News In Focus
9 September 2010
Ten bills proposed for final parliamentary session
The SNP administration yesterday unveiled 10 proposed bills for the final session of the Scottish Parliament before next May's elections.
After announcing earlier this week that he would not be presenting a Referendum Bill, which would fall in the face of opposition from the other parties, First Mnister Alex Salmond claimed that "devolution, as we knew it, is over": there was no longer any logic to maintaining the current funding system of a block grant from Westminster given the cuts to public services that were about to hit, and the Parliament needed full tax-raising powers.
The Budget Bill is set to be the most controversial measure, as Finance Secretary John Swinney sets out where the spending cuts will fall. The bill itself will be introduced in January, accompanied by a set of Budget documents setting out the Government's spending plans for the next financial year in more detail.
Double jeopardy restricted
Mr Salmond also confirmed that the Government will push ahead with a Double Jeopardy Bill, to allow a second trial following an acquittal where the original trial was "tainted", e.g. by intimidation, or there is evidence of a subsequent admission by the accused, or "compelling new evidence" emerges (restricted to cases of murder, rape, culpable homicide and serious sexual offences); and also to permit prosecution on a more serious charge where a victim has died after a conviction or an acquittal for a lesser offence such as assault.
Other measures of interest to the legal profession will be a Long Leases (Scotland) Bill, to implement a report by the Scottish Law Commission which recommended converting long leases to ownership; a Private Rented Housing Bill to strengthen the regulation of the private rented sector and give local authorities more powers to tackle rogue landlords; and a bill on forced marriages to protect people from being forced to enter into marriage without their free and full consent, and those who have already been forced to do so.
A Public Records (Scotland) Bill will improve record keeping across the public sector, strengthening governance, transparency and accountability, and fulfilling a key recommendation of the Shaw report; and a separate bill on certification of death will introduce a new single system of independent scrutiny applicable to deaths in Scotland which do not require a procurator fiscal investigation, in order to achieve improved quality and accuracy of medical certificates of cause of death with a view to effectively targeting public health resources.
The other promised bills are on local electoral administration, reservoir safety (which deals with flooding risk), and a measure to allow Scottish Water to undertake some commercial activity, such as erecing wind farms on its land, while still remaining publicly owned.