Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, 03 Nov 1999

Meeting date: Wednesday, November 3, 1999

Official Report 264KB pdf

---

Reporters

We will now address item 3 on the agenda, which concerns the remit of reporters. Lloyd Quinan raised a pertinent matter earlier in the meeting. I think that it was in reference to time scales.

No, my point relates to the committee's guidance on reporters. I have not seen a written remit for reporters. According to Martin Verity, the remit should have been agreed when the reporters were appointed.

More important, if we are to examine a national anti-poverty strategy, we need to decide whether to create a sub-committee according to rule 12.5 of the standing orders or whether, under rule 12.7, we have reporters who meet other members of the committee without those other members being formally appointed by the committee. We appear to be in some confusion. The group has been called an ad hoc group, a committee, a sub-group and a sub-committee. Until we have a constitution for that organisation it should cease working.

Oh dear. In light of our previous decisions that would make life quite difficult.

I would not take the drastic step that Lloyd suggests, but I have every sympathy with what he said. Basically, the group has been called every name possible. I did not even know that it had been set up: perhaps it happened when I was in hospital.

I know that John McAllion is the reporter on housing issues and that Karen Whitefield is the reporter on the voluntary sector, but I do not know whether anyone is on drugs.

We have to decide that.

If we are going to have reporters we must do it in a formal way, so that everyone knows who is doing what. I do not want to complicate matters or make them more bureaucratic, but if we are having reporters, those who have an interest in specific areas—obviously, mine is drug issues, and others are interested in housing and the voluntary sector—should work closely with the reporters so that they have an input. That is how we should be doing it. We do not want to be over-bureaucratic, but we must know who is doing what.

I am confused if people do not know who the reporters are. John McAllion has been doing a report for the past couple of months.

Yes, I knew that he was.

At the previous meeting, or the one before that, it was unanimously agreed that Karen Whitefield was to be the reporter on the voluntary sector. Do not let us confuse the issue.

It is not in the minutes. It is not down here.

I do not see anything wrong in committee members meeting informally to discuss the issues in greater detail. That can only improve our knowledge and our performance when we come here to the committee. But when we will find the time to do that, I do not know. I am confused here—

You are confused by the confusion? If they have missed meetings, members should read the Official Report to ensure that they keep up with the business of the committee. That is important, because we have returned to the same issue—who is doing what—again and again. However, there is a sense of direction to what we are doing.

On Lloyd Quinan's point, we must decide whether to establish a sub-group or a sub-committee on the anti-poverty work. The group was deliberately kept informal, and I remind members that it was a committee decision to do that. We have therefore been implementing a committee decision. If we decide to make it more formal, we have to go through the procedures of the Parliamentary Bureau. That will take some time. I am not averse to making it formal—I would be sympathetic towards that idea, because anti-poverty work is a substantial part of the work of the group. Making the group formal will change the nature of decisions that we have already made. In light of what we have said about pursuing the evaluation report and such like, it would be a great pity if the group stopped working. There is such a lot to be done, as we know.

I feel that the membership of the sub-group should stay the same and that it should continue working. We should raise with the Parliamentary Bureau the possibility of setting up a sub-committee.

Margaret, I think that we are getting all confused on this. There are two issues here. One is the status of the sub-committee, which, as you rightly say, we agreed should be informal, at this stage anyway. We made it informal because it had a specific remit, which was not to address the issues of anti-poverty and social inclusion, but to come back to this committee with suggestions on a remit, work plan, time scale and modus operandi for dealing with those issues. It has not yet come back to the committee. I suggest that the sub-group has at least one more meeting and then comes back to the committee having fulfilled its original remit. That would be the appropriate stage at which to decide whether the committee wants to delegate responsibility to a formal sub-committee.

I would like to make a positive point, if I can. It is all very well to say that we can plough through the Official Report—I take your point—but we still have five reports to get through. Let us be realistic.

There seem to be two routes—the reporters route and the sub-committee route. Sooner or later we will have to rationalise this. I quite like the idea of having reporters for different issues—one on drugs, one on housing, one on the voluntary sector and one on social inclusion. When we get their reports—whether that happens fortnightly or whatever—it would help to have bullet points on a sheet that showed where they had got to. That would help to keep us abreast of what they are doing, and would be in their interests too.

I feel that we are undertaking too many inquiries at one time.

I accept that, but we are getting into the dangerous area of changing our decisions meeting by meeting. We have to learn to live with the outcomes of our decisions, and take some time before deciding to change them.

At last week's meeting, I sought clarification from other members on my role as reporter. When I was appointed as reporter, I was advocating that we should set up a sub-group on the voluntary sector. After a lengthy discussion, the committee agreed unanimously that I had talked myself into the position of reporter on the voluntary sector. It is important that we do not fight over whether we are to have reporters or sub-groups.

The committee has made the decision to appoint me as its reporter on the voluntary sector and it should concentrate on defining my role so that I can get on with the work. My role as a reporter is to ensure that issues that are important to the voluntary sector, including those that have been raised at previous committee meetings, are kept on the agenda, and to liaise between the committee and voluntary and community groups around Scotland. I can report to the committee, but I need a clear definition of what my role is.

Yes. Is Lloyd going to refer to the paper?

We can clear all this up if we have a written remit for the sub-groups and reporters. That would fix it. That is what was asked for last week.

We will raise that at the next meeting, but now we must return to the committee paper.

I accept Alex's suggestion about the anti-poverty sub-group. If we bring a report back to a further committee meeting, we must spend time discussing it. When we have 15 or 20 minutes at the end of a discussion, members will get frustrated and angry with me if I have to cut them off to let somebody else start.

Never.

I know that Alex would not.

We must ensure that that item is timetabled properly. That is one of the difficulties: we are not timetabling properly. Can we finally agree and stick to this agreement—I am trying to remember Lloyd's words—that at the next meeting we will circulate a paper that details the role of the reporters and their work load? Perhaps we can include a recommended time scale for reviewing the role of the reporter and the work they have done, the work of the sub-committee—sub-group, ad hoc group, or whatever we are calling it—and what action we want to take. Members should bear in mind that, at the next meeting, we will have to dedicate some time to discussing that. They should remember that when I cut their questions short and they get agitated with me.

Do members want to have any further discussion on that?

If we are to have four reporters, I suggest that they take it in turn to report to the committee. We do not want four reports on every agenda.

It would be likely that that would be timed according to what was happening in each particular subject area. If there were urgent housing issues, we would try to time the hearing of a report appropriately around that.

I ask for members' forbearance in some matters. Do members have any other issues to raise regarding the paper on reporters, which might inform next week's discussion?

No.