Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association
Item 3 on the agenda is another discussion with the press, this time with the Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association. We have received a letter from Mr Farquharson, which has been included with the other committee papers. I invited Mr Farquharson to speak to us in support of the points that he made, but he was unable to do so. Mr Ron McKenna has come in his place. I welcome Mr McKenna and acknowledge the presence of Bethan Hubbard, the head of information systems, and Andrew Slorance, media relations officer. I will invite them to contribute, as there are points of clarification on the technical and practical issues that will arise as a consequence of our discussion. Ron, we are at your disposal if you would like to run us through the issues that you think we should be addressing.
Ron McKenna (Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association):
There is not much to add to what is in the letter. I should point out that members of the press who cover a committee would not usually see such a letter, as we are not usually given the papers. The letter puts a lot of emphasis on internet access to papers. However, it is important that the press receives hard copies in advance—perhaps the same papers as go to MSPs. That is a lot more straightforward for us. The internet is a great thing, but it is sometimes difficult to access and it can be difficult to print the material in a format that is usable.
The fundamental issue is that we cannot do our job properly unless we know what is in the documents that members have in front of them. The local government system in Scotland works exceptionally well. Papers are produced for all accredited news organisations and are delivered in advance so that members of the press can take them along to committee meetings. Papers are embargoed and the information within them cannot be written about until the day of the committee meeting. That is the system that we would like to see in place in the Scottish Parliament. To be honest, I am surprised that it is not.
Councils across the land will be delighted to read in tomorrow's Daily Record that the local government system works exceptionally well, although I know that you were speaking about a specific aspect of the system.
I met a very distinguished journalist in the street this morning, who told me that he did see committee papers in advance. I am not clear what the press does and does not get and when it gets what is available. Will you spell that out?
The system is ad hoc and varies from committee to committee. The system that we would like, and to which I hope the committee will agree, is one whereby the press is given the papers at a set time before the committee meeting—for example, a day in advance, or whenever they are usually given to MSPs—so that there is some certainty.
At the moment, what is available varies greatly. I tried to get the papers for this committee as I was coming in today. There is a notice on the door telling us to get papers from reception, but there were none.
They may all have been taken.
That is possible.
Where would you like the paper copies to be sent—to your offices in Glasgow or to the press centre here?
There are about 30 accredited news organisations in the Lawnmarket press centre, each of which has a mail basket, where they receive the agenda. All documents could be delivered there through the internal mail system.
I will ask Mr Slorance to comment on some of the practical issues later, but other committee members have indicated a desire to ask questions.
Will you clarify something that Mr Farquharson says in his letter? He says that internet access would be acceptable; he does not mention hard copies. He accepts that there may be problems with circulating hard copies and that internet access would do away with that concern.
I agree with everything in the letter, but hard copies would be better.
But would you accept internet access?
I assume that the two are complementary, but we would rather not have only internet papers; we would rather that you gave us hard copies, as councils do. There are problems with internet papers. When one tries to print a large document with 60 or 100 pages, one can end up with gobbledegook. That also ties up the printers, which newspapers need, for a long time.
Many of us have looked forward to having Ron McKenna in front of us. It has almost been a fantasy. [Laughter.] I can think of about 200 questions that I would like to interrogate him with but, alas—
But they must be relevant. [Laughter.]
Well, exactly—but this is such a great waste of an opportunity that I am going to be upset all day.
I agree with everything in the papers that we have been provided with. It is extraordinary that we have not done what is suggested. Many of us are especially concerned with access to committees. The available space is very limited. Some journalists are unable to come into committees; they hear the broadcast, but that is not at all the same. We must be much more proactive in spending the resources of the Parliament to ensure that all papers are available as early as possible. I must say to John Patterson that this is a model committee—the papers are always very well presented, they are in order and committee members get them on the Saturday morning before the meeting. We have to ensure that the journalists are equally well served. A lot of journalists attend this committee, and today we have more in attendance than ever before—to listen to themselves, which is interesting.
The Scottish Parliamentary Journalists Association's point must be not only considered, but accepted in full. We must ensure that the Parliamentary Bureau and the clerks are informed that it should be actioned as soon as possible.
It is also a matter for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, because there are resource implications.
Bar the fantasy, I echo many of Mike Russell's sentiments. It is not good that the Parliament does not offer journalists access to documents. I appreciate the points that were made about access to the internet, but there is nothing like hard copy. Ron made a good point when he said that printing copies ties up newspapers' main piece of equipment.
I am interested in the views of the officers of the Parliament who are here, so that we can find out why there is a problem. I would expect any modern institution such as ours to hand out hard copies of committee papers.
I guess that means you, Mr Slorance.
Andrew Slorance (Information Systems, Scottish Parliament):
I will start by explaining how we handle things at present. Contrary to what is in the letter and to what Ron was saying, papers are made available—although not as widely as we would like, and certainly not as widely as the media would like. We make sufficient copies available at each committee meeting so that all the journalists who attend can see them. If people call us in advance, we also make copies of committee papers available ad hoc—which I think is the phrase that Ron used. The problems arise when we come to the resources involved in producing bulk copies. I will talk about that later.
Our media relations office has two press officers and one person for administration. We deal not only with committees, but with the Presiding Officer, the corporate body, the Holyrood project and visiting media. We also deal with accreditation issues. Committees take up a good proportion but not all of our time.
We get committee papers from the clerks either electronically or, if that is not possible, in hard copies. That usually happens two to four working days before the committee meeting. Some clerks give us two or three sets; others give us one. Alternatively, we get them via e-mail. We then have to make hard copies of the sets ourselves—six, seven or eight for each meeting, depending on what we think the media interest will be.
We issue a news release outlining the agenda as soon as we get the papers. Early on in the parliamentary session, we asked the clerks to give us more information on the agendas, and that is starting to come through. I hope that the agenda gives the media a feel for what is likely to come up in the committee meeting. The agenda does not include other papers, but it gives the time, the place and the topics for discussion.
Committee papers are not yet on the web. We had hoped that that would have been set up when we started; perhaps Bethan Hubbard will go into that later. However, we are moving towards that.
The media are very good now at picking up from the internet things such as the business bulletin and parliamentary questions. We have received a lot of positive comments from the media about our internet information. I am glad that they make use of it.
Why are we not able to provide bulk copies? The clerks will agree—and some committees have greater difficulties than others—that they do not get committee papers as early as they would like. I had a quick look at the document on guidance for the operation of committees, which was produced last year. The guidance says that committees that meet fortnightly should try to distribute papers at least one week in advance of the meeting. If that is not possible, the target is five working days in advance.
We are still settling into a pattern for committees, and that target is not being achieved. I will not name it, but there is one committee that is meeting tomorrow morning for which we did not get the papers in the internal post until 5.30 pm yesterday. We were not able to start processing them until this morning, and Tuesday mornings are busy, as we are running around the five or six committees that are meeting.
We also receive a number of hefty documents. Often, committees will be considering external reports—for example, annual reports—from other organisations. Such reports are often commercially available, and it is difficult for us to ask an organisation to give us 30 copies of its annual report when that report is retailing for £8 or £9 in the shops.
If a committee is considering legislation, there may a bill, an explanatory note and a memorandum, which together could stretch to 100 or 200 pages. Running that off in sufficient numbers would be a problem.
As Ron McKenna says, there are around 30 media organisations at the Lawnmarket; I would say that we could narrow that down to around 20 that show a regular interest in committees.
I wanted to look at a comparable organisation, so I approached Glasgow City Council. Ron used to deal with it, and he knows about local government. The council has more than 60 committees, but the bulk of those are sub-committees, with only around 12 parent committees. They meet in a six-weekly cycle, so the average number of committee meetings a week is around a dozen, similar to the Parliament. They make their papers available three clear working days in advance, so they obviously have them three clear working days in advance. Papers are distributed to the accredited media; I believe that around eight members of the media have pigeonholes. On the odd occasion, they will give papers to, for example, The Times Educational Supplement.
That task is not carried out by the council's media relations office, which is completely bypassed. The office gets the papers, but it is not tied up with producing copies. That is done by the committee services department, which has about 30 staff and is, I believe, similar to our clerking department. The committee services department gets a list of the media that require papers; the papers are then printed off and made available.
Papers are not always embargoed. Once papers have gone to MSPs, we are quite happy—unless there is an embargo—to make them available if there is a story.
Interestingly, Glasgow City Council is moving quickly towards putting its papers on the internet and stopping the issue of paper copies. I do not know whether it will meet the same resistance as we have. The council pointed out that, under the law, it is not obliged to provide individual sets, but it is obliged only to make papers available for scrutiny in advance. If it wished, it could simply make one set available for people to come and see. It could charge for photocopies, but it makes photocopies available. The numbers are fairly small, but it is difficult to ascertain whether the council would make a charge.
In the media relations office, we would love to be able to make 30 copies of each committee's papers available in advance on a regular basis. For timing and resource reasons, that is not being achieved. We continue to look into that. We recently found better and quicker photocopiers; one of our problems was that our photocopier was fairly slow and it was taking our administrative staff most of the day to copy even a limited number of papers for committees.
We are keen that media people who simply want to dip in and out to see whether there is anything interesting should use the internet, whereas people who want to come to committees should have a hard copy. If we were to make 30 sets of copies for each organisation, that would amount to thousands of pages a week. Perhaps we can strike a balance.
I am sure that there are several issues on which Ron McKenna would like to comment. I have always felt uncomfortable with the fact that the Parliament does not operate to at least the standard of the local authority of which I used to be a member. As someone who has had many years' experience of reading committee papers, I know that one scans the agenda and if something seems interesting, one turns to the report to see whether it is. If the papers are not there, the agenda is not much use.
I suspect that the media are not really interested in the operational difficulties—photocopying—but will take the view that that is our problem, which seems a fair response. I appreciate that you might have difficulties and there might be links in the chain between the clerks and your department that need to be reviewed. That would be part of the practical implementation of any decisions that we take.
Huge amounts of unnecessary paper come before the committee, such as 120-page Scottish statutory instruments, the two-page summary of which is quite sufficient, as nobody will read the whole thing. When councils produce a report, they list the relevant background papers at the end. If anyone wants to go beyond that, to the statutory instrument or the European directive, they are able to do so. There are answers to all the practical difficulties that you have raised, although it is important that you have set them out. If we relay the matter to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, it will have to deal with the resource decisions that we recommend.
I agree with everything that you have said. We do not want to be heavy-handed about this, but the Parliament is supposed to be open and transparent, and that cannot be laid aside because of expense. Andrew was hinting that it is expensive to photocopy papers, but as the papers are being printed for MSPs, I am sure that making another 20 copies at the same time would not be too difficult. It is very important that we have the full information in front of us.
The Procedures Committee gets hard copies of papers, but in other committees, the clerks e-mail individual MSPs, leaving it up to them to print the papers if they need them. Originally, I thought that I could just ask each clerk to make another 30 copies when they were at the photocopier, but it is not as simple as that.
The Procedures Committee receives electronic and paper copies, as does the Transport and the Environment Committee, on which I also serve. I do not know whether there are any committees that do not get paper copies.
It is a sine qua non that we do this. I appreciate the problems, but it is essential that paper copies are supplied to an accredited list of journalists and that the papers are posted on the internet. I do not say that that is a secondary route—it is another primary route, which allows wider access. There is another important issue: if members of the public are interested in the committee proceedings, they should have access to the papers, too. I do not think that we can get out of this by putting it off. It has to be done now—it should have happened months ago. We must bite the bullet and pass the matter on to whoever is responsible.
We must take action. I was just skimming through the supporting papers and I have selected one example—always dangerous, although journalists have been known to make use of that sampling technique—that does not need to be circulated: several pages about the treatment and definition of a budget bill.
That is not our decision.
No, but a reasonable judgment about what should be circulated, taking into account time and costs, seems fair. For example, I do not think that all the correspondence with the gentleman from Liverpool needs to be circulated. The Parliament should take action, but should also exercise reasonable discretion. Outside bodies should just send more copies of papers, such as their annual reports.
It is likely that an annual report would be given to the press directly.
Perhaps, but those copies might not go to the people who come to the committee. If the Parliament seems disorganised, consider the press—they do not speak to one another at all. It seems reasonable to insist that outside organisations that are sending papers to be considered by the committee should send enough copies for the press as well. We should tackle the matter quickly, but we do not have to go overboard.
I profoundly disagree. The moment that we start being selective, we run the risk of being accused—however unfairly—of withholding papers. The press and the public should see what we see. In exceptional circumstances, such as private sections of meetings, particular criteria apply.
I have been in a committee that has sat to consider a 120-page Scottish statutory instrument and I did not have a clue what it meant or said because I was not familiar with the legislation that it was replacing. I am sure that the cost of producing that document was phenomenal in terms of money and staff time, and the benefit was nil.
I do not see what is wrong with producing a report that lays out the background so that a journalist who wants to look up material can access it on a website somewhere. I do not think that the issue is whether we provide that material for journalists, but it is whether it is necessary to provide it for the committee. There might be certain papers that do not need to be copied. Why bother to reproduce papers such as the West of Scotland Water annual report, which could easily be found in a library or the Scottish Parliament information centre? We do not need to provide copies of everything.
We are trying to be a wee bit clever by defining everything in advance. We seem to be working towards agreeing with the request and passing it on to the corporate body along with several practical issues that we have identified. We want to ensure that the people who implement this decision will think the matter through, and produce a set of recommendations that will satisfy us. We do not have to define all the categories at this point. In principle, I agree with Mike Russell. The policy papers and the substantive material that the journalists will write about should be accessible.
I agree. However, perhaps the sensible solution would be for us to see what the MSPs see. There might be documents that do not look very interesting, but which might be referred to in a committee meeting; it is difficult to second-guess that. It is important that we are in a position to report accurately what is being considered in a committee.
Yes. I would not want to make editorial judgments on what the media should or should not see. There are occasions, such as when a committee is considering a bill, when some hefty documents are involved and MSPs are asked to bring along their copies of the bill. Perhaps the media would accept that such papers are available on the website or at the Stationery Office. However, I would not like to pick through papers, deciding whether they were relevant and should be copied.
Many valid points have been made, and I generally agree with what Mike Russell has said. However, if the committee is discussing a document repeatedly or one that is available elsewhere, the committee papers that are supplied should state how to get hold of a copy.
We should refer the matter to the SPCB to look at urgently; it should ensure that the resources are in place to provide the information. Double-sided photocopying, for example, would reduce some of the cost. We should also suggest looking at the Welsh Assembly, which, I am told, is a paperless environment, with everything circulated electronically. It would be interesting to see how it is done and whether it actually costs more because people run off copies on their laser printers.
I am surprised by how difficult it has been to get hold of committee papers in this Parliament. In local government, the problem would not have been allowed to go on for so long—and it would not be legal—and it should be sorted out, but it is up to the corporate body to ensure that the resources are available.
I hope that the press do not then pan us for overspending on photocopying.
A useful point, which I am sure that the Daily Record and others will take on board.
Bethan, we asked you to come here but have not drawn you into the discussion. The report fully explains the practical difficulties faced in rendering everything compatible so that it can be posted on the website. Would you like to add anything?
Bethan Hubbard (Information Systems, Scottish Parliament):
A work plan has been agreed with the clerks to address the problem, and it is in operation. A test period this week and next will allow us look at the volume and nature of the papers coming in. Producing papers for a committee is the end of a process and any delay in provision of information earlier in the cycle has an impact on the final stage of production. Therefore, while we might be able to find a technical solution, we must also control the work flow for the publishing services. The same services provide the Official Report, overnight committee reports and all the core parliamentary publications, so there are resource and work load issues to be addressed.
I wanted that on the record for when Kenny Farquharson reads the report—he is into hyperlinks. His point should be addressed.
We have covered the practical issues and the clerks are in a position to compose a letter to the SPCB, incorporating the report and its appendices and the record of this discussion. Our recommendation is that it make whatever changes in practice are necessary and make available whatever resources are necessary to ensure that accredited journalists receive adequate advance information in hard copy as well as in electronic form. They must be able to prepare to report debates and committee discussions just as we ourselves wish to be adequately prepared to take part in them. That is a unanimous recommendation. I dare say that someone somewhere might not be happy about it, but that is tough. We must be open and accessible.
I thank Ron McKenna for coming. At least this morning you have a result. I also thank the others who attended.