Chamber and committees

On quotas, you might be drifting away from that approach. As a Parliament, we cannot direct how parties select their candidates—that is outwith parliamentary control. It might be that a party’s selection and then election process—even if there was a 50:50 candidate split—could result in a party having one more male than female, or the other way round. You cannot direct quotas, because you cannot direct the election. Therefore, I do not understand how you feel that you can implement a quota system. How do you implement it?

I totally agree with that. However, if, despite my preference, I am excluded because of quotas, that is wrong.

As a committee convener, I do a huge amount of work with clerks to ensure that I do not have an all-male panel or an all-female panel. I ensure that there is balance. Setting quotas prevents that, and it worries me that the best person for the job would be prevented from doing it. I do not care whether they are male or female; I want the best person for the job.

Thank you, convener. I am delighted to be back on the committee, which is one that I have always enjoyed immensely. I hope that, at the end of this meeting, you will still be able to say that you enjoyed having me.

I have no interests that are relevant to the meeting to declare, but I remind members that I have in the register of members’ interests an entry that says that I own property, am part of a family farming partnership and have a wild fishery on the river Spey.

The only comment that I would make is that I was on this committee at the start of the session and I am now back as a substitute—I am in the fourth group of people from my party who have been on this committee. The membership will constantly change, and I cannot see how you can force it—that is my problem.

I have a small question on committee membership. If, during a session, somebody is asked to step down from a committee to try to get a balance, they can, of course, refuse to do so. I do not have to resign from a committee just because my party wants me to; I have to write to the Presiding Officer and say that I want to resign. You might not be able to achieve this aim without a lot more significant rule changes, and you might be ordering somebody to leave a committee when they have expressed a preference to attend it. Would you feel comfortable with doing that?

Okay. What you have put forward has not convinced me that that is the right way to go, as you have said that the recommendation is there just as a matter for discussion.

Convener, you know my views on proxy voting, because I was on the committee when it was discussed. It is the most excellent thing that we have brought in, and it is important that we continue it. I will just comment that it is important to increase access to it for parental leave, bereavement and illness. I struggle to imagine an MSP voting against that, because we never know what is around the corner.

I agree on the data collection point.

I will turn to the issue of quotas, which is where I have some issues. Susan Duffy, do you agree that, when you select somebody to do a job, it does not matter where they come from or whether they are male or female and that the most important thing is to get the best person to do that job?

Because of that last question, I will deal with my questions in a different way from what I intended. All my questions will be on the recommendations that are relevant to the committee.

I struggled with the recommendation on bullying and harassment, and I thought long and hard about the right way to address the matter. I understand why complaints relating to bullying and harassment might be investigated by an outside body, but, in my experience, the committee is fairly robust in how it deals with its colleagues who breach rules. In fact, it is probably more robust than some other people might be who are not directly involved, because committee members have bought into the Parliament and are part of it. Do the witnesses not think, therefore, that it might be better to give the investigation to the third party but allow the outcome of the investigation to be decided by a group of fellow MSPs—the peers of the person against whom the complaint has been made?

I have one follow-up question. Let us say, for example, that a party is going to elect two people to one of the committees. Let us make this interesting in the sense that I can relate to it and take the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee as an example. Let us say that it was my party and that there were two farmers who desperately wanted to be on that committee but they both happened to be male. Under the rules, one of them could be excluded, yet they would undoubtedly be the best person for the job.

I agree that, if you want to go back and change things to ensure that there are more women farmers—women in agriculture are really important—that is a good start, but that is not where we are at. Therefore, you would say to me, “Edward, you are a man. You can’t be on that committee although you have been farming for 40 years.” How would that make me feel, as an MSP in this Parliament? I think that it would make me feel undervalued. Do you not agree, Susan?

Thank you. I have heard the arguments, and I am sure that we will discuss them later.

I have been through a period when I was desperate for us to have proxy voting, because I could not vote in person. By the end of it, I was concerned that people would not know that I had not been in the Parliament or why I had not been voting, because not everyone reads through the voting lists.

The beauty of our current proxy voting system is that it requires a member to apply for such a vote for a period of time, which is important. I will not be on the committee when it makes this decision, but I think that it is important that a proxy vote be allocated for a certain period. Having a permissive system that would enable us to increase it for other things for a set period of time is, I think, right, because it would give parties and the Parliament a chance to ensure that the person who was proxy voting was being properly mentored—and not only by their party. I have always believed that the Presiding Officer has a role in mentoring members who use a proxy vote for a long period of time. We are a family even though we are divided on some issues.

I just wanted to make that observation, convener.