Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Lo): At our meeting on 22 January, we completed the formal clause-by-clause consideration of the Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, and the Department has now considered that. We sought to conclude Committee Stage early to accommodate the Department's timetable. We are scheduled to finish Committee Stage by the end of March, but we thought that we could finish this week. However, as you all know and as we said earlier, there is quite a bit of uncertainty about new amendments that the Department is bringing forward. I suggest that we wait for a couple of weeks. What we can do is agree the schedules as drafted and make our own report.

The Committee Clerk has just told me that it would be better to wait. We really want to wait for the Department's amendments so that we can complete our decision-making process in full possession of the facts and then make a complete and relevant report to the Assembly. We want to tell the Department that it needs to bring us the text of the amendments so that we can look at them before we formally conclude the scrutiny process and produce our report rather than just doing it blindly and saying that the amendments are fine.

Are members agreed?