Procedures Committee, 31 Oct 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Official Report 244KB pdf

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Annual Reports

Item 4 is on committee annual reports. I welcome Trish Godman, whom we are not to grill, because she is not here as a witness; she is here to take part in our discussion and to transmit to us the views of the Conveners Group, which she chairs. She will speak on behalf of the group rather than give her personal views. As a member of the Conveners Group, I testify that there have been vigorous discussions on two occasions when several committee conveners expressed remarkable hostility to producing annual reports. Trish Godman must represent that view and we will then discuss how we will progress the matter, if at all. Other views that were expressed to the committee and passed on to the Conveners Group were against abolishing the annual reports as the group wanted, but the group has now come back to us with another request that we consider abolishing the annual reports. I invite Trish Godman to fire away.

I start by saying, "Don't shoot the messenger," as that is exactly what I am. The Conveners Group recognises the importance of producing statistics about the work of the committees and fully supports the reintroduction of the statistics volumes that will be produced by SPICe. However, it believes that committee annual reports are an unnecessary addition to the committee workload. The group feels that the annual reports, even if they were in a more interesting format, simply draw together and summarise work that has been done during the year, even though all that information is already available to commentators and stakeholders on the committee web pages on the Parliament's website.

Committee annual reports do not make the committees more accountable or add to their transparency. Committees already broadcast, webcast and report their proceedings—papers, agendas, minutes and reports are all available throughout the year. Stakeholder groups have access to the convener and members and speak regularly to the committee clerks. Apart from four submissions that were received by the Procedures Committee, there have been no demands from stakeholders for an annual report.

The committees cannot be compared with public bodies that do not conduct their proceedings in public or make their papers available to the public. Annual reports provide the only opportunity to find out about the work of those bodies, but that does not apply to committees of the Parliament.

The submissions to the Procedures Committee made reference to the House of Commons select committees' annual reports. The conveners do not think that such a comparison is appropriate. Given that the House of Commons select committees have control over their own workloads, it may be appropriate for them to show how they chose to divide their time properly over a range of tasks. On the other hand, our committees have a large proportion of their work referred to them in the form of bills, Scottish statutory instruments and legislative consent memoranda. The conveners considered that requiring our committees to produce documents such as the Westminster select committee annual reports would further reduce the time and resources that they could devote to their scrutiny functions. The conveners did not feel that the comparison was appropriate.

As time and resources are scarce due to the volume of referred work, the conveners believe that our committees would be better to use their time undertaking more scrutiny rather than reviewing already completed work that is fully accessible and has already been reported on during the year. In summary, that is the Conveners Group's view.

Thank you.

This committee can either agree or disagree with the Conveners Group or, alternatively, we might say that the issue needs to be explored more fully by taking formal evidence from conveners and from those on the other side of the argument who contacted us last time because they felt strongly about the matter. I think that those are the options.

I just do not get where this is coming from. Having tried to navigate the Parliament's website recently to find information, I know that the website is not the most user-friendly piece of software that I have ever had the good fortune to use. I accept that much of the information is available online and in the public domain, but moving away from publishing a two-page, user-friendly and accessible annual report would be a retrograde step. We have already discussed the issue, consulted on it, received responses to a consultation and made a decision on that basis. I see no new evidence to move us from that position. We should say, "Sorry, we have considered the matter and we are not changing our position."

I am surprised that there should be any stramash over the need to produce a 700-word annual report. In my undergraduate years, that would have been equivalent to half an hour's rushed work on an essay. I do not see that a huge time commitment is involved.

I will not shoot the messenger—Trish Godman has simply put the case of some other conveners—but, like Karen Gillon, I am a little confused as to why conveners were so exercised by the issue. Producing an annual report does not involve a huge time commitment, although I appreciate that it might involve more time than is apparent. Some people will find a succinct document such as an annual report useful.

Certainly at the Enterprise and Culture Committee, the annual report has never been raised as an issue, but I do not know whether it has been an issue for other committees. Apart from the correspondence from Trish Godman on behalf of the Conveners Group, I am not aware that we have had any other traffic on the matter. I am a bit puzzled as to why it should be such a vexing concern for some members on the Conveners Group.

I share the concerns that other committee members have expressed, but I want to make another, slightly different, point. We heard that the reason behind the request is that all the information in the annual report is already in the public domain. If we were to end the requirement for committee annual reports, we would need to question the nature of the information that is available. I believe that the structure of such information is important. Everything might be in the public domain, but publishing more and more information can make it more difficult for people to find the information that they need. The build-up of public information can serve to confuse and, in some cases, to conceal information. I am not prepared to accept that the fact that all the information is already in the public domain is an argument against producing an annual report.

The way in which information is provided is an important issue that we could explore in another way.

I see no reason to deviate from what my colleagues have said. I cannot recall the requirement to produce an annual report coming up as a significant issue in any committee of which I have been a member. I do not doubt for a minute that the issue has been exercising the minds of some conveners, but I doubt that committees spend much time producing annual reports. I concede that the annual report will take up officials' time, but I suggest that changing the requirement would make gey little difference to the time that committees have available. I am not going to shoot the messenger, as I realise that Trish Godman has a remit to fulfil, but the idea that producing the annual report significantly hampers the committees' ability to scrutinise things is fanciful.

Trish Godman said that the annual reports draw together and summarise work that has been done throughout the year. I think that that is a benefit of the process and is an argument for keeping the current arrangement. Without the annual reports, we would have to waltz round the Parliament website to find out what committees had done. How successful someone was in that regard would depend on the extent to which they knew what they were looking for in the first instance. The starting point for that would be the summary of the work that has been done throughout the year. The annual reports are about engaging members of the public rather than satisfying the anoraks who want to go through every last dot and comma. If members of the public can quickly and easily find out what a committee has done by looking at the subject headings in the annual report, that is all the better. I appreciate that this suggestion might expand the amount of work that is involved, but we should encourage committees to be as inclusive as possible when listing all the work that has been done. The fact that committees are not in possession of total control of their own timetable because of the amount of bills that this place deals with is a political matter that should be dealt with elsewhere.

Clear views have been expressed. The avenue of exploring the overall presentation of information about the Parliament to the public is one that we could usefully look at. Perhaps Elizabeth Watson, who is here to support Trish Godman and who clerks the Conveners Group, or our own clerks might have a suggestion about whether it is worth while exploring the way in which the Parliament presents its information. If Karen Gillon finds it to be confusing, perhaps we could present it better.

I am sure that there is someone on the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body who has responsibility for the way in which the Parliament communicates with the outside world. Perhaps we could suggest that they should consider this issue in some detail. I think that we have enough to be getting on with. We are not information technology experts—as is, perhaps, confirmed by my difficulty in navigating the Parliament's website to get the information that I am looking for.

I could draw the points that have been made to the attention of the relevant members of staff who are responsible for this area, including people who work for the SPCB and the members of the editorial board who are responsible for the content and structure of the internet site and the intranet site. If members have particular suggestions about how the accessibility of the website can be improved, that would be welcome.

Trish, you have heard what people have said. Do you have any suggestions about how we could proceed? It would not be helpful if the committee and the Conveners Group were to engage in ping-pong or trench warfare over this issue. On the other hand, some of our colleagues on the Conveners Group felt that it was an important issue.

You are right to say that some members of the Conveners Group felt strongly that there should be no annual reports. I take it that you will write to me formally to inform me of the Procedures Committee's decision. I will handle that, literally line by line. You have listened to what I have said and have challenged a lot of it and I need to tell the Conveners Group about that. However, I agree that we do not want to start some kind of table tennis match. To that end, I will try to close the issue down—but do not quote me on that.

Other issues arise from this. Members of the committee do not seem to be aware of concerns about the matter in the other committees of which they are members. It might be that conveners are flying kites rather than consulting their committees. However, I would not like to suggest such a thing.

For the sake of the Official Report, should we make it clear that we agree to leave things as they are?

You have pre-empted me slightly. However, yes, that seems to be the view of the committee. Do we agree to write to Trish Godman and the Conveners Group to say that we do not accept the arguments that Trish Godman ably put forward on behalf of the Conveners Group?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you for your attendance, Trish. Consider yourself unshot.

Items 5 and 6 will be dealt with in private.

Meeting continued in private until 12:41.