Transport and the Environment Committee, 24 Jan 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 24, 2001

Official Report 275KB pdf

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Work Programme

The next item is our future work programme, specifically the proposal to inquire into the awarding of contracts for trunk road maintenance. The matter has been of concern to members of all parties. There is a dire need to investigate the process from start to finish. The proposal is that we appoint reporters to undertake an investigation into this matter. I propose myself, Bruce Crawford, Murray Tosh and Bristow Muldoon. It will be the job of the reporters to perform an initial examination of the issue, to agree lines of questioning and areas to investigate, and perhaps to do some of the investigation work.

The inquiry by the reporters will not take place behind closed doors and, once we have had an initial look at the matter, I am sure that the committee will want witnesses to give evidence in public. The idea behind appointing reporters in the first instance is to focus the remit of the investigation, perhaps to do some pre-investigation work and to make recommendations to the committee on how it might proceed.

As members will know, we are tight for time. We have a scheduled work programme. The water inquiry is a major piece of work—it is subject to a great deal of public and Executive interest and it must proceed. We cannot afford to ignore our work priorities but, none the less, there has been such a crescendo in the Parliament on the issue of trunk roads that it is the role of this committee, if members are agreed, to investigate the matter fully. I invite comments on the proposals.

I realise that how this item is worded on the agenda is an economical way of stating the issue, but we do not want to be limited to the narrow matter of the awarding of contracts. We should examine the design and specification of the whole process and the implications and we should go wherever the inquiry takes us.

Yes. As I tried to indicate in my remarks, the inquiry is about examining the process from start to finish. We should consider how the previous contract performed, the consultation on how the new contracts were to be made up, the new contracts themselves, the evaluation process and everything else in between; if it is relevant, we should also examine what took place before that process started. We need to have a wide-ranging investigation into the matter from start to finish.

You have set out the essential nature of the inquiry, but we should also examine the impact of the matter on public policy and public finance. I see that Des McNulty is looking at me, so I will explain that I do not mean that in the widest sense; I mean that we should consider the impact at local authority level of the way in which the contract was drawn up. We should ensure that the report is all-encompassing and transparent.

The issue is highly complex and detailed—it will be particularly so when we get down to talking about tenders—so some pre-work has to be done to ensure that people understand the issues before we have witness sessions. We must draw up a schedule of how we will go about the work, with a guarantee that we will have a process of interviewing witnesses. That will be an essential part of the process if we are to keep the inquiry transparent—some of the processes of the tender have not been as transparent as they might have been. We must ensure that everyone on the committee has the chance to ask questions of the relevant people, whether they be civil servants, consultants, advisers or, indeed, ministers.

I whole-heartedly concur with that view. That is the committee's purpose. The inquiry will be conducted transparently and openly, in the full glare of the committee. That is definitely the way to proceed.

I know that we have a tight work programme, but are we setting a date for when the group of reporters will produce an initial remit for us to consider? That will enable us to keep the issue going—we do not want it to just go away today and perhaps not come back for a month.

I am certain that Bristow Muldoon, Murray Tosh, Bruce Crawford and I will not let the matter lie. As soon as this meeting is over, I will arrange the initial meeting with colleagues to determine priorities and to consider timetabling issues so that we can come back to the committee with a plan of action. The more work that we do at the pre-investigation stage, as Bruce Crawford said, the more productive our public processes will be. I deem this a most urgent matter and there is a need for transparency throughout the process.

I have a procedural question. I have come across situations in the past where one or two people from a committee have been designated as reporters, but I do not recall four people being designated as reporters. What is the difference between that and the whole committee conducting the exercise? I am slightly taken aback by the proposal and am interested to know how the mechanics of it might work.

Essentially, the logic behind what I propose is this: I would argue that if the whole committee did the inquiry, it would be extremely difficult to timetable. The reporters can do the work outwith committee time. If the committee does it, we run into issues such as accommodation, timing, resources and the Official Report. This is an attempt to progress the matter—we will progress it and then return to the committee. The size and nature of the group of reporters is meant to reflect what I see around the Parliament, which is great cross-party interest in the matter. That was the reason for my proposal.

I want to be clear about this. There are issues to do with the mechanics as well as, I believe, some procedural questions. My understanding of the role of reporters is that they go off and investigate on behalf of the committee and then bring back evidence or a report for the committee to discuss. There is a difficulty with having what is, in effect, a sub-committee. Is it the responsibility of that group of people to conduct themselves as a committee, or should they conduct themselves as a single reporter or two reporters might do, preparing a report to bring back to the committee?

I would argue that the reporters are not a sub-committee; they are reporters who will go away to do the very job that you indicated they should do in relation to proposals for the investigation. For me, this is about making the best use of resources in the time that is available to us. If we were to programme such an investigation into the committee's work load, I would not see us being able to do it until just before the summer at the earliest.

Given the immediacy of the issue, reporters are our only route. My preference would be to say, bluntly, "Drop everything else. We will do this for the next month or so, get everything done and dusted and get a report out", but that is not a way in which we can do business. The idea is therefore that we move the matter forward via the reporters, who will report to the committee on information and proposals at every stage.

The reporters will not act as a sub-committee, making decisions; they will simply gain factual information, recommend future areas of action with regard to witnesses and provide technical briefings on what is a very technical matter, based on information and evidence that they gain from individuals whom we choose to see. In the initial stages, as Fiona McLeod said, we need to act quickly. That means that the group of reporters must meet to agree a plan of action, bring it back to the committee and pursue that plan. That can be done in the short term.

You have given me considerable reassurance on that point. I am concerned to assert the rights of the committee and to ensure that account is taken of our position.

I can give you an absolute guarantee that I want the committee to agree in the full glare of the public on the questions that it wants to put to ministers, civil servants, bidders, consultants and advisers. The committee structure of the Parliament is most effective when we have the opportunity to make people accountable for their actions. That is what the investigation is all about. I can therefore absolutely guarantee that all the matters that the reporters address will come back to the committee. We will do the committee's work in public—the committee will be fully involved in the process.

So if we arrange meetings, other members of the committee who are not reporters will be absolutely free to attend if they wish to do so.

Once we have agreed a plan of action—where we will go for information and whether we will visit organisations and individuals to gain it—it will become known to the committee and will become the property of the committee via the reporters. I stress on behalf of the reporters that there is no intention of keeping information confidential to the tight group of reporters. The method of proceeding is more about the mechanics and about our ability to respond to the matter quickly, which is important. The aim is to lay out some groundwork, consider the main issues, agree a course of action and then come back to the committee with those intentions.

I agree with your proposal, convener. On the question of having a group of reporters, there is a precedent from another committee of the Parliament. When the Local Government Committee investigated the views of local authorities on the McIntosh recommendations, it sent several groups of either three of four reporters to individual local authorities to gather evidence. The basis for doing that was pretty much the same—it would have been impossible to timetable the whole committee going round to gather the evidence. However, as you indicated, the evidence was fully on the record when the members came back and reported to the committee.

That is a fine precedent. There is nothing wrong with that. If the role of the reporters is to go and gather information, which they then present to us, that is fine. I would be concerned if the reporters set themselves up as a mini-group of the committee in informal hearings. I do not think that that would be appropriate. There has to be recognition of the committee's proper role.

I think that you have that absolute assurance—which I give you again—that that will be the case. The committee has primacy. The reporters are the route that we are taking to achieve the objective. The reporters will make the committee aware of what they are doing, how they are doing it and what the future proposals for action are at every stage of the process. I would hate to see the matter drift and for the horizon to be longer. Having a group of reporters is the only way in which we can deal with the matter in the short term. Are members content with that proposal?

Members indicated agreement.