Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, 05 Feb 2008

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Official Report 209KB pdf

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Code of Conduct

The third item on today's agenda is consideration of written evidence that has been received from stakeholders and interested parties in response to the committee's review of section 8 of the code of conduct. I thank all those who have submitted written evidence to the committee. Their responses have provided us with a useful base of evidence for consideration. We also received an MSP response from Lewis Macdonald. It arrived slightly after the deadline, but I have agreed to accept it.

We received four responses to the open call for evidence. Members will recall that, in addition, we sought the views of a number of stakeholders, including the Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, both of whom have provided us with written responses. As the standards commissioner has previously considered complaints of the type that are made under section 8, his views are especially helpful.

I ask members to note that one of the respondents has requested that his or her submission

"remain, for as long as possible, anonymous".

The Parliament's policy on the treatment of written evidence by committees makes it clear that it is for each committee to decide in each case whether to accept evidence that is submitted on condition that it is published anonymously. I draw members' attention to paragraph 7 of paper SPPA/S3/08/2/3, which sets out the respondent's reasons for requesting anonymity. Do members wish to comment on the request?

I am of the view that if anyone wants to give evidence to the committee, we should have their name.

So submissions should not be anonymous.

If we are to be open and transparent, submissions should not be anonymous.

It is a shame that we cannot see the submission, but I agree with Cathie Craigie.

I go along with what has been said.

If we accept anonymous submissions, anyone will be able to send in anything.

Someone who is in a position to give us valuable information may be concerned that doing so will affect their job, but in this case the respondent is saying only, "Ah hae ma reasons; Ah hae ma doots." That is not acceptable.

I am quite relaxed about the matter, but I am cautious about setting a precedent that others will seek to follow. Do we agree not to accept the evidence on condition that it remains anonymous? The clerks will inform the individual concerned of our decision, so that they have the chance to resubmit their evidence, but not on an anonymous basis.

Members indicated agreement.

Our papers say that the person has requested to remain anonymous for "as long as possible". It will be his or her decision whether to—

We will ask him or her whether he or she wants to remain anonymous.

As a result of our decision, the submission will not form part of the written evidence unless, of course, the person gets back to us to say that they no longer wish to remain anonymous. The respondent will be notified of the committee's decision.

I invite members to comment on the responses and to say what broad conclusions they might have drawn.

A number of new responses have provided a counterpoint to the bulk of the responses, which expressed views that I admit I shared. The responses that we have received from the public and various bodies have provided some balance to the picture.

The Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner's response was extremely good. He has been at the coalface of dealing with complaints, so we can trust that his views are based on experience.

The Scottish Parliament information centre and the clerks have provided us with information on the practices in other Parliaments. When we come to write our report, we will need to reflect on the procedures that have been adopted elsewhere.

On the point about electoral recourse, it is important to remember that, in a sense, regional members do not go through elections.

I agree with what the Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner says in the first paragraph of his submission. In my experience, one constituent might feel that an MSP is doing a wonderful job while another might feel exactly the opposite. As long as an MSP is making themself accessible and is not breaking any rules that are set by the Parliament, that is all that can be asked for, in the overall picture.

In answer to question 5, which asks how detailed the complaints should have to be, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman says:

"experience suggests that an absolute requirement to provide full information at the outset can discourage complainants."

I am not saying that we are trying to encourage complainants particularly, but we should note that requiring an absolutely full report to begin with might put some people off.

That is a fair point. The SPSO has a pro forma that makes the process fairly easy, but I do not think that it would ever disbar someone for not having full information; rather, it would ask for more information.

The Scottish Parliamentary Standards Commissioner notes that section 8.2.1 says:

"The wishes of constituents and/or the interests of a constituency or locality are of paramount importance."

He also says that section 8.3.1 makes it clear that section 8.2.1 relates to which MSP the constituent would be dealing with, rather than stating that an MSP must take a constituent's case on.

The standards commissioner covered a number of other helpful issues in his submission. He quoted from his annual report for 2004-05. He obviously feels that his position was set up to detect corruption, encourage openness and deal with financial issues rather than to police the quality and quantity of members' services to constituents. Those are two powerful points.

As you and Cathie Craigie say, the fact that he is the one making those points adds weight to them, given his experience.

I have a comment on one of the other responses, from Andrew McCabe. I do not want to go into it in detail, but it raises a point about members' responsibility to give factual accounts. Generally, the Presiding Officer or the convener of a committee is responsible for the conduct of a meeting, but not for whether a member makes an accurate or inaccurate statement. We might want to give back benchers, conveners and the Presiding Officer a bit of protection. Would the fact that the gentleman has raised the matter with the committee allow us to consider it in a wee bit more detail?

I roughly agree with that. The only problem is that the case to which you refer is quite emotional; there is a strong emotional investment in it and we walk a thin line. It is a matter of a person's interpretation of a situation. Somebody could say that something is inaccurate but, if we ask the person who gives the evidence to produce accurate information, we must ask the person who counters it to give accurate information that actually counters the evidence. It is a grey area and a thin line.

The problem is where it would lead us if we were to look into such an issue. It is a he-said-she-said situation. It can often be a matter of opinion unless it is proven that something that was said was factually inaccurate. In that case, one would hope that pressure to retract or amend what was said would build up on the person, whether through the media or elsewhere. We can take that into account in future, because this is not the end of the process. In future, we will ensure—as we have done today—that we do not go into any detail on any allegations in responses because there are procedures for dealing with those that we would not want to circumvent.

I draw members' attention to the fact that we intend to take evidence on section 8 of the code at our meetings on 26 February and 18 March. It would be helpful if we could have a discussion in private about the key themes that arise from those evidence-taking sessions at the end of each of those meetings. That would inform our draft report and, in the case of the 26 February meeting, help us to identify key areas of questioning for the meeting with the business managers on 18 March. Did members follow that? Are we agreed to meet in private at the end of the committee meetings on 26 February and 18 March?

Members indicated agreement.

As members will recall, we agreed at our last meeting to invite the business managers and the Minister for Parliamentary Business to give evidence to the committee on its review of section 8. Bruce Crawford, the Minister for Parliamentary Business, has since contacted me to request that Brian Adam give evidence in his place. He states that Brian Adam is better placed to provide the range of views held by Scottish National Party members on section 8. I have agreed to that request. The SNP members of the committee will certainly know that Brian Adam is better placed to give evidence than Bruce Crawford, but I wanted to pass that information on.

We will consider which members we wish to take oral evidence from when we discuss our work programme under item 6.