Scottish Civic Forum
Item 3 is the Scottish Civic Forum event last week. I thank Richard Baker and Bruce Crawford for attending on behalf of the committee. Mark Ballard also attended. I am sorry that I was unable to attend, but the Local Government Committee overran. Do any of those members wish to say anything about the event?
It was very useful. It was great to hear so many distinctive voices in the chamber. It was a different and refreshing debate. We all enjoyed it because of that change. I would have found it even more useful if the use of time had been structured slightly differently. In particular, I would have liked there to have been more verbal reports on and discussion of some of the points that were raised at the regional meetings, as well as written reports on those meetings. If the event is held again, consideration should be given to the structure of the discussion. Perhaps people should be helped to focus more on specific issues, instead of there being speeches of five or six minutes. Some of those speeches were very interesting and explained why individual organisations were attending but, if we want to research the founding principles, more focus on issues relating to those would be useful.
I do not know how the Scottish Civic Forum could do this, but it would be helpful if it could present more specific, detailed recommendations. Many general opinions were expressed. For example, people wanted there to be less whipping in the Parliament. In my view, if there is to be a campaign to increase participation, it should have achievable, realistic goals. Ending whipping is a lovely idea in a utopian atmosphere, but it will not help the Procedures Committee to find practical, realistic ways of achieving access, participation and the other founding principles more effectively. However, overall, the event was hugely useful and I hope that it will be repeated in the future.
I support much that Richard Baker has said. I, too, found the event very useful. However, I was slightly surprised by the number of representative organisations—to put it as kindly as I can—that attended. Perhaps that is just the nature of the beast and the way in which the Scottish Civic Forum operates. There were not as many ordinary people from throughout Scotland in attendance as I thought there might be. That surprised me. The Scottish Civic Forum is representative of organisations, but it needs to consider how to become more representative of people. I do not know how it can do that, but it would be useful if it could.
We discussed a number of issues. I have already alluded to the issue of committees meeting in private, about which some interesting comments were made. In particular, there were comments on the issues of transparency and accountability and whether committees were in a position to feed back properly not just on what decisions were made but on the procedure that was used for making them and on how conclusions were reached. It is obvious that some groups are frustrated about that.
There is also frustration about the ability of groups to contribute at stage 2 of bills or to earlier evidence-taking sessions when they are determined to do so. Some people believe that they have been cut out of the process. I do not know how Richard Baker feels about that, but it did not leave a very good taste in my mouth. I do not know how representative it was of the whole organisation, but one particularly powerful contribution was made on that issue.
Another strong point was made about party whips. I was struck less by the view that was put than by the lack of awareness of the realities of the Parliament. I do not know how we can communicate back the way to help people to understand those realities. In future, Parliamentary Bureau members could attend meetings to enable people to understand some of the dynamics, issues, tensions and conflicts that exist in the Parliament. It might not be a bad exercise to raise awareness by exposing more of the Parliament's inner workings to them. I am not saying that raising awareness would change people's minds, but they would at least come to a view with a greater sense of what it is really like to operate in this place. We find it difficult, so God knows how they sometimes view the matter.
As Richard Baker indicated, the most important point is that it would be very useful for us if the Civic Forum presented more specific, concentrated, focused proposals for change that the committee could begin to debate, rather than groups of frustrations about how a process does not seem to be working. I understand those frustrations and see where people are coming from, but it would be helpful if we helped the Civic Forum to create a process that is rather more focused, pointed and specific.
I very much agree with what Richard Baker and Bruce Crawford have said. Interesting points were made about consultation. The committee's consultative steering group report contained some broad headings on improving consultation, but there was a lack of clear proposals. That was matched by the lack of clear proposals in the Scottish Civic Forum debate.
We need to look at the parliamentary consultation processes: how do they work, what is the experience of people who have been consulted directly and can we come up with a better system? The Civic Forum's criticism was that consultation tended to be conducted with representatives of representative organisations, which is a criticism that could also be made of our own consultation procedures. It would be worth looking at how the Civic Forum and the Parliament could get round the problem of talking to the same people. I am not sure whether guidance is in place at the moment on how committees should consult. If so, is it worth looking at it again?
A number of consultation templates and suggestions are available from the Parliament's participation services, which try to give advice to committees, as they did to us when we did our oral questions inquiry. Advice on the different types of consultation is available, although I do not think that there is a guidance document as such; it is more of a series of option papers that address different circumstances.
There is some information about consulting young people, which the Education, Culture and Sport Committee drew together as a result of its experience of consultation in that area.
I am interested in the comments that Mark Ballard made. However, I think that those who complained are the very people who would complain even more if we were to go beyond the representative organisations and the usual suspects—they are the people whom we consult. An interesting dilemma could arise if we were to move beyond the people whom we consult at the moment. We should do that because representative organisations are not necessarily representative of the general public. It is the public I want to consult.
When we complete our report on oral questions, we will have to decide what weighting to give to the views of the ordinary people we spoke to across the country together with the views of the usual suspects, who gave us their views anyway. That will be an interesting dilemma for us.
It must be frustrating to watch the process from outside the Parliament. It is sometimes frustrating even for those of us inside it—we do not always get what we want. Part of the problem with politics is that people sometimes think that if they suggest an idea that they think is a good one, we should accept it automatically. Sometimes the idea is not the best way forward. We have to take responsibility for the decisions that we make and we have to live by our decisions. That said, consultation should be done properly and openly.
I am interested in what Mark Ballard said about stage 2. I might ask him for a bit more information on that after the meeting. By stage 2, we are at the stage of changing legislation. Politicians have to live with the changes that are made; they are going to be on the statute book for a number of years. I will be interested to hear more about the criticism of the stage 2 process.
To return to consultation, my experience of consultation from the previous committees on which I have served is that the people who have been involved in the consultation process, whether they are from professional or voluntary organisations, welcome the process. Some voluntary organisations might feel that they are weighed down by the number of Parliament or Executive consultations but, if the issue is important enough, they will take the time to respond to consultations.
I return to Mark Ballard's point about getting to more than the usual suspects. The Communities Committee is taking evidence on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill. Given the Social Justice Committee's experience of taking evidence from too many umbrella groups and not from the real people on the ground, the Communities Committee made an effort to get out and speak to people around Scotland.
Instead of inviting only organisations and bodies to give evidence, we invited people who work at the sharp end in the field. Of course, we also have to invite the organisations and bodies. As Karen Gillon mentioned, some of them might be unhappy if we did not do so. However, from speaking to members of other committees, I think that in the second parliamentary session we have more experience of how to take evidence and consult. Members now have the confidence to ask for the opinion of the ordinary man and woman in the street.
I should have mentioned the mainstreaming equalities guidance, to which the committee is signed up, which covers how we try to ensure that people from disadvantaged groups get the opportunity to voice their opinions too.
The key problem for many groups was feedback. As Cathie Craigie said, they were keen to be consulted and voice their opinions; they were just not sure what had happened to their input. That is where stage 2 came in. They felt that they were involved in the bills process at the pre-legislative stage, but they did not realise that they had a chance to contribute when bills went to stage 2. Amendments took out a lot of the measures that they supported and they did not understand why, because meetings were often held in private.
Not at stage 2.
Never.
Measures were discussed at meetings about draft reports or at stage 2 and the groups did not have time to be involved in the process. That is perhaps a communication problem, as people do not understand the process. I am just trying to feed back what people were saying, in response to specific points that Karen Gillon and Cathie Craigie made.
When the Communities Committee goes out to take evidence or invites witnesses along to give evidence, those witnesses are engaged in the process. Their names are in the committee's database and they get information back on how the committee has responded or what it has done with the evidence given.
I just want to respond to the points that Karen Gillon made about stage 2, because there is an issue to be resolved there. We are talking to each other and we are convinced, but the public need to be convinced about changes to our procedures—it is an awareness issue. In effect, there were two complaints about the process. One related to the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill. A gentleman who was involved with an organisation—forgive me, but I cannot remember which one—said that it had put a lot of effort into doing research on and considering in detail a particular part of the bill and had applied to give evidence, but was denied, which it was quite angry about. I am not saying that everyone can give evidence, but the issue for that organisation was that it did not understand why it could not give evidence, because it was never given real reasons. That goes back to the feedback issue.
The complaint about stage 2 was that it is okay for the non-governmental organisations that are well resourced and can bring forward amendments. They can be more focused about specific changes that they want to see in legislation and some of them were effective at doing that in the previous session—WWF Scotland was effective in that way during consideration of the Water Environment and Water Services (Scotland) Bill. However, the ordinary people who are not part of representative organisations do not have the resources, understanding or knowledge to help them to bring forward amendments even if they have given evidence suggesting that amendments might be required. That is to do with ordinary communities not having access to resources that they require to make changes.
Maybe the issue is to do with ordinary communities not having access to their MSP. It is MSPs who have to lodge amendments.
I am not arguing about who is right or wrong.
I know. I am saying that perhaps what we have to get back to and what we have started to lose is people speaking to their elected representatives and saying, "We have been involved in this process at this point. We know you are our MSP"—there are many to pick from—"and these are the issues." The MSP has the resources, through NEBU or whoever, to lodge an amendment. Perhaps we have to get that process across to people. I do not know how we do that.
In an ideal world, every community group would have the resources to put forward amendments, but that is not going to happen, so we need to find a mechanism to deal with the issue. There is a big flaw in what happens at the moment: unless I read through the documents, I never know who in my constituency has contributed to an Executive consultation. I would find out if I was sent all the documents and they were quoted but, let us be honest, we are not going to do that. Perhaps we should be alerted that certain groups in our constituencies have contributed to consultations. The onus would then be on us to make contact with them and ask them what they think. Perhaps we should consider that in consultation with the Executive to see whether it is practical or possible.
Those are useful comments. We will send a copy of the Official Report of the meeting to the Scottish Civic Forum—
Oh dear.
No doubt it will get back to us with any thoughts that it has.