Chamber and committees

Yes. I have one more thing to follow up on but will do so after you.

Brilliant.

As we have sought to understand the many and complex issues that we are talking about, some potential solutions have floated to the surface. I want to float three of them past you, just to understand whether there is an appetite for them and to give you the feeling of them.

If the problem is that the SPCB is overloaded, Bridgeside house is too full and there is a capacity problem in the Parliament, the first potential solution—I think it was the convener who highlighted it earlier, or maybe it was Murdo Fraser—would be to redefine some of the SPCB-supported public bodies and put them into the more general public body space, so that they are directly funded by the Scottish Government.

It seems that the creation of new commissioners is, in many ways, about trying to fix the gaps in a system when there have been scandals. People might see a need for a patient safety commissioner because they are reacting to a scandal, for example. The second potential solution might therefore be to give more proactive powers to existing bodies—the ombudsman could have wider investigatory powers, for example—with the intention of trying to prevent such scandals, rather than people feeling like they need a commissioner as a redress.

The third potential option that we have floated around, and I am aware that some other Parliaments have done this, is some sort of consolidation act of Parliament, whereby, for instance, the Scottish Human Rights Commission would have its remit substantially redrawn in legislation so as to incorporate powers and effectiveness.

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland has been held up to us as the gold standard of what a commissioner can and should be, but not all advocacy commissioners are defined in the same way. For example, the Scottish Human Rights Commissioner seems to have quite significant limitations on its legislative remit.

I am interested in your thoughts on those three options. Are there reasons why we should not be considering any of those, and do any appeal more? Are they the solutions to our problems?

I object.

I do not have any interests that are relevant to this committee’s work. Per my entry in the register of members’ interests, I used to work for Orbital Marine Power and I am a member of Unite the Union.

Thank you for coming to see us, minister. The committee has been tasked with looking at the SPCB-supported bodies, but the work that they do sits within both the wider landscape of Government scrutiny and the public body landscape. Given that the committee will need to make recommendations, some of which might be quite wide reaching and ambitious and may suggest primary legislation, I want to feel out what you think is the art of the possible in where we go next. I have a few questions to ask in that regard, if the convener will indulge me.

First, picking up on the point that the convener made earlier about independence, I note that both the Government-supported public bodies and the SPCB-supported bodies have emphasised the importance of independence and testified to their independence. From my point of view, there is no difference in how they feel about that independence or how practicable it is.

One thing that the committee could recommend, although I am not saying that we would, is that some SPCB-supported bodies should be reclassified out of the landscape. Our task is to look at that landscape, and punting some of those bodies out into the wider public body space would be a solution, although it would not necessarily be the right one. I want to test those points—on independence and reclassification—with you. Would that make a fundamental difference to the wider landscape?

One of the challenges that has been presented to us by both SPCB-supported public bodies and others is how they make their work relevant and feed it into both the Parliament and the Government. My colleagues will come on to some of the mechanisms around that.

At a higher level, however, how do you view the paradox between bodies being independent and getting to decide what they investigate, but that issue perhaps not being on the Government’s agenda, so that there is no focus on it and no legislation on it coming through? Commissioners are putting out excellent papers that they have done lots of work on, but that go nowhere—they are not read by any particular parliamentary committee and they are not picked up by the Government in any way. As such, a lot of resource goes into excellent work that is then not fed in to or picked up by parliamentary committees, because it is not timely, it is not related to legislation and it is not in line with Government priorities or concerns.

Do you have any thoughts on the relevance of the work being done by both SPCB-supported bodies and commissioners and others? What gets through to you? What lands on your desk? My question is sort of related to what Murdo Fraser asked about. I know that ministers are bombarded by so much information from MSPs, and from all the various commissioners, public bodies and third sector organisations. How do we ensure that our SPCB-supported bodies, and other public bodies, do work that actually lands on ministers’ desks and gets actioned?

I will go back to a point that Murdo Fraser touched on. Are commissioners any more effective in those spaces than MSPs or third sector organisations? Are people more likely to do something if a commissioner has said it than if they hear about it from the third sector or from MSPs? In your experience, do commissioners have a material impact?

I have a final question, for clarification. Would a bill be roughly in line with the Scottish Government’s intention for that sort of vision and potential consolidation, as part of its review of the public sector landscape? Am I right in thinking that we would not be at odds with the Government’s intention and direction?

If we seem to be doing all right for time, convener.