Standards Committee, 05 Apr 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 5, 2000

Official Report 141KB pdf

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Cross-party Groups

The second item on the agenda is consideration of applications for recognition as cross-party groups. There are five applications for consideration; members have copies of the application forms. We will take the applications in order. Do members have any comments on the proposal for a cross-party group on sports?

The proposal appears to conform with the rules on cross-party groups; we should endorse it.

Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

The group will build on Scotland's success in the recent rugby international.

We will move on to the second application.

I suggest that we return to the second application after we have dealt with the other three.

I am happy to do that.

We may well want to discuss the second application.

Do members have any comments on the proposal for a cross-party group on renewable energy?

It is absolutely in order.

Are members happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

Do members have any comments on the proposal for a cross-party group on pluralism in education?

I have one concern, which relates to an issue that I flagged up in relation to a previous group. Groups should be of general application and interest, rather than tied to specific campaigns. To be blunt, the proposal seems to be too closely linked to Steiner Waldorf schools; it could be seen as part of a campaign on behalf of one grouping. I would need to be convinced that the group had a genuinely broad-ranging remit, and that it was not simply the vehicle for taking forward a campaign, before I would be content for it to proceed.

I have no objection to the application. It states:

"The main purpose of the group is to achieve pluralism in state education through including Steiner Waldorf school within the maintained sectors."

The emphasis is on achieving pluralism, which would involve there being many different types of school to meet different needs.

I have a niggling concern about the application. The proposed title of the group is fine, but the application states that the group's main purpose

"is to achieve pluralism in state education through including Steiner Waldorf school within the maintained sectors."

That seems very close to a campaign that is centred on a particular kind of school. I suggest that we ask the proposer to spell out more clearly what is intended. Perhaps the application has just been badly worded. When we have been given an explanation, we can return to the item at our next meeting.

Members would be happy with the wording, "The main purpose of the group is to achieve pluralism within the state education system." Our problem is that the group seems to focus solely on Steiner Waldorf schools.

Can this application be considered again at a future meeting?

That is what I suggest. The application also raises a policy issue. In my view, cross-party groups should be sufficiently general in scope as not to be associated with a particular local campaign. We must avoid a situation in which local campaigns come to see cross-party groups as an effective vehicle for taking the campaign forward. If we do not, we will end up in the same position as the Public Petitions Committee.

To be frank, I do not see what members are objecting to. There is, for example, a cross-party group on Borders rail, of which I am a member. If an issue is of major concern to a significant community in Scotland, it seems rather restrictive to introduce a rule that says there cannot be a cross-party group because it is a campaign issue. The main reason for putting together cross-party groups is to allow MSPs and others to come together to consider issues that may or may not be the subject of campaigns now or in the future. I think that Des McNulty is trying to be too restrictive in his definition of what cross-party groups are about.

Borders rail is another issue. I am not sure which way I would jump on that. It raised questions in my mind for the first time. I am fairly clear that if the Steiner group were to deal with a specific school in a specific locality, it would not be in line with what we want to achieve.

I would be open to argument and discussion on the Borders rail group, but let us say, for the sake of argument, that I proposed setting up a cross-party group on the retention of the Crown post office in Clydebank, which I could do—I attended a public meeting last night and people want to launch a campaign. We could get into a situation where every local issue is elevated to being the subject of a cross-party group; I do not think that that is what we want to see.

We need to develop a way of handling such matters, which does not prevent legitimate issues from being dealt with in cross-party groups. I am not saying that the fact that an issue is purely local is necessarily a reason for debarring it, because it could be argued, for example, that a group on fishing would reflect the interests of only a few constituencies in Scotland rather than of Scotland as a whole, although in my view, such a group would be perfectly legitimate.

When we consider applications, we have to safeguard the position of cross-party groups to ensure that they are used as a vehicle for what most of us would expect them to be used for—to broaden out issues and provide a vehicle for people to contribute and so on.

Some of the applications raise questions in my mind. The decision to go back and speak to the proposers is correct. I do not want to say that they cannot form such a group, but there needs to be more definition. We will also have to confront the policy issue, whether in relation to this application or to a subsequent application.

Des McNulty is right; we need to have a longer discussion about the matter. At the risk of sounding as if I am putting in my tuppence worth, it is quite clear to me that a cross-party group on something like Borders rail would deal with an issue that affects a number of regional areas and enjoys wide support from all the parties. There is a difference between that and Des's example of the post office, which affects only a tiny local area. If we set down definitions, we might have to say that, at the lowest level, an issue must affect a whole constituency, rather than a town. We need to consider the matter. With a wee bit of common sense, we should be able to reach a solution.

We should refer the matter back to the proposers.

I understand that there is more than one Steiner Waldorf school. The issue is not just local to Edinburgh; there is a school in Aberdeenshire.

We will ask the proposers to come back to us.

Let us consider the next application, which is for a cross-party group on shipbuilding. Are there any comments?

Shipbuilding is an important issue.

Is everyone happy with that group?

Members indicated agreement.

I would like to go back to the application for a cross-party group for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Members should note that the proposed CND group does not include a member from the Conservative party. The rules on the establishment of cross-party groups state:

"The group's membership must be open to all Members of the Parliament and must include at least 5 MSPs of which at least one Member must be from each of the parties or groups represented in the Parliamentary Bureau. In circumstances where the Standards Committee considers it is merited in relation to a particular group, this rule may be modified or waived."

I have received a letter from the convener of the proposed group, Dorothy-Grace Elder, requesting that we waive the rule because, for obvious reasons, it is highly unlikely that the group will ever include representatives from the Conservative party.

I would be reluctant to waive the rule. It is obviously very unlikely that any member of the Conservative party would wish to be a member of any movement on this subject—unless it were in relation to multilateral disarmament, which I understand is also the position of the official Labour party. If CND wants to hold meetings, it can make arrangements through any MSP, who can book any committee room, and can hold those meetings. There would be no difficulty in that. However, this proposed cross-party group would not cover all the four major parties in the Parliament.

This is the one cross-party group for which the Standards Committee should modify or waive the rule that the group has to have somebody from every political party that is represented on the bureau, because it is impossible that any member of the Conservative party will ever join it. We have raised the concern that situations might arise where one party, for whatever reason, might decide that it did not wish to take part, and that that might effectively scupper the cross-party group. That is why we have the fall-back position that the Standards Committee can modify or waive the rules.

It is significant that, in addition to the parties on the bureau—with the exception of the Conservative party—we have representation on the group from the Scottish Socialist party and the Scottish Green party. I think that it would be daft for us not to waive the rule and not to approve the application.

When we were establishing the rules for cross-party groups, we discussed the possibility of one of the parties not participating in a group. We specifically discussed the possibility of a group being scuppered because one particular party did not believe in the subject matter. It was because of that that we introduced the possibility of waiving the rule. This CND application is a classic example of a case where we should do that. The rule should be waived.

There is a case for waiving the rule for this application, but I feel that we should ask the group to set out its purpose in more detail. It has established a principle on which it is based, but we are looking for more under the purpose heading.

I would quite like to ask the group for more information abut what it would see as its purpose and mode of operation. I would like to wait until it gives us more about its purpose. I see no reason for waiving the rule.

The only other issue that I would highlight is that in Dorothy-Grace Elder's letter, she mentions "three Conservative party"; one is quite enough.

Dorothy-Grace Elder's letter makes a statement, but I do not see any evidence that it is correct. We must be careful that we have all the evidence before us when we are asked to waive a rule. She states:

"The proposed cross party CND group will, for very obvious reasons be highly unlikely to ever include representatives"

from the Conservative party. It would be a different kettle of fish if she were able to say that she has approached all 19 Conservative MSPs and each has refused. Her statement is an assumption. On that basis I would not be happy to approve the establishment of this group at this stage.

If the group is to discuss nuclear disarmament, is there a way in which it could frame that activity that would lend itself to Conservatives participating? If the group cannot do that, that is fine, but we should give it the opportunity to try.

If some members of the committee were minded to approve this as an all-party group, I would feel bound to vote against it on principle because it does not include one of the four major parties in the Parliament and is unlikely to do so.

It is the democratic right of CND and MSPs who are that way minded, which I understand excludes the official Labour party, to pursue their aims through booking committee rooms and having meetings in the Parliament. There is no reason why they should not do that, but it would not be a genuine cross-party group.

Perhaps Lord James Douglas-Hamilton is making assumptions about members of his own party. I am sure that a number of Conservatives believe in unilateral disarmament and would be happy to get rid of our nuclear weapons. I am more minded to take up the convener's suggestion to ask Dorothy Grace-Elder to ask Conservative members whether they would like to join the group. Perhaps we could then consider this matter at our next meeting.

Dorothy-Grace Elder must show that she has made efforts to make the group genuinely cross party. I would direct her to the framing of the purpose, because of its lack of detail and baldness in that regard.

If members are content, that is how I will phrase my reply to Dorothy-Grace Elder.

I will also write to the individuals whose requests we have approved to inform them that that is the case.

Item 3 is the post-registration monitoring of cross-party groups. At our previous meeting it was suggested that consideration be given to developing a mechanism—at Des McNulty's instigation—for monitoring cross-party groups once they have been registered. The clerks could produce an issues paper for discussion at the next meeting, or the one after. We will leave it to the clerks to produce that paper if members are content.

That would be helpful, but I suggest that local campaigns are part of the same issue. We could therefore consider the matter formally and generally—and not in the context of a particular application.

We now move on to item 4 of the agenda, which we will consider in private.

Meeting continued in private until 11:03.