Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, December 19, 2019

Official Report 437KB pdf

Cross-party Groups (Annual Report)

Under agenda item 2, the committee will consider an annual update on cross-party groups’ compliance with the code of conduct for members of the Scottish Parliament. There are currently 107 cross-party groups. Members will see from the report that compliance with the code is very high. Do members have any general comments?

There has been a tremendous improvement since we last discussed the issue, a year or so ago. That is down to the hard work on the part of our team here—the clerks and those who work for members—in making cross-party groups aware of the requirements. Our staff should be congratulated, as should the groups themselves.

There are 107 cross-party groups, which might not sound a lot to the public, but most of us sit on half a dozen of them. Everything is squeezed into a couple of hours, and members can be in only one place at a time. There are a lot of constraints. The rule that two MSPs must be in attendance might not sound onerous, but ensuring that that happens can be difficult. MSPs have to consider which CPGs to go to and which ones are most important. CPGs are a lot of work.

The main on-going concern is that CPGs must provide Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee clerks with 10 calendar days’ notice of all meetings. I wonder whether we can ensure that CPGs are reminded that they must give that notification. That would be considerate to MSPs and outside bodies that come in.

That has been noted.

I do not think that there is any necessity for action to be taken on this occasion in relation to non-compliant groups. A good piece of work has been produced for the year. I thank Sam Currie for her work on the report.