Chamber and committees

I want to follow up on the issue that Craig Hoy raised. House-building companies commonly use special purpose vehicles, particularly for phasing—those are extremely common. Clearly, that represents a risk for your ability to collect. You mentioned connected party rules, which is the standard approach, but the issue is more complex than that, because payment will occur quite late on in the process and the Scottish Government has deliberately set that to be so. The usual remedy would be to ensure collection up front, as far as possible. That seems to me to be quite a risk. What assessment have you made of the risks around the cost of collection in that scenario? The other remedies that you have can be quite expensive and time consuming.

That is a standard sensible approach. I am trying to tease out the risks of the detail coming through in secondary legislation and you saying, “Oh, right. I wish we’d known that up front.” The figure that has been bandied around is £30 million, but the basis for that is pretty loose, and only time will tell.

Alexander Dennis has an important footprint across the entirety of Falkirk district, and I am grateful for the Scottish Government support. However, the wider supply chain is also at risk. The cabinet secretary correctly calls on the UK Government to accelerate the demand pipeline for electric buses, but can she confirm that there are also positive implications for the wider supply chain in calling for that action, which makes the need for pace even more important?

I thank Mr Leonard very much because I realise that he is in full flow. I accept what you are saying about historical precedent, but you are surely not suggesting that we should not give cognisance to the cost in any way whatsoever. We have to, because we are a responsible Parliament.

First, I will make a few remarks to remind us why we are debating this issue today. Members will know of my interest in ethics. It is for others to judge, but, as a member of this institution, I try hard to balance complex and competing issues using an ethical frame. I know that many other members do that, too, and I believe that we are here today with a shared interest in protecting the reputation of this place. It is good that we have many of the recommended institutional measures in place, such as a code of conduct, registers for openness and accountability, the Lobbying (Scotland) Act 2016 and so on. In my opinion, the bill marks a strengthening of enforcement and is, therefore, to be welcomed.

However, before I talk about the bill per se, I want to reflect a little on something else that encourages and supports ethical behaviour, which is culture. During my time in corporate companies leading up to the crash of 2008, and in my time in Westminster during the Brexit vote and in this place during some interesting periods, I have seen how culture can greatly impact behaviour.

The Presiding Officer and her office have provided strong leadership during this session, but I believe that mandatory ethical training should be in place for the next session to ensure that all members who have the privilege to be here understand that the buck stops with them and that their choices about how they behave potentially have a direct impact not only on their careers but on trust in this institution.

Moving on to the bill, I note that Elect Her suggested that

“women politicians are more likely to face politically motivated action, and we suggest that an extreme version of that could end up being a recall or a removal attempt.”—[Official Report, Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, 22 May 2025; c 28.]

I believe that women in politics are treated differently—for which read “worse”. I support Richard Leonard’s comments. I went through the stage 1 report to find out how many times women were mentioned. The quote that I read was from the Elect Her evidence, but I am not clear what specific consideration has been given to women in the bill’s development.

In addition to the Elect Her comments, I highlight the extent to which women are judged by different standards, which are often unrelated to their ability. For example, strong women are considered to be nippy sweeties—or worse. We also cannot forget about structural inequalities in party support, of course, and the challenges of mobilising funding. It is important that we consider those issues.

I also noted the statement from the committee, which considers that

“making provision for a direct right to recall on the grounds of disagreement with an MSP’s political views or voting record would run counter to the intended purpose of the Bill.”

That seems to be quite the understatement, and I would be strongly against any provision that would lead to that possibility. There will be many members who have no truck with some of the language that we hear in our political narrative, but we have to accept that people are entitled to their views, as much as we violently disagree with them. Perhaps that was the wrong choice of words by the committee.

With respect, I think that the member is conflating two different issues. I will go on to comment on people who switch parties. The important point that I am making is that, much as we dislike some people’s views—they could be considered completely slanderous—I do not think that we should get the two issues mixed up. For example, we do not need to go far back in time to hear outrageous views about women.

I said that I was going to mention the consideration that a recall motion should be triggered if a member changes their political party. I consider that to be very dangerous ground. It goes back to the big picture that I tried to frame at the start of my speech. What is the behaviour that we are trying to reward? If somebody changes party because of a compelling conscientious objection that was held to be just and well-meaning by most people, would we not consider that exactly the sort of ethical behaviour that we want from our politicians? I accept that people vote for their party preference, but, equally, parties change, people’s views change and the sentiment in the world changes. I would be very nervous about such a move.

There is lot of discussion to be had on signing places. That is a very complex issue, particularly when it comes to regional MSPs. I appreciate what the bill is trying to do with regard to accessibility, but, ironically, the debate shows how far behind our digital processes are when it comes to the effective use of technology. I understand that that issue is entirely distinct from those that we are considering in the bill, but we will have to look at it at some point.

On a minor point that was in the stage 1 report, I agree that, despite the drive to maintain parity between constituency and regional members, they are not elected on the basis of parity. There is further thinking to be done about that, and I appreciate that it is a difficult area to address.

Although the Law Society gave evidence, I think that there will be an on-going requirement for legal tests as we go through stage 2 and beyond. I listened to Alex Cole-Hamilton’s speech, and I think that we have to be very careful—for example, that whatever measures we pass cannot be subjected to judicial review. The principle that somebody is innocent until proven guilty under the law is absolutely vital. In that area in particular, we need to be extremely careful.

I can see that you are correct with regard to what you say about society and trust. We can take a view on the issue, but we are an advanced economy in all ways. Of course, there will be bad-faith actors, but we have seen that in relation to other areas, too.

My opening question was about the uncertainty around black-box generative AI, where it will be much harder to track what is being done and capture some of the risks—some of which could be insidious, depending on how we are populating the systems. We know that there are concerns about biases being built in—I understand that that is one of your areas of expertise, Professor Schaffer—but do we have a good enough sense of the known unknowns, in that respect? I do not think that anybody can say that we totally understand the situation, because of the exponential rate of change, but are there enough people who are worrying about the possibilities and doing the thinking about them?

Professor Schaffer, you are inclining your head, so I will bring you back in.

Thank you. Stephen Kerr will ask questions about our next theme.

Yes, thank you—I appreciate that it is a difficult question.

I think that we will get on to that aspect.