May 2009. Unfortunately, these responses were received too late to be taken into account at the point when decisions had to be taken on the final contents of the Bill prior to its submission to the Parliament. However, we will consider the representations made to us.
Discussions with stakeholders
5. 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 provisions in the Bill was encouraged. There were many interesting points raised during the discussion which has assisted us with our analysis of the final policy content of the Bill. A note of points raised at the event is published on the Government's website.
Findings
6. 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 breakdown of the questions and indicates the number of respondents who agreed or disagreed with the questions. Overall, our conclusion is that the respondents to the consultation generally agree with the purposes of and approach taken in the Bill. There were no novel or substantive issues raised in response to the consultation.
7. The Scottish Government has considered the findings from the consultation on the Bill and these have informed our development of the policy.