Call to reduce Holyrood red tape

Thousands of rules and regulations that make up the detail of legislation pass through parliament each year and can be scrutinised up to eight times.

This should be simplified, according to Holyrood's Subordinate Legislation Committee, in a report released on Friday after a three-year-study.

It now wants Scotland to have its own system of scrutiny, rather than the present method taken from Westminster.

It was brought in as a stop-gap at the start of devolution in 1999.

The new system would put all pieces of secondary legislation on the same procedural footing, and allow parliament and the executive to decide which should be subject to fuller debate.

Committee convener Sylvia Jackson, Labour MSP for Stirling, said: "Our job is to scrutinise the rules and regulations which implement the detail of primary legislation.

"We are conscious of the impact that these may have on all of our daily lives as individuals, businesses or organisations.

"It is vital therefore that they are fully scrutinised and that the system for doing so is open, transparent and understandable."

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