Equalities and Human Rights Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, May 17, 2018

Official Report 507KB pdf

Prisoner Voting Report

Welcome to the 15th meeting in 2018 of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. I make the usual request that mobile devices are switched to airplane mode and that mobile phones are kept off the table.

Before we kick off, I have a brief statement about the committee’s report on prisoner voting in Scotland, which was published at the beginning of this week. I would like to place on record my personal disappointment that the findings of the report were leaked to a national newspaper, where they appeared on the front page on Friday 11 May.

Therefore, for the avoidance of doubt, I would like to draw members’ attention to the following provisions of the code of conduct for members of the Scottish Parliament. In the sections under “Confidentiality rules”, it says:

“12. All drafts of committee reports, and committee reports which, although agreed by a committee and no longer in draft, have not yet been published, should be kept confidential, unless the committee decides otherwise. In addition, the following should be treated as confidential: briefing provided to members by Parliamentary staff for particular members’ information only; documents produced during a private session of a committee; evidence submitted to a committee sitting in private from a witness which it has been agreed can be treated as confidential; any other documents or information which the committee has agreed should be treated as confidential; and minutes of private discussions.

13. Unless the Parliament or the relevant committee has agreed otherwise, such documents should not be circulated, shown, or transmitted in any other way to members of the public (including those in Cross-Party Groups), media or to any member of any organisation outwith the Parliament, including the Scottish Government, nor to other MSPs who are not members of the committee or committees for whom the material was intended.

14. Members must not provide the media with off the record briefings on the general contents or ‘line’ of draft committee reports or other confidential material or information. Disclosures of this kind can also seriously undermine and devalue the work of committees.

15. Unless the Parliament or the relevant committee has agreed otherwise, members must not disclose any information to which a member has privileged access, for example, derived from a confidential document or details of discussions or votes taken in private session, either orally or in writing.

16. Where a committee member wishes to express dissent from a committee report, the member should only make this public once the committee report has been published in order to avoid disclosing the conclusions of a draft report.”

In the light of the recent press reports, I would like to emphasise to all members the importance of complying with those rules and to ask that particular attention is paid to them in future.

Having been a member of the Equal Opportunities Committee in a previous parliamentary session, I know that there is a long-standing tradition of keeping politics to a minimum in our committee’s work. Whenever possible, we try to put politics to one side and to put those who are the most vulnerable in our society at the forefront, so that their voice is heard in the decision-making process. Over time, we have gained the trust of those who have shared their lived experience with us and they expect us to treat their information respectfully. A short-lived political stunt strikes at the heart of that hard-won reputation.

As parliamentarians, we have standards to live up to, not just for those who govern our conduct but, importantly, for the people of Scotland. It is my hope that the committee can move forward in a collegiate manner, although I recognise that it will take time to build that trust again—trust that is fundamental to the effectiveness of this committee in helping the most marginalised in our society.