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We need to pull together a programme. On finances, Johann has a point about discussing with the Executive why it took its decision, given the evidence—albeit for only one day—from important people, including McIntosh himself, who had contributed to the two consultation papers. Every single one of them said the same thing; they were all singing from the same hymn sheet. We need, therefore, to find out exactly what the Executive's reasons were for deciding not to have an independent review.
When this subject came up last week, I suggested that we go through the report as a committee, rather than independently; Bristow suggested much the same thing. It would be a bit of a plod, but it would avoid all sorts of cross-talk. We could go through the paragraphs of the report systematically and decide what we agreed on and what was contentious. We would then know exactly what points needed to be discussed.
At the back of the report there are recommendations, with the relevant paragraph highlighted. If, when we are considering recommendations one by one, we find problems, we can refer back to the paragraph. The clerk informs me that the Accounts Commission will probably want to speak for 45 minutes to an hour. With questions, we are likely to need an hour and a half. That should give us time at the end of the meeting to start examining the report. If we run out of time, we can continue with it at the end of another meeting.
You said you would be talking to Wendy Alexander about what interests us. I am keen, as I am sure are other members of the committee, to know why the Government is iffy on the issue of general competence. I thought that that was a done deal.
I will mention general competence and finance. Obviously, if we have the minister before us, those questions can be put directly and expanded on. What about proportional representation? I wrote down finance, PR and general competence, because that is how you presented it. Do you want to examine PR?
We should get the Electoral Reform Society here to tell us about all the systems so that we understand the fundamentals. We can spend a morning firing as many questions as we want so that we all know in our mind's eye exactly how the systems work, before moving on to the next stage. As Johann said, it is important that we do not ignore the current system. Although McIntosh recommended that we move to PR, at the end of the day we should still compare it to the existing system.
Do you want someone else to come along and give the other side of the story?
As long as it is not Charlie Gordon.
Okay, on the proviso that it will not be Charlie Gordon.
In the interests of fairness that would be appropriate.
It would be interesting to invite someone who was able to put the debate on PR into a political context. In an ideal world we would examine the different systems and choose the one that we liked. However, we are working within the context of people being disaffected with politics and not being involved in it.
McIntosh suggests that there should be a different system in the Highlands, does he not?
That is exactly what I said in the briefing last week. In fact, I mentioned Johann's home island of Tiree. It is important that we are not looking for a single system that necessarily fits the whole of Scotland, because it may be that a single system is not suitable. I would be surprised if the system that suited Glasgow also suited the Highlands or Argyll, for historic reasons.
I do not disagree with the comments that have been made about the way in which members want to address this issue, but we should broaden it, so that we do not talk just about the electoral system, but about the ways of maximising participation in local government elections, because that part of the debate is often forgotten. Increasing participation does not depend solely on the electoral system that we use. We must examine other ways in which we can improve participation in local government elections, and in that way renew democracy in local government. I would like us to examine that strand as well as the electoral system.
McIntosh provides some suggestions on that matter. When we study the recommendations we can determine whether we want to examine that matter.
I do not think we need to do that. It is all laid out in McIntosh and I think we will be in agreement with all its recommendations.
Obviously, as the Highlander here I welcome what Kenny said. Taking off my Liberal Democrat hat for a minute, it is a concern in the Highlands, where some wards are bigger than many constituencies in this Parliament.
The people of East Timor, under the guns of the Indonesian army, put us all to shame with their 90-odd per cent turnout.
It does put us to shame.
All together.
We are starting at 10 am at the moment and finishing at half-past 12. Everything is falling forward, so 5 October is a day on which we could fit that in, before we have—excuse me—yet another holiday.
Allegedly.
Will we be meeting on a Tuesday, or will it always be a Wednesday?
Good question. There will be the odd afternoon—or evening—session on a Tuesday, from 4.15 pm to 6.15 pm. I have managed to get the other committees on that group to rotate, so it will not always be 4.15 pm to 6.15 pm. It will only happen every so often.
On the question of PR, it may be that it would cost too much, but the people in Britain who have most experience of different systems of PR are the Northern Irish. We could get someone who is Northern Irish and had experienced PR, or who had studied it. We may not be able to afford the air fare.
If they are living here they might come.
We could invite Ian Paisley. He was elected under the system.
I will pass on that one.
Like Johann, I recommend that we ask an academic who has as much knowledge about international systems.
I suggest John Curtice.
Yes, I was thinking that. We will try to get Professor John Curtice.
We know fairly well what people are saying about the power of general competence, but we need to know why the Executive is concerned about it. I have looked at the matter and I cannot see why it causes any difficulty for anybody. It would be a great boon to local government, which is why all areas of local government appear to be in favour of it. That is another area of finance on which we might want the Executive to explain its concerns. It has said that it wants to consult widely on it, but I understand that the consultation is fairly set. I do not know anybody—from trade unions to SOLACE—who objects to the power of general competence.
When you say the Executive, do you mean that we ask Wendy Alexander when she attends the meeting? Finance and general competence are the two main things that we would like her to discuss with us.
I wonder whether it would be possible to find somebody who knows a lot about European local government, who could inform us of the real benefits.
Neil McIntosh certainly went across to Europe. There is nothing to stop us pulling him back in—I do not know.
I thought that the case was made very generally at the briefing. The representatives of the Executive were not able to give a response on what was creating the unease and what the timetable for consultation was. Once we know what the difficulties are we might want to address those difficulties and bring people before us on that basis. There is a broad sweep of folk in favour of that.
That is the other question for the minister.
My understanding, from what we were saying earlier, is that the Accounts Commission is not likely to take up the whole meeting on 15 September. Is that the case?
It would not take up the whole meeting. We will cover the McIntosh recommendations in the last part of the meeting. We will be able to refer back to the appropriate paragraphs if we have any problems. We can then put our message to the councils that we are aware of or agree with what they raise and are getting down to the nitty-gritty .
We want to be fairly flexible, but we also want to make it known that we wish to examine all other controversial aspects. I see no reason why we cannot put down a marker for the other topics to be discussed between now and December, so that we know that every topic will be covered before Christmas.
Are you looking at the document with the grid of subjects and priorities?
Yes.
If there is no disagreement, we will examine on Wednesday 27 September the items on the grid that we have not dealt with.
I am not clear who writes the covenant—obviously we have to agree in the end and we need to start somewhere. Is there merit in suggesting to COSLA that it could draft what it thinks the covenant should contain, with a view to discussing it with us at the end of October or November or whenever? I am not sure whether drafting the covenant is our responsibility or the Executive's responsibility, or whose responsibility it is.
If my memory serves me right, local government, the Scottish Executive and COSLA are to be involved in drafting the covenant. There is nothing to stop us making an input as that can be done through me. The Executive has made it clear to me, as it has to other committee conveners, that I can make contacts, pass issues on and make comments whenever I wish. There is nothing to stop us having a view on how the covenant should come together.
Could we invite COSLA to write a draft?
COSLA will be writing a draft, as that was the suggestion in the McIntosh report. There is no problem with us asking for sight of the draft when it is completed.
May I suggest that, if we do go out, we go to areas where we have least knowledge? You and I have both been councillors on Glasgow City Council and Strathclyde Regional Council. It might be beneficial for someone like me to go to the Highlands or to the Borders, and for someone like Jamie to look at the urban context, so that we gain experience of all parts of the country. That would give us all a better feel for local government and delivery of services in other parts of Scotland.
I agree. It would be better for us to widen our knowledge base, and that would be a good way in which to do it. I do not want to listen to the councillors in Glasgow City Council yet again. I would be quite happy to move around. I hope that that was not recorded—Charlie Gordon will kill me.
I think that we will need a little advice on this matter, although I totally support your point about getting beyond councils and councillors. We could talk to associations of, or a given grouping of, community councils. It would be no bad thing to talk to tenants' associations where they exist in some of the more built up areas—even in Highland. However, I think that we will need to ask for advice, as there will be groups that may not instantly come to mind that would be just as relevant—such as playgroups, school boards and so on. We will have to be careful not to get bogged down, and we will have to try to group them together where we can. If we go into too much detail, we will be out on visits for months and months on end—I could be in Glasgow for months.
Perhaps we could learn from the McIntosh commission's experience. The last thing we want to do is end up in greeting meetings in which people make specific criticisms and which are of no real interest to us. At the same time, Jamie is absolutely right—we want to talk to the voluntary sector and to people who use the services, as well as to the establishment. The McIntosh commission might be able to tell us how it set out its stall.
Yes—and the commission was a small group.
Kenny nicked half of what I was going to say, because I was going to advocate that we took a similar approach to that used by the McIntosh commission when it took evidence. When the commission went out to a local authority area, it spoke to the local authority directly, but it also structured the day so that evidence was taken from groups in the community. It also publicised meetings that were open to the public, so that people could discuss the proposals. It would be a good idea to get a broad perspective on people's views of how we should progress local government and the McIntosh recommendations.
That is how I would envisage organising such visits. For example, if three members—say Kenny, Gil and Bristow—were going out next week to visit a particular council, they would ask other committee members to let them know the issues that they wanted them to find out about.
One of the reasons for the success of the McIntosh report was that the questions were sent out a couple of weeks in advance of visits. People knew what they were going to be asked and had time to consult their colleagues and put together a collective view. The visitors did not get the opinions of just one or two individuals who they met on the day, which could have produced a distorted picture.
That would be a good way of working. If a group of members planned to visit a particular area, it would be incumbent on group members to speak to other committee members to ascertain what they want to find out about that area. The responsibility would be on members to work together to send questions out in advance. The clerks would ensure that that was done.
We could devise a standard list of questions as a starting point, for example to find out the main problems in the area. It would help if people received the questions in advance.
The clerk has not yet got used to the fact that he can speak up during our meetings, so he has passed me a note to say that we could produce some proposals for the next meeting. That is a good idea. Please feel free to speak up, Eugene, rather than whispering and passing notes.
We should contact Neil McIntosh or somebody who was involved in the committee and ask what parts of the consultation process worked and what did not. The point was made before: we do not want to repeat what has already been done but we want to learn from it. No doubt members of the McIntosh commission feel that some things could have been done better.
When he was summing up, Neil said that it was important to get out and listen to people, so it would be fair to ask him what the most efficient way to do that would be. The clerks or I will speak to him about that.
You are the boss.
I am not the boss; I just keep you all in line.
There is an argument for keeping our agenda flexible as issues will emerge from the initial stages of the process, particularly from the discussion with the Executive and we might want to change our priorities. While it would be useful to have a programme to work to, the danger is that we might have no room to manoeuvre if we have invited people to come and talk to us.
That is a fair comment. We have planned up until the week after the recess. After that, we might want to go down a road that we had not considered before.
We might need discussion time or a breathing space in between visits from people. We have rather a lot of people coming and talking and we might want to talk as well.
I will try to have a space at the end of every agenda to allow us to throw issues about and discuss things in general.
I do not know how the system works but it would be useful to book a weekly slot without saying what we are going to do. If the Executive sets up a financial inquiry, that is fine, but if it does not, instituting an inquiry would be a major task and would take several weeks.
And a lot of discussion among us.
When will we receive the briefing papers for last week?
Matt Smith, of Unison, and George Thorley, of South Ayrshire Council, informed me that we will have them as soon as possible.
All the papers will come out together—we will have one from Neil McIntosh and one from Arthur Midwinter as well.
Meeting closed at 11:19.
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