Standards Committee, 25 Apr 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 25, 2001

Official Report 123KB pdf

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Confidentiality

Item 4 relates to our proposed inquiry into confidentiality. Members will have seen the issues paper on the matter, which sets out some of the areas that we might wish to consider. It asks us to consider the format of the inquiry. I would like to hear members' comments on the paper and their views on how we might proceed.

I found the paper quite useful. The most practical part of it was the bit about handling committee papers. That is a relatively mundane part of the paper, but it is probably one of the more important parts, because it includes more on how we handle committee papers at present, and on how they are identified and circulated. Physical copies of papers can be identified. There was an example recently of somebody from outside a committee having a physical copy of a leaked report. Such things could be prevented by a system of identification.

Paragraph 11 of the paper states:

"At present the remit of the Standards Committee would preclude it asking parliamentary staff whether they had leaked the report."

If there was an investigation—I think that investigations should be few and far between—I do not think that parliamentary staff should be excluded from being asked questions.

I am advised that any investigation of staff would be conducted by other people. However, Lord James is right to draw attention to that point, which I also wanted to raise. The committee, the standards adviser and the commissioner—when we get one—will have the power to make investigations almost anywhere, which leads to confusion in paragraph 11. I think that the clerks are referring to any investigation of members of staff, whereas the committee is referring to the powers to request people to come and give evidence to us. There was confusion about that point.

I agree that supplying the media in advance with embargoed copies is a good method of subverting the possibility of leaks. If documents are made available to all newspapers and media sources in advance, the temptation to scoop is avoided.

That is a very good point.

Staff were mentioned. My understanding is that, if there had to be an investigation into the conduct of parliamentary staff, that would be within the remit of the clerk of the Parliament, in his capacity as the chief executive of the Parliament and the employer of Parliamentary staff. What would happen if there was a suggestion that a member of an MSP's staff had been involved? We came across that difficulty previously when discussing the code of conduct for MSPs' staff. MSPs' staff are really responsible to no one except the individual MSP for whom they work. How would we gain the co-operation of those individuals, if it came to that? I hope that it never would, but I wonder how we would handle things if we had to go down that road. I know that the committee can ask people to come before it, but we do not really have any sanction or means of encouraging them to co-operate.

That is correct. The sanction would be against the individual member who employed that member of staff. Our focus is clearly and quite rightly on members of the Scottish Parliament and should remain there. Lord James Douglas-Hamilton identified the confusion and slight misunderstanding about paragraph 11. The clerks are talking about an investigation of a member of parliamentary staff, which would not be our task.

Patricia Ferguson's question focuses on members of staff who are paid through MSPs' parliamentary allowances, but we must focus on MSPs. When dealing with the draft bill on the standards commissioner we can make clear exactly what the remit should be.

I ask members to comment on paragraph 10, which states:

"The Committee may consider that the current procedure is both costly and time-consuming. An alternative approach could be that adopted by select committees in the House of Commons. Following a ‘leak', it is the select committee whose report has been disclosed which conducts an initial investigation in an attempt to discover the source of the leak, by formally asking in public and on the record all members of the committee and the committee's staff if they can explain how the leak came about."

That is what they do in the House of Commons, and I have just been informed that they are also going down that road in Canada. What do members think of that proposal?

I have read the paper, which is wide ranging, and there are a number of issues that we must consider carefully. In the light of that, could we delay further consideration until next week, and conclude our discussion then?

Would members prefer more time to consider the issue thoroughly?

That would be helpful.

We can delay that until our next meeting, which will be in a fortnight.

I have no objection to that. There is no harm in the proposal in paragraph 10. Most leaks are deliberate. Not everybody who commits the misdemeanour owns up to it, and often the culprit is not found. However, a public challenge of the nature that has been described can do no harm, because there are occasions on which there are misunderstandings, which would come to the surface and save a lot of administrative time and the unnecessary use of the committee's time.

That is a good point. The proposed action would ensure that everybody was clear and that there was no misunderstanding on the part of committee members before the standards adviser—or, in future, the standards commissioner—launched an investigation. If members are happy, we will defer discussion of the matter, as Tricia Marwick suggested, until our next meeting in a fortnight's time.