Official Report 269KB pdf
Item 3 is the excellence and equity conference on 9 December. The committee will have had a chance to consider this. Are any members interested in attending? The conference is important, but I understand that there may be difficulties over the time scale.
Is it an invitation to attend as an observer or as a speaker?
It is an invitation to attend as an observer, so that we are informed about issues that may arise from the improvement in the education bill.
I propose that we send the convener.
Is there any fee? There is an issue over fees for conferences, which has been discussed elsewhere. The Scottish Parliament has to be kept informed and has to pay its way but, given that we are spending public money, fees for members to attend conferences should, in principle, be avoided. If the conference is prepared to have an observer from the committee, our participation should be on that basis.
I understand that there is a budget to enable committee members to attend conferences. I do not suggest that we start eating into it but, in view of some of our discussions, I think that this conference will be useful. I suggest that the committee send me or a substitute to represent it at the conference. We can feed back information to the committee.
This may sound stupid: I think that I will be attending that conference—I think that I have been invited as a speaker—but I am not sure.
Do we agree to send our chair or a substitute, but that if we find out in the meantime that Fiona is attending and will not have to pay, she should go on our behalf?
Yes.
I want to ask a question that is not on the agenda. It concerns the arena in which we find ourselves. I would appreciate committee members' comments on meeting here in the chamber, rather than in one of the smaller committee rooms.
The big advantage of the chamber is that it allows our questioning of witnesses to be televised, which is obviously important. The disadvantage is that it makes it somewhat difficult to conduct that questioning.
I should correct you—this meeting is not being televised.
In that case, we should not be in here and we are wasting our time. You are right—at the moment the BBC can televise only one meeting at a time. In that case, we should meet in a smaller committee room. However, there will be much interest in the Scottish Opera hearing and we should meet in the room from which it can be televised. I assumed that we were in the chamber because we wanted to be televised asking the minister questions—if that is not happening, this is not the best place for us.
The difficulty was that another committee had already said that a minister would be present, so it had first use of committee room 1, which at the moment is the only committee room from which meetings can be televised.
That is very poor.
It is obviously a difficulty. The only thing that I would say—and I have mixed feelings about meeting here—is that the chamber allows more members of the public and the press to attend. There was a great deal of interest in this meeting, so I thought that we should try meeting here today to enable people to attend. However, meeting in the chamber gives rise to practical difficulties.
We must be able to meet whenever we wish to meet and, because there is a shortage of space, we accept that we may have to meet here. I do not think that the chamber is as good as one of the committee rooms, but if we are last in the queue, so be it.
I would say that the chamber is preferable to all the committee rooms, apart from committee room 1, from which meetings are televised. For meetings such as the one that we have had today, if we are unable to meet in committee room 1, I would prefer us to meet here rather than in committee rooms 4, 3 or even 2.
I thank members for their comments, which will be fed back.
Would it be possible, when we are questioning only one witness in the chamber, to have that witness sit in front of where the minister sat, and for us to sit rather closer to them? The current set-up is a bit theatrical.
The reasoning behind that was that if members sit on the front benches at the side, their view can be blocked by the mace and the desk on which it stands. However, we will try what Mike has suggested. This meeting was really a trial run.
Meeting closed at 12:12.
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