Public Sector Jobs Relocation Debate
As members know, on Wednesday 15 September there will be a debate in the chamber on the committee's report into the relocation of public sector jobs. I put the item on the agenda because the Executive has not yet sent a response to the committee's report. Paragraph 17 of the protocol between the Executive and committee clerks says:
"The Executive will determine the form of its responses to Committee Reports according to the nature and content of the Reports. The Executive will normally provide a response within 2 months of publication of the Report. Where a response will take longer than 2 months to prepare, the Executive will write to the Committee Convener or Clerk explaining the reasons and indicating the likely timetable."
The clerks asked the Executive for such a letter when it became apparent that we would not receive a response within two months of the publication of our report, but they received no reply. I therefore faxed the letter to the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services yesterday, asking for his urgent response. I have received a letter, which has been circulated to members this morning, in which the minister says that he intends to respond to the committee in advance of the debate on Wednesday. There is no clear indication of when we are likely to receive that response.
Members will have seen the proposed motion, which I sent round in the normal format. We should lodge the motion in order to facilitate the debate, but it is unsatisfactory that we have been left in a situation in which we have no response from the Executive. Members of the committee will obviously be concerned about that.
It is good to be here.
Members who were in the chamber yesterday might recollect that I raised the matter as a point of order. The protocol that the convener quoted is absolutely clear in stating that when a committee of the Parliament produces a report—in this case, a substantial report that represents a major piece of work—the Executive should normally provide a response within two months. The Executive has not done so. The protocol also clearly states that if the Executive considers that it cannot meet that deadline, it should explain why it needs more than two months and provide a timetable. The Executive agreed the protocol and agreed to abide by those rules. However, the Executive has broken the rules—apparently, rules are for other people. Given that the Executive is in breach of the rules, it is particularly unfortunate and rather more than unsatisfactory that Tavish Scott, the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services, has failed to say when we will receive the Executive's report.
The matter is not just about form or a technical breach. The point of having rules is to ensure that we have the Executive's response to the work of the Parliament before we debate the issues; the debate should be informed by the Executive's response. If we do not know what that response is, we do not have a proper debate or proper accountability, openness and transparency, which are the principles on which the Parliament is founded. It is a matter of sadness to me that we must begin our first meeting in the new building with the Executive being in breach of the rules. As for the letter from Tavish Scott, I would advise Mr Scott that, if one is making a plea in mitigation, it is best to start with a clear apology.
The minister should today state when we will get the response. In my view, the Executive should today provide the Parliament either with that response or with a complete explanation for the delay and the failure to comply with the rules to which it agreed.
I should make it clear that the rules to which Fergus Ewing refers are guidance, rather than standing orders of the Parliament. However, I do not think that that takes anything away from the burden of what he suggests.
I concur with your suggestion, convener, that we go ahead and lodge the motion even though we have not had the response from the Executive.
I add my concern about the Executive's somewhat cavalier attitude. Obviously, people have been moving over this period, so there has been a certain amount of dislocation. That may be the reason why we have not received a response within the time suggested by the guidance. However, the fact that we have not suggests a somewhat cavalier attitude. I hope that it is not typical of the Executive's attitude towards its relocation policy, but I would certainly welcome a more substantive response.
I can understand why Tavish Scott felt that he had to get a response back to the committee quickly after the convener had faxed him a letter, but Fergus Ewing is right: it is not satisfactory just to be told that we will be getting a response before Wednesday. If it became apparent to the Executive that it was not going to be able—for whatever reasons—to adhere to the guidance, we should have had a letter at that point and that letter should have been a bit more apologetic. Even if the letter had just said, "Because of the move, we have been unable to get this piece of work done," I think that we would have accepted that, but the fact that the issue was ignored is not satisfactory.
I agree. I have to say that the minister's response is cursory. He states "I regret", but there is nothing to suggest that he really regrets anything. The letter reminds me of the minister's response when we were discussing the whole relocation business in connection with Scottish Natural Heritage's move to Inverness; he said that, ultimately, ministers decide those matters. There appears to be an in-built arrogance in the responses from certain ministers. That is regrettable.
I believe that we should lodge the motion and press ahead, but I do not see why we should not also say to the Executive that, if it cannot come up with a response today, the debate should be postponed, because those of us who wish to speak in the debate next week would not have an adequate opportunity to take into account the Executive's response. If the Executive cannot come back to us today, the debate should be postponed to give us an adequate opportunity to get our arguments together in response to the Executive's arguments, so that we can do justice to the fairly hefty piece of work in which the committee is involved.
The postponement suggestion makes enormous sense. To a large extent, the committee is event driven and we are often given little notice to debate matters and take them forward. However, a lot of work has been done on the issue and it would be good for us to have the chance to get our heads round a substantive response from the Executive and to see it in context with the work that we have produced and the inputs that we have had from various enterprise agencies.
As has been alluded to, the guidance exists to ensure that the Parliament can fulfil its scrutiny role; when the guidance is not adhered to, we cannot fulfil our scrutiny role. The point of compelling, or seeking, a response within eight weeks is to allow the committee collectively to consider the Executive's views and, if need be, to respond in advance of the debate.
I concur with the suggestion that we should seek the advice of the Presiding Officer, because it seems to me that, when there is a debate on a committee report and the Executive has not adhered to the guidance, a point of principle is raised. The appropriate way forward on the debate—because clearly the business managers have agreed to the business—is to ask the Presiding Officer whether he is willing to take a view, in this and other cases, about whether the guidance has to be adhered to before committee debates are held. Otherwise, we are into the dangerous territory that the Executive could presumably choose not to adhere to the guidance and not to publish a response until after a debate. That is an issue for the Presiding Officer, given that the business managers have already timetabled the business for the next couple of weeks. Perhaps the clerks could forthwith raise with the Presiding Officer the issue of principle that is at stake.
I will draw together the strands of the discussion. It is generally agreed that we do not want to be in breach of practice by not lodging our motion. I think that we should lodge our motion. It is unfortunate that we have not had the response from the Executive, which might have informed what we say in our motion, but we will leave that to one side for the minute.
A view is coming from members of the committee that we should write to Tavish Scott to indicate that we are dissatisfied with the tone and content of his letter, in that it does not deal with the issue of the timetable or give us a clear indication of when we are likely to receive the Executive's response. A letter to the minister from the committee is required in response to his very brief letter.
I am not sure about the practicalities of postponing the debate. As far as I understand the matter, the debate on relocation is the next business in the chamber and I am not sure of the mechanisms for changing that. We should draw to the Presiding Officer's attention the position that the committee has found itself in as a result of the Executive's failure to respond in the appropriate way to our report. This is entirely the Executive's fault; it is not the committee's fault that we are in this situation. Do members agree that we take those three steps?
Time is short. The debate is next Wednesday and, as members have said, a serious point of principle is at stake. Wendy Alexander's points seemed to me to be extremely well made, as were Ted Brocklebank's. We really need an answer now—this morning. The letter from Tavish Scott is, frankly, an insult. He must know when the response will be published; he must know whether it will be published today, tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday. If he does not know, the Executive is surely completely failing to comply with the parliamentary process and is treating Parliament with contempt.
I suggest that Mr Scott's office be called and that a response from the officials in his office be obtained before the end of the meeting to clarify information that they obviously have and are withholding from Parliament. If we do not get a response by the end of the meeting, which obviously we should do, we must seek guidance urgently from the Presiding Officer, as Wendy Alexander suggested, about whether in the circumstances it is correct for Parliament to go ahead and debate a vital piece of work when the Executive has not complied with the rules. I hope that those two suggestions, which I have put forward in a constructive fashion, can be acceded to.
We can certainly attempt to put forward a communication to Tavish Scott's office during the meeting, but I am not sure whether we can secure a response. Irrespective of that, we should seek guidance from the Presiding Officer along the lines that Wendy Alexander suggested.
By the end of the meeting.
I do not know whether we can get the information by the end of the meeting; that is not an issue. However, do we agree to the proposition that we lodge the motion, that we try to get information from Tavish Scott's office and that we seek guidance from the Presiding Officer? I agree with Fergus Ewing that we should try to get the information within the shortest possible timescale. I think that those are the steps that we can take.
I am genuinely sympathetic to what Fergus Ewing is trying to achieve, but it is possible that Tavish Scott is on a plane to Shetland. The critical issue that we need to resolve is the status of the guidelines. If they are breached and no timetable is placed on the Executive in which to produce a response prior to a parliamentary debate, we will be complicit in setting a precedent that none of us would wish to set.
I therefore think that the Presiding Officer is the person to whom we should take the dilemma. We should let the Presiding Officer clarify the parliamentary practice that he will observe when the Executive has not met its own guideline of eight weeks. The Presiding Officer may choose to give the Executive a further 24 hours, or he may say, "I am sorry, but if you have not met the eight-week guideline, I will not allow the parliamentary debate to go ahead until the committee has had the chance collectively to consider your response, whatever it might be."
The risk is that we set a principle in relation to what is properly a matter of parliamentary practice. We should ask the Presiding Officer urgently to consider the issue and to state his view. Therefore, instead of agreeing not to have the debate unless Tavish Scott responds by 4 o'clock today, it seems to me more important that the Presiding Officer should clarify the procedure for this and all other circumstances in which a similar situation might arise.
I see several heads nodding in agreement with Wendy Alexander's suggestion.
Is it possible to establish that during this part of today's meeting, rather than to carry on for two hours and then gently find that the Presiding Officer does not have time? Is it possible to establish urgently whether the Presiding Officer will take a view on the matter?
The clerks will endeavour to take the matter forward urgently now, but Wendy Alexander is right that the speed with which the Presiding Officer can respond is not the issue. Our role is not to put pressure on the Presiding Officer but to refer the issue of principle to him so that he has the opportunity to respond in the correct way. Ultimately, it is for the Presiding Officer to adjudicate on all matters of scheduling and parliamentary business.
Can we revisit the issue at the end of today's meeting, after the clerks have had an opportunity to seek responses from the office of the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services and from the office of the Presiding Officer?
We should revisit the issue if there is further information to impart, but it will not be necessary to revisit it if there is nothing further to report. We are clear about our position and about what we want to happen.
There is an issue of principle, but what makes the issue much more acute on this occasion is that our committee's debate will be the very next item of business in the chamber. Whether or not there is an issue of principle, we urgently need to know whether we will get a response from the Executive to our report and whether there will be a debate next week. I would have thought that we needed to know that today.
In our communication both with the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services and with the Presiding Officer, we can certainly highlight what we feel to be the urgency of the matter, but Wendy Alexander has correctly pointed out that the Presiding Officer would need to come to a decision on the issue of principle not just for this narrow instance but across the board. He needs to do that in the way that he sees as being best.
Wendy Alexander is correct that the Presiding Officer must clarify the position. However, if I may say so, he went a long way towards doing so yesterday in his response to my point of order. As the protocol is a matter between the Executive and the Parliament rather than part of standing orders, there is no basis for him to instruct the Executive to comply with the rules by which it agreed to abide. I doubt that, under standing orders, the Presiding Officer can do anything about the matter. We are in the position that the Parliament is powerless to compel the Executive to do its job and to comply with the guidelines to which it agreed.
As Ted Brocklebank pointed out, for the next piece of parliamentary business, the Executive will have flagrantly breached the rules and guidelines to which it agreed, but the Presiding Officer can do nothing about it. To proceed with the debate when Tavish Scott is cocking a snook at the Scottish Parliament seems to me to be a wholly reprehensible principle to establish on this, the first day of committee meetings in the new building. If Tavish Scott is around today—and if he has some gumption—he should come before the committee and explain himself. If he is not around today, before the end of today's meeting we should find out from his office what is going on. We should also confirm the position with the Presiding Officer before the end of the meeting. To do otherwise would be to allow the Parliament to be subverted by the Executive.
Fergus Ewing's suggestion gets close to the heart of the issue. As the Presiding Officer made clear, the matter is not covered by standing orders; it is an issue of parliamentary convention rather than of parliamentary rules. Sadly—or perhaps fortuitously—there is no Erskine May in the Scottish Parliament, so it is important that we ask that the Presiding Officer establish a convention that upholds the scrutiny function of the Parliament forthwith. That would be the single most important result that the committee, by using its collective powers, could achieve from this unfortunate set of circumstances.
We should not rush the Presiding Officer to a decision. I have every faith in George Reid. If he finds himself in the unfortunate position of being unable to change next Wednesday's business, I have little doubt that he will tell the Parliamentary Bureau on Tuesday that he wishes to establish a convention that will operate forthwith whereby scheduled business for which the eight-week guideline has not been observed will not be accepted. As I said, I have no doubt about George Reid's independence, but we need to give him the opportunity to think about the convention that he wishes to adopt in such circumstances. I have no doubt that, in considering the best way forward, he will uphold the place of the Parliament by turning what has hitherto been a guideline into something that he will invest with the authority of a parliamentary convention for business on the floor of the chamber.
It is important that we have the Presiding Officer's response, but we must also bear in mind the fact that the timetable for business in the Parliament is established not by the Presiding Officer but elsewhere. How much influence can we have on rescheduling the debate at this late stage, given that the decision has been taken? I am not sure that any of us can answer that question. Another debate would need to be brought forward at very short notice in place of that debate and that would be very difficult.
Ultimately, the committee cannot dictate what happens in the chamber. However, we can set out our position clearly in letters to the Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services and to the Presiding Officer, from whom we have agreed to seek guidance. I will undertake to report back to the committee by the end of today's meeting what progress, if any, has been made on that. However, we will not have a further substantive debate today because our position as a committee is clear.