 I welcome members to the sixth meeting in 2005 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee and remind everyone to switch off mobile phones as they affect the broadcasting system. Item 1 is for the committee to agree to take agenda item 7 in private. This item is the consideration of a complaint. Do members agree to take this item in private? We agree. Item 2 is for the committee to decide whether to take the following items in private. Future consideration of the report of the commissioner and its own draft report on the complaint in private at a future meeting. In relation to its inquiry into the election of committee conveners, whether it is consideration of oral evidence heard, including at agenda item 6, issues for draft report and draft report should be taken in private at future meetings. Are we agreed? We are agreed. Thank you very much. The third item of business is for the committee to take evidence from Bruce Crawford MSP on the proposed cross-party group on tourism. Unfortunately, Bruce Crawford is unable to attend this morning due to illness, and the evidence session, which I think will be relatively brief, has been rescheduled for our meeting next week. We now come to agenda item 4, which is the first evidence session related to our inquiry into the election of committee conveners. In attendance today, we have Dr Hannah White, the Institute of Government programme director. We have Professor James Mitchell, co-director of the Academy of Government and Professor Charlie Jeffery, senior vice principal, both of whom are from the University of Edinburgh. May I welcome all our witnesses to him? Thank you for helping us there. We will go straight to questions if I may. My practice is that I will at the end give you the opportunity if you think there are gaps in our questioning and things that we should hear that are limited, roughly 100 words to inform us where we have not managed to do that for ourselves. Members have a series of questions, and the answers may inform further questions, so we will see where that takes us. Margaret Mitchell Thank you, convener, and good morning, panel. Would elected conveners enhance power sharing and accountability between members, the Parliament, the Scottish Government and the Scottish people? Well, I think the reason you've asked me here today to talk to you is because I've been doing a piece of research recently on the way that the elections of select committee chairs in Westminster has been working out for the last Parliament. What I can mostly talk to you about is what I've learnt from my research about the impact that that has had. What I would say is there is certainly a symbolic value in increasing the democratic nature of the way in which committee chairs in Westminster are appointed. There has been a definite impact on the way in which select committee chairs view themselves and the legitimacy and the credibility they feel they have having been elected by their peers. In the sense that there's then that direct line of accountability that the people elect the Parliament, and the Parliament is then responsible for electing the people who will conduct scrutiny within the legislature of the executive, I think you could argue that that would enhance the situation. Your question, I think, is whether some of the founding principles of the Parliament would be enhanced by this kind of change. I guess that's a question about whether those founding principles are being borne out in the way that we might have expected, given the sense of ambition and renewal that accompanied the foundation of the Parliament. I think it's a good time, a decade and a half, and a bit more in to be thinking about that. I think there is, I think it would probably be fair to say, a view among academics who look at the Parliament that the Parliament is not fully matching up to those founding principles. The work of the committees is one of the areas where it may indeed be falling short, and I think that's a good reason for thinking about this and perhaps other kinds of reform, to see if some of those founding ideas can be better realised than they have been. I think there are two ways in which that might be. I think that what the experience in the House of Commons has shown is that it may not be the best idea to allow the Government, in the form of the majority constellation in a Parliament, to pick some of the people who scrutinise it through party discipline and whipping measures. I think that that argument could be transferred quite easily to the Scottish Parliament context. There may be a point about the opposition as well, because there may be a sense that the opposition is not necessarily always using the structures of the Parliament as it might do to do its job of scrutinising Government. Perhaps elected conveners, some of whom would be provided by opposition parties, may be a way of enhancing that scrutiny function to the general benefit of Parliament and those that it represents in holding Government to account. If we go back to the constitutional convention and the debates leading up to the Parliament and the expectations, I think that there was no doubt that there was an expectation. I hope that there will be a greater sharing of power than has been realised. In part, some of the expectations were unrealistic to start with, idealistic, unrealistic to choose whichever term you wish, but I think that that was part of the problem. We have not realised those high ideals. If we were to try to move towards those ideals, we would be looking for some kind of reforms and it is conceivable that, amongst the reforms that could be considered, would be election of conveners. I would not want to suggest that that is a panacea that will solve everything. I think that there is a danger of assuming that, but it could contribute to that. I think that one of the things that I have been looking at the evidence on this from other countries is that the evidence basis is relatively weak. That is not to say that there is not a strong case for this. It is just that this has not been tried out very often. House of Commons is the obvious place to look for evidence for this Parliament to draw upon. We have heard that there is some evidence that it is symbolically important, but I think that anyone who imagines that such a change would dramatically change the balance of power would be mistaken. That is not to say that it is not a good idea, but we have to be realistic in a way that perhaps we were not in the early days of devolution. Professor Jeffrey, you touched on my second question, which is about enhancing the scrutiny. Perhaps Dr Hannah White and Professor Mitchell could give their view on that. I take on what you have said up till now. What we are talking about today is the election of conveners, but does that mean that you should elect the members of the committees as well? It opens a can of worms. If you could perhaps just widen your answer on that. That is an obvious next question, and Westminster did choose to open that can all in one go. In some ways, it is difficult to disaggregate the impact of electing chairs from electing the whole committee, which is what happened at the start of the Parliament. I think that you could probably say that approximately a fifth to a quarter of the chairs who are now chairs in Westminster would not have been chairs under the old system. That is particularly visible in the two by-elections that we have had since the start of the Parliament. We have had a by-election for the health committee and for the defence committee. Both the candidates who ended up being elected to those committees are candidates who would never have been chairs under the old system. They were first-term members, and they were regarded in some respects as a little bit maverick in their parties. They were not the obvious candidate. They were not the result that the whips expected. They both—this is a sample of two, so it is not really scientific, but it is interesting—were both brought and may have been elected by their peers partly because they brought some previous experience of the subject matter of the committee that they were going on to. They had clear ideas about the policy questions that they wanted to look at in their manifestos when they spoke about that. I think that you can say—and also looking more broadly at the chairs who were elected at the start of the Parliament—that some slightly different people have been elected chairs, and that has had an impact on scrutiny because some of the people who have been elected chairs—and I am thinking again here of Andrew Tyree, who was elected chair of the Treasury Committee slightly unexpectedly at the start of the Parliament—have been people who have pushed the boundaries of the powers and practices of committees a little further than had been the case in the past. The fact that those chairs have felt that they have had the legitimacy of having been elected by their peers—this is what they have told me—has meant that they have felt that they have got that mandate to try a few different things. In Andrew Tyree's case, we had the example of the parliamentary commission on banking standards in which he deliberately tried to be innovative and tried some new things in terms of scrutiny. I think that we can definitely see that there has been that impact from the introduction of the election of chairs on scrutiny. Again, the evidence on this is not strong. That is, again, not to say that it is possible, but, if we work on the assumption that an elected chair has a source of authority and legitimacy that would otherwise be absent, then it is conceivable that that would bring a leadership, a different type of leadership, to a committee and a more independent leadership. That is not to say that this is certainly not criticizing the current or any other committee convener, but, in as much as the authority that may lie behind it gives him or her an independence, that could be a useful source, whether it is for scrutiny or any other business. Again, I want to stress that there are some if spots and maybes in that. The evidence, again, is not strong. We have to draw on the experience of the House of Commons, and it is still early days. However, if you like the theory behind doing this, it makes sense that the authority and legitimacy that is based on election we should expect would lead to a different type of approach or might lead to a different type of approach. Again, I do not want to overstate my case. Of course, just after that, it remains to be seen what the activities and chairs in this Parliament do to their chances of being re-elected chairs in the next Parliament. The evidence base. I agree with James that the evidence base is slight. There are many examples to draw on, and it was striking in the SPICE document that accompanied this inquiry that what is happening in the House of Commons appears to be pretty much unique. However, I do think that that reflects the particular style of operation of the House of Commons, which is highly adversarial with very strong party discipline and the notion of the sovereign Parliament playing into that as well. That perhaps suggests a context in which you need to do something to balance the Parliament against the Executive a little bit more. We should also, in that context, though note that this Parliament is a Parliament which is, in many respects, within the Westminster tradition, despite the attempt in the framing of what the Parliament should be and how it should work. In practice, it has replicated many of the features of the Westminster system with a strong adversarial element and a pretty strong party discipline as well. Those shared features with the Westminster Parliament may make what is happening in the Westminster Parliament a good example to look at, even if there are not many other examples. Let me bring some others in on the subject first today. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning to the panel. It was just to follow on that general point, and it was a comment that Professor Mitchell made in terms of the reforms that there are maybe other things that you were hinting at that need to be done. That this on its own might achieve something, but is it your view that to make it really effective and to get the sort of scrutiny that you might think is appropriate that this would need to be done in conjunction with other matters such as, for instance, I am thinking one of the big problems that we have in this Parliament. We have a limited number of MSPs. A big chunk of them are in government, or their main opposition, spokespersons, so they are taken out of the equation. We have way under 100 MSPs to service all our committees, all our cross-party groups and everything else. Time to scrutinise is very important. We have a system of debates where we have six-minute and four-minute debates, which means that sometimes our party at the moment needs to get nine speakers in a debate in an afternoon, which ties up nine people for that single debate. Do you feel that it needs to be looked at in a broader sense if it is really going to be effective, or do you actually think that this point on its own would be sufficient to initiate further change down the line? I do not think that this alone would be sufficient. That is the easy part. It is much more difficult to outline what needs to be done. I think that, from what you were saying, when one could draw the conclusion, and it is a conclusion that I have already drawn, that the size of the Parliament is an impediment in that respect. However, I do not see any appetite for increasing the size of the Parliament at this juncture in time. I think that there are issues around the size, the number of committees, and perhaps the resourcing of committees needs to be looked at. Again, we have to take into account the current environment and the resources are scarce. I suppose that one could conclude that this is as good as it gets in the current climate. However, I do think that it would be well worth looking at reform in the overall. It is worth considering the relationship between the chamber and committees, the number of committees and the subjects that are looked at. I think that all of those things. However, I am not going to try and give a prescription, because, frankly, I think that it would require a lot more work. However, I do think that anyone who thinks that the election of conveners is going to dramatically change things, I think that that is unlikely to put it mildly. Can I just follow up briefly? Maybe the other panelist might want to comment as well. In that case, would we be better advised to look more broadly, take more time and look at a bigger package of changes over a longer period? Maybe it might even need to run into the next Parliament, rather than go ahead on one that is a relatively small piecemeal change, or do you think that we should drive ahead with this one anyway, or is it better done in the round in a broader sense? Those are not either or, so I think that you could do both. I think that you could go ahead with this but then take this further and look at this in the round. That would be my suggestion. If you go ahead with this now, it might be reasonable to suppose that those who then stood to be conveners of committees would be those members' self-selecting who had more of an interest in the committee system and how to make it work to best effect. The role of the committee of conveners might be enhanced in looking at all the other options for improving things. It might be a useless interim step. Can I add a comment? I'm not sure it would be a small and piecemeal change. I think it would be a significant change to the culture of operation of the Parliament. Having said that, I have quite a lot of sympathy for the wider point you make. I have even more sympathy for that when you project forward, because in some way or other, as yet to be entirely determined, this Parliament is going to have more to do. It's going to have matters of particular complexity around fiscal policy and welfare policy to add to its list of tasks. I think that puts the capacity point that you made into perspective and suggests the need beyond thinking about conveners, which could be done separately, but beyond that of thinking in a much more systematic way about how this Parliament remains fit for purpose as it moves forward. You've got some points on this, and if you would move into what you were going to ask. Dr White said that the conveners were elected by first-term members. Do you see that as a disadvantage or an advantage? I was merely noting that it was a change, something that the new system facilitated. I would tend to think that any member elected to a Parliament should have an equal chance of standing for any of the jobs in Parliament, and it shouldn't necessarily be a question that the longer your experience—which was certainly used to be the case in Westminster—that the people who were parachuted in or chosen by the whips tended to be members of longer experience, I think that members with outside experience can bring useful things to the committee system, so I think that it's a good thing that any member of the Parliament could potentially stand and be elected as a chairman. Can I put an observation on that? On the other side of the evidence from the states, we are in the past, not currently. Committee conveners were essentially chairs, were appointed, so depending on how long they have been elected, it proved to be not a good policy and that was changed. The opposite, in other words, appointment in terms of how long you have been a member, was not a very good system that operated for decades in the United States and Congress, so that changed dramatically and improved the system. I think that there's a little bit of saying, have you five years experience, or one years, five times? I think that that probably kind of covers it. It's probably the nature of people's experience, rather than the duration that we should be thinking about. Also, thank you very much. Do you think that there are differences in the Scottish Parliament that elected conveners wouldn't have the same effect in the House of Commons as they have here, or here as they have in the House of Commons? Because we're a smaller Parliament, that's what I was really trying to get at as well. Yes, you're a smaller Parliament. I must defer to my learning colleagues who have much better understanding and knowledge of the Scottish Parliament than I do, but I think that there is a smaller pool, obviously, of members to choose from. It is a younger Parliament, so whereas in Westminster there is probably a greater variety of members who have been perhaps exhausted their possibilities for ministerial office, or expectations of ministerial office, or senior backbenchers with experience who might be available and wish to stand as chairs, alongside, as I've said, the first-term members who might want to come in, that is necessarily less the case for the Scottish Parliament because it hasn't been in existence for as long. Obviously, there are differences, but I don't think that the differences preclude the change being a beneficial one. Sorry, because I read in the briefing paper that some people were very happy to be elected conveners as far as they really wanted to go. It was a sum of their achievement. I think that was certainly the intention behind the reforms that Tony Wright proposed, was that people could see being a member and chair of a committee as a career path in itself, and as a backbench career. Of course, that is assisted in the Westminster context by the fact that committee chairs are paid. From the interviews that I have carried out for my research, I would say that, although being a committee chair is seen as a prestigious thing to do and as a thing that gives you, many people would argue, more power and influence than, well, certainly influence not power, more influence than lots of junior ministerial jobs, which you might have. Certainly, that is a point that Chris Mullin made in his diaries, that he would rather be chair of the Home Affairs Committee than a minor minister. Even though that is the case, it still seems to be that most members would still give up a committee chair for the lure of the front bench. I really did not have anyone argue to me that except, you could perhaps look at the example of Tony Wright, who was a politics professor, and then came into Parliament and had a lot of ideas about things that he would like to see done and had the opportunity of going on the Public Administration Select Committee to explore those ideas. There are very few members who still see it as a preferable route to the potential of ministerial office. Is there any chance that those folks would ever get into Government in the first place? That is why they would likely choose to be a chair. Do you think that many members who are elected think that there is no chance that they are going to get into Government? I am just trying to put myself in their frame of mind, that they thought that there was no chance because they were a little bit balshy. They may think that I am an independent person in mind, so the Government and the Whips will not put me in. I am not an element of that. It is a good job to get into being a convener. That sort of system would make that much more of a possibility. I am not sure if you were thinking of that as a recommendation or not, but it does suggest to me that if one can find a place for the talented expert in a particular field who feels less comfortable than others with the strictures of party discipline, then this route is a good one. It may well be a good one for this Parliament as it matures, as it gets older, whereby there will be a stock of people, perhaps bigger than now. The convener is one of them who have been a Minister and are unlikely to figure in a future Government because Government and parties like to renew themselves. I was not talking about specific people. This may well be an alternative way of using that accumulated expertise. I think we see that in some of the committee chairs in Westminster or some who were just a little bit too spiky for the party, but very, very talented Andrew Tyre is one who has found a platform that is of general benefit for their particular set of skills. You have just handed the convener to the black spot. Maybe we are just making the observation and you will need to read my biography in due course to get the full story. When I was invited to go home to Bute House in 2000, it never occurred to me that he was being invited along to discuss being a minister because I had never the faintest thought in my mind on the subject, but there were. That is for another day. George, do you want to pick up the baton? Yes, each session of this Parliament has created a different political situation. Every session has, and the voting system by its very design has probably created that. How would the system work with many different political situations that it will find itself in? If you have a process of election of chairs to a certain set of committees where there is an allocation key that determines how many committees a party will provide the convener for, then that system will work with different complexities of parliamentary make-up. It may mean that you have a smaller or greater number of parties providing committee conveners. I do not think that the— Very mindful that we have had minority government, majority government and before that we had the rainbow Parliament as well. Yes, but I think that the point is in part to disconnect the process of establishing committee conveners from the form of—from the government, whichever form it takes, and I think that applies in whichever constellation of parties and minority or majority relationships that exist in Parliament. I do not see that that would necessarily complicate the operation of an election system. I wonder if what George may be seeking to get to is that, for example, on this committee, we have a party who has a single representative here, and if it happened to be that party that is allocated the convenership, if we are to elect among the Conservative members of this committee, we do not actually have a choice. Can one vote for who is going to be convener without opening up the issue of how you decide who is on a committee? I suspect that he is part of it, because if there is only one candidate who is already a member of the committee, it is not an election. It is a mechanical question in other words, rather than a political question. Westminster at the moment is that the chairs to committees are elected first, and they are elected. The Dahont system is used to decide how many committees will be chaired by which party, and then the party whips between them decide which party will get which committee, and then only members of that party are eligible to stand for election to that committee, but that is all sorted out before then members stand for election as members of the committee. There is the potential for a larger number of candidates from a minority party if there was a Conservative chair allocated to this committee. For example, it would not only be one member who was eligible, because there would be other people potentially able to stand. I am sorry if I am running off on the wrong track. I do not think that it matters what the composition of the Government is. This is about the Parliament, and even if, for example, midterm, the Government was to change from say a coalition to minority, that should not affect the decisions on convenerships or committees. I think that the Parliament ought to be a Parliament in and of itself, and I think that if it was to radically change its ways simply because of the executive, then that would necessarily be a very healthy situation to be in. I do not think that the executive should be calling the shots—it is the Parliament ought to be calling the shots. One would imagine that the committee conveners would be based on party support, the level of party support and the number of conveners, and chosen as Hannah's outline. I am not convinced that the nature of the Government, whether it is minority or coalition or majority, would or should affect things. I may have misunderstood you, so apologies. The Parliament is made up of the membership of the Parliament, so regardless, just take out the fact that I mentioned the Government, then take that out of the scenario. You have still got the political parties, and you still have them the way they are standing, so how would it work with the various different combinations of the make-up of members that we have had over the past since 1999? I think that there would be an issue at the margins, such as the smaller parties. That would have to be addressed. In the case of this Parliament and certainly certain periods when you have had a large number of smaller units, there would always be an issue as to how many, if any, should be allocated to the smaller parties. That would need to be sorted out, for sure. I take that point, and I think that that is an interesting point. I do not think that it is insurmountable, but I think that you would need to consider that. For example, you had a large number of members who were independents or two or three small groups of two or three MSPs, for example. That would be an interesting scenario. One would imagine that we would have to have rules in advance for such a scenario, but I take that point. There is a problem that has led in the Westminster context where the system has retained some flexibility in order to accommodate smaller parties, which has led to some committees being expanded in size in order to give seats to small parties, which some people feel has made some committees unwieldy. That plays back into the issue that was raised earlier about the capacity of the Parliament as a whole and the number of members available to sit on all of those committees. Just as we follow on, in the last Parliament, with the minority government, the Duhont system allocated up the seats. However, the SNP minority government, in order to secure general support from the Green Party, actually allocated a committee convenership to Patrick Harvey of the Greens. Politics came into it at that point. Do you think that it would be easy to write rules that would still allow politics to come into the equation when necessary? I have to accommodate politics. I mean, it would keep in whether you like it or not. I don't think that it's a bad thing necessarily, but I do think that there would have to be some element there. You could be overly prescriptive, for sure. I think that at the start of each Parliament, you would have to consider these matters. Again, I don't think that these are insurmountable. However, what we don't want to have, in a sense, is a situation in which Government—and it is not really just Government—front benches control things. The essence of this idea is to give more power to the back benches, rather than the front benches. That's essentially what we're about. In a few weeks, we may well see an illustration of some of these issues, because the composition of the House of Commons is likely to be a little bit more diverse and complex than it has been. You may get an example in action to observe in the not-too-distant future. I've made it, but I've got others who want to come in on the back. The other former minister in the committee, Patricia. I'm quite intrigued by this issue about how we would react to different scenarios within the Parliament. I understand the point that's being made, but if I could just say the situation that we have at the moment, for example, where there are five Liberal Democrats, now, if we were to have elected conveners, that party would then—and if we're saying that elected conveners are important and that there should be opportunities for all to avail themselves of that opportunity to exert some influence, if not power—it would then be very hard for a party of that kind of size. That's not unique here to both service, if you like, the issues that it wanted to cover as a front bench and also to have members who were elected conveners, because I get the impression—I don't know, Dr White will know better than I—that the elected conveners at Westminster seem to have an enhanced role, at least in the extent that they're more in the public eye and they're therefore more likely to be giving interviews or to be the focus of press attention. It strikes me that that would take up more of an elected convener's time than perhaps is the case in most committees at the moment. I just think that there is a dynamic there that might be quite difficult for us in a Parliament of this size to accommodate, just simply because of the numbers. I have to qualify perhaps what I've said in that I think what the election of chairs in Westminster has done has been to deliver some slightly different results. There were certainly chairs who, when appointed, already had a high media profile and sought to develop that. That's been very much a question of the style of the committee chair rather than a function of the way in which they've been elected. I think that the mandate of having been elected has allowed those who have wished to exploit the media platform, which gives them to a greater extent. For example, Keith Fass, the chair of the Home Affairs Committee, became an appointed chair and became an elected chair. He certainly was already a high profile media figure before he became elected. I'm not sure that makes the difference, but that's not quite the point that you're making, is the point about the capacity of members. If I may just say that, clearly, I think that Parliament would have an issue with someone trying to be both a front bench spokesperson and a committee convener, because that would clearly defeat the purpose of having elected conveners. We would have that difficulty because almost since day one we have had collections of MSPs not necessarily affiliated to a particular party, but certainly coming together for the purposes of the bureau's numbers who have coalesced into groupings. I just think that we would have to think again about that entire system. We're just slightly over halfway through this session just for timing purposes, so Chris Bonson, please. Professor Jeffrey. That's partly a question about the allocation key for the distribution of committee convenerships to parties. I'm thinking about the other aspect of your question, whether that would get in the way of front bench duties. Perhaps this for a small party, the Lib Dems now, or in earlier parliaments, the Greens, with five or six in the second one, SSP as well, having the platform of a committee convenership might well be seen as far more attractive for the party as well as the individual than being a front bench spokesperson on a range of policy fields. It might be a different way of carrying through the parliamentary role that could be especially valuable for small parties, giving them profile that they might not otherwise actually have. Let me bring Gill in before I move on to Dave. A substantive point I wanted to make has passed and been covered, so I would like to just engage in that and not take another question. We'll come to you later. No, I wouldn't mind taking it just now. It's far on what George had said, because here we are in this very short history of a parliament that we've had almost everything but revolution delivered to us. I mean, we really have. I don't think there can't be any other parliament that's had in such a short time had all this experience, but it's always been based on a principle of proportionality. So, how would proportionality go out the window or if it doesn't, effectively, the parties would still need to present the candidates, I would assume, because it would be based on the proportion of the parliament? I think that if you follow what I mean, Hannah knows more about how the system works in Westminster. So, the proportionality system has remained the same in Westminster, so the allocation between parties, according to the balance of those parties in the house, has stayed the same. So, that is not a difference. Except for this, that if what you were saying earlier on, the influence of the whips, the fact that the Scotland Act dictates everything is governed by a proportionate system, so, therefore, at the present time, SNP have got the majority, so they get the majority of people who are likely to be on any list for members to be a convener. Would that not be right? There is certainly a question over whether, if party discipline within a parliament is very strong, then if a chair, for example, was allocated to the SNP and a number of SNP candidates wished to stand for that chair, the whip would still make it perfectly clear to the rest of the members who the preferred candidate was, and that candidate might still be elected. So, there is a question over whether you could, in a parliament where party discipline is strong, the introduction of elections might not initially have a very great impact. One of the important aspects of the system in Westminster here is that it is a secret ballot, and that, therefore, if members feel strongly about who they wish to be chair of a committee and are not, don't wish to follow the recommendation of their whip, which I feel sure may still be there in certain circumstances, then they don't wish to do so. I think that you can probably see the fact that the whips influence has reduced in Westminster over who gets to be chair of a committee, by the fact that there are rumours that the whips would like to return to a system where committee chairs were elected from only within an electorate of their own party rather than across the whole house. So, there is obviously a sense in which the grip of the whips has been loosened and, therefore, it is more parliament-expressing of you on who should be chair of a committee rather than party whips. Is that evidence, therefore, in your view that the reforms are working? It depends what you mean by working. Finding it's working. That's what I was creating the opportunity for you to say, rather than saying it myself. You go on. What you are proposing is no far-to-influence at all in the allocation, none at all. The allocation is done in the same way as now. The number of chairs for each party is done by a formula, as Charlie has been saying. What happens in Westminster is that the parties decide who gets which committee, but within the ballot for who becomes the actual chair from within that party, that should be a secret ballot and that should be up to the whole Parliament to decide from amongst the candidates who becomes chair. Thank you for that clarification. In Westminster ministers, they are not part of the—you know, they can't vote. There is a convention that ministers and PPSs of the department for the committee which is being in question, so the Department of Health Ministers wouldn't vote in the election for the chair of the health committee, but otherwise everyone votes. I'm just thinking about the situation that we have at the moment, where there's a huge majority. It's not a huge majority. It feels like a huge majority. It's a huge plurality. I thought that ministers were excluded, so it's only the ministers of the committees that are up for ballot. It would mean that ministers could vote for this committee, because it's not a party committee in that sense. When you say that a convener of a minor party is selected, does that mean that somebody else from that party, like the Conservatives—if I were, by chance, convener here—could somebody else from the Conservatives stand, or would it only be one person because of the Duhant system? So the Duhant system would say that there are—10 conveners will be from the SNP, and the wits would decide that the chair of this committee was going to be a Conservative chair, and then it would be up to all the Conservative members to decide if they wanted to stand for this committee. Most of the points that I was going to raise have now been raised back. I'd like to just tease this out a little bit further, because it's very interesting, I think. Going back to comments about independent-minded MSPs who might feel they're never going to be ministers who would enjoy chairing a committee, and the issue of the whips—parties-preferred candidates and so on—I found it very interesting that Bruce Crawford made a short submission to us. In that, Bruce was a previous business manager in charge of the whips—he was, in essence, a chief whip, I suppose. He made the point that parties will play games, I think was the term he used, in relation to those matters. Therefore, with his experience, he came out in principle in favour of independently elected whips. I thought that was quite revealing coming from Bruce, because there's no doubt that power generally likes to retain power. Therefore, the system really has to allow counter-power, if you like, if it's going to be really effective, because it's just in the nature of things that any Government is going to try to keep things as tight as it can. The secret ballot, I think, would be very important, because if you had this without a secret ballot, then the power of the whips would be retained. I'm seeing you all— David, this is acquiring the nature of a statement. Perhaps you might come to a question. It's probably had to, given what was said before, in terms of the different points, but I just wanted to make that point in particular that Bruce Crawford has come out in favour of this in principle. I saw the panel nodding their heads there that, if this is going to happen, it would need to be done on the basis of a secret ballot. I suppose that one of the questions that comes out of the secret ballot, which a number of members have informally expressed to me, is when is the right time to have it? If you have it, I think that the House of Commons is 80 members retiring or thereabouts this time, so it would be a fair intake. Last time for us, I think that the intake proportionally was even greater. Would the electorate know those for whom they might be voting as conveners, their strengths, their weaknesses, their capabilities? It's one of the questions. If it's done as it has to be relatively early, what are the snags associated with that? Professor Geoffrey, you are dying to come in. Thank you very much. I think that you have to do it at the start of the Parliament. There's no other real logic, I think. I don't imagine that new members are unable to inform themselves, and I'm sure that the whips would try to do some of the informing for them. But I think the point of having a slate of candidates who want to get elected to the post is that they will also be doing some informing, and through whichever kinds of statements or whichever conversations in the bar downstairs or however it happens, would be seeking support for their election, and that would be a communication mechanism for the skills they think they have for the role. That would presumably imply that we have a secret ballot for our Deputy Presiding Officers, but in fact the nominations are known one hour before the vote, if I recall correctly. Nobody is disagreeing with me, so I must be right. I take it therefore that we would need to know who was up for election sufficiently far in advance of the election to allow the process of individual members examining, interrogating and sidling up in the bar and so on. There will be some changes in that area. Will I bring Jim Mitchell in? I would like to think that all elected members are capable of doing the work and doing research and finding out about the colleagues before they make a choice. I would like to think that they would do that on every vote that they participate in. I would also suggest that a new member has not appeared from outer space. That new member has probably been active in politics and will know not only his or her colleagues in the party but will know many others, their strengths and weaknesses. It is also worth noting that, when it comes to conveners, the World Bank research outlined the kind of key characteristics that they felt were important in any convener. Those are certainly characteristics that can develop during a parliamentary career, but equally will have developed in many aspects of life before entering into Parliament or into politics. I suspect that many conveners and many members have enormous skills well before entering the door of this institution. I have a higher opinion of members of this Parliament than the question. We shall treasure your interest from here on. David, anything more? No, that is fine. Patricia, do you have any further points? I would like to talk a little bit about the process that might develop. We have heard that ministers have a sort of self-denying ordinance that they do not become involved in the vote for the committee that scrutinises them. However, I wonder whether, in a Parliament of this size, it would be more sensible to have a rule rather than a self-regarding mechanism that said that ministers do not take part in the election of committee conveners. I am conscious that ministers can find themselves appearing before a number of committees. I was, for a time, Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport and international development and a few other things that were thrown in over the piece. I could find myself at any one of perhaps four committees, so would it not just be easier to say that ministers did not take part in the election of conveners? I think that is a very fair point about an important difference between the relationship of Parliament and government here, as compared to Westminster, where the select committees are designed directly to mirror departments here. We have moved away from the idea of a department, so that simply does not work as well. What you say may have quite some merit. We have heard that there should be a secret ballot. I have to say that my experience of secret ballots does not bear out the view that whips would not be involved in that. I say that as someone who was also Minister for Parliament for some time and who did not try to influence secret ballots, but that seems to have changed. I wonder whether you think that the nominations should come from the individual's party or whether they should come from anyone. I was struck by the fact that it seemed to me that the system at Westminster, at least to read about, sounds quite complicated. In practice, those things tend to be what you know and what you understand anyway, but I would have thought that we would have wanted to make the system very simple, to understand and open and transparent. I wondered if you would have given any thought as to how that should be done. Should it be in its own party or should it be a certain amount of cross-party support that would have to be achieved before you could stand, for example? The system in Westminster, on this point, is not very complicated. It is that you should be able to show that either 15 members of your own party or 10 per cent, whichever is the lower, support you. You can also show that up to five other members of other parties support you, and that goes down on your nomination papers, so other members can take that into account. That is something that would have to be tailored to the circumstances here. It is useful to show that you have a minimum level of support from your own party, and it is also interesting for members to see what other support you might have. That would be a lovely example in the spice paper about the defence committee chair election, and there are two, four, six, eight, eight Conservatives who nominated themselves. I am pretty sure that one of those, or two of them perhaps, were encouraged to do so by their whips, but I do not think that the winner was. Interestingly, the winner was the only member who was not already a member of the committee, I believe. That is interesting. The whips was tried to intervene and was willing to intervene, and that is understandable. It is even acceptable, but that minimises the influence. It will not overcome the problem, so I think that you are absolutely right that you will still have that influence. I also think that the breadth of support is important in terms of the nominations, so it would be best if it was the case that a member is nominated by more than her own party. I think that that would again encourage that kind of independence and the likelihood of a convener seeking consensus across parties. I do think that that is very important. It is, of course, the possibility that support from one's own party might actually be the killer. Indeed. In terms of how other people perceive you and think of you, I wonder then whether you think that it should be just a simple majority vote for each of those positions, or should it be done on a proportional basis as the Parliament is proportional? I am just interested to know your views if you have thought to that far forward. There is not an alternative vote system and then a simple majority, so that is just designed to avoid having a series of ballots that you can do in one go. It is just a simple majority vote. In as much as you are electing one person, it could not really be proportional in the normal sense of that, but if you were to have it out of one, you could just go for a simple plurality, first-master-post, or alternative. You have to have 50 per cent plus one. I think that that is an interesting point. I would be inclined to the alternative vote, but I do not think that that would be a killer if it was not to go that way. I always remember the 1945 election to Westminster. For the university seats, the third member elected by the Scottish universities got 4.16 per cent of the poll, which was less than a third of 12.5, and he lost his deposit but still got elected. It also happened in one of the English university seats, so it was not a uniquely Scottish thing. You get quirky results when you go for different systems, and it perhaps was no surprise that the university seats were abolished before them. George? You have already touched on this when Dave was asking some questions. No, I am not going to go, Dave. Basically, is there not a case that there would have to be other changes in the Parliament as well? Would we not have to look at, as Dave already said, the larger aspects? There has already been some questions brought up with the discussion that we have had here today, so would it not be a case that, for this to work properly, we would have to broaden out the spectrum totally and look at other changes within the Parliament? It is my view that any Parliament should constantly be thinking about its own effectiveness and what impact the way it is structured and its systems are having on the outcomes that it thinks are desirable. I get that, but what I am saying is that the fact is that it is not just an elastoplast, elected conveners. If there is an issue, it should not be looking at it as a larger scale. If the fact of introducing the reform meant that the issue of looking at what else might be done would then be closed, then, yes, that would not be desirable. If that was seen, on the other hand, as a first step, because the Parliament thought that it was important to think about all the range of things that might be done, then that looks like a positive step forward. Parliament should have an elastoplast, but it could conceivably be a catalyst. It could contribute to a next stage. I do not think that it would undermine any next stage in any overall view. I would be very much in favour of a review. The Parliament has been pretty good at looking at itself periodically, but I think that a major review and asking itself where we go forward, particularly in points that Charlie was making earlier, with the increasing parts, would be good, but I think that the elected conveners would be a catalyst. It would be a good base in which to then look at the broader questions. I do not think that I will ask the possibly be how I would view it. I think that there are different issues that face the Parliament, different challenges. One of them is whether there is the right balance here between Parliament and the Executive. I think that the committee convener issue is addressed at that. There are other questions, as are perhaps even more important, about the capacity of the Parliament through its current structures to deal with the issues that face it. I think that the prospect of additional powers really puts that question into sharp focus, but it is a different question. I think that the question about executive-parliament relationship will persist through those different capacity challenges. I think that you can separate out different questions and not necessarily see elected conveners as a sticking plaster, but as one aspect of change that might be needed. Thank you for being the only one not to mention the branded name there, actually. I just forgot myself. The capacity issue that I take on, but my problem is that, apart from the odd wildcard, it is more or less not created that much of a difference. Here, I do not think that it would make that much of a difference in the make-up of convenerships in the odd wildcard. Is it like a sticking plaster? Would we not have to look at something even more detailed and more in-depth to make the difference that you are all advocating? I am inclined to agree with the point that Professor Mitchell was making about this potentially being a catalyst. I think that what we have seen in Westminster, certainly, if you spoke to some of the House authorities, one of the impacts of electing chairs has been a greater demand for resources and for support for committees from those elected chairs because they are trying to do more and to do things differently. That might be seen as a disadvantage for some, and there are certainly risks involved in it in that you potentially create a system where the committee who shouts loudest and wants to do most starts to attract more of the resource and you have to find ways of managing that. From the point of view of how I would imagine most elected members feel about the role of Parliament, it has to be a good thing if members are pushing towards doing more and trying different things. That is not just the one that you might think of as a wildcard. It is some members who might have been elected chairs appointed chairs under the old system but feel that they have a greater legitimacy to do more and do differently under the system. Perhaps what you are getting at is that the first time it happens, the result might not look very different to how it might have looked if it had been done just as the system is now, but at least it creates the conditions in which a different result is possible. Under the old system, a different result is never possible. Margaret Mitchell I will ask what the procedure should be to remove an elected convener. I cannot answer. I did dig into some of the standing orders of the House of Commons earlier. I did not get into that one. I am sure that there is an example there of how that circumstance is handled. I guess that it would probably need to have two dimensions. One is an expression of loss of confidence in the committee, but since the convener would have been elected by the Parliament as a whole, I think that then there would be a second stage in which the consent of Parliament as a whole was needed to endorse a motion to remove. I suspect that that is something that the standing orders say, but I do not know. I think that we would have to involve. The electorate that elected the convener would presumably have to be involved in the de-selection or sacking how we want to put it off that convener. I would imagine that it would be democratically acceptable otherwise. I come back to my colleague George's point. If I could just explore that a little bit more, it strikes me that, in terms of committee conveners pushing to do things differently or to do more, that, at the moment, because of the numbers that we have and the time available to us, we cannot even do the things that we have the power to do now, like, for example, pass our own legislation as committees. That has only happened once in the lifetime of the Parliament—certainly once that I can think of. I am not sure how much spare capacity there actually is without there being other more fundamental changes. If we consider that the role of the committee is to scrutinise Government and to hold Government to account, as is the job of Parliament, is the election of the convener really going to make a big difference in that very important element of the work that we do? Or are there other things that we should be doing that would give effect to that in a better way, which takes me back to George's point? Are we looking at the right thing at the moment, or should we be looking at something else, like, for example, the make-up of the committee or how the committee is formed, rather than jumping straight into the election of conveners? It seems to me to be disconnected from all the other things that we might want to do. I think that there is a danger that elected conveners will be seen or expected to be the answer to all of the weaknesses. That is not going to happen. We have to be clear about this. Elected conveners are about achieving certain functions, certain improvements, but they cannot do everything. That is why we have to be very careful not to overstate the case for elected conveners. I think that there is a very powerful case. The more I have listened to the discussion, the more powerful it has become for an overview of the Parliament. I think that you make a really important point about the expectations that the committees will be producing in legislation. That was there at the outset. It just has not happened. I think that there is a capacity issue. I think that we need to go back and revisit that. It may be that the conclusion is that it is not possible, but I think that we should be honest about those things and revisit those matters. We have developed and we have had 15-odd years of experience of that structure. I think that it would be a good idea. I guess that where we possibly have a slight disagreement is that I think that elected conveners would facilitate that process of further deliberation and potential reform. I think that, if I am detecting correctly, you are sceptical of it at the very least. However, I think that there is a very powerful case for revisiting in the hall, and I think that, particularly, as Charlie was saying earlier, of powers that are coming. Can I make one point about scrutiny? I think that there is a really fundamental point that is connected to the capacity and the resourcing issue, but also distinguishes itself. That is whether scrutiny is best delivered in a system in which the party or parties which form the government determine who a good proportion of the committee conveners are, because that is a patronage system and it may not allow the sense of independence that you might wish to have in certain circumstances. The same applies for opposition whips choosing conveners from the other parties, because oppositions have particular priorities in opposing governments that may not necessarily be the priorities that a committee should be following in the work that it does. Detaching the process from the party whips is, in and of itself, a really good thing to do for those reasons. We have talked about this issue and it has been done on its own. We have talked about a wider review, but I wonder whether you could help the committee here if, when you go away, you could put your heads together and think that there might be, if we were to move forward in this, just a handful of issues that might need to be linked into it, rather than a full review of what we do, but a number of issues that might assist. A sort of thing that springs to mind, again getting back to the capacity issue, could we, for instance, increase the time available to MSPs by not having such big committees? We have seven here, but we are right up to what is the biggest one, 11 or 11. We could maybe take that back to eight. The haunt, of course, comes into this, but that would release the time of some MSPs, so I wonder if you would like to comment on that and whether you would be willing to look at some of those issues that would just assist with the capacity difficulties we have. Yes, and I will add another one as well. That sounds a sensible approach that you set out, but I suspect that the clarking and the spice support side of things may well have to be reconsidered if we were in a situation where we were, in a sense, lifting conveners into a different status. They might require different levels of support from parliamentary officials. Certainly questions which are still being explored at Westminster, and the liaison committee there published a report just earlier this week in which they were talking about this very question about whether committees were too big. There was too much not enough time amongst members to sit on all the committees that there are, and they were talking about the potential of moving to a system where, rather than having an exact party balance reflected on every committee, you would ensure that the party balance was reflected across the committee system as a whole, or at least a certain set of committees, but parties would be able to make their own decisions about which committees it was really crucial to have more or fewer members on. So those are certainly questions that could be looked at. On the process, I think that it would be good to look at how the ship is done. I wouldn't hand it over to academics to come back to you, frankly. I think that there's an opportunity for some kind of dialogue deliberation, and we could certainly help facilitate that, and to draw on, I think, experience self-swear. Perhaps the starting point would be the founding principles, and to consider it. I would be nervous about identifying things that we were particularly interested in. I think that it's got to draw on your experience and what you think is important and where things are fitting in. Perhaps that could be done in a safe place, as it were. It's like an academy of government, obviously, because it brings to mind. But I think that we would certainly be very happy to help facilitate that. That's very helpful. I've got two further bids, which I think probably is going to take us to the end. Cameron, and then George. Thank you very much. You mentioned that you said that committee conveners are lifting into a different status. What's your opinion about remunerating them accordingly? I think I said that. I didn't mean money, although that's part of it. No, I realise that, but it was part of it, isn't it? I think the idea that we should give MSPs who become elected committee conveners another 15,000 a year, which I think is the case in the House of Commons, might not find public favour too easily. The status that I meant was the legitimacy of being elected by the Parliament as a whole and not selected by WIPs, which I think gives a stronger sense of legitimacy to the Parliament as a whole. I'm on record seeing that I think remuneration should be considered, but I suspect that my view on that is very much my minority view. I think that in the current climate it would be unacceptable, but the reason I think it's worth considering is because of the symbolism. It's the symbolism. It's not the actual money itself. It's a statement that we take these posts seriously, but I acknowledge that there are incredibly powerful arguments against that. I think that in the current climate it would be clearly unacceptable, but I have to admit that I am on public record. Annick Dately and Westminster, it's the case that people have said that what election has done has been to narrow the gap between Opposition chairs and Government chairs, where Opposition chairs used to be relatively weaker and had to always find support within their committee and so on to get what they thought was the right programme through and reports through and so on. Now the fact that Opposition chairs are elected has strengthened them and brought them a bit closer to the position that Government chairs were in before. Professor Mitchell successfully anticipated George's question and answered it, so we'll move to my thanking you for coming, but I had given you that opportunity at the outset to, in 100 words or less, contribute anything that we haven't covered that we might usefully be informed by. Does anyone wish to add to the remarks that have been made thus far? I think that we've made the offer to help facilitate any further discussion. Yes. I think that the committee is in broad terms quite open to considering further reform. I think finding the appropriate time to do it and what we might focus on I think is a matter for another day, but if the academy for government is a safe haven in which the early stages of discussion could take place, we're very grateful for that offer and most certainly seek to come back to you at the appropriate time. Once again, thank you very much indeed, and I now suspend this meeting while we move into private session.