After Holyrood approved the expiration of the Scottish Coronavirus Acts, any measures no longer needed to support the public health response will be taken out.
After three days of careful scrutiny, the Coronavirus Extension and Expiry (Scotland), Bill was approved by MSPs.
The legislation will also expire certain measures:
- Children’s Hearings and Child Protection are urgent operational measures to ensure children’s rights are protected during this time.
- As the normal system for processing these resume, there are’stop-the-clock’ measures to limit the time of guardianship orders or certificates authorising medical treatment for adults who are incapacitated.
- Power to accelerate regulation scrutiny
- Power to prohibit the public from attending local authority meetings in person and hearings on alcohol licensing admissibility of evidence through statement
To allow public authorities to continue operating, the legislation extends other measures beyond their original expiry date of 31 March 2022 to 30 September 2021.
Temporary measures will continue to be taken to allow the court system to function in these difficult times. These measures include measures to keep public services and businesses running, and temporary modifications to the law to help tenants and debtors who are facing financial hardship.
This adds reporting on evictions to the existing bi-monthly requirements for theScottish government. One-time reporting requirements have been added to wedding and civil partnerships ceremonies, support for business, social security support for carers, and social care services one year after Royal Assent.
Deputy First Minister and Covid recovery SecretaryJohn SwinneyHe said, “Having the bill approved today by Parliament leaves adequate time for it to receive Royal Assent in early August. My officials will use this time to ensure that all relevant guidance is updated and made more widely available to stakeholders so that everyone is clear about which provisions should be kept available beyond September’s end and which ones will expire at that point.
“I want to thank the members of Parliament for their efforts to improve the legislation and advance the issues of members. It also helped to make sure that we had the right statutory framework to address the ongoing threat from coronavirus.
