Chamber and committees

I recognise that there are concerns about the plans and that there has been a lot of debate. I am very proud of the Wishaw unit in my constituency. It is an award-winning unit that provides exemplary care, and it will still care for the vast majority of babies. The change will impact only the smallest babies and those in the poorest condition—the ones who need extra help—and those babies often already have to travel to Glasgow, because the Wishaw unit does not have the capacity to provide neonatal surgery.

In general, I support the proposals, given the expert clinical advice, the reassurances that the Government has provided and the fact that we have ScotSTAR—the Scottish specialist transport and retrieval service—which is a dedicated ambulance service for babies that is not subject to some of the challenges that there have been in ambulance procurement for patients in that area.

However, I recognise that there has been a major public service reform announcement regarding health boards, so it is important that we focus on what those big national health service changes might mean for these plans.

My office has generally been very good in this area. In fact, another CPG has been held up as an exemplar of how we should do things and its final annual report always includes a survey of members with regard to the influence of the CPG—I absolutely get that. The secretariat is really important, and we rely on third sector organisations and other professional organisations to carry out that role. In this instance, it was just a case of unfortunate misinformation in the handover. In the future, we would use a checklist of what is required and absolutely chase the annual return to ensure that it had gone through.

It is frustrating, as my office actually has a checklist of things to do for all events and CPG meetings that we hold in the Parliament. I think that members should have a checklist from the clerks, because the code of conduct is a technical document, but the requirements that have to be met are actually very simple. In the future, having a checklist to give to the offices that are organising the meetings, and to the conveners, would be helpful and would probably avoid the omissions that we have had in this situation.

There are a few points to make. It is a big change. The clerks commented that, when we submitted the return, we had verbatim minutes. We do not have verbatim minutes. That would be the easiest thing to do—as I said, our meetings are hybrid, so we could just dump a transcript—but that is not what we do. We have detailed minutes, and the CPG members rely on those to find out what happened at the meeting, and we know that they are of value to our members.

If the clerks need specific information on decisions that have been taken or any financial information, we can provide that as an addendum. I stress, however, that none of the CPGs in which I am involved usually have financial returns; we rely on the members to contribute voluntarily for things like teas and coffees, so we do not have a treasurer in that respect. In my view, CPG minutes are for the members, and we would like to continue to have them detailed but not verbatim.

There is one other point. We did try to comply, but the matter was dealt with by a new staff member. Paragraph B, on reregistration, sits between paragraphs A and C. I appreciate that those other two paragraphs both refer to the requirement for a 10-day notification period, but the paragraph on reregistration does not mention that. My staff were confused; they did not think, therefore, that the 10-day notification requirement was relevant to that paragraph. That could be looked at in standing orders.

There were major changes to the operation of CPGs as a result the work done by this committee, and I am supportive of that.

I have a few observations. We have been told that we held our AGM late, but our AGMs were dated 29 October 2024 and 12 November 2025. We were scheduled to have an AGM in September, as usual, but, due to late sittings of Parliament last session, which I am sure members remember well, we had to postpone that meeting. It was rescheduled to take place as soon as possible, in November, which still fell within 12 months of the previous AGM. To hold us to such a tight definition of what counts as being late is unfortunate.

09:15

Obviously, lots of us lose staff at the end of the parliamentary session, because people move on to new jobs. That happened in my own office. I had relatively new members of staff dealing with the CPG at the time, and the person with the key secretariat role of looking after the CPG, which has been going since 1999, left the organisation. It was just a mix-up in communication. That person said that they had complied with everything that they needed to do in the handover, but they had not submitted the form—although it had been ratified, signed and completed at the November meeting. It was only due to those circumstances that the annual return was not submitted on time, and I apologise for that.

I was written to, as the convener, but I was a co-convener—we have co-conveners on cross-party groups—and I am not aware that the other co-conveners were written to at the time. It was primarily my office that organised the meetings, but we need a discussion among ourselves about what co-convenership means in terms of responsibility and whether the letter should have gone to all the co-conveners at the time.

We are very aware of the changes to standing orders, which, as always, are technical in nature. At the end of the previous session, a document was produced on the changes for cross-party groups, but my staff were not aware of that because they were not in post when it was sent round the Parliament. I appreciate that that document provides very comprehensive advice, but I wonder how many other offices are fully aware of the document and the impact on cross-party groups. I was aware that we had to get the cross-party groups up and running as quickly as possible, so we scheduled the meeting at the time.

Another practical consideration is that, in the past, I have attended many CPGs that have not been quorate or met the standards for a CPG meeting. Since the introduction of hybrid work, we have always had a hybrid meeting. In the past, we have gone ahead with the meeting and then had it ratified via a Teams meeting at a later date. When we were advised not to go ahead because we had missed the notification deadline by, I believe, three days, because we notified in 10 days, not seven—again, I apologise for the mistake—we went ahead on the basis that the decisions that had been made would be ratified at a later Teams meeting that would have been quorate and met the requirements for a meeting of the Parliament.

Convener, it is up to you and the rest of the committee to decide whether that is an appropriate action for groups to take in the future. It was standard practice until the new rules were introduced.