There's a further development on this story. It appears that there may be substantial obstacles in the path of Wendy Alexander's back-up plan - to table her own bill.
Firstly, she would require the support of at least one other party to table such a bill. Secondly, if there is the prospect of a Government Bill on a comparable topic - then a member's bill is ruled out.
Given that SNP ministers plan their own Bill for a referendum in 2010, this would appear to be a problem.
Sure enough, the Parliament's guidance on public bills states:
3.9 The final proposal [for a Member's Bill as opposed to an Executive Bill] is then published in the Business Bulletin for one calendar month, whilst the consultation summary or (as the case may be) statement of reasons is made available via the “Proposals for Members’ Bills” page of the Parliament website. During this period, any member may notify support for the proposal, this being recorded in the bulletin. If, at the end of the month, at least 18 other members, drawn from at least half the parties or groups represented on the Parliamentary Bureau, have indicated their support, the member has the right to introduce a Member’s Bill. This is unless a Minister has indicated either:
that the Executive will introduce legislation (which could be a Bill or a statutory instrument) to give effect to the proposal within the same session (i.e. the period, usually of four years, between general elections to the Scottish Parliament), or
that Her Majesty’s Government will introduce such legislation within the same or next session (a session at Westminster meaning a Parliamentary year, rather than the span of years between UK general elections).
I willingly confess that I was ignorant of these requirements. But then I'm not the leader of the Scottish Labour Party in Parliament and I didn't plan to introduce a Member's Bill.
Oh, and Big Gordon is unhappy, as Brian Taylor explains.
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