Overview of the Act and General Notes Interpretation Part 1: Emissions Reduction Targets Section 8: Requirement to respond to parliamentary reports and resolutions on draft plan
58.Section 8 of the Act amends section 35A of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 to impose a duty on the Scottish Ministers to respond to parliamentary resolutions and reports in relation to draft climate change plans within 3 months of the resolution or report.
59.Section 35A(1) of the 2009 Act requires that, before laying a final climate change plan before the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Ministers must first have laid a draft plan before the Parliament. It also requires the Scottish Ministers, in preparing a finalised plan, to have regard to (amongst other things) resolutions about the draft plan passed by the Parliament and reports about the draft plan published by committees of the Parliament. Section 35A(2) requires that, alongside a finalised plan, the Scottish Ministers lay before the Parliament a statement providing details of any such resolution or report and what (if any) changes have been made to the plan in response.
60.Section 8 of the Act inserts a new subsection (1A) into section 35A of the 2009 Act. The new subsection (1A) sets a 3 month deadline for the Scottish Ministers to publish a response to a parliamentary resolution or report in relation to a draft climate change plan.
61.As mentioned, before new subsection (1A) was inserted there was an existing requirement in section 35A(2) for the Scottish Ministers to respond to such resolutions and reports by laying a statement before the Parliament at the same time as laying before the Parliament a finalised climate change plan. In addition to the new subsection (1A), section 8 of the Act inserts a new subsection (1B) into section 35A of the 2009 Act, which makes clear that the requirement for a response created by the new subsection (1A) can be fulfilled by laying before the Parliament the statement required by section 35A(2). In other words if, within the 3 month deadline set by subsection (1A), the Scottish Ministers have responded to a parliamentary resolution or report by laying before the Parliament a statement in accordance with subsection (2), they do not need to publish a separate response to the resolution or report in order to fulfil the requirements of new subsection (1A).