Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, 03 Jun 2008

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Official Report 126KB pdf

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Difficult Correspondents and Constituents Inquiry

We come to item 2. Members will recall that the committee agreed at its meeting on 22 April 2008 to consider whether to issue guidance to MSPs on handling difficult correspondents and constituents. Our predecessor committee considered the matter but, because of time constraints, it could not incorporate guidance into the code of conduct.

Paper SPPA/S3/08/8/1 contains a copy of the paper that was circulated to the Standards and Public Appointments Committee on 25 April 2006, which details the approaches of other agencies and bodies to dealing with persistent complainers. Appendix 3 to that paper is the policy of the Northern Ireland ombudsman's office on unacceptable actions or behaviour by complainers, which was not available to the committee in 2006.

The paper proposes three approaches to progressing the inquiry for the committee to consider. The committee could seek further written evidence, hear oral evidence or move straight to considering its draft guidance for MSPs. I seek members' views on which of those approaches they are minded to adopt and I invite them to make any other suggestions.

In previous sessions, committee members and others have done considerable work. We should use that work and the information that is appended to the paper. I suggest that we ask for another paper that proposes a commonsense approach that we can share with members to assist them in dealing with difficult constituents who might approach them. We do not need further written evidence or oral evidence; we can use what we have.

That is my view, too. When we first discussed the subject, the aim was to have an add-on, as we were finishing our consideration of section 8 of the code of conduct.

If that approach is agreed, I ask members to think about the relevant issues. Do we want the overarching policy to be that MSPs should always endeavour to represent their constituents but may determine how they engage with persistent complainers—for example, in writing or face to face? The cornerstone would be our endeavour to represent constituents, but we might seek guidance on persistent complainers.

I agree with that. We should try to keep the paper as simple as possible.

For the benefit of the clerks, who will have to put the paper together, should we try to encourage MSPs to separate the behaviour of persistent complainers from the issues that they wish the MSP to pursue? That is not always easy to do, but it seems like a good principle to follow.

Members indicated agreement.

Do we agree that the policy should reflect the need for each substantial issue of a case to be considered, and that the previous poor conduct of a complainer should not debar them from approaching an MSP again with a different case?

We should focus on the behaviour of the complainer, rather than the cases. The guidance should help MSPs and their staff to deal with abusive or threatening behaviour—someone at a previous meeting mentioned being stalked by a complainer—and cases in which members are inundated with unreasonable and abusive e-mails or letters.

The clerks are looking to the standards commissioner's policies and those of the ombudsman in Northern Ireland, which suggest that if a persistent complainer comes forward with a fresh complaint, that complaint should be dealt with on its merits, regardless of the previous behaviour. Are you saying that the previous behaviour should be taken into account?

I would have thought that the previous behaviour would be important. Members want guidance on whether there are times when the police should be called in, for example. That is the main issue, as far as I can see. If someone has exhibited behaviour that has caused a member concern, it is unlikely that they will change in the course of the few months between their first complaint and their next complaint. If we say that we should ignore someone's past behaviour when dealing with a complaint, we could make it possible for someone to continue to harass a member.

The area is fraught with difficulty. The safety of elected members and their staff from physical assault or verbal abuse must be a primary consideration. It is not beyond any of us to imagine that someone whose track record shows that they are likely to cause fear in a member or their staff might come up with a somewhat spurious complaint simply as a means of gaining legitimate access. Cathie Craigie is right to say that someone's past behaviour is important. We must come up with a form of words that says that members of the public cannot treat people in such a way.

All of our public servants have a right to be protected from abuse, and there are a variety of advertising campaigns that say that abusive behaviour is not acceptable. I am sorry, but, regardless of our position as elected members, it is no more acceptable for us to be subjected to such abuse on a regular basis than it is for any other individual. We need to be a little bit cautious in case we create a window of opportunity for someone to use another issue as a method of perpetuating an abusive campaign.

We have to be careful here. The matter is one of degree. Someone might have gone over the top because the issue at the time affected them in such a personal way—it might have concerned a family member, for example—that they did or said things that they should not have done or said. Six months or six years down the road, they might have an issue that they need to take to their MSP that is not so personal and does not get them so worked up. The first situation might have been a one-off, and it would be wrong for us to debar them because of that. We need to consider the degree of the problem.

I hesitate to say this but, with one or two exceptions, ignorance of the law is no mitigation. If people are clear from the outset about the basis of the relationship, there can be no doubt about what the boundaries are.

The expression "over the top" would not stand up in court, as it would depend on who was defining what constitutes an over-the-top reaction. It is natural for people to want to address emotive issues, but I reiterate that if it is not acceptable to abuse a train guard because the train is late, early or cancelled, it should not be acceptable to abuse MSP staff, who are almost certainly the first point of contact, or MSPs. Rather than the onus being on MSPs, we should have clear guidelines on how the relationship will be conducted, which should be known to both parties so that everyone knows where they stand. The guidance should enable MSPs to say, "If you would like me to take up this case, here is the basis on which we will go forward." Somewhere in there, we perhaps need to say that verbal or written abuse is not acceptable and that decisions on whether to progress will be contingent on acceptable behaviour.

To clarify, what we are discussing now is guidance for the clerks, who will put the papers together.

I understand that.

I go back to Hugh O'Donnell's analogy about the train guard. It is unacceptable for someone to be abusive to a train guard because a train is late. However, if the person goes back for a train two days later and asks the train guard why there are delays on the west coast line, should not that request be treated on its merits?

If their manner of approach is similar to that in the first instance, no.

That is true.

I may be repeating what I said before, but we should not have guidance that says that a constituent should not come to our surgery again with a case. We were elected to represent everyone, all of the time, regardless of their behaviour. I am looking for guidance for me and my staff about what we should do. I am not looking for the bottom line, which is that an MSP can close their door to a constituent altogether. We should not have anything like that in the guidance.

This is my third session in the Parliament and I do not think that we have had any training on how to deal with difficult constituents or been told the situations in which we should call the police. At our previous meeting, one of our colleagues explained how a member had felt intimidated by a constituent. That should not happen. We should be able to call on a part of the organisation to assist in such cases or we should know what to do.

I was going to make the same point as Hugh O'Donnell. It does not make any difference whether it is a guard on a train, an MSP or a member of their staff; abusive behaviour is not acceptable anyway nowadays. The same avenues should be open to anyone. We cannot make ourselves special just because we are MSPs and MSPs' staff, much as I would like to.

The clerk's paper mentions a report by Craigforth Consultancy and Research, which was produced in 2003. It might be worth having a look at that.

Which page is that on, Jamie?

It is in paragraph 4 on page 4. I am not certain what it says, to be honest, but the point is that work has been done on the matter.

That is one of the points that I was going to make. There are a number of different models: the standards commissioner's policy, which is on his website; the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman's; and the guidance from the Northern Ireland ombudsman's office, which the previous committee did not have. It is a week or so since I read about them, but the Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner's policy seemed to be a good starting point for the clerks. It is also most relevant to this Parliament. Are members happy for the clerks to use that as a starting point?

Members indicated agreement.

The guidance from the Northern Ireland ombudsman's office is big—too big, which is why I call again for simplicity. Let us drill down to make our guidance a fairly tight document. If we try to address every single issue in great detail, we could get into all sorts of problems.

There is one final point on which it would be useful to get any strong opinions now. As Hugh O'Donnell said, not only would we take a cue from the guidance, but it would allow complainers to know where the boundaries are. Would it be worth considering whether an MSP could discuss and agree with their business manager cases in which the MSP proposes to cease contact with a constituent? Obviously, it would be quite contentious to cease contact. The idea behind the proposal is that the business manager is relatively independent of the case.

I thought that, in general, we could get individual advice from the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee clerks, which is a better way. I would expect to get more substantial, backed-up advice from the clerks than from the business managers.

Part of the reason why we are discussing the matter is that there is a vacuum because there is not a lot of guidance. Do the clerks want to mention any previous advice that has been given on such matters?

We can always give advice to the extent that matters are covered by the code of conduct and the guidance. Obviously, it is easier to give advice if there is better guidance in place.

There does not seem to be a great deal of appetite for the idea of discussing cases with the business managers, and nobody is saying otherwise.

We have provided a few clues for the clerks to start to put together a paper. That is the next thing that will happen, and we will have it after the recess.

We talked about the lack of training. It is not the committee's place to offer training, but staff in all our offices often work on their own and if we are going to issue guidance, we need to give it to them as well as to MSPs. Who would we ask to set up training?

That is a good question.

The personnel office has organised training for members' staff in the past, but the committee might want to recommend training for MSPs' staff when it issues the guidance. We can pursue that.

What guidance and training was given to MPs after the horrific murder of an MP's assistant? There might be something already in place that we can use instead of reinventing the wheel.

I have asked about staff before. Even in the short time in which I have been an MSP, there have been scary situations for people in my office, especially my two female staff, who are often on their own.

For now, we are discussing having guidance in the code of conduct that gives members surety that they will have something to back them up if they say that they are not going to communicate with someone any more for whatever reason. Security and training for staff in local offices are separate issues. It might be best if the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body considered those.

I have just heard Marlyn Glen mentioning health and safety. I was going to mention that. As employers, we have a responsibility to keep our members of staff safe. If training can be carried out or other things can be done to protect people in the workplace, we have a responsibility to arrange such things.

All new members of staff are given a handbook that contains information on conduct. A new insert could be put into that handbook. Something could bring to staff's attention how they should deal with persistent complainers. There could be an update for all members of staff.

That may be outwith our remit, but it would be within the SPCB's remit. I could write to the SPCB and suggest that it should consider training and security measures in local offices. It might be worth asking the SPCB about that, even if we ended up only with guidance, although we might end up with something more substantial than that.

Unless the policy has changed, the elected member is the employer. The elected member is the responsible person in such matters and so it is down to each of us to take the necessary steps. Heaven forbid that there should be a problem, but if there is, as employers, we, rather than the corporate body, carry the responsibility for it. From my experience, the corporate body's attitude to allowing any training other than the initial training that is provided to members of staff is that it should be funded not by it but from the members support allowance. The corporate body has no budget for such training, and it will almost certainly bat the issue back to us.

In that case, perhaps it would be appropriate to raise the issue with the party groups.

In the past week or so, we have all received an e-mail, saying that a survey is being undertaken and that people from somewhere in the Parliament will come to speak to us to find out how we can be supported. There could be something out there that can be tapped into, although I am not aware of it.

I am a wee bit further ahead, as I took part in a face-to-face survey interview this morning. There were a few open-ended questions, but nothing like that was covered in it. Like Hugh O'Donnell, I think that the corporate body would say that it does not provide such a service.

From my experience of dealing with it before I was elected, I think that that is exactly what it would say.

As I said, it may be appropriate to raise the issue through the party groups.

We agree that the clerks should produce a paper. Do members also agree that any draft guidance should be discussed in private?

Members indicated agreement.

We will now move into private session for agenda item 3.

Meeting continued in private.

Meeting continued in public.