Procedures Committee, 18 Sep 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Official Report 145KB pdf

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Consultative Steering Group (Principles)

Item 7 is the inquiry into the consultative steering group principles. We are joined by our adviser, Professor David McCrone. I invite Professor McCrone to report on what he has been doing and to point the committee in the direction in which it needs to go in order to progress the inquiry to the next stage.

The main purpose of the report is to report back on the CSG seminar that we held on 10 September—just over a week ago. That was an opportunity, in a fairly informal setting, for members of the CSG who could attend and members of the Procedures Committee to discuss in a fairly broad and open way the issues that they felt were most relevant.

It is particularly interesting that the comments were focused almost entirely on the role of committees in the Parliament. That was an interesting way in which to handle the seminar, because we did not want to set the agenda for the CSG, but to find out what the CSG felt about the progress that had been made after two years. There was a wide-ranging discussion about committees. Four members of the Procedures Committee and seven members of the CSG were present; we had good coverage of the two bases.

The consensus was that people felt that the committee system was somewhat unstable because of changes in committee membership. People felt that the CSG had put a lot of emphasis initially on the role of committees. In the welter of the first two years it was difficult to establish the kind of distance from the issues that the CSG envisaged in its report. People felt that committee work loads were dominated by the Executive's legislative programme, which left very little time for policy development. I know that the members of the Procedures Committee raised some of those concerns. So far there had been less long-term strategic thinking than the CSG hoped for. I came to the committee to consider that.

There is also a general feeling that the Parliament should operate a slower timetable—of course, that might be impossible. There was greater pressure to perform and produce and less time to ponder and think. The fact that the CSG saw the Parliament not simply as a legislating body, but as a policy-making body came up frequently in the discussion. The CSG felt that that aspect of the Parliament had been somewhat squeezed over the past two years.

Other matters that were raised concerned the mobility of committees. Committees were encouraged to move around the country a bit more and to experiment with how they carry out their activities. That clearly had implications for information technology as well as budgetary implications.

The CSG also thought that committees should try more to obtain expert advice. The vexed issue, which the CSG and various panels debated, concerned the role of outside people on committees, not as voting members, but as expert members feeding into the committees. There is a general feeling that that has fallen somewhat by the wayside.

That was the gist of the seminar. I am sure that committee members who were present will be able to amplify that, but that was the gist of our discussion.

Do any members have points that they would like to bring up on that—particularly members who were at the seminar? It was encouraging to see so many people taking an interest.

I was not at the seminar; I was not able to make it, but I wanted to. The idea that the Parliament is moving too fast is one that is not common in our experience of taking evidence from business and industry. The most common complaint is that Parliament is terribly slow, and that Executive action is fairly slow. Was that view reflected at the seminar?

It was not raised. The general feeling was that the agenda, and therefore the time to ponder, was too tightly set by the legislative process. It was recognised at the seminar that there was a backlog of legislation that had been held up for a long time and which now was being put into effect, but the strategic thinking time for committees was being lost. There was a general feeling, in so far as the agenda was set by the first two years of business, that the culture of the Parliament and its committees would not allow the process to be reinvented. People at the seminar acknowledged that legislation takes some time, but it was felt that there was a problem in that there was no space for committees in particular to think strategically.

I recognise the concern, but I wonder whether, in our evidence-taking sessions, we should seek out a different view. My experience of taking evidence on the new economy in the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee was that we were told forcefully that we had to act and act now. I would be concerned if that view did not emerge, and instead the overwhelming evidence was that we are moving far too fast and we should slow down.

That is an important point. I accept the point about hearing from witnesses with opposing views, but there are other issues. One is that moving too fast, in so far as legislation is being pushed through, means that no space is left for other things to be considered. Businesses and organisations that are associated with enterprise and education support the notion that instead of rushing through potential legislation that has not been thought through, time should be taken to ponder and think strategically about the longer term. My reading of what the CSG said was simply that there was too much legislation that squeezed out thinking time, not that legislation should not be introduced at all.

I was at the seminar and found it extremely useful. I will pick up on Ken Macintosh's point. It is important to distinguish between Parliament and the Government. Industry's criticism, which Ken reflected on, was of the policy initiatives that are taken by the Government. It is important that we consider the wider Parliament, of which the Executive is only one part.

It was striking that people at the seminar were not aware that approximately 40 bills have been passed or will be introduced. The sheer volume of legislation was not anticipated by the CSG. I recently sat on a committee that dealt with legislation, and it is clear that committee timetables are being driven by legislation. In industry, there is always time for strategic thinking. If the committees are to be the element of the Parliament that does the strategic thinking, they need time to think strategically. Unfortunately, they have the competing constraint of being part of the legislation sausage machine. Will the committees be able to stand back? I am not sure what the solution is, but it is an important point to raise. Is that reasonable?

Yes. The background noise was that the compact is between the Parliament, the Executive and the people. There was also concern about how the people are represented, and the various channels that feed in to the Parliament and the Executive. Clearly, it is difficult to maintain those links, because it is not just a three-way link; there are two-way links on each side. It is true that the design of the CSG's scheme was premised on open access. The general feeling, as you rightly say, was that legislation was imposing itself on the Parliament, and that has the potential to squeeze out public feedback into the system. That relates to the accessibility and availability of committees, and whether they should be based in the central belt or Edinburgh.

My understanding was that the concern about excessive speed related in particular to the tight timetables for bills. It was suggested at the seminar that at stage 2 committees could have alternate meetings to progress with bills and with inquiries, or whatever they might be doing, which would give more time for outside groups to contact committees and lodge amendments.

Much of what was said at the meeting was good but not new, but one point that was stressed and which I had not grasped was that the CSG saw committees being expert committees. We are all well aware that we are not experts in anything at all, apart from skating on thin ice, but attendees were worried that numerous changes in committee personnel meant that whatever skills and knowledge were being developed were being lost. It may not be possible for the Parliament and the parties to do anything about that, but that point was new to me and was strongly made, and we must address it.

On the second or third reading of the report—which I hurriedly performed this morning—it becomes apparent that it is quite critical. That may be because the aspirations at the beginning of the Parliament were never going to match the reality of setting up a new Parliament. What is the CSG doing to address the gap between what people thought pre-1999 and what they think following two years of operation of the Parliament? What is it doing to measure that gap?

On issues such as sharing power, the report contains a couple of welcome comments, but most of it ranges from very uncertain to sceptical to negative. That also applies to the comments on equal opportunities, which perhaps reflect a lack of information on how to break through a system, even a new one, to obtain a measurement. What is being done to bridge the gap that exists between views pre-1999 and the reality check of 2001?

It is always dangerous to speak on behalf of the CSG, but the general view was that theirs was a council of excellence, and that the Parliament deserved many plaudits for going back and examining its principles. The very act of going back and doing that, and seeing how well or how badly the principles had been adhered to, had its own impact in terms of the dynamic of institutions and committees. The general feeling was that that should be a continuing process. That does not mean continuous revolution, but constantly asking whether the Parliament is fulfilling the role that was envisaged in the four principles. At the very beginning we asked CSG members whether, if they had the time again, they would go for the same principles, and unequivocally they said yes. They evolved those principles and, two years on, they feel that those are the principles that are required.

The questions on the principles were instigating questions. Frank McAveety is correct that few questions were attached to equal opportunities, but that does not downgrade the importance of equal opportunities, which I appreciate is the responsibility of a different committee. CSG members are very keen on the interconnectedness of the four principles. They also are realists, and they recognise that when setting up a Parliament, very rarely will the principles be applied 100 per cent. However, examining that is an important part of the process.

I should have said earlier that the purpose of the seminar was to get people to talk informally. This committee will have the opportunity to take evidence formally from the CSG, which will provide the opportunity to raise the points that have been made.

You talked about first principles. Paragraph 7 of your report states that few people understand who is accountable and where the blame or the credit should lie. Is it time that we desisted from calling the Executive the Scottish Executive, and started calling it by its real name, which is the Scottish Government, given that everyone understands what that means? Should we also stop calling civil servants the Scottish Executive, given that they are the Scottish Government's civil servants? It is muddled. There are criticisms but no answers at this stage.

Yes, the use of the term Scottish Executive to mean the political system as well as the civil service was raised. That is an issue of nomenclature and, to be fair, the CSG did not want to get too hung up on the terminology, in recognition of the fact that it may or may not change, and because it has been invested in. However, the use of the term Scottish Executive was raised by CSG members, as committee members who were at the seminar will know.

But if it is a continuing problem in the minds of the public, and people who want to access this Parliament do not understand who they should address their problems to or who is giving the answers, it is a big problem that must be overcome soon.

Yes. I do not know of any survey that has asked people whether the term Scottish Executive is meaningful in the outside world, in the way that, as you say, perhaps Government is. In future, organisations may wish to examine that.

The next step is to plan our evidence-gathering sessions. We have received more than 230 submissions from the 2,000 or so individuals and organisations that were contacted. Annexe A to the report contains an initial categorisation of the contributors. It is clear that we must allocate time to talk to the parliamentary community about how we do things. Equally, it is clear from the list of outside organisations that there is considerable interest in the wider community in talking to this committee.

We have four evidence-taking slots between now and Christmas. It is clear that we cannot do justice to the level of response by using those alone, and we will have to go into next year. We knew that the inquiry would expand if the interest was there. We must somehow whittle down the long list of individuals and organisations to a meaningful and representative group, or sets of groups, of people whom we can invite in for interview or invite to correspond with us in other ways. At the moment we have a list of categories.

Somewhere in the system there is a letter—if it has not gone out yet, it will go out shortly—that will give committee members information on all the people in the list. When they receive the list, committee members should nominate people or organisations that they wish to give evidence at a committee meeting, and we will use that as a contributory factor in drawing up a list of people. It is obvious that we will have to do some selecting. Some people will get the opportunity to give evidence and some will not. We will have to do that fairly. I would like to involve everyone in making nominations. We will fillet the lists and draw up our lists of people to come in. If committee members feel that somebody important has been overlooked, we will find a way to work them in.

As we go through the inquiry, some of the organisations or individuals who have not been invited to give oral evidence might decide that they want to give further written evidence. We must be receptive to that. The main thrust is to try to focus on the issues that arose in the initial response. We must balance our selection to take account of that.

If members are happy to give that degree of discretion to the clerks and me, we can proceed on that basis.

I have one general point and I want to see if colleagues agree. I would like priority to be given to people who have experienced our goings-on. Witnesses who have been to a committee and said that aspects A, B and C worked quite well but that X, Y and Z were bad are more useful to us than people who have worthy theoretical ideas, but no experience.

That is a fair point.

On the other hand, I would like to know why people who have not connected with the Parliament have not done so. Maybe the committee will not connect with such people during the inquiry, but I would like us to try.

Yes.

One of Professor McCrone's key points was that only the usual suspects had given evidence. That is no disrespect to those who have given evidence, but we must get behind that. It is important to have input from those who have experienced the process, but Patricia Ferguson is right to ask how we reach folk who do not feel that they can engage in the process. That is harder to achieve, but time should be spent on working out how we can best do so.

That emphasises the importance of making the inquiry representative. We should try to cover as many different angles as possible. For example, there seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction with the petitioning process and we will have to examine carefully why that is the case. The problem might be that people ask the Parliament to take actions that it has no power to take, such as overturning local authority decisions—in which case, that is tough luck. Alternatively, the problem might be that people who had petitions with aims that were achievable feel that they have not been listened to or that the petitioning process was wrong. We must get at the roots of problems and find ways to resolve them.

All the members' points are valid.

There are around 250 written submissions, some of which are substantial documents that are worth reading. The committee should consider whether simply to take those as given and talk only to people who have not made submissions. Some of the written submissions contain interesting points and the committee might want to question the authors on what they meant. The committee must factor that dimension into its decision.

I am conscious of my time management and that of other members and I have a point on the volume of information. As we have some general areas of concern, convener, is there a way to summarise the key concerns with references to the submission that contains those concerns? If members want to consider submissions in detail, they can do so, but we will have the key themes that have emerged.

Such a document is in preparation and it will be circulated before the witness sessions.

It is important to consider the themes and issues rather than who has raised them. We are supposed to be considering the principles so the evidence should be driven by principles rather than by who has submitted the comments.

Yes, but it will be clearly cross-referenced, as an aid to members.

Professor McCrone, would you like to add anything?

We talked about taking evidence from throughout the country. When we began the process, we were keen for it not to be central-belt driven and to ensure—even simply geographically—that we had a better spread of submissions. That brings us back to the people who do not think that it is up to them or that it is their place to submit evidence. Those people are the most difficult to get hold of, but their attitudes might be the most valuable.

In addition to the committee travelling to where people are, it might be that videoconferencing is one of the solutions for the committee and for the people that Professor McCrone was talking about. I am conscious that the places that have been identified are good for people who happen to live within a 10-mile radius, but people who do not will be restricted in getting to those places.

We are agreed on the way forward. Before I close the meeting, I inform the committee that Katherine Wright, who is one of our assistant clerks, is moving to the chamber desk. Now that she knows who you are, she will interfere with your questions. [Laughter.] I thank her for the work that she has done and I wish her well in her future career.

Meeting closed at 11:35.