Our committees do a really good job in scrutinising legislation. A couple of comments have been made about that. However, there are times when committees come down to party politics. People have joined the political parties for a reason, which is that they agree with colleagues. At those times, people vote along party lines, and that happens across all the parties.
If we look at the times when there have been divisions within parties, we see that the Green Party is the most united, as its members vote together probably 100 per cent of the time. The Lib Dems would be the second most united—in fact, I am not sure whether there have been any occasions on which Lib Dems have voted against each other. That would be difficult in committee, because they never have more than one member on a committee. Likewise, the Conservatives are very united in voting together. However, you will find that there have been only a small number of occasions when Labour and Scottish National Party members have voted against their colleagues on committee.
That is all down to party politics and it is what we expect, given the reasons why we have joined our parties. For most of the time, particularly when committees are considering legislation, members take their party political hats off and consider the legislation properly. In stage 1 reports from across the committees, we keep hearing people say that their committee is different, but all the committees are different, and they all take their role very seriously, particularly at stage 1. The Government reads those reports and acts on them.
There are a couple of good examples of that from this session, including stage 1 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Bill. The Health and Sport Committee has a majority of Government members on it but it has a Labour convener. There are six significant recommendations in its stage 1 report on that bill—I will not read them out—and, in various ways, the Government accepted them into the legislation, either by working with a member of the committee or by lodging Government amendments at stage 2 or 3.
Another, probably more significant, example was the Local Government and Regeneration Committee’s consideration of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill. I have a list of some 20 recommendations from the committee’s stage 1 report. The committee has an SNP convener but it does not have a Government majority. The Government listened to what the committee said, the committee having probed, questioned and done its job at stage 1. Again, the Government either worked with individual members or lodged amendments at stage 2 or 3 so as to take on the committee’s recommendations, which were based on the evidence that it took at stage 1.
Our committees do a fantastic job, and we should shout about that more often. The media are only interested where there is a party-political division. That gets reported. When the Government accepts the recommendations of committees, that does not get reported. Going right back to 1999, whatever Government there has been, our committees have done a very good job.