Draft Committee Report (Alleged Unauthorised Disclosure)
Item 4 relates to the alleged leak of a draft Justice 2 Committee report earlier this month. Members will have seen correspondence between me and the Justice 2 Committee convener, Pauline McNeill, who has asked us to consider investigating the alleged leak.
The complaint has been referred to the Standards Committee, as it does not name an individual member. Under the code of conduct, we may exercise our discretion to refer it to the standards adviser for his consideration regardless.
Members will recall that, following last year's inquiry into the confidentiality provisions in the code of conduct, we agreed that in future we would seek the views of the committee concerned before deciding whether to exercise our discretion. We decided that one factor that we would take into account would be the seriousness of the leak. We adopted that approach at our previous meeting in response to an alleged leak of a Justice 1 Committee report.
Pauline McNeill has provided additional information on the matter in an e-mail, which has been circulated to members. The matter was discussed at yesterday's meeting of the Justice 2 Committee and an extract from the Official Report of that meeting has been circulated to members. As members have just received that, they might wish to take a few moments to read it, because it is important.
While I wait for members to cast their eyes over that two-page extract, I inform them that I have had a good look at it. I draw members' attention to the second-last contribution from the convener, who stated:
"George Lyon is correct to say that we will never really get to the bottom of the leak. We never do with such matters."—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 24 September 2002; c 1775.]
I will throw the matter open when members have read the extract. When members of the Justice 2 Committee were asked how seriously they took the matter, they replied that it was extremely serious. Another aspect of the issue that we must weigh up is how likely we are to achieve a result from asking the standards adviser to investigate.
Is not the normal procedure for a committee to be asked to undertake its own investigations first?
That is what we agreed. The Justice 2 Committee convener seems to feel that an investigation is not likely to provide any information, but the committee has asked us to carry out an investigation. I am concerned about wasting the standards adviser's time, given that the Justice 2 Committee convener feels that an investigation is not likely to produce results.
The Official Report confirms what we already knew from talking to colleagues and from the debate that followed the leak. Although there is always anger over a leak, members of the Justice 2 Committee were particularly animated and concerned about this one. Stewart Stevenson made an interesting point when he said:
"I would be surprised if anyone who was part of the committee would have been able to give that detail."—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 24 September 2002;
c 1773.]
That sort of information might be helpful if we refer the matter to the adviser for an investigation.
At this stage, we should take the usual action, which is to refer the matter back to the Justice 2 Committee and ask for further information. We note and share the members' concern about the seriousness of the issue and the damage that it does to the Parliament and to their committee, but we should ask for more information on possible sources of the leak before we take the matter any further.
The committee and the Parliament have discussed unauthorised leaks and disclosures at some length and I do not want to revisit too much of that territory. None of us is so naive as to think that briefing of various sorts will not take place in and around the Parliament. However, the Parliament quickly slipped into lax, casual and almost shoddy practices in respect of parliamentary committee reports, which contrasts markedly—for the worse—with the situation at Westminster.
I have no magic bullets on this, but somehow we need to take a lead in attempting to raise the standard specifically as far as parliamentary reports are concerned. Committee reports are qualitatively different from other debates, discussions and private meetings that happen to find their way into the public domain in one way or another. If the Parliament is serious about getting the media and, in turn, the public to give proper consideration to the work that is carried out through parliamentary inquiries and the like, it is vital that major reports are launched into the public domain properly, with the facts set out fully—not, as George Lyon said, on the basis that
"someone walked straight out of the private meeting at which we discussed the report and briefed journalists, giving them chapter and verse on the committee's internal discussions."—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 24 September 2002; c 1774.]
That seems to have been what happened in this case.
I think that we should hand the matter back to the Justice 2 Committee, as is consistent with the procedures that have been established. However, we should ask that committee to conduct further active investigations and return to us when it has done that. It is important that we do not adopt the view that we will never get to the bottom of the matter and that we cannot do anything. For the reasons that I gave, we must attempt to go further.
We are all aware of cases at Westminster in which an individual has been found to be in breach of procedure in this respect and serious sanctions have been exercised. I can think of a specific case from not too long ago. If we are to get to the bottom of one of these leaks, perhaps a similar course of action should be taken in the Scottish Parliament to show that we take its rules seriously.
It is obviously unhelpful for members to comment while a committee is considering a report. For the benefit of the public, we must try to get that message across. Members should have the opportunity to develop the report and then release it to the public so that the public can understand it fully.
We are not good at spending time with journalists when we release a report, briefing them on the kind of debates that took place. Journalists all seem to be keen on getting information on the debates that took place prior to the report's distribution. That is an issue that we have to deal with. Since the Parliament began—probably since Westminster began—there have been demands from journalists for an exclusive release and some background to what was discussed during committee debates.
We must consider how we can get to the bottom of the issue without bringing in private investigators to find out who released the information. No journalist has ever revealed their source. We must make people aware of the difficulties that such a leak leads to for the committees.
As a member of the Justice 1 Committee, I know the amount of work that the Justice 2 Committee has put into the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. It is unhelpful that information has been released prior to the completion of that work. It is perhaps not an issue for the Standards Committee, but we must think about how committees can brief journalists on an equal basis when they release a final document. Sometimes, journalists feel that briefings are carried out for particular journalists and complain that some are given priority over others.
I do not think that we will get to the bottom of the matter. I would like to think that we would, but I wonder whether we are spending time on something that we will never achieve.
Are you content to go along with the other three members who have voiced their concerns that I write to the convener of the committee and ask her to conduct a preliminary investigation and give the results of that investigation to the Standards Committee?
Yes. We have to investigate whether we can identify the source of the leak. However, as with any other investigation, we have to ask what the chances are of the investigation being successful. They must be pretty remote.
We therefore have to consider other ways of dealing with that kind of demand for information. There will always be a demand for someone to leak information. Journalists will contact MSPs and claim to have information in the hope that the MSP will confirm it. We have all been subjected to that kind of interrogation.
Members need to be briefed that it is not helpful to release that kind of information before the public are made aware of it. We want the public to have full access but I keep repeating that we have to consider the way in which we release information when a final document is issued. It needs to be done equally for all the journalists who want that information.
I will write to the convener. I will also enclose a copy of the Official Report of our discussion and ask her whether she would be willing to undertake a preliminary investigation within the committee. She can then come back to us if she believes that the issue needs to be pursued by the standards adviser. Are members content with that?
Members indicated agreement.
I will emphasise how important we believe the issue is.