Item 4 is consideration of the committee's draft annual report for 2004-05. Does any member wish to ask a question, make a comment or suggest any changes to the draft?
Paragraph 12, on meetings, states that the committee met 29 times in the year and that
I hear what you say, but of course what you suggest is not always possible, because items come up that we then have to deal with, for example consideration of draft reports, which most people accept must be taken in private. I fail to see how we could deal with them if they were clumped together. At every meeting it is open to members to object to all or part of the proposal to take items in private. There are always good reasons for having such a proposal on the agenda. We always have a mind to ensure that we keep to a minimum what is dealt with in private and this committee works hard to ensure that its meetings are in public in the main. Although over half the meetings might have been held partly in private, in some of those cases, the time in private was a small proportion of the meeting time.
Mike Rumbles mentioned a principle that we all agree with—that we should maximise our openness. However, we should not lose our thrust here, or the opportunity to say that the committee has engaged extensively with communities in town and community halls on dark nights all over Scotland, including the islands. Probably one of the most successful participation events in the history of the Parliament took place a couple of weeks ago. We need to keep that up front, but neither should we hide the fact that certain situations prevent our meeting in public. For example, we need to be able to discuss freely what witnesses to call and similar things. We all accept the principle of openness and we do a lot to encourage participation throughout Scotland.
That is well said. We appear to be quite constrained by the format of the annual report. When I saw the report today, my immediate reaction was to ask whether we could not make more of some of the work that we have done. However, it seems that we have to use a format for what we want to say, even down to the kinds of headings that are permitted. That is a bit of an issue. We have done the best that we can in the context of that constrained format to make sure that people are clear about the work that the committee has done.
I was going to say something similar to what Duncan McNeil said, so it is not worth saying it all again. Really and truly, we have tried hard to incorporate the public by going out and about. They have been extremely appreciative of that and have said so.
We will see whether we can beef up the introductory paragraph in the report to make some of Duncan McNeil's suggested qualitative statements, which are a good idea. Is everybody happy with that?
Everybody accepted that the one full committee meeting that we held outwith Edinburgh at Stonehaven was a great success. I would like the committee to go to other parts of Scotland where we can make an impact.
We plan to discuss that idea. If no one wants to make further comments or suggestions for change, can I assume that, with that change to the introductory paragraph, the committee agrees the report?
I should make the point that not only is the annual report prepared to a standardised format, there is also a set word limit, which does not allow us too much in the way of flights of rhetoric.
Meeting continued in private until 15:19.