Equal Opportunities Committee, 07 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 7, 1999

Official Report 130KB pdf

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Schedule of Meetings

Items 1 and 2 of the agenda are deferred to a later meeting and we will start with item 3, which deals with the committee's schedule of meetings. Are there any questions about the report that was circulated regarding the schedule?

Initially, there was an understanding that the committee would meet weekly. A number of members blocked off spaces in their diaries because of that. On what basis and on whose decision was the schedule changed to have us meet fortnightly?

The papers that were presented to us this morning show the amount of work that the committee has to carry out—a lot of work is detailed in the paper on the schedule of meetings, for example. The organisations that briefed us during the recess said that they believed that this committee would be one of the busiest. It is strange, then, that we should meet fortnightly. I would like to open up the issue to discussion.

How often the committee meets is up to the committee. My understanding is that we did not come to a firm decision on the schedule of meetings because it was difficult to make that decision until we understood how we would operate. We decided that we would have fortnightly meetings but would allow ourselves the flexibility to meet weekly if necessary. The next item on the agenda is methods of working, which will allow us to discuss whether we want meetings every week or informal meetings in Edinburgh. I am interested to hear other people's views.

I propose that we take items 3 and 4 together. It does not make much sense to discuss the schedule of meetings without discussing the methods of working. There is a problem with our schedule of formal committee meetings: I see a four-week gap between 16 November and 14 December. I understand the reason for that but, whatever we decide in the broader discussion in a moment, we have to slot in at least one meeting in that period.

That is an anomaly that has come up in the programme.

I think that we need to be flexible. We have a huge amount of work and there is high expectation about what the committee can do. We are in uncharted waters and it would be a good idea to block off spaces in our diaries as time that we will devote to the Equal Opportunities Committee.

My concern about formalising our arrangements is that, inevitably, the work would expand into that time—we would meet weekly and might not be able to do the kinds of things that we have spoken about, such as meeting organisations and visiting places. If we discover that we are being overcome with work and cannot examine the work of the other committees as we discussed, we can at any stage review our schedule and methods. I would like to have time in which we can meet organisations.

Time is tight for committees generally. We are unable to meet on 30 November, as we had planned, and we should discuss what we will do about that. At a later point, we should examine how effective we have been with the time that we have been given and amend our schedule accordingly. I would not like to be told at the end of November that we can meet only fortnightly.

That ties in with my thoughts about the committee. We have two roles: to consider the Parliament's legislation; and to be pro-active in examining issues that have been raised by the groups that briefed us during the recess. I hoped that we could have formal meetings every fortnight and, every other week, split the committee into smaller groups that would consider and report back on specific areas of our remit and include people from the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Commission for Racial Equality, Disability Scotland and other specialists. That would mean that we were not driven only by the legislative programme and could diversify into other areas. I was going to introduce that as a topic for discussion when we turned to methods of working.

I agree—your comments pre-empted what I was going to say. The key word is flexibility. To meet formally every week might not be the best way of dealing with some of the issues in our wide remit. We have to look at different ways of working and they should not be set in stone. Meeting weekly would serve little purpose if we were to become bogged down and unable to involve other people in our discussions. Equally, if working in small, informal committees becomes undesirable, we would have to review that method.

If we set out our working methods from the outset and are inflexible about them, we will create problems for ourselves. We have to overcome that and allow ourselves a chance to bed in. We must try different ways of working; they may be unsuccessful, but they have to be given a chance.

I understand your point about having informal meetings in between the formal ones, Kate. As Michael and Johann said, we should establish that as our working method at this stage but set a date on which formally to review it. It would be helpful to assess whether the arrangement is working in three or four month's time, rather than simply to leave it open-ended.

We should do that. Is six months a reasonable period, or is that not long enough?

It would be sensible to review our arrangements before December, which is when the next dates will be set.

That sounds sensible.

We will come to our work programme later, but it would be helpful if members would tell the clerk at some point today what specific issues they are interested in for the sub-committees.

I do not know whether this will be addressed later, convener—you can tell me to shut up if it will be—but I would like to know whether you mean that we should tell the clerk about the general area that we would like to cover or an aspect of that area that we would like to focus on?

It would be useful at first to set up a group to deal with each of the main areas that we are going to cover—we might have four groups dealing with four areas—and then to specialise within those areas.

It might be more logical to consider sub-committees when we deal with the work programme. Once we see what the work programme will be, we will know what sub-committees we will have to set up in order to take the work of the committee forward. According to the informal briefing paper, if we set up ad hoc sub-committees around all the areas that we have examined so far, we will have five or six of them. That might not be the best use of our time.

I will ask the clerk about Malcolm's point about there being a four-week period with no meetings. Martin, would it be possible to sort that out?

There is the October break and the St Andrew's day holiday, which falls on a day on which the committee would have otherwise met. There are some difficulties if the committee wants to arrange another meeting in that period, because members of this committee are also members of other committees and we have to avoid clashes. Possible dates would be on Wednesday afternoons or on Tuesday afternoons—possibly Tuesday 23 November or Tuesday 7 December.

That is too late; the four-week gap is between the beginning of October and the beginning of November.

There are two gaps—the October break and the one that covers St Andrew's day on 30 November.

I take it that everybody is agreed that we should try to fit in another meeting. I suggest that the clerk and I try to find a date in the committee timetable.

It would be logical to meet on 23 November, which would bring the meeting forward a week. Committee members have blocked off that time anyway.

Yes, it would.