Local Government Committee, 29 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 29, 1999

Official Report 200KB pdf

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Consultation

We now move on to ways of consulting councils and council service users. We have a briefing paper on this item, which reflects the discussion that we had at our previous meeting.

Is there anything in the paper about which you are not happy?

In the briefing paper or in the Executive's response to McIntosh?

In the briefing paper on ways of consulting councils and council service users.

The first point that I wish to make is on the section on targets for the consultation programme and on the scope of visits to groups that are external to councils. We talked about extending consideration of community councils to include area forums, civic assemblies and so on. You have perhaps encompassed such things.

After our discussion this morning, there may be things to be added. Do members think that a mapping exercise would be useful? We could get a diagrammatic representation of the areas that the Scottish Executive is considering and, as Johann asked, to whom the groups that have been set up will report—to Parliament or whatever. I understood from previous papers that the Kerley group, for example, would report directly to ministers, but Frank said that it would report to Parliament. Does he mean that the report will go to ministers and then to Parliament? We need to clarify issues such as where the report goes and how it will be taken forward.

In the mapping exercise, can we examine McIntosh's main recommendations, where the Executive fits into those and which are the priority areas. I do not know whether I am looking at this as a scientist, but it is about getting the bigger picture and finding a way of bringing all those threads together. We have already identified what we see as priorities—I am sure that there will be more. I do not know if that is possible; maybe Eugene is in a better position to do it.

Does anybody have any objection to that, or any other comments on it?

I am not objecting, but I have other comments. First, in addition to what is recommended here—it may happen anyway—individual members can have discussions with political colleagues and with councils in their own areas. Some of us are party spokesmen on local government; we will have discussions with party colleagues and can feed that into the system. We can get a lot of feedback from councils without much expense.

Secondly, I am not suggesting that we career all over the continent, but we could get feedback from the continent by post or, even better, electronically. For example, almost all European countries have signed up to the granting of the power of general competence. They do not have revolutions every day and the world does not collapse. It will be interesting to see how it works for them. In many countries on the continent, local government is held in higher regard than it is in Britain. I suggest some consultation. I do not know whether the relevant embassies would give us information, or what the best mechanism is. We can learn from the continent.

It is a good idea to compare that with what goes on here. Morag Brown from the Scottish Parliament information centre might be interested in putting something together for the committee—[Interruption.] Could you stop talking at the other end of the room, please?

We were discussing our holiday plans.

Then could you discuss them outside?

I fully support the briefing paper. However, although it sounds like a great idea, I am concerned that if three people with backgrounds in one type of authority visit a different type of authority—for example three people from urban authorities might visit Highland Council—they would not have enough background knowledge. Perhaps the group should be mixed.

That is a fair point. We can look at that.

Which members of the committee have been councillors?

Six have been councillors.

Colin, Gil and I were councillors. Bristow was, and Donald and Jamie, too. Keith still is. You were a councillor, too, convener. So that is eight.

How many of us have rural council experience? Just Jamie, I think, so he would have to visit all the rural councils.

I am from a semi-rural area.

But you were not a councillor.

I think that Michael McMahon's point is appropriate. There is a problem of balance and we might not be able to resolve it absolutely. We should definitely avoid sending anyone to a council on which they have served or in an area that they represent. That would be very unhelpful.

Colin would resign from Parliament before he would go back to Renfrewshire.

In that case, I think we should send him there.

Do we have some agreement about that? We will consider sending the SNP members everywhere, we will mix members with urban and rural experience and we will not go to a council either that we served on or that is in an area that we represent.

If three people are going to be doing that, I think that they should represent three different parties. We might want to have one or two former councillors, but there is no reason why we cannot mix and match.

Och, behave yourself.

I am trying to say that it does not have to be the same three people every time. It does not have to be a set group visiting each authority. For example, Johann, Donald and I could visit one council and Keith, Sylvia and I could visit another.

What is the time scale for starting and completing those visits?

There is a programme further on in the briefing note. We should tie in the recommendations with the timetable because there may be something to be added next week. We will broaden out the recommendations following the discussion of the past few minutes. Are there any comments on that?

Just for my own clarification, the briefing says that the reporter system should be adopted. Does that mean one of the three members acting as a scribe, or a member of staff?

Some members will be aware that the reporter system is used in many Parliaments. In that system, a member of a committee is given specific responsibility for an agreed task. Yesterday, the European Committee considered a report on the system and I can get copies of that report if members are interested.

The member of the committee would be responsible for the task, but there would be some scope for staff assistance. However, that raises some resource issues.

We will get that report to members; it will be helpful. The reporter system works well.

I have a point that was made in Neil McIntosh's report, and which Eugene alluded to in his paper, about the way in which we decide a framework of questions so that there is consistency between each of the groups. Will we do that today or at a subsequent meeting? Obviously, that framework will be based largely on the McIntosh report, but there might be a series of key questions that we want to ask all the bodies that we visit to ensure a degree of comparability between the reports.

I suspect that the questions that we will want to ask of rural authorities will be different from those that we will want to ask of urban ones.

I suppose that builds on paragraph 3.3 of the briefing paper, which deals with the subjects that we will consider. Could we add the question of civic education? That came up this morning and I think that it is an important subject to consider, particularly as local authorities may be asked to set targets for its inclusion.

That is important. We have to ask councillors and voluntary groups different questions, but we must operate within a reasonably tight framework otherwise there will be no correlation between reports.

Right, there are two ways of doing this: we can either use a committee meeting to consider the questions that we would like to ask everyone, or we can ask the clerk to pull together questions to create a base from which we can work.

The problem is the time frame within which we will operate. Can officials say how many visits we might make, and what kinds of locations we might want to visit? It would be worth while having a briefing paper on that.

If the recommendations in this paper are agreed today, we will try to come up with a programme that suggests who will do what, based on interests that committee members can indicate to us at the end of the meeting. We will then return with recommendations, probably at the next meeting, which members can approve.

We will not visit all the councils anyway. Eugene can pick out councils that are representative of their type: totally urban, semi-urban, totally rural, and so on. There will be a core of questions that we will ask them all.

There is also the aspect of areas of good practice in councils. How are we going to get at that? How will we find out which councils are known to show good practice in certain areas?

There is a league table, is there not?

Did the electorate not give their judgment on that league table at this year's election?

The league table is based on the delivery of services, but it is a model that the officials could consider. We do not need to accept it.

The Scottish Parliament information centre has information on where models of good practice have been developed. We hope to draw on that and other knowledge to find specific examples of good practice.

Morag Brown has suggested that we might want to liaise with COSLA, to determine which councils are the best ones to visit.

Some of the areas that we want to explore are mentioned in section 3.3 of Eugene's report, but we will probably want to broaden our investigations considerably. Electoral reform is not included in section 3.3 of the report, partly because that would duplicate the work of the Kerley group, but it would be a huge missed opportunity if the Local Government Committee visited local authorities and did not discuss that issue.

We need to broaden our investigations, even if we might be seen to be straying into some areas that the various commissions and groups are examining. I do not want us to do that extensively, but we should explore some of those issues.

I was going to suggest that COSLA might have information concerning good practice.

I hope that the list of official questions will not be exhaustive. If, whenever we go somewhere, there are eight questions that we are supposed to ask, I hope that we will not have to limit ourselves to those eight questions. The essence of the thing is that one answer should lead to probing a bit further.

Yes, I accept that.

I am trying to think about the matter logically. We must agree which of the areas in section 3.3 of the report we want to cover—that was Bristow's point. We must then move on to think about questions that will be phrased slightly differently to different groups. Eugene, is that how you are thinking of developing the process?

Yes. I do not think that we should do that today. I suggest that, once we have an idea of which subjects committee members are interested in, and of which geographical areas they might want to consider, we will try to pull together some kind of programme. If that is agreed, the rapporteurs who are appointed could then get together as a group and try to build consistency into the process.

It is all about the messages that we send out. We should be careful not to go about with a tick box, saying "Huh. You think you are good? Well, we are going to tell you something different." Nor should we prejudge which councils are good, bad or indifferent. There have been adverse reactions to the advisory panel in certain local authorities. We do not want to be seen to come in on the back of that panel, doing that kind of job. We should genuinely try to establish some kind of dialogue.

It is about trying to get a representative impression of local government throughout the country. There are obvious places where we want to touch base, but I am anxious that we should not be prescriptive. We should not say, "We are coming to meet you because you have good practice," or, "We are coming to meet you because you have bad practice." We are trying to build a dialogue, and that is slightly different from what has been done by the Executive.

Presumably we will send people a list of the subjects that we want to discuss, but our basic function is to listen and learn, not to judge. We must have a dialogue.

Convener, there are only 32 local authorities in Scotland. How many do you suggest we visit? Will we see 10 or 11 each?

Certainly not 32—we must be selective. I would want as much variety as possible in terms of size and geographical area. Perhaps you could tell Eugene Windsor what kinds of things you are interested in, and that could guide our programme. There are some that we obviously must visit. It goes without saying that someone—not you, Kenny, or me—would have to go to Glasgow and see what is going on there. We could begin with those that it is clear we must visit—Inverness would be another. The inquiry must not be narrow, but it must not be too wide either. Perhaps we should visit about 10?

A dozen maybe?

If that. That is a lot—perhaps eight to 10. We are not going to listen only to councillors and officials; most important, we will listen to the people who receive the services. What is the point of fixing things if people do not get their services delivered?

We must get more information from members about what they are interested in and then think about which authorities we should visit and what the timetable will be. The committee must remember that the ethical standards bill will go before Parliament towards the end of the year and that we will have to scrutinise it. At the moment, the bill is timetabled for three committee meetings, but as a result of discussion with the clerk yesterday, we will probably cut that to two. We have to scrutinise that bill before Christmas.

I would like to suggest that we see a dozen councils. That would mean four each.

The kind of authority that we visit has a bearing on this. I was born and brought up on the islands—being in an urban situation seems a bit odd—and there are peculiar situations in island authorities. I suggest that we go to at least one island authority—although I should not go. The problems of island authorities are quite different.

That is an interesting point. During that long holiday when we did nothing I spent a week listening to the local government committee in the House of Commons. I can assure you that it is very interesting.

I think mind-numbing is the phrase you are looking for. Frank was up in Orkney a couple of weeks ago.

He was also in the Western Isles.

It might be worth looking at the House of Commons local government committee report—its recommendations are interesting.

My point is similar to Kenny's. The Accounts Commission broke the local authorities down into four different kinds: rural, urban, mixed and island. If we do two of each, that will give us eight, and then Edinburgh and Glasgow—which we must look at because of their particular difficulties—will take us up to 10.

We should look at Highland, because it is the biggest. That makes 11.

If we work the visits out on that basis, we would be covering a fair spread.

Yes.

Also, if something crops up during the process that we think we really ought to look at, it can be included. At the moment, it is important to establish a number.

In addition to Michael's criteria, we should remember that size is also important.

There is no answer to that. [Laughter.]

Colin will burst into tears. [Laughter.]

I am sorry about that. The paper also mentions political control, which should be added to our list of criteria.

Is that your last question for the day, Sylvia? Does anyone wish to raise anything else in respect of this paper? If not, can we formally approve these recommendations, including the items that we have added?

I think that the point that I raised earlier about mapping was raised in the wrong context.

Here we go again.

Do not go to sleep. The discussion on the briefing paper was not the right place to mention it.

I will speak to that when I sum up.

Will you? I have four headings now.

Four headings and a funeral.

We move now to the programme of committee dates. Ah, members do not have that piece of paper.

Does the press have it? [Laughter.]

No, no, the press does not have it. I will formally close this part of the meeting to allow the official report to go away and then we can discuss the diary.

Meeting closed at 11:57.