Chamber and committees

That sounds as if the Scottish ministers are seeking for those powers to be granted. If that is the case, some questions need to be answered.

Before the ScotWind auction was delayed, the maximum cap was set at just £75.6 million, only for it to increase tenfold weeks later, after consultants were hired. That secured Scotland an extra £680.4 million. Global comparisons suggest that even that final figure was substantially undervalued.

Can the minister explain on whose advice Crown Estate Scotland, a wholly publicly owned body, came within days of losing out on that substantial increase in revenue, and to whose potential benefit was the initial undervalue?

Experienced educators, such as the retired Edinburgh headteacher whom I met this morning, track the root cause of escalating violence in schools to the erosion of clear and unambiguous values-based behavioural policies that are based on consequences.

Will the Government now admit that the overreliance on restorative approaches has failed and eroded behaviour in our schools, and will it now fully commit to urgently restoring clear behavioural expectations with consequences in order to protect our teachers and pupils’ safety and to raise attainment?

This is an important inquiry, and I have enjoyed listening to the contributions this afternoon. I thank the committee for inviting me to give evidence last week. As a very small party, is good for us to be able to take part in such things. In fact, due to the system that we currently have, I am not even entitled to a committee place at the moment, as a member of a very small party.

During my time here—I think that it has been just over nine years now—I have been on eight committees. I have also been in government, so I have been on both sides of the table. I have been in and out of government, and I have been on the government benches and on the opposition benches. It is fair to say that, during the past few years, my views on committee effectiveness have very much developed. Let us leave it there.

Committees are meant to be at the heart of scrutiny in the Parliament, but I agree with some of the previous speakers. Too often, the structure that Stephen Kerr pointed out undermines the purpose that we are here to carry out. Members are often overstretched, some convenerships appear very partisan and often there is limited co-ordination between committees, which serves to weaken the quality of our legislative oversight. Smaller parties and independent MSPs—of whom we may see more in the next session of Parliament—struggle to have meaningful input.

Before I go on to the substantive part of my speech, I want to say that there are many examples of excellent work by committees in the Parliament, both on inquiries and on scrutiny of legislation, and some excellent conveners are sitting in the chamber with us this afternoon. However, unfortunately that is not always the case, and I want to use my time to put on the record an example of what I see as a very significant failure by committees and Parliament in an area that I believe is very important.

Members will not be surprised to hear me say that it relates to the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which I believe showed how serious the structural flaws have become. From the outset, credible legal experts, women’s groups and statutory bodies raised what they felt were very urgent concerns about the interaction between gender recognition certificates and the Equality Act 2010. Those were not abstract legal theories; they were serious warnings about human rights and the clarity of the law. However, instead of being interrogated with care, those concerns were repeatedly dismissed.

We need to be very candid, as a Parliament, and face the fact that the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee failed in its core duty of scrutiny. It did not fully investigate the most contentious issue in the bill and it did not challenge the Government’s legal stance.

When, during the week of stage 3 of the bill, the Court of Session issued a ruling that contradicted the Scottish Government’s position, even that was ignored. No emergency session was called and no formal briefing was given to MSPs on how the ruling might affect how they voted. Manuscript amendments that were submitted by the Conservatives seeking to address the ruling were blocked. In my opinion, that was not scrutiny but strategic avoidance of certain issues.

Worse still, the conduct of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee since has only deepened public unease. Some of the personnel on the committee have changed but, last month, the deputy convener publicly described the Supreme Court’s decision and, by implication, its senior judges, as being motivated by “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”. That was not a critique of the legal arguments involved. It was, I believe, a smear on the judiciary. Such rhetoric from a senior figure, charged with upholding equality standards, has brought the Parliament into disrepute and exposed the lack of checks and accountability in our committee system. The problem is clear. When committees scrutinise legislation and then mark their own homework in post-legislative review, we get defensiveness and not learning.

I am running out of time, Presiding Officer. I had much more to say about legislative impact and post-legislative scrutiny, and on things such as elected convenerships, but I am afraid that I will have to leave it there.

Last week, I urged the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to revoke the unlawful gender self-identification policy that has put male offenders, including murderers and sexual torturers, in women’s prisons for more than a decade. Teachers are also crying out for lawful guidance to repair a decade of lobby-led ideology. Councils across the country are losing court cases. Female prisoners who are denied justice and their human rights may yet sue. An NHS Fife policy, which has now been exposed at an employment tribunal, is clearly unlawful. How much legal, financial and reputational damage will Scotland stomach before the Government stops dragging its feet?

A number of witnesses have raised the issue of how the Parliament measures the outcomes that are produced by the supported bodies. The committee has received some evidence, albeit in private session, that suggests that there are serious challenges in some areas—possibly more for advocacy-based supported bodies. Do you have any views on how that could be improved?

The committee has taken evidence that suggests that office-holders should be scrutinised by a parliamentary committee at least once a year. Do you have any views on that, and do you think that the timing is appropriate?

I want to focus slightly more on that, to get your opinion on it.

If a commissioner that is funded by the corporate body is potentially not fulfilling its remit as set out in its enabling legislation, and if Parliament is perhaps not doing its job effectively with regard to scrutiny, would that be a concern? Would you seek to suggest that the Parliament step up in some way?

I come to my final question. There are other bodies that are funded directly by the Scottish Government and their oversight, scrutiny and governance arrangements are, in some cases, quite different from those that apply to bodies that the corporate body would fund. I do not know how far you are aware of those arrangements. Do you think that anything could be learned from the way in which the Government carries out scrutiny of the other bodies that it funds?

Yes—that is what I was going to add. In addition to what Douglas Ross said, we could and should be doing post-legislative scrutiny better as a Parliament.

The other thing that I would add is about something that I was not particularly aware of. I have just started sitting on the SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee, which is an extra short-life committee, and, during our discussions, it has come out that members of the Scottish Parliament and its committees are responsible for monitoring the performance of the bodies that are supported and funded by the parliamentary corporate body. MSPs and committees are possibly not aware of that, and they are certainly not doing that as they should be.