Chamber and committees

I am confident that the members of this committee would ensure that stuff did not leak. It would be a serious matter if it did. Membership of this committee comes with certain responsibilities, and confidentiality is one of them. I have never sat on this committee, but I am sure that you deal with things that are confidential, and there have been no leaks. We just have to trust members of this committee to do their job.

The bill does define it. Section 26(2) states:

“due to the person’s failure to physically attend proceedings as a member, the Parliament has resolved to disqualify the person in accordance with standing orders made by virtue of section 27 of the Scottish Parliament (Recall and Removal of Members) Act 2025.”

That is the vote that you would have in order to disqualify the person in accordance with standing orders.

It means physically being in a committee meeting or in the chamber.

Here—this Parliament.

It means attending a committee meeting such as this one or a session in the chamber; it does not mean attending a cross-party group or a reception in the Parliament.

Correct. You need to turn up only once every six months. As Emma Roddick said, doing so is not particularly onerous. Perhaps I am being too lenient.

—but that is not a reason to remove somebody from their elected position.

The tests are set out in the bill. They would need to actually break certain rules, which are set out in the bill. It is not enough to say, “I don’t like that person. I don’t like the way they have gone about that campaign,” or whatever. No chance.

In cases such as that, people are entitled to a degree of privacy. I know that we will come on to talk about non-attendance, but you have raised it. Let us that say somebody has an illness—this has happened. MSPs fall ill, which means that they cannot come in for a period of time. We would not expect somebody to lose their job because of that, and, if the MSP wanted it to be private, we would expect it to be private. Things happen in people’s lives that mean that they cannot come into work and they deserve that level of privacy. I am trying to maintain that.

That is correct.

At the moment, it is possible for any of us to decide not to come in, and that is wrong. That cannot be right. My starting point was that, because I had been a councillor, I knew the law that applied to councillors, which is very clear: if you do not attend for six months, you can be removed but you will not necessarily be removed. For example, I took part in a vote in South Lanarkshire Council about a colleague—not a party colleague—who had been off. I will not say why they were off, but they were and there was a very good reason why. The council decided that they should be allowed to continue, and that individual is still a councillor.

Thank you, convener. I have very much enjoyed the committee’s previous meetings on the bill. The range of questions—I am sure that I will get the same—has been very good and they have covered all aspects of the bill.

I am not assuming that we will get to stage 2, but, should we do so, I very much look forward to seeing Ruth Maguire back on the committee—if, indeed, she does return to it—so that she can get her teeth into the bill. That would be good. I am sure that we would all want that.

Appearing before a committee can be daunting. As a member, I have given a number of people a good grilling and, no doubt, some of them are watching, hoping that I will get the kind of treatment that I have dished out. This is not my first time appearing in front of a committee to talk about my bill. I appeared before the Senedd’s Standards of Conduct Committee, which wanted to know all about the bill. We did a private session and a public one, and I call those dress rehearsals.

I thought that it would be useful to provide some background to the bill and my thinking on it before we get into questions. As you all know, members of the Scottish Parliament are elected every five years. If a member decides to stand again, the public gets its say: they can decide whether that person is re-elected.

What happens if any of us do not adequately represent the needs of those who put us here, or if we demonstrate very poor conduct during those five years? We are all obliged to adhere to a code of conduct and, if we do not, the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee can recommend sanctions up to and including suspension, but it cannot recommend that an MSP be removed from office, no matter how bad their behaviour. There is also no mechanism that allows constituents to remove an MSP during a parliamentary term, no matter how serious a sanction this committee recommends. The only way that an MSP can be removed from office altogether is if they receive a custodial sentence of longer than one year. That is too high a bar.

In addition, if any MSP is elected and never comes to this building—ever—there is nothing that the public or anyone else can do until the next election. That is an absurd situation. By contrast, in other workplaces, if an employee repeatedly or seriously breaches their company’s code of conduct, they could be sacked. If an employee just does not attend their place of work without good reason, they could be removed, and we would expect that. If an employee receives a relatively short custodial sentence for a criminal offence, that could lead to their dismissal, especially if they are in a senior position. To me, the contrast is quite jarring. My bill would improve democratic accountability by ensuring that MSPs could be removed more easily if our conduct fell short of what our constituents could reasonably expect.

The bill is in three parts. The first part of the bill would introduce a recall system—the committee has focused quite heavily on that. It draws on the Recall of MPs Act 2015 but adapts those provisions to ensure that they work in our electoral system. We will, no doubt, discuss that later.

Part 2 would reduce the length of custodial sentence that results in the automatic removal of an MSP from more than 12 months to six months. It provides that, if an MSP does not attend parliamentary proceedings in person for a six-month period without good reason, this committee could recommend to the Parliament that they be removed.

Serving as an MSP is a privilege, and my bill would ensure that we are all much more accountable. Ultimately, I think that the people who choose us to represent them will feel that the provisions of the bill and their implications for members are fair, proportionate and in line with what people in the outside world would experience in their places of work.

I look forward to the questions.