Justice 2 Committee, 03 Feb 2004

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 3, 2004

Official Report 125KB pdf

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Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill

Good afternoon. I welcome members to the fifth meeting of the Justice 2 Committee in 2004.

Before I proceed to the first item on the agenda, it is with regret that I raise with the committee a matter that I regard as extremely serious. The clerks have just brought to my attention an article that appeared in Scotland on Sunday on Sunday 1 February. It appears to have been written with knowledge of the committee's private discussion at last week's meeting. That discussion concerned the draft report that the committee is required to prepare on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill.

I repeat that it is with great regret that I raise this matter. I wish to make it crystal clear that I personally, as convener, take a very dim view of something like this happening. This committee, like any other parliamentary committee, is effective if we act collectively and with integrity. Frankly, we do one another a great disservice if any one of us is minded to depart from that principle, which I think is sensible and laudable. I am very disappointed that this has happened.

I remind members of the terms of section 9.4 of the code of conduct for members of the Scottish Parliament, which relates to confidentiality requirements. Paragraph 9.4.3 outlines the difficulties for committees should an unauthorised disclosure take place. Paragraph 9.4.4 states, in relation to confidential committee material:

"such documents should not be circulated, shown, or transmitted in any other way to members of the public, media"

and so on.

Not only does a breach of that obligation impact on the committee as a whole; it places the lead committee on the bill in a very difficult position. That committee—the Communities Committee in this case—should be entitled to rely on the integrity of this committee to present to it, in confidence, an adjusted report, the terms of which become public only once the Communities Committee so determines. I am both irritated and extremely disappointed that such an incident has occurred in this committee.

It is competent for the committee to decide to make a formal referral to the Standards Committee, which would involve the committee conducting its own leak investigation and then preparing a short report for the Standards Committee. I am open to comments from committee members in order to ascertain whether there is a view that such action should be taken.

I agree that this is a very serious matter. I was very concerned when I read the Scotland on Sunday article. It undermines every single member of the committee and brings our respective integrities into disrepute. It undermines the work of the committee collectively, because it puts a question mark over all the members of the committee, over the work that we do and over the way in which we work collectively. It is important that we send a signal to whoever saw fit to leak the report to the newspapers that such behaviour will not be tolerated. For those reasons, it is important that we consider referring the matter to the Standards Committee. It may well prove impossible to discover who was responsible for the leak. However, it is important that we make the point that leaks of this nature are unacceptable, that they bring the committee and the Parliament as a whole into disrepute and that we should not conduct ourselves in that way.

I associate myself with your remarks, convener, and with those of Karen Whitefield. It is a discourtesy to you, to the committee and to the principles upon which the Parliament was founded. Clearly, the member responsible had an opportunity to reflect on what was, to all intents and purposes, a private meeting, and chose to breach the confidence of the committee. I find it quite cowardly that there was no name attached to the inferences that were made. Indeed, some of the inferences that were made in the article are inaccurate and do not reflect the committee report. I would support any move to have the matter investigated and reported to the Standards Committee, as I feel strongly about a breach of this nature.

I will not repeat the comments that have already been made; I am happy to agree with them. I am happy to refer the matter to the Standards Committee, which I think is what should happen in all such cases.

I associate myself with the remarks that have already been made, so that it is on record that I concur.

I concur too. It is one of the most blatant examples of a private discussion of a report being leaked to the press. For similar articles in the past, the reporter has perhaps listened to the evidence or looked at the Official Report and used guesswork, but Sunday's article has obviously come straight from a private meeting of the committee. I very much regret that and am disappointed that it has happened.

I agree entirely. I have to say that Eddie Barnes spoke to me and asked me what the report said. I said that he would need to get and look at the evidence that was public so far; that he could decide what evidence had been led; and that the document that we dealt with last week was private and would be discussed further this week. He asked me whether the document that we would discuss this week would be published, and I said, "Frankly, I don't know when it's to be published." I also said that this was the first time that we had been involved in a stage 1 report as a secondary committee; that, because we are not the lead committee, the report would go to the Communities Committee; and that at some point whatever this committee says will be made public. It was a general conversation. I gave him no indication whatever of what the paper said; I said, "You will need to go away and have a look."

I read the article on Sunday as well, and I think that most of it is inference; I think that Eddie Barnes has jumped to conclusions. He has mentioned the various bits of evidence that we were given when witnesses came to public committee meetings, which is a matter of public record. I did not say anything about what the report said. I said, "You will need to go away and investigate that yourself."

I am honest enough to say that I spoke to him, but I said, "You will have to go away and look at the evidence that has been given so far. You can draw any conclusions that you want yourself, but the report will not be made public until such time as the committee makes it public." I then spoke to one of my colleagues, who said that the normal course of action is that our report will go as a private document to the Communities Committee, and that it will be up to that committee to make it public at some point.

Do you have a view about referral to the Standards Committee?

I agree entirely. I have no problem with that at all.

I thank you for that comment.

The committee is obviously unanimous that we will refer the matter to the Standards Committee, so that is what I shall arrange to do as convener. I will refer to the matter again when we come to the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill later on in the agenda. That discussion will be in private, but I emphasise to every member here that I do not expect a leak to recur, and I expect the confidence of the committee's discussions to be sacrosanct and respected by every committee member.