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For the next agenda item, we welcome Alex Neil and Claire Menzies Smith. We are at the stage where we want to ask Alex Neil about the consultation process for his bill. We are not going to grill him about the substance of the bill, although we hope to have the opportunity to do so in the future. Alex, what consultation method did you choose and on what basis did you choose it? For example, did you consider holding consultation meetings in addition to the written consultation process?
I will go through the process. Before I started the formal consultation, I contacted a number of organisations in Scotland that operate in this field, including the Scottish Pensioners Forum, Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged. We also contacted the National Assembly for Wales, because the Welsh proposal to establish an old persons commissioner is quite far in advance of ours. Moreover, we contacted the parliamentarians in Westminster who—unsuccessfully so far—are supporting the principle of an old persons commissioner for England.
You have already answered the question that I was going to ask: it was about whether you would be flexible with regard to the deadline for responses. You are saying that you might extend it by two to three weeks.
Yes. We have allowed more than the required 12-week period, but I think that it is important to give the maximum opportunity to people who want to respond. That 12-week period has included Christmas and new year. There has also been the special request from the British Sign Language society. I said to that organisation that we will extend the deadline by the time necessary to allow it to respond. As we are doing that, we will accept responses from anyone else who wishes to respond during that additional period. I think that that is a fair and flexible approach.
The committee will be pleased that you have allowed such a long time for the consultation in any case. You said that you have received responses from around 27 of the hundred and thirty-whatever organisations.
We wrote to 238 organisations, and we have so far received 27 responses. I am told that that is above average in percentage terms. Claire Menzies Smith will be able to answer this in more detail, but I understand that the average number of organisations that are invited to respond to a consultation is around 70 to 90 and that the usual number of responses is around 20 to 25. By the time that we are finished, we will have well over 30 or 35 responses, I hope. The responses will not be like those to the consultation on health board elections, with people just ticking yes or no. The responses that we have received have gone through all our questions and have given us a lot of detail, aside from those that were sent by the five organisations out of the 27 that think that the proposal is not a good idea in principle.
You have also answered quite a bit of my question, too. Given those numbers, you seem to be content that you have reached a sufficiently wide range of people.
Absolutely. I should add that we circulated a copy of the consultation paper to every MSP, asking them to consult and to give their responses, too. Furthermore, I have formally requested a meeting with the minister with responsibility in this area—Malcolm Chisholm, the Minister for Communities—and I am told that I will be able to have a meeting within the next two or three weeks. Obviously, I am keen to ensure that the Scottish Executive supports the bill, at best, or does not block it, at worst. This is not a party-political issue—it cuts across all parties.
Have you received responses from individuals, as well as from organisations?
We have. A couple of people have responded through the website, on which the consultation has been placed. We received one such response this morning. Unfortunately, we had to ask the respondent to convert his e-mail attachment to Word, because we could not read it. However, it is encouraging that people have responded through the website.
What is your understanding of why a member consults on a member's bill? Is it to inform the member of what to include in their final proposal or whether to proceed at all? Clearly, if all the consultees said that the bill was not a good idea, the member might have to consider whether to proceed. I ask those questions to establish how robust the consultation needs to be and because, if you proceed, the proposal will come to one or more of the Parliament's committees, which will have to conduct their own consultation. Presumably, they could have access to your consultation, if that would help to inform them.
The Procedures Committee outlined the benefits of consultation. First, it said that consultation was designed to develop and test any legislative idea by drawing out both positive and negative responses. I think that we are doing that. The vast bulk of responses have been positive, but we have received some negative responses, too. That shows that we have consulted as objectively as we can.
The consultation is also raising awareness around the issues. I believe that you are planning to visit Muirhead seniors forum in my constituency.
The purpose of the member's consultation is to try to get the proposal into a sensible shape. The purpose of the pre-legislative scrutiny at stage 1 is obviously to improve the bill. As you know, I am currently the convener of the Enterprise and Culture Committee, which is dealing with the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Bill. We are still at stage 1, the pre-legislative scrutiny stage, but the proposal has been round the houses four times. It originated as a proposal of the old Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, of which Marilyn Livingstone was a member. However, as you will see from our stage 1 report, which will be debated on 20 January, we have suggested further improvements to the bill as a result of this fourth round of consultation.
On publicity, you arranged to have a launch event, which can be effective if the media pick up on it, because a range of people will be made aware of the situation. Attracting such coverage can maximise awareness. I know that you have consulted extensively as well, but have you publicised the process in any other ways? For example, have you asked doctors' surgeries or community centres to put up posters about the consultation?
We have not done that directly. We got page 2 of the Daily Record for the launch. I do not always agree with the Daily Record but, as you know, it ran a successful campaign last year on the issue of elderly abuse and gave a lot of good publicity to the bill as a result of that.
One of the aspects that arise in regard to resources is the extent to which you use alternative formats when you are trying to communicate with people. In your covering letter, you made it clear that people can request alternative formats. Did you do anything proactive in that regard, such as producing large-print documents for older people or making tape recordings of the documents?
We provided fairly large print for organisations that we thought would request it. We have also tried to have more front-line contact. In the previous session of Parliament, when working on my Public Appointments (Parliamentary Approval) (Scotland) Bill—which was, in effect, eventually taken over by the Executive—I found that it was much better to go to the front line and talk to people face to face. I have therefore had meetings with, for example, Age Concern and the Scottish Pensioners Forum. I have preferred to do that rather than trying to make contact through, if you like, paper propaganda or other media. If one relies too much on other media, one tends to get squashed out. In addition, posters and suchlike do not lead to as good a response. Posters are usually up among a lot of other posters and responding to them is not necessarily people's primary concern. Face-to-face contact and dialogue are far more effective than doing everything in paperwork.
I totally agree about the benefits of talking to people face to face. It takes a lot of extra time and effort but is well worth doing. I was also going to ask about electronic media, but you have covered those points.
I want to ask about the resources involved in providing information in alternative formats. Alex, you can judge the extra time and work required for you to go and meet people face to face, but what about payments? For example, if you need translators, do payments come out of your office budget?
Under the Parliament's rules, the work that we will do in, for example, British Sign Language will have to come out of my members support allowance. In this financial year, I have allowed for us to do that. We have indicated that we will respond positively to any request for translations. One of my jobs at the moment relates to the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Bill, so I am especially sensitive to the need to offer information in alternative languages. I have also said to people whom I have met from ethnic minority communities that, if they required a translation—into Urdu, for example—we would try to facilitate that. So far, we have not received such a request. Within certain minority groups, particular issues relating to older people can sometimes arise.
Do you not think that the non-Executive bills unit, for example, should carry out that function for back-bench members who are working on a bill? Otherwise, there could clearly be a drain on members' office resources, which could impact on staff salaries.
Because I knew that I would be working on this bill, I budgeted accordingly. I have to congratulate NEBU—I am not saying this simply because Claire Menzies Smith is sitting next to me and, even more threateningly, David Cullum is sitting behind me—on the work that the unit has done and the assistance that it has given me on this bill as on my previous bill.
However, it is helpful to raise the issue, because back-bench members can have difficulties. Obviously, the Executive has many resources that back-bench members do not have.
Certainly, the committee wants to encourage people to use any kind of formats that are available and to use signers and interpreters. We would be concerned if that did not happen simply for financial reasons. That is an interesting point.
As I said, the only specific request that we have had so far is for British Sign Language, but we may get other requests.
You have obviously done a lot of work in sending out the letters and in contacting organisations. Do you have any plans to monitor and evaluate the levels of participation to identify groups that are under-represented? We are concerned that equalities groups should be participating in such an exercise.
I made a few phone calls just before Christmas to some people who I thought would have responded but who had not, just to gee them up a bit. Once the consultation period has ended—as I say, we are going to extend it to facilitate the British Sign Language society, in particular—NEBU will carry out an independent assessment of the responses; it will provide a detailed analysis of the answers to each of the questions as well as of the overall comments that have been made. That analysis will be available in the Scottish Parliament information centre and will be passed on to the lead committee on the bill, which I assume will be the Equal Opportunities Committee. All that information will be made available to every member of the committee and to the general public.
The committee has no further questions. Is there anything else that you want to say?
I just ask committee members to lobby their groups to support the bill.
I knew that you were going to say that. Thank you very much. Are members satisfied with the statement of reasons that is attached to the proposed bill?