Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Official Report 300KB pdf

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Cross-party Groups

Item 2 is to deal with two applications to establish cross-party groups. The first is a proposed cross-party group on the middle east and south Asia. At our meeting on 17 January, we considered the application and agreed that we would invite the proposed convener, Hanzala Malik, to come along today to answer one or two questions about the group. Welcome to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, Hanzala.

Thank you, convener.

Do members want to start with a question or two about the composition of the proposed cross-party group?

Welcome, Hanzala. The committee is not against the group, but we are looking for a little clarification, if that is the right way to put it. It is quite unusual for a cross-party group to have a single non-MSP member. We wonder whether you can give us some more detail about Umbreen Khalid. Does he represent an organisation or is he just an interested individual? Could you give us a bit more detail on his—her, rather; I beg your pardon—her relevance to the group?

I am happy to do that, but first I thank the convener and the committee for the opportunity to clarify the issues.

Umbreen Khalid is a part-time researcher for me. She also works for the Council of Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector Organisations, but she is not on its committee. We have not yet invited members of the relevant communities to join the group because we are waiting to be registered. We will invite everyone to join; the group is about including people rather than excluding them. There will be an open invitation to join us, so there will be public participation. That is the whole point of the group’s being established.

Thank you for that, and I understand that. The Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee has to recognise formally the existence of cross-party groups; I wonder whether we are sufficiently able to do so when we do not know who the non-MSP members are likely to be. Could you give us a flavour of who are likely to become members? I can imagine who some of them will be, but with a completely open invitation, it is quite hard to tell.

We are looking for people from communities that are established—communities that are now indigenous communities in this part of the world. People will come from organisations that are, for example, part of a local authority or are established with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator. We will be inviting members from organisations that have democratically elected committees, so the invitation will be to all organisations that are accountable to a board and are totally open and transparent so that—as we hope—we will not get any loose cannons.

Welcome, Hanzala. You will be aware that there are other cross-party groups including groups on China, Palestine and so on. What will your cross-party group do that will be different from what those other groups are trying to achieve?

China and Taiwan are outwith the sphere of influence that we would operate in, so they are not relevant to what we are doing. Palestine is within our area, but we are absolutely comfortable with the idea of not doing anything in that respect and leaving it to the cross-party group on Palestine to deal with. If anybody wants to work with us, co-operate with us or share information with us, we will be happy to do that, but we will not cross the line. We will support already-established groups if they want that, but otherwise we will not get involved. Therefore, we will not engage with activities in Palestine but leave that to the relevant cross-party group.

So, in effect, you are going to eliminate any possibility of duplication?

Yes.

That is very helpful.

We would not want to offend anybody; there is no point in stepping on people’s toes unnecessarily.

Do you envisage communicating with the cross-party group on Palestine to keep track of what it is doing, to share business agendas to ensure that there is no crossover, or to see where your groups might come together on certain issues?

That is a valid question. We discussed that and concluded that because various cross-party groups are already established and doing work on various parts of the world, we would not want deliberately to do anything in relation to those areas, but would make ourselves open to them so that if they need to engage with us, we could happily assist. That is all that we would do. We would let them take the lead because we would not want to interfere in their work.

Thank you.

I imagine that an awful lot of communities throughout Scotland—from the middle east, south Asia, and so on—could fall within the scope of your group. When they respond to the invitation to come along to the group and say that they are willing to be permanent members, do you intend to register them as such?

We have approximately 150 different communities in Scotland today. I do not imagine that they would all want to join us, but following the invitation it would be open to them to do so. Once they have shown an interest and attended our meetings, we will be happy to register them. It is important that people know who are the regular attendees and who are the actual participants. We want communities to become more aware of what we do in the Scottish Parliament and, more important, how we then sell the Scottish badge overseas. That means engaging with those communities in a reasonably formal way—so, yes; there would be a registration process of sorts.

Are there any other questions from members?

Members: No.

Are members happy to accept the registration of the cross-party group on the middle east and south Asia?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you for coming along today, Mr Malik.

We now move on to the proposed cross-party group on sexual health. Members will see that that group was active in the previous session and that all the criteria have been met. Are there any questions on its application?

Members: No.

Are members happy to accord recognition to the proposed cross-party group on sexual health?

Members indicated agreement.