Item 2 on our agenda concerns the committee's external relations remit. A paper has been circulated to members. It is fairly straightforward and outlines the position that we want to encourage the Procedures Committee to take in relation to extending this committee's remit. Members will recall that we discussed at our previous meeting how we could push that along. The clerks have produced a paper, which I hope we will agree to and refer to the Procedures Committee today, which should expedite matters.
I agree in principle with the proposed change to standing orders, which would extend the committee's remit to allow us to deal with broader aspects of external relations rather than only European Union matters. However, I am not sure about the wording for the proposed changes to standing orders. I presume that that wording comes from the Procedures Committee—is that the case?
No. The paper was prepared by our clerks and legal advisers. The intention is to forward the paper to the Procedures Committee. Alison Coull, the legal adviser who assisted with the preparation of the paper, is willing to answer any questions.
I am not sure that the wording of the proposed changes is ideal. The paper proposes the addition to rule 6.8 of standing orders of a new paragraph 1(d), referring to
I call Lloyd Quinan, followed by Colin Campbell then John Home Robertson.
Colin Campbell had his hand up before I did.
I did not catch that.
I always defer to the teacher.
To talk about countries in Europe—or the European Union—and the rest of the world does not at first seem to be prescriptive, but what about international organisations? Are we entitled to, or do we wish, to foster relationships with international organisations per se?
Are you thinking of NATO?
As it happens, I was not thinking of NATO in particular. Can we talk directly to the World Health Organisation, the United Nations or the European football association, or whatever it might be called? I draw a distinction between such organisations and nations or countries.
I will let other members make their points before we ask the legal adviser for guidance.
I share Dennis Canavan's reservations. I also share Colin Campbell's concern that the word "countries" seems prescriptive—I would prefer to use the word "structures", unless there is an agreement or concordat between the committee and the Executive that clearly lays out what is meant by "countries". That is an important point, because we need to deal with pan-national structures as well as countries.
It is important that we do not stray into reserved matters. However, I accept the points that colleagues have made about the limited definition and about the use of the term "Scottish Administration". I will ask the legal adviser about that in a moment.
The convener has just raised the point about which I was worried when I first read the document. What does the term "Scottish Administration" mean? Does it refer to the Executive or to the Parliament, or to both? That should be made clear.
I will try to deal with all the points that have been raised, starting with those on the reference to "Scottish Administration".
Therefore, it covers both.
Yes.
When is the Parliament's international relations work scrutinised and by whom, if that is not done by the European Committee?
The Parliament—
—has an external liaison unit.
I see what you mean.
I am glad that we are all awake now.
Who scrutinises the scrutinisers?
That question is important.
The issue is interesting. I am grateful to the legal adviser for telling us the meaning of the term "Scottish Administration". I did not realise that such a distinction was made. I thought that the term "Scottish Executive" covered ministers plus civil servants, but apparently it does not.
Colloquially, the term is used to cover ministers and civil servants.
That is interesting. Does it include the Parliament?
No.
A department of the Parliament deals with external relations. We will discuss that next week with Paul Grice, the Parliament's chief executive. All sorts of activities are being undertaken. I have complained in the chamber and elsewhere that decisions about the Parliament's external relations with other Parliaments have been taken rather clandestinely, rather than openly and democratically. Important issues of accountability are raised, and I would like the European Committee to have some responsibility for overseeing the work of the external liaison unit of the Parliament and the external relations function of the Scottish Administration.
Is there a precedent for parliamentary committees scrutinising Parliament officials?
The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is covered.
Technically, the external liaison unit is attached to the Presiding Officer. Is that unit really the Presiding Officer's cabinet? Perhaps Stephen Imrie can shed some light on the matter.
In the internal parliamentary structures, the external liaison unit is in the office of the chief executive, who is the Clerk to the Parliament—that is, Paul Grice's office. The unit supports the activities of officials, including the Clerk and people like me, in external relations. It also supports the Presiding Officer and the Deputy Presiding Officers in their functions. The members of that unit are parliamentary officials and not civil servants in the way that the term has been used before.
Will Alison Coull shed light on the question that I asked? Is there precedent for parliamentary committees to scrutinise parliamentary officials rather than members of the Executive and civil servants?
I am unaware of any such precedent. The job of the committees tends to be scrutiny of the Scottish Executive's policies.
We might be straying a little.
The Equal Opportunities Committee has discussed the Parliament's hiring and firing policies. The issue is not whether we will set a precedent, but whether we are performing the functions that are required of proper scrutiny. We have found a gap that requires to be filled. I advise the committee not to consider precedent, because we have discovered an arm of the Administration and of the Parliament that is not being scrutinised.
The unit is not an arm of the Administration in the sense of the Scottish Executive, but it is an arm of the Parliament. Is it a parliamentary committee's responsibility to scrutinise another part of the Parliament? I need to take legal advice on that, because I am not sure whether that is our responsibility. Perhaps Alison Coull will assist us.
I have had a chance to look at standing orders. The Equal Opportunities Committee's remit covers the observance of equal opportunities in the Parliament which, I presume, is why it has considered that. I do not think that any other committee has a role similar to that, so it would be unusual for a committee to undertake such scrutiny. However, the Equal Opportunities Committee has a role in examining the Parliament.
Surely it is the case that the servants of the Parliament—the parliamentary officials—are, whether they are in the external liaison unit or any other part of the Parliament's administration, accountable to the Parliament as a whole?
I would have thought that they are accountable through the chief executive.
They are accountable also through the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.
Yes, they are accountable through the corporate body as opposed to a parliamentary committee. That is my assumption.
The corporate body is, in a sense, a parliamentary committee that is accountable to the Parliament as a whole. The European Committee is a parliamentary committee and we must report to the Parliament as a whole. Our membership is approved by the Parliament as a whole; therefore we are accountable to the Parliament as a whole. I do not see any legal or constitutional difficulty in saying that we should have some responsibility for monitoring the work of the external liaison unit, provided that whatever we report is put to the Parliament as a whole for approval or otherwise.
We are straying into technical issues about the chief executive's role in controlling his staff and relaying matters back to the special corporate body.
The matter is not mentioned in the brief because the ambit of the brief is a change to standing orders in the light of the new external affairs remit, first for Jack McConnell and now for Jim Wallace. The remit was a first. We are getting into thinking about how to make different parliamentary officials accountable. It is not really the officials that Dennis Canavan seeks to make accountable, but the work of the Parliament. There is an issue about how the Presiding Officer exercises his functions. Dennis Canavan is shaking his head, but we have discussed the matter before, when Dennis brought it up. We have a choice. If we want to go down the route that Dennis suggests, we will have to discuss the matter for another couple of months, because we could not make the decision unilaterally at this meeting.
The matter is for the Procedures Committee. We are expressing an opinion. We asked for the briefing paper so that we could push things along by agreeing the committee's position and sending a statement of that position to the Procedures Committee. I want to push on with that because, otherwise, we will have to reopen the whole issue. I would rather agree today to extend our remit to take on the role that we originally wanted to extend it to include, which is scrutiny of the Executive.
When we find that there are gaps and spaces we should not rush into doing things just because we want to get on with them. I do not agree that we would be setting a precedent. The change to the Equal Opportunities Committee's remit was based on its recognition that it could not carry out its functions if it ignored equal opportunities issues within the Parliament and its structures. We have discovered exactly the same hole.
John Home Robertson.
I have not finished.
Dennis Canavan raised a fair point about ensuring that there is scrutiny and co-ordination of external decisions by the Parliament or on behalf of the Parliament by the Executive or the external liaison unit. However, we are dealing with a separate area. The draft amendment is intended to give the committee the authority to scrutinise matters beyond the external affairs element of the minister's functions as he described them to us. That seems logical.
Yes. I think that the point was summed up at the beginning of the discussion. The definition is wide enough to cover groups of individual countries.
What is the definition of "countries"? Scotland is a country. That may sound pedantic, but the issue is important. It is all very well to talk about countries, but many people do not recognise countries.
That is true.
What definition are we using? Is a country defined by the people who live in a geographical area or by people who wish to live in a geographical area? Is a country a member of the United Nations? We should remember that this is a legal matter and a decision will be binding.
I think that the intention is for a fairly flexible interpretation of what a country is. The standing orders are a legal document, but they are not in the same category as legislation. They are internal working rules for the Parliament. In general, a purposive interpretation would be given to them. If the committee has specific concerns about how the term "countries" is determined, I am happy to go away and reconsider the matter in the drafting.
When we are scrutinising work, it is up to us to decide what we think countries are—that is a reasonable way of operating. We should either accept the proposed changes and ask further questions about who will scrutinise external affairs work, as exercised by the Presiding Officer, or kick everything into touch and reconsider the matter. We do not have much of a choice. I raised the issue of timing because, at the previous two meetings, members have been anxious to get on with scrutinising work in the Executive's external affairs remit.
We have talked about the matter for about a year and have waited for proposals for at least eight months.
That is precisely why I raised the point.
That is fine for you. We have dealt with the matter for quite a long time and I am not prepared to go along with something that does not satisfy the many hours of discussion that we have had in the past year.
To be fair, we have not discussed scrutinising the Parliament's external affairs remit—that is new. We have discussed scrutinising the Executive. It is valid to raise the matter and consider where the scrutiny function of the external affairs arm of the Parliament should lie. That is right and proper.
At the beginning of the discussion, three people at the table did not even know who was running the unit or that we had one.
It is right and proper for Dennis Canavan to raise the issue and that we should discuss it. Do we want to return the paper? There is an assumption, given that we are meeting the chief executive next week—
On 20 March.
On 20 March. There is an informal assumption that the committee will have a monitoring role. I think that the unit is happy to report to us and enter into dialogue with us. I do not see anything that would necessarily preclude us from continuing that scrutiny or monitoring of the external liaison unit informally. We have already arranged a meeting on that. I would be happy for that to continue informally, but do we want to send back the paper and change it?
Would there be strong opposition from other quarters within the Parliament if we were to suggest the addition of the proposed paragraph 1(f) to rule 6.8 of the standing orders? That would include the monitoring and co-ordination of the international activities of the external liaison unit of the Scottish Parliament. We could put that down as a marker, as we will discuss the matter with Paul Grice on 20 March. If in the light of that discussion the committee feels that there would be strong resistance to an additional paragraph and that insistence on its inclusion would delay the implementation of the rest of the changes to the standing orders, we might decide to withdraw the proposed amendment or not proceed with it at that point. We could perhaps keep it on the back burner for a future occasion.
That might offer some possibilities.
As Dennis Canavan said, we have talked in black and white about having to send back the paper. We are talking about a proposed amendment to the standing orders; we can amend the amendment without sending back the entire paper. What Dennis Canavan suggested makes an awful lot of sense. If we are going to go down that road, can we consider the content of paragraphs 1(d) and 1(e) and get back to what we discussed originally—the development and implementation of the Scottish Administration's links with Europe and countries outside Europe? Will we consider the structures of that? I wish that I had your faith in the informal structures with which I have had no contact but of which you seem to be aware, convener. That is all very well at the moment, but we are setting precedents for others.
We are developing as we go along and I think that we are taking positive steps. We are bringing in the chief executive to discuss external affairs for the first time in the two and half years in which the committee has been operating. That is a positive development.
We could have discussions about the drafting with the Presiding Officer and the chief executive. I am quite comfortable with what has been proposed; it is sensible.
Why is the committee seeking the right to scrutinise? Do we wish to enter into discussions? I do not understand.
My view is that we have a role to scrutinise the Executive and civil servants. We have opened up a new discussion today about whether we have a role in scrutinising parliamentary employees. We might well do.
The issue is the same for the Equal Opportunities Committee. The Rural Development Committee does not have to scrutinise parliamentary employees because, as far as I know, no one is farming on the roof of the building. However, the Equal Opportunities Committee had to consider the processes for hiring and firing people and the way in which we treat staff. In exactly the same way, we have discovered that an area that is part of our potential remit is not being scrutinised.
The matter is ultimately for the Procedures Committee to decide.
On our recommendation.
We can reflect our discussion today by adding a sentence referring to the external liaison unit of the Scottish Parliament and we can enter into further discussion with the Procedures Committee and the chief executive. I would like to have a clearer understanding of the legal situation on whether committees can undertake that sort of scrutiny of parliamentary employees.
The Equal Opportunities Committee does that because it fits in its remit.
That is a policy issue, however; it is a wee bit different.
Perhaps it would be better to use the phrase "the external relations work of the Parliament", which sounds like the framework that is used on the equal opportunities side. It would refer both to the external liaison unit and to the general work of the Parliament in external relations. We need to think about the terminology. I would prefer a wider, catch-all phrase.
I agree. That is why I suggested that the additional paragraph should read "monitoring and co-ordinating the international activities of the Scottish Parliament". We might want to add "and its external liaison unit" to make the wording all embracing.
I anticipate difficulties with the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, although I do not disagree with anything that has been said in the discussion.
We all agree. We have brought the subject up—let the SPCB kick it about for a bit.
I am concerned about whether a parliamentary committee is entitled to scrutinise activities of the Parliament. As Colin Campbell says, we have uncovered something that needs consideration. However, I think that we should proceed with caution.
The issue is new. The proposed new standing orders were drafted on the basis of the committee's discussion about scrutinising the affairs of the Executive. I would want to consider the wording of any suggested additional paragraph in detail. I would like to be clear about any legal implications arising from adding the point about scrutiny. I would have to take it away and think about it.
That is only fair. Does the committee agree that Alison Coull should take on board the comments that have been made today, with the proviso that we inform the Procedures Committee of our discussion and of Dennis Canavan's suggested amendment and that we need to investigate the legal implications?
This is really pedantic, but it stems from the fact that I am on the Subordinate Legislation Committee. Could we include a footnote directing people to a definition of "Scottish Administration"? If the revised standing orders go out to the rest of the world as they are, they will raise questions.
Standing orders have tended not to include footnotes of the sort that are included in statutory instruments. However, there is a case for giving an explanation in a commentary with the standing orders.
Okay. Thank you.
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