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An initial meeting

When a team in OPC has been allocated to a Bill project, it is useful for that team to have an initial meeting with the departmental team (including, in particular, policy leads, lead departmental lawyers and the Bill team manager).

The purposes that can be served by this meeting include—

• enabling the departmental team and the OPC team to meet each other and to establish/confirm what each is expecting of the other;
• establishing the necessary ground rules for communications between the OPC team and the departmental team;
• establishing how - in other respects - business will be conducted between the department and OPC (eg the officials who will deal with the OPC team on different matters and the matters about which it would be for Counsel alone to deal with the House authorities);
• clarifying how relations with the devolved administrations are going to be handled;
• enabling the departmental team to explain, and to answer questions about, the political and policy background to the project and how the Bill fits into any project for the implementation of a wider policy in which the Bill is to perform a facilitating role;
• confirming the timetable for the instructions, and for drafting the Bill (eg whether the instructions are to be delivered in instalments and, if so, in what order);
• enabling Counsel to advise on what would be most helpful so far as the structure, form and contents of the instructions are concerned;
• to enable Counsel to explain how the work will be organised and timetabled in OPC; and
• enabling the departmental team and the OPC team to discuss the risks that are likely to affect the delivery of the Bill according to the planned timetable, and how those risks can best be managed.
  

This meeting may be held before instructions have been delivered or before the OPC team have had an opportunity to get to grips with them. It is not necessary for questions to have arisen on the detail of the instructions.

It is usually more helpful for this meeting to be held in addition to, and separately from, the first of the regular meetings that will be held by PB Secretariat for the purpose of monitoring progress on the Bill. Those meetings serve a different purpose and although they serve a useful regular point of contact between Counsel and the departmental team, they are not the best place to address issues that arise between the OPC team and the departmental team about how their partnership should work.