I acknowledge everything that has already been said. As Emma Trottier said, it is quite difficult to work out what people should do. To a degree, that is understandable because of the number of possible variations. Either the person who is reporting that they have been harassed or the perpetrator may be someone who works for an MSP, someone who works elsewhere in the Parliament, someone who is visiting or someone who is a contractor. That makes it look very complicated to work out what should be done and when.
The answer is that the difficult bit should be in organising how reports are dealt with, rather than where someone who wants to report fits in. It should be quite straightforward for someone to find a document that clearly sets out their position, whether they are visiting the Parliament and feel that they have been harassed, or working for an MSP and feel that they have been harassed by someone else in the Parliament or by their employer or whoever. The person who is reporting an incident needs to be able to clearly identify their position and the procedures need to clearly state whether what that person is feeling uncomfortable about is seen as harassment, so that they feel that they can report it.
The person needs to be confident that there is clarity about how the report will be carried out, particularly at the first step, when asking who they should go to. That needs to be abundantly clear and it should be clear, regardless of which of the categories we have talked about the person fits into. It should be reasonably clear who the person should report to.
It might even be the case that it would be good for there to be someone in the Parliament who is independent of the various different organisations that work in the Parliament building to act as an adviser. Somebody could go to that person and say, “I have got a concern and I am thinking of reporting it.” In the first instance, they would be able to discuss the matter with someone who is not aligned to any particular part of the organisation. That could help to simplify things for people. If someone decides that they want to report an incident, they need to be confident about what will happen next. No one is going to enter into a system if they do not understand what the next step will be. As Emma Trottier said with regard to anonymity, the person needs to know who will know about the report, how many people will be involved, and who they are, so that the person can be informed when they make their decision.
The guidance that will eventually come out needs to be clear about the penalties for anybody who interferes with a report or tries to influence a person into not taking a report any further, for example by bullying them or explaining to them in strong terms that continuing with the report will be bad for them as well as the person who has carried out the activity. That kind of behaviour has to be clearly unacceptable.