 Rwyf wedi bod y c vainfannauadd sanitizer yf y sgwlaffaidd i Gwneithriodau maenassadd bonus. Jo Fitzpatrick yn gadewch â gwiaith y Plywgrif Ragdbag o'r Llywodraeth wahaswnol ym Gwneithrydag i gynyddu Llywodraeth Llywodraeth sp? Mororon nhw'n chi gynnig auta gweithio chi wedi gweld gan gweithredu yn negrifion nid Gwneithriodag a collogio Jo Fitzpatrick yn defnyddio gwiaith y peth yma. Rwyf wedi gweithredu gweithredu gwnd y pethau! undid y cwmorth i gyd, mae'r byth yn fwy o gymhwynt rhai yn y cyd-fodol unrhyw 4 i lŵw 4. Padw i'r cwmorth i gyd, mae'n castall gennym yn y cyd-fodol unrhyw 4, mae'n cymhwynt rhai yn torwnt yr Ysgriffydd y Pryd Slassen, yn yr hyn a i gyda'r Cyllid Gwmeth, maes ei ddefnyddio'r cymysgwch peirwyr yn cwmorth i gyda'r cyd-fodol unrhyw 4. Secondary Miner will put the question to the chamber. That question is at motion 1587, seven four and the name of Jovnez Patrick. We agree too? Are we all agreed? We are. The next item in business is stage three proceedings on the Lobby in Scotland Bill. The supplement to the marshaled list and the groupings. A division belt will sound and proceedings will be suspended for five minutes for the first division of the proceedings. The period for voting for the division will be 30 seconds. Thereafter, I will allow a voting period of one minute for the first division after a debate. Members wish to speak in the debate on any group of amendments should press the request to speak buttons as soon as possible after I call the group. I would be grateful if members could now refer to the marshaled list of amendments. We turn to group 1, Lobbying Definition. I call amendment 1, in the name of Neil Findlay, in a group on its own. I ask Neil Findlay to move and speak to amendment 1. I think that this bill is in danger of being undermined from the outset by a lack of definition of what we are actually talking about when we discuss lobbying. The bill, as it stands, has no clear definition and therefore leaves itself very exposed. Amendment 1 would remedy this glaring loophole by providing a definition of what we mean by the term lobbying and it strikes me rather absurd to introduce a bill without actually defining what lobbying is. I do not think that we introduced many bills in this Parliament without describing the actual thing that we are legislating for but then again logic does not necessarily apply in this place. The definition that I have put forward is one that we consulted on and we took much comment on and therefore I would ask people to support the amendment. I understand the principle underlying what Mr Findlay is seeking to do. However, I am left somewhat unclear what the phrase in a professional capacity might mean, since that itself is not defined within the bill where we have to accept this amendment. I think that, while understanding where Mr Findlay is coming from, it seems to me much more effective for us to look at the activities that are covered by the bill. That is what the bill is about. The member will. Neil Findlay. I think that the definition that is given is much clearer than the lack of definition that we have at the moment. Does he not agree? Stuart Stevenson. Of course I do not agree that it carries with it the significant danger that it may exclude by putting things like in a professional capacity in the amendment some of the intention of areas that we will regulate on. I think that we are simply safer to go on what is in the bill, the activities that are covered by the bill and it is certainly my intention. I think that I will make progress. Patrick Harvie. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Very briefly, just to say in the defence of this amendment, it seems reasonable to include a definition on the face of the bill. I have to say that the idea that we have just heard that this amendment seems to include both too much definition and not enough definition seems a rather weak and perplexing argument. Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As Neil Findlay described, the aim of amendment 1 is to set out in the bill a definition of what lobbying is before the bill moves on to define the scope and the scope of regulated lobbying. As I made clear at stage 2, this amendment is not required. Section 1 of the bill already defines clearly what type of activity is deemed to be lobbying, the type of lobby ease and lobbyists to be included and the means by which the lobbying communications are made. Minister Findlay's amendment would lead to confusion and potential difficulties of interpretation of the bill's key provisions, including in particular section 1. The effect of the amendment is likely to be the opposite of what Mr Findlay envisages. It wouldn't add to clarity but instead would create unnecessary ambiguity. For those reasons, I invite Parliament to oppose amendment 1 in the name of Neil Findlay. As we go through the afternoon, Mr FitzPatrick might care to reflect on those words to reflect on the words confusion and ambiguity, because once we go through the bill, I think that that will be riddled with. Therefore, I think that we should move to the amendment and our press amendment. The question is that amendment 1 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed and there will be a division. As this is the first division of the stage, I now suspend Parliament for five minutes. Order. We will now proceed with the division on amendment 1. This is a 32nd division. Members should please cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 1 is, yes, 30, no, 75. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. That brings us to group 2, Regulated Lobbying Methods of Communication. I call amendment 12, in the name of Patricia Ferguson, already grouped with amendments 15, 14 and 23. I ask Patricia Ferguson to move amendment 12 and to speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. I rise to move amendments 12, 15 and 14 in my name and to support amendment 23, in the name of George Adam. The Government's bill that Parliament has before it today suggests that only communications made orally, that is face-to-face communications, or by video conference or the like, should be deemed to be lobbying. In evidence to the Standards Committee, Dr Dinan of Spinwatch and Alter EU described the restriction to face communication as ludicrous, while Unlocked Democracy described the current definition as a gift to those who might wish to keep their activity out of the public gaze. Professor Ransh Charri of Trinity College Dublin, an expert in this area, advised us that he was unaware of any legislation anywhere else that contained such a restriction. Carers Trust Scotland presumed charitably that it must just be an oversight, but no, Presiding Officer, it is not an oversight, it is instead the policy position of the Scottish Government. As a result of the evidence that was heard during stage 1, the Standards Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, of which I am a member, suggested that the Scottish Government should also consider including other forms of communication, such as emails, letters and telephone communication. At stage 2, I brought forward amendments to the bill, amendments designed to give effect to the stated recommendations of the majority of the Standards Committee, but unfortunately that committee then shows to vote down those amendments by five votes to one, so much for the independence of our committees. So today I again move amendments designed to ensure that communication by email, by telephone and in writing will be considered to be lobbying. Without those amendments, this bill becomes a sham. Before members press their voting buttons, let me ask them to consider this. We have all been lobbied about this bill. We have been lobbied by a range of organisations with different viewpoints. How many of those organisations who lobbied us spoke to us face to face? And how many sent an email? I think that we know the answer to that one. We also know that the power of electronic and written communication and to omit them from this bill is plain wrong. I would like to talk on and move my amendment 23. I bring forward this amendment in the back of a recent briefing paper from the Law Society of Scotland. The Law Society noted at section 1 of the bill to a communication that is made orally. The bill does not define orally and the society further noted that the plain dictionary definition of orally makes reference to verbal communication. Like the Law Society, I would welcome clarification from the Government as to whether British Sign Language or indeed other forms of communication equivalent to the use of the spoken word would be covered by the bill as currently drafted. During the passage of Mark Griffin's Bill on British Sign Language, I, along with my colleagues and education committee, learned that BSL is a living, thriving language within our community. It is my belief that if we truly recognise BSL as a language as the BSL Scotland bill did, then it stands to reason that that language will be used to engage in the political process in ways that represents that community. It is only logical that we include BSL in the lobbying bill as oral communication. That is a technical amendment, but it is one that keeps this Parliament's commitment to those who serve in the BSL community, who look towards equality of communication. With that in mind, I ask members to support the amendment. At the moment, I have two requests to speak. I call Stewart Stevenson to be followed by Patrick Harvie. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. If I may, it was perfectly proper the quotation that Patricia Ferguson gave from the committee's stage 1 report, but it might be as well to continue from where she quoted, The committee recommends that the Government renews the potential impact of altering the definition to include communication of any kind to establishing what amendments might be required. The reason for that is because the effect of extending the definition is not currently known. I very much welcome the Government's amendments to the bill, which will give us two years of running and then we will revisit the subject and see what we want to do at that stage. I think that that is a proportionate response to the issue. I only know one little bit of sign language, which identifies who I am as ZS, which is my working initials. I just very much want to support George Adam's amendment. It is timely, appropriate and the right thing to do. I am going to struggle to resist the temptation to use some of the few signs that I know. I do very much welcome George Adam's amendment. I think that it is important that we include BSL. I was interested, though, that amendment finishes always otherwise made by signs. It seems to me that, if we pass amendment 23, but not those from Patricia Ferguson, we will be in the absurd position where semaphore would be included in lobbying, but email would not. Which century are we living in? Surely we have to include the broadest range of forms of communication, including those that are particularly powerful, and we can only expect to be of increasing significance in the future. Please let's pass those amendments and be serious about the bill. Patricia Ferguson's amendment 12, 15 and 14 would substantially broaden the definition of regulated lobbying by including other forms of communication, particularly those made by electronic and written means, and would also give the Parliament the power by resolution to modify and or remove types of communication. The Government's view, supported by the Standards Committee's original inquiry into lobbying, remains that face-to-face lobbying is the most influential means. As I made clear at stage 2, the Government does not support extending the definition of regulated lobbying to include other forms of communication. I am not persuaded that the additional burden that this could place on organisations has been properly thought through, a view supported by many stakeholders, including the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Federation of Small Businesses. The Government has, however, listened to views and brought forward an amendment agreed at stage 2, which extended face-to-face communications to include those made by video conferencing and equivalent in addition to those made in person. The review provision that was inserted into the bill at stage 2 provides an opportunity to learn from experience in the operation of the act and found any potential changes to the types of communication on a clear evidence basis. What evidence does he have, or has he ever had, that face-to-face communication is more effective than any other communication? He has no evidence and he never has put it before Parliament. I think that there is evidence, which I will come to later. I am particularly of the view, but I think that the important thing is that we need to make sure that the bill is proportionate and there is no evidence to assert the fact that it would not be a disproportionate burden to extend the definition in the way that Patricia Ferguson's amendment suggests to. Moving to amendment 23, I thank George Adam for bringing forward the amendment and also to the Law Society of Scotland for raising the matter that it deals with. The Government will support the amendment. That will make clear that the definition of regulated lobbying includes methods of communication used as alternatives to spoken words, which I think deals with Patrick Harvie's point. Very important is that British Sign Language is in itself a language. I am clear that British Sign Language and other such methods of communication such as those used by deaf-blind community and made face-to-face or through an interpreter should be included within the definition of regulated lobbying and this amendment will helpfully put that to be on doubt. In conclusion, I would ask the Parliament to oppose amendments 12, 15 and 14 in the name of Patricia Ferguson, but I invite the Parliament to agree to amendment 23 in the name of George Adam. I definitely intend to press, Presiding Officer. I'm actually struggling to know how to react to the contribution made by Stuart Stevenson. As I think Mr Stevenson knows, I very much respect the way in which he handles the Standards Committee as its convener and I very much enjoy the discussions and the debates that he has. I will just simply remind him—I will not go into the detail any further than this—that the committee report, the committee of which he chairs, described the distinction being placed on the bill by the Scottish Government as an artificial distinction. That is the view of his committee. I would also say to the minister that I find the idea that somehow collating information about written communication would be harder than collating information about verbal communication. It stands to reason that one is recorded in writing on a computer and the other relies on individuals reporting it. It seems to me that we are in the 21st century here. We all know that the volume of emails and telephone calls that we have has increased since this Parliament even has been in existence. Many members will testify to the fact that constituency surgeries are no longer as well attended as they were in 1999. That does not mean that the volume of communications from constituents is any less. It just means that those constituents choose to communicate in a slightly different way and they do so by email. To exclude those issues from this bill is, to my mind, well taken intervention. Can other members stop having conversations across the chamber? Let me be very clear. The bill has framed and is very much our intention. We would not, under any circumstances, catch the kind of constituents coming to see their MSP. Those people coming to talk about housing issues on their own behalf, the bill is very clear that those are not covered. Patricia Ferguson. I'm really surprised that, after all these months, Mr FitzPatrick thinks that I need to be told that. We know, Parliament knows, and if Parliament has read the bill and the amendments, Parliament knows that communication with one's constituents is not covered by the bill. The point that I was making, and Mr FitzPatrick must know this well, is that the way in which people of all kinds choose to communicate in 2016 is very different even from that that he chose to communicate with in 1999. If we don't include communication by email and by letter and by telephone, all things that are recorded by civil servants for ministers, I should say, too, then I think that we are doing this bill a disservice and making this Parliament, frankly, a laughing stock. The question is that amendment 12 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. It will be a division. This is a one-minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 12 is yes, 34, no, 75. There were no abstentions amendments therefore not agreed to. That brings us to group 3, regulated lobbying recipients of communications, under call amendment 18, in the name of the minister, which is grouped with amendments 13, 16 and 20. I ask the minister to move amendment 18 and speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. The purpose of Patricia Ferguson's amendment 13 is to extend the scope of regulated lobbying to include communications made to people other than MSPs, ministers and special advisers. Her amendment 16 defines the civil servants that she wishes to extend the bill to cover. Government's amendment 18 and 20 set out an alternative way forward. During the debate of Patricia Ferguson's near identical amendment during stage 2, I made clear that I did not think her approach was proportionate. The committee agreed to a Government amendment at stage 2 to extend the coverage of the bill to include special advisers and I undertook to consider further whether the bill should be extended to any other specific groups of public officials and in doing so to consult with the trade unions. The Government has carefully considered the possibility of including all senior civil servants as lobby-ease and has concluded that the case has not been made to justify extending the bill in this way. In the first instance, there would be an increase in the volume of registrable lobbying activity that should bring with it. An additional burden to registrants has the potential to erode public engagement in Scotland. In addition, although civil servants have a clear linkage to ministers, they occupy a different space to politicians. There is a potential risk of unduly impacting on the day-to-day operational duties that civil servants undertake, which do not influence the exercise of ministerial functions in a way that would generally be regarded as lobbying. However, I recognise the unique position that the permanent secretary holds on amendments 18 and 20 that I have lodged to seek to include face-to-face communications with the permanent secretary within the definition of regulated lobbying. I remind members that the bill as amended at stage 2 includes our review provision, which will allow the Parliament to learn from the experience of the register and to build a clear evidence base on which to consider any future proposals for change. I invite Patricia Ferguson to withdraw amendment 13 and 16 if she chooses not to then ask the Parliament to oppose them. I move amendment 18 and ask the Parliament to support 18 and 20 in my name. First, let me say that the minister's move to include the permanent secretary is, of course, welcome. However, the permanent secretary is only one among many civil servants and officials who have responsibility and who will, by the minister's own admission in his last contribution, be receiving matters that may well be registered to him. I am sure that the bill will be useful if my amendments are passed. I find that argument slightly odd. However, I want to, as Parliament will understand, extend the definition of those who are covered by the bill. I want it to go further clearly than the minister does. I would like it to include civil servants to the grade of deputy director level. It seems to me that, if the legislation is to be effective, not only has it to recognise that politicians are not the only people who are lobbied, but that officials may be too. The public needs to know what lobbying takes place, and that is a large part of the bill. However, I think that it must also have another purpose, and that is to protect those who may be lobbied from unwittingly falling foul of unscrupulous lobbyists. The best way to do that is to make the situation as transparent as possible so that those public officials are protected by the openness that would apply to their dealings with lobbyists if that was to be ready. I would like to say to the minister that he argues that members of the civil service do not, in and of themselves, make decisions. That is something that perhaps could be argued. However, who writes the briefings that ministers then make their decisions upon? The civil servants. If those civil servants have been lobbied, should that not be something that is known? I think that it should be. As I have said, I very much welcome the minister's change of direction in this particular area, but I do think that if we are to give any kind of openness and transparency to this bill that it does have to be extended to those civil service grades down to deputy director level. Patricia Ferguson and Jo Fitzpatrick have both had the happy privilege of serving as Scottish ministers. I am yet to enjoy that luxury, but my guess would be that the vast majority of the lobbying of senior civil servants is not, in fact, to the permanent secretary but to others at other influential positions within the Scottish Government. Mr Fitzpatrick tells us and reminds us quite correctly that there is to be a review period. If we are going to be as fully informed as we deserve to be in that review, then the time between now and then must capture the greatest amount of information about the lobbying that is taking place. We will be in a stronger position to decide whether the system is working if we have had the maximum transparency position in the intervening period. For that reason, if there is nothing else, I will support Patricia Ferguson's amendments. I think that we have to be very careful that we are not making decisions here today, which would potentially have unintended consequences. I do understand that there is a body of opinion that feels that we should go much further in terms of how deep into the civil service should be covered by the lobbying bill. That is why we have agreed to the proposed amendment stage to ensure that there was a review provision, specifically saying that this is one of the areas that the Parliament should look at, but we need to see the act in operation to make sure that we are not very briefly. The minister is seriously saying that all those people in government, the only person who gets lobbied and should be registered for is the permanent secretary. Is that what you are seriously telling us? What I am saying is that we have got to the level, including special advisers and the permanent secretary, where we think that any lobbying should be registrable. I am confident that that can be achieved without any unintended consequences on the operation of both of the Scottish Government and the impact on people who are engaging with Government. I have made it clear, whether he has responded to Patrick Harvie's point, that he will collect the data in the meantime so that the review is fully informed. There are two approaches here. We extend the register as far as possible, which I understand. Respect is Patricia Ferguson's view, or we want to make sure that we are not having an unintended impact. I think that the bill, as proposed with my amendments and not supporting Patricia Ferguson's amendments, is the way forward. The question is that amendment 18 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are. I now call amendment... Sorry, we are not all agreed. I am going to call that again. If someone wishes to disagree, please do so loudly. The question is that amendment 18 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. Hammond is not agreed. There will be a division. It is a one-minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 18 is yes, 96, no, 12. There were no abstentions. The amendment is, therefore, agreed. I now call amendment 13, in the name of Patricia Ferguson, already debated with amendment 18, and I ask Patricia Ferguson to move or not move. Thank you. The question is that amendment 13 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Hammond is not agreed. There will be a division. This is a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 13 is yes, 35, no, 74. There were no abstentions. The amendment is, therefore, not agreed. I now call amendment 15, in the name of Patricia Ferguson, already debated with amendment 12, and I ask Patricia Ferguson to move or not move. Thank you. The question is that amendment 15 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Hammond is not agreed. There will be a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 15 is yes, 35, no, 73. There were no abstentions. The amendment is, therefore, not agreed. That brings us to group 4, regulated lobbying, individuals making communications, and to call amendment 17, in the name of Patrick Harvie, in a group on its own. I now ask Patrick Harvie to move and speak to amendment 17. I have already indicated informally to the Scottish Government and to Mr Findlay that I am bringing this amendment without necessarily a huge degree of determination about it, but with a desire to see some degree of discussion about a form of lobbying, which may not yet be a significant issue in Scotland but which we can anticipate to see growing in the future. Something that is not currently covered by the system of lobbying regulation that we are establishing here, but which may grow and which I hope that the review will consider, is around the operation of businesses which operate as a highly networked business model, marshalling and encouraging the large numbers of their customers to lobby effectively on their behalf, on the businesses behalf, rather than on the behalf of the direct interest of the industry. There are many, many cases around the world, for example, perhaps the most notorious example of Uber. Whatever view you take of its business model and whether it is a good addition to the transport economy of a country, it has vigorously used its very networked customer base to lobby for favourable regulatory regimes. Including in contexts where public safety is at significant threat and where regulations are intended to address that rather than to shut down the company's business altogether. Other companies can be identified such as Facebook have used similar tactics. As with the earlier discussion about the change in the way people communicate, we are also seeing a change in the way businesses operate. The phenomenon of highly networked businesses, which can mobilise very quickly in a non-transparent and unregulated way, the voices of a great number of their customers to lobby on behalf of the business interests, we can expect this to be an increasing feature of lobbying. Whether we call it professional lobbying or whether we call it networking is less the point. I have brought this amendment merely to solicit the views and I would be interested to know what view both those who have argued for lobbying regulation from the opposition benches and what view the Government takes on the way in which our system of lobbying regulation should deal with this new and emerging form of commercial lobbying as and when it develops. I move amendment 17. I understand exactly the motivation that Patrick Harvie has here. However, in practice, he is in danger of falling into something that he himself would be strongly opposed to. That is what the UK Government is doing in trying to stop charities being involved in lobbying as a result of being charities. I just give an example that might, and I do not assert this to be absolute, might fall out of what Mr Harvie brings to us. He says essentially that a member of, and I only choose this as a very large organisation, the RSPB, could not be lobbied by a paid employee of the RSPB to be part of a campaign on an issue the RSPB felt very strongly about. It is very analogous to shutting off bodies of that kind that are professionally run, employ large numbers of people but have huge bodies of support who might, if that were to happen, not be able to be informed to aid their own personal lobbying activities in line with their beliefs as a member of the RSPB or many other organisations. It is a very good thing to bring to the Parliament and discuss, and it should certainly form part of what we look at at the end of the review period, but I would be very much reluctant to support that in the form that it is before us for the reasons that I hope Patrick Harvie will understand. We in this side are very pleased that Patrick Harvie brought forward this amendment because we think that it does highlight an area that had not been thought of in terms of the bill. I suspect that Patrick Harvie is right that it is perhaps not something that needs to be decided on today or should be decided on today and that when the review comes forward, as we hope it will in the early time in the next session of the Parliament, that people in Parliament and beyond will be much more aware of that. He describes the type of business model and is therefore much more able to make a reasoned judgment on that. Those new technologies are growing and they are allowing people to have that kind of networking relationship. I think that it is right that we consider how best they should be included in this bill. I personally think that they should be ultimately included within our lobbying regulation, but then again I am naive enough to think that electronic communication in a more normal way should be included in the bill. I thank Patrick Harvie for his explanation of his amendment. Even he probably agrees that there is not a requirement for such a provision in the bill today. The amendment that is drafted is ambiguous and unclear about its intention and for obvious reasons when we hear the member's reasons. However, as it stands, it is a complex provision that does not align directly with the key principles that are considered when developing the bill as proportionate and simple to operate. I thank Patrick Harvie for raising the issue that will allow the Parliament to consider whether it should be included as part of the review of the operation of the act. I invite Patrick Harvie to withdraw amendment 17 if he decides not to then I would ask Parliament to resist. I am grateful for the constructive comments that have been made on the need to address in some form the issues that this amendment merely seeks to invite debate on today. I would say in relation to NGOs and the many, whether it is RSPB or somebody, I have less simply for lobbying. I think that a great many of those organisations already expect to have their professional campaigners and lobbying operations fall within the ambit of the regulation system. There would simply be one more dimension of a system of regulation that they are already expecting to comply with, which I do not think will be disproportionate. I do not think that the concerns around the impact on NGOs should prevent us from debating how in the future we may take a more robust approach to commercial interests using those networked business models, the huge network of customer base that they have to lobby in their own interests. Do not get me wrong, I see far more to welcome in the network age than to fear. However, there is a necessary debate about how the platforms that are emerging for those huge and exciting networked aspects of our lives, how those platforms are to work in the common interests, in the public interests, rather than merely being co-opted to serve commercial private interests. I do hope that that is something that we will be able to return to in the review and come up with a system that will be relevant for those emerging aspects. With that, I would ask Parliament's permission to withdraw the amendment. Patrick Harvie seeks to withdraw amendment 17. Does any member object? Since no member objects, that amendment is withdrawn. We now move on to group 5, money and time spent lobbying. I call amendment 2 in the name of Neil Findlay, group with amendments 7, 8 and 9. I ask Neil Findlay to move amendment 2 and speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. My intention at the public are most concerned about the influence of powerful and wealthy or often well-connected individuals and organisations who use their power and wealth and connections to gain access to decision makers, to influence policy, to win contracts or to exert influence over Government and Parliament in other ways. People are less concerned about small-scale, relatively insignificant lobbying. My original bill consultation took account of the concerns raised by small businesses, community organisations and charities that small-scale lobbying might be included. We listened to those concerns about a bill that would prevent rather than encourage dialogue with this Parliament in access to it. In keeping with other jurisdictions, almost one third of which operate a threshold system, we developed that very principle. A lobbying threshold, I believe, is the most appropriate, fair and proportionate way of dealing with it. Those amendments establish a time threshold for in-house lobbyists and a financial threshold for consultant lobbyists. By creating a threshold system small-scale, insignificant lobbying would not be covered, but more significant lobbying would move amendment 2 and 7. Amendment 8 and 9 provide information on the scale of investment that is made in lobbying activity. The public is rightly concerned with how much money is invested by organisations to get results, because that is what lobbying is. It is an investment by an organisation to get results. There is a great deal of difference in spending £100 for an MSP photo shoot holding a placard and tens of thousands of pounds trying to win a ferries contract or a railways franchise. In my consultation, we took evidence from businesses who were concerned that identifying the actual amount spent would be commercially sensitive, so we agreed a compromise where a system of banding would indicate the scale within set parameters. The amendment sets out those scales for both consultant lobbyists and in-house lobbyists. This is all about openness and transparency, and I move the amendments in my name. You would imagine from what Mr Finlay has said that the bill as it presently stands would exclude lobbying for a ferries contract or a railways franchise, but that is very far from the case. That would already be captured as regulated lobbying because people would be being paid to do that lobbying. There is already a lobbying threshold. The threshold is that if you get paid—I speak broadly, of course, there are some caveats—then you are captured, and if you are doing it of your own volition and without financial reward, then you are not caught. There is a threshold. That is a clear and unambiguous threshold that will not be open to the enthusiastic chosen interpretation of accountants. If we want to get into the position where we have a subjective view from accountants as to whether something is in or out, so be it. I will not support that. I think simply that the threshold definition that is already in the bill is the appropriate one, and I encourage members to leave the bill unamended by Mr Finlay's amendment. The group of amendments from Neil Finlay are the same as those that he lodged at stage 2, which were opposed by the committee. The amendments do two things. First, to offer a threshold to remove small-scale lobbying from the registration scheme, and secondly, to include financial data and time spent lobbying in the register. I agree with Mr Finlay that we should seek to remove small-scale lobbying from the registration scheme, and that is why I have brought forward amendments 21, 22 and 22b, which I will invite Parliament to support later. My amendments will exempt small-scale lobbying and exempt constituency-based communications. They do so in a way that is simple and understandable to operate. Unlike the complexities of Mr Finlay's amendments, I want to make it clear again, as I did at stage 2, that I do not think that the case has been made to require registrants to provide financial data in connection with regulated lobbying. I therefore invite Parliament to oppose Mr Finlay's amendments. The question is that amendment 2 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. This is a one-minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 2 is, yes, 31, no 77. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I now call amendment 14, in the name of Patricia Ferguson, already debated with amendment 12. I ask Patricia Ferguson to move or not move. Question then is that amendment 14 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. There will be a division. This is a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 14 is, yes, 35, no 73. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I now call amendment 23, in the name of George Adam, already debated with amendment 12. I ask George Adam to move or not to move. Move, Presiding Officer. The question is that amendment 23 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? I am calling that again. The question is that amendment 23 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are. We now turn to group 6, Employment History of Lobbyists, and I call amendment 3, in the name of Neil Finlay, which is grouped with amendments 4, 5 and 6. I ask Neil Finlay to move amendment 3 and speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. Thanks, Presiding Officer. Those amendments relate to the revolving door principle. That is where senior politicians, civil servants, special advisers, et cetera, having served in the civil service or government leave their post armed with a hefty black book full of contacts inside knowledge of the policy process. The key players, the decision makers and a very good idea of future developments, spending proposals or lightly proposals, they then take up a post in business or finance or with a lobbying company or another organisation. And are free to use those links on behalf of their new employees and their clients. Opportunities not available to the ordinary men and women in the street. We only need to look at some of the lobbying organisations and businesses detailed in the spin watch guide to Hollywood lobbying that was recently published to see this at work. If we look at the personnel of Charlotte Street partners— Order, please. There's a bit of chat going on. Could we have quiet please, Mr Finlay? If we look at the personnel of Charlotte Street partners, Weber Shandwick or Edinburgh Airport, just as examples, very well connected ex-politicians, civil servants and special advisers, with a huge advantage over ordinary members of the public and over their business competitors at work. Those amendments would compel people in that position to on their lobbying returns, record their employment record for the previous five years. So, for example, the former head of the civil service, Johnny Elvish, now chairs, by the airport. If he was lobbying, he would detail his previous role allowing the public to deduce whether there may be any correlation between his past role and the Government's policy on, say, for example, scrapping air passenger duty or airport expansion and whether there's any contradiction with that and the Government's policy on climate change. Those amendments are about openness, transparency and I believe that they should be supported. As Neil Finlay has just outlined, his amendments 3, 4, 5 and 6 all seek to introduce a requirement for those who register to provide retrospective information about their employment history or the employment history of those lobbying on their behalf. As I made clear during stage 2, I don't agree that the case has been made to require those who are undertaking lobbying activity to have their past employment history publicly disclosed. It's important to remember that those amendments would apply to all people who are undertaking regulated lobbying and there would be a situation where individuals being required to publish such information would be clearly disproportionate. The committee noted in its stage 1 report that it was satisfied that the inclusion of individuals' names on the register would enable those with an interest to probe the employment history of those involved in lobbying as clearly Mr Finlay managed to do with Sir Eldridge. Considering civil servants and special advisers, I repeat exactly what I said during stage 2 that there are already existing arrangements in place to scrutinise the future employment of civil servants and special advisers and a restriction on former ministers to ensure that they do not lobby government for two years following the end of their appointment. In conclusion, I'd ask Neil Finlay to withdraw his amendments if not I'd ask the Parliament to oppose them. Thank you, Mr Finlay. Do you wish to wind up? Can you indicate if you intend to press her with draw? Press the amendments. Thank you. In which case the question is that amendment 3 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. There will be a division. This is a one-minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 3 is yes, 29, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. Amendment 4, in the name of Neil Finlay, is already debated with amendment 3. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 4 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. There will be a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 4 is yes, 29, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. Amendment 5, in the name of Neil Finlay, is already debated with amendment 3. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 5 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. This is a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 5 is yes, 28, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. Amendment 6, in the name of Neil Finlay, is already debated with amendment 3. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 6 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. This is a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 6 is yes, 29, no, 75. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I'd now call amendment 7, in the name of Neil Finlay, already debated with amendment 2. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 7 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. This will be a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 7 is yes, 29, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I'd now call amendment 8, in the name of Neil Finlay, already debated with amendment 2. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 8 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament is not agreed. This is a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 8 is yes, 29, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I'd now call amendment 9, in the name of Neil Finlay, already debated with amendment 2. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move or not to move. Move. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 9 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. This will be a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 9 is yes, 29, no, 76. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. That brings us to group 7, Offences and Sanctions. I'd call amendment 10, in the name of Neil Finlay, in a group on its own. I'd ask Neil Finlay to move and speak to amendment 10. The amendment provides for a sliding scale of warnings, alerts and sanctioned for those who fail to register, who register and commit a breach of the terms of the register. In practice, that would mean that the organisation being warned of its failure via the clerk. If, after this, they still fail to address these concerns, a sliding scale of punishment prior to conviction would be suggested with the ultimate sanction being that they'd been struck off the register for a period of three years. Being barred from the register and that becoming common knowledge may indeed be the most effective sanction and will ensure that others are not tempted to try and breach the terms of the register. I move amendment 10. Amendment 10 is a similar amendment to what Mr Finlay lodged at stage 2, which was opposed by the committee five votes to one. If we create a criminal offence— Neil Finlay. He has raised us several times when it suits his argument, but when it doesn't suit his argument he never mentions it. Minister. Order, please. Order. We'll just move on. We create a criminal offence with no criminal penalty. I understand that it's also his intention to introduce a more serious penalty for a second or subsequent offence and for that person to be potentially prevented from lobbying for three years. I appreciate the spirit in which the amendment seeks to offer registrant some latitude in respect of initial failures to comply with the registration scheme, however I remain of the view that the amendment will not deliver that intention. It's unclear how a sanction preventing a person from engaging in regulated lobbying activity would be enforced. The Government considers that the existing statutory framework set out in the bill provides a proportionate approach in respect of offences. Both the provision of guidance and the role of the clerk and commissioner backed by the possibility of criminal sanctions provide an approach which is both fair to registrants and sufficient to ensure the robustness of the registration regime. For those reasons I would ask Neil Findlay to withdraw amendment 10, but if not I would ask Parliament to oppose them. Neil Findlay, you wish to wind up and please indicate if you intend to press her withdraw. Press amendment. The amendment has been pressed in which case the question is that amendment 10 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? No. Parliament has not agreed. This is a one minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 10 is yes, 35. No, 72. We were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. That brings us to group 8, Public Awareness, and I call amendment 11 in the name of Neil Findlay, grouped with amendment 19. I ask Neil Findlay to move amendment 11 and speak to both amendments in the group, please. The amendment seeks to ensure that adequate resources and investment is made in any system and that the legislation is implemented successfully. We cannot introduce any new system on a whim or on a shoestring. We have to put in the resources to raise awareness of the changes that this bill brings in and that the register can be effectively monitored and enforced. I recently heard the Irish regulator speak at an expert seminar at Stirling University. She was very clear that investment and education is required to ensure that legislation is successful. She heard in her words what price a will function in and transparent democracy. I agree with her and move the amendment. Neil Findlay lodged an identical amendment at stage 2. I should have said that he spoke to amendment 19 and other amendments in the group. Neil Findlay lodged an identical amendment at stage 2. It has two parts. First, it provides that the Parliament may make available information with a view to raising awareness of the act. Secondly, the amendment would require the Parliament to make available sufficient funding to support such activities. I am sympathetic towards the first part of Mr Findlay's amendment. At stage 2, I have brought forward amendment 19 in my name, which will enable the Parliament to take such steps as it considers appropriate to promote public awareness and understanding of the operation of the act. That will, of course, be complementary to the existing provisions in the bill that require the Parliament to publish guidance on the operation of the act. I still cannot support the second part of Mr Findlay's amendment. In my view, it must be left to the Scottish Parliament corporate body to make decisions about the use of its overall budget, which is available to the Parliament. I do not think that it is appropriate for us in a bill to be taking that action. I therefore invite Parliament to support amendment 19 in my name and to oppose amendment 11. I invite Neil Findlay to wind up and indicate whether he intends to press or withdraw. In which case the question is that amendment 11 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. This is a one-minute division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 11 is, yes, 30. No, 66. There were 11 abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I now call amendment 19 in the name of the minister, which has already been debated with amendment 11, and I ask the minister to move formally. Question is that amendment 19 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is agreed. I now call amendment 16 in the name of Patricia Ferguson, which has already been debated with amendment 18, and I ask Patricia Ferguson to move or not move. Thank you. The member has moved. The question is that amendment 16 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. This will be a 32nd division. Please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 16 is, yes, 35. No, 72. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed. I now call amendment 20 in the name of the minister, which has already been debated with amendment 18, and I ask the minister to move formally. Question is that amendment 20 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is agreed. Parliament brings us to group 9, communications that are not lobbying, and I call amendment 21 in the name of the minister, which is group with amendments 22, 22A and 22B, and I ask the minister to move amendment 21 and speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The three amendments in my name in this group deal with important elements on how the lobbying regime will operate, so I am going to take some time to explain why the Government is proposing these changes. Parliament is rightly proud of its reputation for being open and accessible and for the relationships that are built with individuals and organisations across Scotland. I know that all members place particular importance on the engagement that they have with their constituents, whether that be businesses and other organisations or individuals. I have been listening carefully to members' concerns during the passage of the bill about the potential for it to impact on that legitimate engagement. At stage 2, I intimated to the committee that I wanted to consider options that would seek to exempt constituency-based communications and small-scale lobbying. Those three amendments will help to ensure that the lobbying regime created by this bill will be proportionate and will not deter engagement with MSPs and ministers. Amendment 21 is what I would describe as the constituency-based exemption. It seeks to exempt all communications that are made by an individual, as, for example, an employee in the course of a business or other activity carried out by a person. That is person in the legal sense and on that person's behalf to a local constituency or regional list MSP. In respect of local, that means that an MSP for the constituency or the region in which the person's business or other activity is ordinarily carried on or the place of residence of the individual who made the communication. The exemption will apply regardless of where the communication takes place. For example, the communication could be made when a local MSP attends a small business gala event in their constituency at which representations are made to them about particular issues concerning local or national policies. My region covers the whole of the Lothian region of which dozens of lobbying organisations are based. That means that they can lobby me as their constituency member and none of that needs registered. Is that what you are saying? No. The member is not correct. It is very clear that the exemption relates to organisations lobbying on their own behalf. Third party lobbying organisations are always lobbying on behalf of a party. Neil Findlay. If an organisation that is lobbying me on their own behalf contacts me as an original MSP, that does not need to be registered. Is that what you are telling me? Yes, that is exactly what we are saying. What we are saying is that we want to make sure that legitimate constituency-based engagement is not covered by that. However, we do recognise that there is a distinction between ministers and cabinet secretaries and other members, and therefore the constituency-based exemption does not... Minister, could you stop me for a moment? The noise in the chamber is becoming louder. We cannot hear the minister. The constituency-based exemption does not exempt communications made to MSPs who are also members of the Scottish Government or junior Scottish ministers. That then takes me to amendment 22. I am going to make some progress. Amendment 22 will exempt all communications made by an individual as, for example, an employee in the course of a business or other activity carried on by another person. Again, that is person in the legal sense on that person's behalf. That person, for example, a small business or other type of organisation, has less than 10 full-time equivalent employees. The number of full-time equivalent employees that that person has will be based on the number of hours worked by all employees in the 28 days... I will complete this, I think. Well, hours by all employees in the 28 days ending on the date of the communication. Full-time equivalent for those purposes is based on a notional 35-hour week for a full-time member of staff. That is 140 hours of the 28-day periods, and this will be the maximum number of hours that can be counted for any individual full-time member of staff. I give way. Diane Lamont, for taking intervention and generally interests of understanding what has been proposed. Is it being suggested that if an organisation employs somebody as a lobbyist to come and lobby somebody who represents a region that wouldn't be registered? However, if they go to an external organisation whose expertise is to lobby, that would have to be registered. What you are saying is that there is a distinction, although the job being done is the exact same. Was to stop an organisation simply rather than employing somebody externally, employing somebody as part of their organisation to do that in order to not disclose that they are lobbying MSPs? What we are trying to do in terms of the constituency-based exemption is to make sure that legitimate engagement between businesses and organisations between them and their constituency or list member does not require to be registered. There may be several reasons why an organisation might want to, for instance, give a constituency or list member the heads up about an impeding challenge in employment within that member's constituency. I think that we want to make sure that kind of engagement can continue. Government recognises that, in this case, there is a difference between most MSPs and MSPs who are also Scottish Government and junior ministers. It is very difficult to unpick that in the time, which is why that exemption does not extend to ministers. If I can move back on to amendment 22 in terms of the small organisations, I recognise a campaign that was quite effective. A lot of us will have received emails from the campaign from Salt, who felt that they had identified a potential loophole in what the Government's amendments were. The Government's intention in relation to representative bodies is that representative bodies do not benefit from the small organisation exemption and the focus should be avoiding undue burdens being placed on other smaller organisations. If a core purpose of a body is to represent the views of its members, it should not benefit from that exemption. In response to concerns from stakeholders, as I have said and Mr Harvey's amendment, I have brought forward amendment 22B, which, although we did not feel that it was ever required, we think that it makes it clearer that smaller organisations exemption does not apply to representative bodies. Partic Harvey's amendment 22A, in my view, goes too far. It seeks to exclude from the small organisation exemption bodies with one or more full-time equivalent body if that body exists primarily to represent the interests of its members and the relevant communications are made on behalf of any of its members or to take up particular issues. I agree with the principle of the first part of Mr Harvey's amendment that representative bodies should not benefit from the exemption, which is why I have brought forward amendment 22B to put that beyond doubt. However, I think that there is a fundamental issue with the second part of Mr Harvey's amendment, which seeks to exclude from the small organisation exemption what I would describe as advocacy groups, unless they have less than one full-time equivalent employee. I think that every single one of us in this chamber will have our own examples of when we have met or visited a small group, which tirelessly campaigns to raise awareness of a particular issue or a small charity, which does all it can to better the lives of the people of Scotland. Those entities also typically operate with minimal resources, and I ask the question to be really want communications by that type of small organisation to be caught. The answer, I hope most will agree, is no, which is why I ask Parliament not to support the amendment in the name of Patrick Harvey. Amendment 22B, in my name, taken together, will help to ensure that individuals and businesses and organisations will retain the ability to freely engage with their elected representatives in the constituency that they are based, and for smaller organisations to avoid a disproportionate burden that engaging with MSPs and ministers might present. I am keen to ensure that all legitimate engagement between MSPs and ministers and local businesses and organisations and our individual constituents is not inhibited by the bill. Those amendments strike a balance between delivering transparency and avoiding inhibiting engagement. The requirement for the Parliament to review the operation of this act will ensure that we can reflect on whether that balance has been correctly struck. What I have presented is a clear and simple to operate. That reflects one of the underpinning principles that I have retained throughout the bill process. I move amendment 21. I ask Parliament to support amendment 21, 22 and 22B, in my name, and I hope that Mr Harvey will withdraw amendment 22 in his name, if not I would ask Parliament to reject it. I invite Patrick Harvey to speak to amendment 22A and other amendments in the group. I think that most of us do recognise that there is an issue with very small organisations and that the way in which the regulation system treats them might not need to be the same as the way in which it treats large, well-resourced, well-staffed lobbying outfits. However, I think that the fact that the minister has come forward with amendment 22B demonstrates an acknowledgement that 22 is a wee bit too much blanket protection in that regard. I think that all of us recognise the picture that he painted of the small, underfunded or perhaps entirely unfunded, locally, crowdsourced funded or whatever, small advocacy organisations, charitable purposes, with whom we would all have a great deal of sympathy. However, surely we can also all acknowledge that there are small organisations that might have very few staff, very little in the way of direct resourcing, but which represent the interests of something much more significant, much more commercial and represent that with a much more politically powerful voice. I think that amendment 22A gets the balance right more so than I think 22B in the minister's name. I do think that the caveat that this introduces to that small organisation exemption will leave us with a stronger bill and make sure that we strike the right balance in terms of who is brought into the lobbying regime and who isn't. Let's remember that we are not creating a lobbying regulatory regime that is profoundly over burdensome. By and large, the bill is a step in the right direction. It doesn't take us everywhere that we need to get to, but I think that amendment 22A will strike the balance right on the small organisation exemption more so than 22B. If I can say a few words about amendment 21 on the issue of residency or rather constituency and regional relevance, because we're not necessarily talking about residency for individuals, although I note that in 1AC3 it talks about the individual's residence. It doesn't necessarily imply to me their permanent or fixed residence. I wonder whether an individual representing the interests of their own business or any other might be able simply to rent a flat for a week in the constituency of the First Minister's parliamentary liaison officer in order to ensure that they can lobby them outside the scope of the regulatory regime. Or indeed in the constituency of a committee chair if they want to lobby them outside the scope of the regulatory regime. I also wonder about the phrases a place where the person's business is ordinarily carried on or activity is ordinarily carried on. What if we're talking about Tesco? Isn't their business carried on in every constituency in Scotland? There are organisations that can't be pinned down in that narrow specific way and who might well find ways to use that as a loophole to avoid complying with the regulatory regime because they want to have the kind of communications that they would just rather not be treated in the transparent way that this bill should be all about. So I do have severe reservations about amendment 21. Many thanks. I have three members at the moment indicating they would wish to speak. I call Patricia Ferguson to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. I hadn't actually planned to speak on amendment 22, but in the course of the discussion I do wonder whether the original text of the bill where we were specifically talking about lobbyists being people employed for the purpose by organisations might not have actually been a better definition than trying to do all the things the minister is trying to do with that paragraph for the very reason. Patrick Harvie has given, but I really do want to talk about amendment 21 because Neil Findlay and Patrick Harvie and Joanne Lamont have already pointed out flaws in that particular element of the bill. As it stands, not only would the person who works within Mr Findlay's region be exempted from lobbying if they were talking to the constituency member where their business was based and all the regional members, but if, for talking's sake, that individual lived in my constituency in Glasgow, they'd also, in the terms of your bill, be exempted from the lobbying regulations, from having to declare that they've spoken to me or any of the regional members in Glasgow. I don't know what the third one about activity actually means and it might be interesting if the minister could explain that, so it seems to me that there are far too many exemptions involved in this particular paragraph. I would also say to the minister in more general terms that I have a real question mark over amendment 21 because it seems to me to add to what is already a very long list of situations where communications with an MSP will not be considered to be lobbying. I wonder if the minister could explain how the amendment to the schedule, which talks about the people who are not captured by the bill, squares with part 1 of the bill that details who is captured because it seems to me that those are potentially contradictory. It would be very helpful if the minister could explain that. It seems to me that they are contradictory because the category of people included in the bill, the same category of people are then excluded in the schedule, so those two things can't possibly square. I wonder if the minister could explain that. I very much welcome the protection that there is for the interaction between members and interests that are in their constituency. I illustrate that in a number of ways. I have a number of companies with nine-figure turnovers that operate wholly and exclusively within my constituency and within no other constituency. I'll name one example, which would be Peterhead Harbour Board, where the turnover is well in excess of £100 million a year. Were they to be inhibited in being able to invite me in to discuss a harbour development, to suggest to me that it's a good idea that a harbour development took place in advance of their committing, to receive my views and advice on that matter, I think that that would be a quite improper interference. One moment please, quite improper intervention and confusion between my right to talk with my constituents, hundreds of whose jobs depend on the success of that particular business. The moment that that business then interacts with the Government to seek grants, then it becomes caught by the act. Of course it does. Furthermore, if they chose to have an adviser who is sitting there acting on their behalf talking to me, they are equally caught. I think that there is a final line. If you don't mind, Mr Finlay, I did do the courtesy of saying that I would take him. Having made that point, I'll now take his intervention. Neil Findlay? I'm astonished. You were the chair of the committee that took all the evidence and you know that none of that is true because what happens is that all you need to— Order, please. I don't think— Order, please, Mr Finlay. You know that the evidence does not support that from the committee's evidence sessions. All that would happen would be that the person would have to register and you would have to have your dialogue with anyone you want. No one is inhibited from anything. Let me just say that I absolutely accept that the company in question, which I use as an example, would be likely to become registered. I feel that if we are getting into a position where we are saying to constituents who have genuine interests in the constituency, for city members it might be a single educational institution that has significant issues that it wishes to raise. Not necessarily in the context of them being registered. They might subsequently have to register, I accept. I will also take Mr Harvey. Patrick Harvie? I'm grateful for the member taking the intervention. The member talks about constituents and doesn't that come down to the nub of it? Our constituents are citizens. They have votes. Businesses do not have votes. They are not our constituents. People working in them are our constituents. If members will permit the argument, people working in those businesses are our constituents and nothing in this bill inhibits them as individual citizens from contacting their MSPs. That is about whether businesses should be treated as though they are themselves, our constituents. Businesses do not have votes and there is a good reason why their lobbying should be treated very differently from an individual citizen seeking to have a meeting with their representative. Stuart Stevenson? I wonder whether I live in a uniquely different world where businesses in my constituency feel quite comfortable to approach and discuss their plans for their businesses. It is proper that they do so, because that affects the livelihoods of thousands of people in my constituency. If there are members in this Parliament in a different position, I pity them rather than envy them. None of this was ever about small organisations. None of this is ever about constituency business. We see all through the course of the bill and the debates around lobbying, we see shows of red herrings brought out time and time and time again. A lot of bad stuff has gone into this bill as the Government has taken it through. That is right, you heard correct. Order, please. Those amendments are just nonsense. If passed, it means that a constituent of mine who is a lobbyist meets me at their place of work, let's say in Edinburgh, doesn't have to register. Given that my region covers the whole of the Lothians, that means a whole number of employees. A number of employees who contact me directly and want to sit down and discuss lobbying activity would not be covered. That is nonsense. I wonder if the member can assure me that he is making a very clear distinction between someone who is representing a lobbying company talking about the business of that company as distinct from speaking about the business of their clients, which is lobbying caught by the regulated lobbying provisions of this bill. I am uncertain as to why that category of companies should be excluded from meeting the constituency member uniquely among companies. Neil Findlay. Yes, I am talking about that. That is clarified. Let me tell you in relation to the amendment about under 10 employees. Of all the stuff in the bill, this is the most farcical of all the amendments put forward by the minister. He should at least have the dignity and self-respect to look embarrassed with this rubbish that he has brought forward, because there is no evidence during the committee stage to support this amendment. Where does the figure of 10 employees come from? Why is it not 20? Why is it not 5? Why is it not 3? No rationale for this proposal. Let's look at some of the organisations who now, with the stroke of genius from the minister, will not be covered. The Faculty of Advocates, the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry Scotland, the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland, the Scottish Licence Trade Association, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Scottish CND, the Institute of Directors, the Scottish Grocer's Association and the CBI Scotland, all of whom have under 10 employees and would not be covered by the bill. All organisations who lobby this Parliament effectively and regularly, none of them is covered because of the amendment that was brought forward by the minister. What a farce, what a sham this is, the minister should be ashamed of himself. It is good to see that Mr Finlay has woken up at last. Let's initially address, I was expecting some more fire earlier on, let's initially deal with Mr Finlay's list of organisations. Those organisations in the main are all representative organisations, so therefore, if they are lobbying, they are never lobbying on their own behalf. We were confident that the bill might have caught them and the exclusion 22 did not remove them. However, taking on board the amendment that was brought forward by Patrick Harvie and the comments, I think that I have finished making my point. My officials helped me to draft an amendment that was drawn from Mr Harvie's amendment, which takes that beyond any doubt. There is no question that those sorts of representative bodies are covered by the bill. On the wider issue, we have tried to bring forward a bill and an amendment that strikes a balance between delivering transparency and avoiding inhibiting engagement. We have had to decide where we felt that balance was. I respect the fact that some folk—Mr Harvie, Patricia Ferguson and Neil Finlay—have a different view of where that balance is. That is one of the strengths of the view process that we have built into the bill that the Parliament can look back and the future Parliament and the future committee can decide. Have we struck that balance correctly if not they can make changes? That is very important. Patricia Ferguson raised a point in thinking that the exclusion somehow contradicted the earlier parts of the bill. The earlier parts of the bill are drawn very widely, so that catches a great number of people. The schedule in exclusion removes some people from that wider pool. On that basis, I think that the bill that we have and the amendments that we have taken together are really strong. I hope that colleagues will support my amendments and reject the amendment from Mr Harvie. The question is that amendment 21 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Parliament is not agreed. This is a one-minute division. Please vote now. Amendment 21 be agreed to. 22 B, rwy'n gweld i chi oesdeithaidd. Se under? Ieithio na tawr 32. 22B, consensus 77 districts. Heidwch wedi caeth gweld g事, ac yn ei gyda ni'r amendment sy'r amendment. 22A yn y namnetu Dr Patrick Harvie. Rydw i ei gadw'n gyd sefydlu Buffalo 21. Playstation minsel prosperity ddefnyddwch y rhannu. The question is that amendment 22A be agreed to, are we all agreed? Palamence is not agreed, this is a 32nd division, please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 22A is yes, 35, no 73, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore not agreed. The question now is that amendment 22, as amended, be agreed to, are we all agreed? Palamence is not agreed, this is a 32nd division, please vote now. The result of the vote on amendment 22A is yes, 76, no 31, there were no abstentions, the amendment is therefore agreed. That ends consideration of amendments. The next item of business is a debate on motion number 15870, in the name of Jocats Patrick, on the Lobby in Scotland Bill. I'll allow a few seconds for members to change places in the chamber to clear. As already intimated, the next item of business is a debate on motion number 15870, in the name of Jocats Patrick, on the Lobby in Scotland Bill. I'll now call on Jocats Patrick to speak to and move the motion. Minister, you have nine minutes, please. In opening this debate, I'd like to thank all members for their contribution to the development of the Lobby in Scotland Bill, which I hope Parliament will in due course approve. Given the stage 1 debate in January by highlighting the distinct character of this bill, it has been brought forward by the Government, yet it is very much parliamentary in nature. I made clear that I was keen from the outset to work closely with the Parliament to ensure that its views were reflected in the bill framework. Contributions to the bill's journey have come in many forms. From the proposal for a member's bill by Neil Findlay, the late Helen Eadie's suggestion that the Standards Committee will conduct an inquiry into the most appropriate measures that are required in the Scottish context, the subsequent inquiry, the committee report published in February 2015, and of the 17 recommendations in that report, 12 fell within the scope of the bill and were reflected in whole or in part on the bill's introduction. The Government's own consultation, published in May 2015, maintained the momentum of stakeholder engagement, and that momentum continued after the bill's introduction with the committee's call for evidence. The stage 1 report published in December 2015 and the endorsement of the general principles of the bill, all 13 recommendations in that report had been or were actioned by the Government. Of course, the contributions made by members during the bill's parliamentary passage. All of those steps evidence the collaborative working between the Government and the Parliament, indicative of the Scottish democratic process of which we are rightly proud. Presiding Officer, that collaborative working has been important, has importantly involved stakeholders who have helped to shape the product to make sure that the product will work for lobbyists, for businesses and organisations, for transparency, campaign groups and most importantly for citizens. As a result of that engagement, including the... Of course. On a scale of 1 to 10 in comparison with other jurisdictions, we are in terms of the level of transparency. Will the minister see the bill sit? I think the bill sits absolutely in the correct place in a balance between transparency and proportionality for the Scottish... for the Scottish circumstances, going back to Helen Eadie's initial request for the standards committee to look at that issue. As a result of that engagement, including the numerous stakeholders meetings I've had, the bill has, that is in front of us, responded positively to a range of interests involved. I respect the position of members and stakeholders who have called for greater transparency. I would emphasise that the Government has listened and has strengthened the bill during its parliamentary passage. I welcome the positive contribution of the lobbying industry who have embraced the principle of greater transparency and accepted the principle of the registration framework. I've listened to their calls for a level playing field and I think we have achieved that. I've also listened to the concerns of the third and voluntary sectors. As a result, I've tried to ensure a proportionate approach to the regime by ensuring that there is not an undue burden placed on small organisations in this sector who, I think, do all they can to better the lives of people of Scotland. I've listened to business through the representative bodies who have called for a simple approach that is easy to operate all with the aim of ensuring that there is free and open relationship between elected members and businesses who serve our communities. That has always been balanced against our aim of greater transparency. I've listened to trade unions through their contributions to the Government's consultation and the parliamentary inquiry and, of course, in respect of the issue of widening the definition of regulated lobbying to include civil servants. I'll say more about that later. Importantly, I've listened to the public through representations to their elected members and, in my opinion, I was clear at outset that this regime should not seek to catch individuals communicating on their own behalf. That was based on the important principle of retaining engagement between the Government and the Parliament with constituents and members of the public. In June 2013, when the Government announced that it would introduce a lobbying bill, we set out three underpinning principles which guided the development of the bill. First, this Parliament has a proud reputation for its approach to openness, ease of access and accountability and the relationship that it has built with Civic Scotland, all of which I was clear that there should be no erosion of. Secondly, I was clear that the register of lobbyists should complement and not duplicate existing transparency measures and should be developed to work alongside existing frameworks established within the Parliament and the Government. Finally, the new arrangements should be proportionate, simple in their operation to demand broad support within and outwith the Parliament. The key words I have consistently used are proportionality and simplicity. Those three underpinning principles have been welcomed by members and stakeholders and are clearly reflected in the bill before us. During the stage 1 debate, every member who contributed to the debate agreed that lobbying is a legitimate activity and recognised the valuable contribution that it makes to informing policy in Scotland. The bill is a transparent lobbying activity, particularly in light of the further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament. The bill that we have before us will aid existing transparency measures in a robust and coherent manner. Throughout the bill's development, I have said that I would continue to consider any potential changes to the bill as long as they retain the principle of proportionality. I thank members for their amendments and recognise that there might be changes that were not endorsed by the committee and the Parliament. The amendments that the Government has brought forward and which we have agreed to were carefully considered on the basis of the views of Parliament and stakeholders. On a number of fronts, particularly on the subject of written communications, I have not been assured that changes would respect the principle of proportionality. Robert Cunning of PE Advocacy undertook his third annual Advocacy survey of MSPs recently. The evidence shows that most MSPs rely on direct communications with organisations by way of meeting in the first instance. That evidence supports the Government's position that face-to-face communications is the most effective means of lobbying. At stage 2, the committee agreed to a Government amendment to add a provision to the bill requiring that Parliament should report on the operation of the act. We feel that it is appropriate for Parliament to review the types of communication by the scope of the regime in the light of experience of the act. That will allow the Parliament to suggest any changes on an evidence base founded on practical experience of operating a lobbying register. There are already provisions in the bill that allow for the Parliament to make changes by resolution to the operational aspects of the regime. Both provisions focus on experience and in evidence-gathering in information and informing any proposals for change. Members have consistently called for engagement with elected representatives to be protected and in particular by small organisations and businesses to ensure that the regime does not interfere with the engagement that we have on a daily basis with our constituents. The bill will not undermine the Parliament's strong reputation for accessibility nor of the Government that the First Minister committed to leading when she came to office. That is why I brought forward the amendments relating to exceptions for constituency-based activity and communications by small organisations and businesses that I outlined earlier. The First Amendment exempts communications from organisations on their own behalf to either the constituency or list MSP for the place where the organisation carries out its business or where the individual making the communication on behalf of the organisation is a resident regardless of where the meetings take place. The First Amendment clearly reflects the wishes of the Parliament not to interfere with the communication that we have with our constituents. Patricia Ferguson. I understand what the minister is saying and none of us would disagree with where he is trying to get to. I would just say to him what the bill as amended today says is that you are exempted if you speak to someone who represents the area where you work. You are exempted if you speak to those people who represent the area where you have activity. I do not know what activity is, but the minister could clarify that. That seems to me to be excluding far too many people. If you draw to a close two, please. What we have tried to do is to get a balance. The balance that we have tried to do reflects the work of a constituency member. Certainly, if a business comes to me which either operates on behalf of the organisation or the person coming to me is one of my constituents, then I take that as something that I can deal with as a constituency member. Remember that this exemption will not apply however to ministers. The second amendment establishes an exemption in respect of any organisation that has fewer than 10 full-time equivalent employees. Any communication made on its own behalf will not require the organisation to move to the next bill. I hope that members will agree that the bill, as amended, achieves the aim that we set out at the outset of the process. A bill that most folk in this chamber can stand behind. The collaborative relationship between the Government, the Parliament and our stakeholders throughout the development of the bill is yet another example that supports the proud reputation for an open engagement with Civic Scotland that this Parliament and this Government have. I hope that members will support it at decision time. Thank you so much. Neil Findlay up to six minutes. I don't think that the minister believed a word of that, I'm afraid. This is not one of this Parliament's finest days. It's a day of mixed feelings for me. In one sense, I'm pleased that three years after introducing the Lobbians and Lobbians Transparency Scotland bill, today this Parliament will at least legislate for some form of regulation of lobbying. Mixed feelings because this is not a robust bill that I envisaged three years ago. That bill sought to open up our democracy to greatly increased transparency and accountability. From the day I introduced the bill, I got the impression that the minister would rather have stuck pins in his eyes than legislate properly to regulate lobbying. We know why, because it's in the interests of any governing party not to know what is really going on. Who they are meeting, what they are meeting about, who is influencing policies, who is schmoozing ministers and MSPs, civil servants and special advisers, whose friends and contacts are in the right places, in the right businesses and civic society. But the public want to know and have the right to know what has been done in their name. They want to know. Prior to this bill coming forward, ministers have recorded the meetings that they have and that was always a way to have transparency. We are moving into an election. One of the groups of people who are being lobbied to impact on manifestos are advisers to the leaders of the opposition while the leaders of the opposition publish the meetings that their advisers are having. Minister, you are talking about going way off tangent here. I am allot for openness and transparency. The more we have it, the better. We will come to some of those issues in a moment. The public want to know and have the right to know what has been done in their name. They should know whether dealing with Donald Trump, Jim Wackliffe, Brian Souter or whoever results in contracts being won, policies being changed or decisions taken or indeed not taken. For the executive, lobby and transparency is something that they do not want. Currently, we see the Government using freedom of information exemptions, often ludicrously, to hide their dealings on fracking to cover up their developing links with Qatar. I realise that the member did not attend all the evidence sessions of the committee, but if he had, he would have heard representatives saying that they were entirely welcoming at the opportunity that registering their actions would give them to publicise the value of the work that they do. I do not endorse that as a particular view, but we did hear many organisations involved in lobbying welcoming what is happening. Excellent. None of them puts forward some of the arguments that we have heard today, but we are here at the use of the FOI exemption being used to prevent people finding out information on things like the future of hospital services. We see the use and absolute abuse of the parliamentary question system to dish out pathetic non-answers to the concerns that we raise on behalf of our constituents, a real failure in our democracy that has gone completely unchecked in this Parliament. All of that is designed to prevent the release of information and the lobbying bill is just another inconvenience. The reality is that this bill's torches journey does not show this Parliament in a good light. From the minute the Government grudgingly took it over, I have never been convinced that they were actually serious about transparency. Initially they did nothing for almost two years. The minister hoping somehow that it would all just go away and then despite denials they asked to hold inquiry. Then a committee debate, then a consultation, then more delay, then we had a further debate in the committee report by the time we had all happened, the bill was watered down to the bowl of rather meager grill that the minister brings to the table today. For the record we should clarify that it was the late Helen Eadie that requested that the standards committee take forward an inquiry. We also had the Government the current convener to host the inquiry and you've confirmed that in the letter that you sent to me. The bill was watered down to such an extent that when we attended an expert seminar on the bill at Stirling University, a US professor of public policy and authority on lobbying said, the US system gets a six out of ten for transparency. This bill gets a two at best and of course since then the bill has gotten a whole lot worse with some of the ridiculous amendments put forward by the minister to date. A minister who has shown zero interest or enthusiasm or indeed knowledge of this issue since day one. The bill in its present form is as clear a statement as anyone could wish for, that this Government has no interest in enhancing the principles of openness, transparency and accountability that this Parliament was supposedly founded upon. I'm afraid that these are now words that fail to match the reality for the public and their representatives searching for answers to serious questions. After nine years in government, the SNP are Scotland's new establishment. More interested in protecting their associations, their networks, their web of helpful connections that they have built up in that time and to look as though at the same time as look as though they are up for scrutiny while in reality closing it down at every turn. If the minister's remit from the First Minister was to make the bill tokenistic weak and full of loopholes, then he has passed that test with flying colours but it's not something that he should be proud of. When this bill passes, he will have done his party proud but this Parliament will have missed a major opportunity to reform our democracy for the better. Presiding Officer, we will support this bill despite it being woefully inadequate because it gets, at least gets lobbying on the statute book but we will seek to amend almost every element of it at the first opportunity of review in the next Parliament to make it fit for purpose because a bill that fails to recognise we live in an electronic age, a bill that means the CBI and the Institute of Directors and others are not covered and a bill that allows the political elite to use their contact books for commercial advancement without scrutiny is a bill that is not fit for purpose. I think that I can answer that point first of all that the IOD and others groups are covered by this bill because they're a big organisation. It's definitely our intention in the committee to cover these big organisations. I think that we can also agree that it's important to have a democratic system that is open, transparent and just. Certainly. The understanding from the research that I've seen is that they're not a big enough organisation, they don't have enough employees to be covered. Thank you. They have members, not necessarily employees, but they have members and that's the same sort of thing. Thank you. There's nothing too contentious about that. There's been a vigorous debate on some details of the bill with important points to consider on a range of issues including the scope of communications, including an environment that is clear focus on ensuring that the system of registration delivers transparency whilst remaining light touch in its approach and that's the key word I've been using all the time. Furthermore it must be clear to any potential registrants what would be required of them so we have a collaborative environment rather than the payday for lawyers. With this in mind I'd like to touch on some of the changes that were posed for this bill and how they contributed as regulated lobbying is hugely influential on the overall scope of the bill so it is entirely right that we've heard extensive debate on what qualifies. We do recognise the motivation behind the arguments that include emails and phone calls within the definition of regulated lobbying but we must always consider the wider need for proportionality and targeted provisions. It is apparent that including all forms of communication will place a large ongoing burden on both registrants so that the volume of emails sent and received can be huge in just one day let alone over a period of months. Requirement to register all of these would be clearly difficult and costly for registrants as well as making information received by the clerk less targeted. I say targeted for two reasons. Firstly the duties imposed on this bill must be proportionate and I keep referring to this point as the benefits to be gained. As we've acknowledged before thankfully our political system has this bill is therefore targeted to some extent at a potential rather than existing problem of undue influence which we should bear in mind when assessing the costs that we can justify imposing on organisations, businesses and members of the public. Secondly we've heard face-to-face meeting can be more influential or important than emails or phone calls. This also makes it apparent that capturing the information will provide a useful insight into lobbying practices without imposing the large burdens on registrants but the question again in my mind is proportionality. As for the question of disclosing financial information as part of the returns it remains apparent that requiring this would be counterproductive and a disproportionate measure. The first point to make is that assigning expenditure to specific activities could be a very difficult and resource intensive burden for organisations particularly small ones to comply with leading to confusion and unwelcome obstacles. In addition to commercial sensitivity and confidentiality the effect of these concerns is that enforcing financial disclosure would impose negatives that outweigh the positives. For the registered to be effective it must increase the transparency of our privacy making without compromising its strength. This means that we must ensure that the openness of our politics is not weakened through either confusion or bureaucracy. Forcing registrants to disclose financial information I think fails this test. I think the point about maintaining the strength of our policy is the key. We rightly pride ourselves on an open and accessible political system particularly here in this chamber. With not only supports public engagement also allows more informed decisions to be made. I do not believe that anyone wants the elected politicians making policy decisions without information from the experts and I think we must guard against such unwanted outcomes. The principles of openness and transparency go hand in hand and must therefore include the matter of implementation on which I will elaborate later. Thank you. Thanks very much. We now move to the open debate and I call on Stuart Stevenson to be followed by Patricia Ferguson up to four minutes please Mr Stevenson. Thank you very much and we've made several references to Helen Eadie in this debate and I think it's the affection with which she has held that over lunch only today a number of us were reminiscing about her contributions to this Parliament and wider political debate. Perhaps those of us on the yes side in the Euro campaign will particularly miss her enthusiastic European ism. Before I get to the substance of it let me just report the result of extensive debate, extensive research I've undertaken since Mr Finlay spoke lasting approximately 75 seconds. I can tell him that far from the CBI employing less than 10 people it employs 14 directors alone before you even get to any other employed staff that the CBI have. So if he asserts, as he did in his contribution that the CBI are excluded because they employ fewer than 10 people he is quite frankly factually wrong. The web address we can check this and he'll get the list of names is news.cbi.org.uk which will give him a list. I think that characterises a lot of the assertions that have been untested assertions. We've also during the debate on the amendments on a number of occasions Mr Finlay suggested that we should reject amendments from the Government in response to the development of the bill as it's gone through the parliamentary process and at each stage we'll learn more and should respond on the basis that the committee didn't take any evidence but it didn't inhibit Mr Finlay himself from bringing forward a whole series of amendments which were well outside the information that the committee engaged with during its research, for example on offences and sanctions but let's not go into too great detail. I very much welcome this bill Mr Finlay of course was correct in saying that the American professor at a seminar at the University of Surling did say that this bill ranked 2 out of 10. What he failed to inform colleagues in the Parliament of course is that when I then interacted with a professor I discovered that his understanding of the bill was substantially incomplete and that he accepted that the 2 out of 10 was based on an entire misunderstanding of where the bill was coming from. A couple of things in the bill that we should look at are things that we should put on the record. First of all, I think we've not made the mistake of in this bill looking at registering lobbyists but at lobbying and the people who undertake it and I think perhaps Westminster in looking at its registration involving consultant lobbyists has missed the proper target. This bill focuses on the activity of lobbying and I think that's all well and good. I think one of the gems in the bill that is very useful is voluntary registration. That allows bodies who are uncertain or anticipating future they might want to get engaged in substantial lobbying to choose to register even though there is no objective evidence at the time of registration that they are required to do so. The second part that is very good about the bill is that you can lobby first and then register afterwards because in many instances the interaction between someone who is lobbying and the person who is being lobbied will not initially have the character of lobbying it develops during the discussion so that 30-day period is very much welcome. I welcome this it's for me not a huge issue but not an insubstantial issue. I estimate that I'll have four interactions between now and recent the dissolution of Parliament that I would categorise as people coming to lobby me. This is a very substantial way forward in Parliament. We look forward to exercising the powers that we are given under section 15 to draw up the details for the register which our successes in office will be doing in the next session of Parliament. I rise to speak in this debate with a feeling of some dismay about the bill we are passing today. I say that as someone who was not initially a supporter of the idea of there being a lobbying bill in fact as colleagues, some colleagues at least know because I've told them so in the Standards Committee in the first session of the Parliament I was one of those who made the decision that we wouldn't have back then any kind of regulation of lobbying. But I am in favour of a lobbying bill now and I'd like to explain to the chamber why that is. As a member of the Standards and Public Appointments Committee I decided that I would keep an open mind and listen to the arguments and the evidence before coming to a decision about whether or not I would vote for a lobbying bill. I listened very intently and with great interest to the evidence that we heard from a number of eminent people with great experience in this area, people who had helped to shape legislation in other countries, people who were advocates for greater transparency in politics and from people who lobbied for a living. We also heard from charities and the voluntary sector and discussed with them their concerns and the points that they thought were right. We as a committee then debated what we had heard on stage 1 report. We made a number of recommendations to the Government about ways in which the bill could and should be improved. Many of those ideas have been debated today so I won't rehash them now. But it became clear that the Scottish Government wasn't going to take on board our recommendations so I tabled amendments to give effect to some of the committee's stage 1 report. I should say that at this point I still wasn't entirely sure that we needed a lobbying bill but I was absolutely sure that if we were going to have one it needed to be the best bill it could possibly be. To my mind excluding communications other than face-to-face communications and I am rehashing what I said earlier but I make no apology for it is absolutely ludicrous in the 21st century. At stage 2 perhaps unsurprisingly all of my amendments were voted down in spite of the fact that they simply reflected the views of the committee in its stage 1 report. How that can happen in a Parliament like this I leave others to consider. Once again today similar amendments were voted down. While we were in committee scrutinising the bill my colleague Neil Findlay tried to obtain information through the FOI system about ministers' engagement with lobbying companies. Most of the information requested could not be supplied so that it would take the cost over the £600 threshold. I wonder whether the Scottish Government needs to look at the system that it uses for recording such information to see if it cannot have a proper search facility that would allow it to abstract that information more easily and crucially more cheaply. Gradually and over time I came to the conclusion that a lobbying bill was required because in principle there are elected members who do and who have influence over them. It also seemed to me that this Government was somehow going out of its way to ensure that this bill would be as ineffectual as possible and I genuinely do not understand why it would want to do that. I want to just take up a point that Patrick Harvie made earlier in the debates on amendments. Mr Harvie made the point that we should at this stage include other categories of civil servants as my amendment had suggested and that if that was found to be too onerous or that it did not work we could, when we reviewed it, reduce the numbers but that until we had the information we could not make that judgment. That amendment was defeated but it is not beyond the Scottish Government to record that information internally and to be able to feed that information into the review when the review happens because it will only be by having that kind of information that Parliament will be able to make a properly informed judgment and I wonder if the minister would consider that today. Mr FitzPatrick has made great play about the idea of the bill having to be proportionate. I absolutely agree with that. We all want to be transparent and open and we want our constituents to have as much and as easy access to us as is possible. What we disagree about is that the bill should be handled through this bill. What we have ended up with is a complicated labyrinthine bill that I think will possibly do more harm than good. I genuinely hope that it does not but I think that that might be the case. It is the passage of this bill that has made me think that lobbying bill is needed. The problem is that it is not this bill this is a pale imitation of the robust bill a Parliament like this should have and I sincerely hope that when the bill is reviewed in the next parliamentary session that there is a Government and a Parliament that is not afraid of transparency and openness but will embrace it and create a new bill which is proportionate and does what it says in the tin because this one does not. Thank you so much. Now Colin Cameron McAllen, four minutes please Mr McAllen. The level of transparency in our Government and its openness to the public and the additional aspects of a healthy democracy which does make it so important that we get this lobbying bill right. I've always maintained that if this bill is to be effective it must take as I said earlier the proportionate approach that increases transparency in our decision making process without deterring participation in the first place. It appears that after much deliberation we've reached a point where the correct balance in our opinion has been stuck. I'm pleased to say that we Scottish Conservatives will therefore be supporting the bill at decision time. It has therefore also been right to seek a collaborative approach to this legislation which is worth bearing in mind as we consider how to ensure that the potential registrants and the wider public are ready for the provisions coming into force. It is essential that provisions imposed by the lobbying bill are clearly understood so that they do not create any distinctive disincentive from participation in public decision making. A long-term principle of our democratic process is that the wider range of views heard in a policy making the better therefore said before, lobbying is not about closed or deals between vested interests and powerful decision makers but actually about the fundamental matter of having an open political process of which all manner of ideas, views and contributions are welcome. Indeed, wide-ranging participation is crucial to a healthy democracy. It should therefore be clear that organisations and members of the public should be free to discuss the matters of interest with their electoral representatives and feel that they are hassle free to do so. I have already underlined how important it has been to keep this in mind throughout our deliberations on the scope of the register. I would like to take this chance to emphasise the need to continue promoting openness and any requirements that come into force. A crucial aspect of maintaining openness and accessibility is the availability of help or guidance to assist potential registrants. The aim, after all, is to increase transparency and not to catch anyone out. I was therefore very pleased to see that my amendment requiring the publication of guidance on the register is passed at stage 2. Such guidance is simply too important to be discretionary. We must therefore ensure that it is clear, thorough and targeted in its explanations of what counts as regulated lobbying and what does not count as regulated lobbying. What any ongoing requirements are, ideally, what any ongoing requirements are, ideally it would remove the need for complex compliance operations or expensive lawyers, so that we can all get on with the business in an open way, which all parties support. Furthermore, putting in an effort to have a clear collaborative process in place would, I think, minimise the chance of stakeholders simply pulling out of the public decision making process, as well as decreasing the likelihood of unintentional mistakes in compliance. If we do achieve such a collaborative culture around lobbying, I believe we will have struck the optimal situation where all our processes are transparent and maintain their strength through accessibility. I am pleased to say that the bill as it now stands I think appears to reach the balance and we Scottish Conservatives, therefore, put our support behind it. Thank you. I now call on Mary Fee up to five minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Scottish Labour supports the principle of a lobbying bill and the need for introduction of legislation. However, we do believe despite voting for it at decision time tonight, we do believe that the bill in its current form has been amended further to ensure that it is a strong and effective piece of legislation. The bill in front of us today is a dilution of my colleague Neil Findlay's original proposal of a lobbying bill and, as we have heard, there are two key areas where we believe that the bill falls short and those are by excluding emails and by excluding all civil servants except permanent secretaries. It is a mistake and it renders the bill almost meaningless. The passing of this bill will lead to a situation where only one civil servant for each Scottish Government department, the permanent secretary, will be captured by this bill and this is an obvious failing. At stage 2, when the bill was in committee, Scottish Labour lodged 16 amendments but each and every one of them was rejected as the SNP used a majority on the committee to reject all the alternatives proposed by Scottish Labour. The Scottish Labour amendments in the name of my colleagues Neil Findlay and Patricia Ferguson aimed to strengthen the bill in the key areas of accountability, transparency and openness. The result of every Scottish Labour amendment being rejected at stage 2 is a lobbying bill that is not as strong or as effective as we would have liked the bill to be. Scottish Labour would like to have the bill significantly strengthened to ensure that the legislation is as strong and effective as possible. As well as not addressing the concerns raised by members of this Parliament, the Scottish Government has not considered the views of Civic Scotland in relation to this bill either. Organisation after organisation and expert after expert have criticised this bill for not being as strong as it possibly could be, yet the SNP has taken little action to strengthen the bill to make it a truly effective and workable piece of legislation. For example, Unlocked Democracy described the current definition of lobbying in the bill as a gift to those who might wish to keep their activity out of the public gaze. Research has shown that the public overwhelmingly want greater transparency in Holyrood, but they are still waiting for MSPs to deliver rather than give in to the lobbying industry. It would be farcical and ironic if the bill to regulate lobbying were to be neutered because MSPs have been lobbied by the lobbyists. Those are not my words, but the words of Robert Barrington, Executive Director of Transparency International UK. I think that members across this chamber should reflect on this statement by Robert Barrington. In 1999, when the Scottish Parliament announced it had the explicit founding values of accountability, transparency and openness, and in a time where public confidence in politicians is failing, we should be aiming harder than ever to inspire faith among the people of Scotland in their elected representatives. That is why we in Scottish Labour passionately believe in strengthening the lobbying bill to make it a strong and effective piece of legislation. We understand the need for a lobbying bill and we support the proposal for the introduction of a lobbying bill. We want the bill to be strong in lobbying, strong in transparency and strong on accountability. The Government talks frequently in the chamber about being a listening Government and being consensual. Speakers in this afternoon's debates have raised concerns about the legislation, about the need to strengthen it. That was a perfect opportunity for the SNP Government to do exactly that. It is just a pity that they decided not to listen. At points today, I have wondered if we have been discussing two different bills, because the bill that I look at is not the bill that the SNP is talking about. There is a need for a lobbying bill and that is why we will support the passing of the bill, but the Scottish Government must listen to the concerns of parliamentarians, independent organisations and experts alike and take action to ensure that the lobbying bill meets the aspirations of this Parliament in providing accountability, openness and transparency through strong and effective lobbying legislation. I welcome the fact that members have subjected the lobbying bill throughout its parliamentary passage, and today there has been no difference. First of all, I am not somebody who has got things skin or whatever, but some of the comments from Mr Finlay I thought went a bit deep and were verging on nasty offensive comments. In defence of myself, perhaps I should read some of the comments that Sault have published today in response to the amendments that we have passed this afternoon. Willie Sullivan, director of electoral reform society, said that we are delighted that the minister has responded in this way. I know that Sault and the members want to go further than we have done and he then confirms that while we still have some concerns about the bill particularly their desire for face-to-face meetings and email calls to be recorded. We are sure that the bill, when enacted will increase public visibility of lobbying. He then goes on to say that, with built-in two-year review of new lobbying register, should provide a firm basis of good evidence for the Parliament to include emails etc. A positive comment there. Rob McAlpine, also member of Sault from the common wheel, this legislation is still not as strong as we'd liked, but the Scottish Government have been listening and we've definitely made progress. Above all, there is a commitment that this is a foundation that can be built on for the future Parliament. Hopefully, Scotland is moving towards a system in which transparency can be proud of. Positive comments from some of the people who have been pushing for maximum transparency and I certainly welcome those comments going forward. A couple of comments that have been raised. Neil Finlay asked suggested that the CBI would somehow be exempt because he reckoned they had less than 10 full-time equivalents who worked in Scotland. Let me just be absolutely clear about the amendments that we passed today. First of all, the exemption is not based on the number of staff working in Scotland. It is based on the number of staff working for the organisation irrespective of location. Secondly, we put beyond doubt the fact that representative bodies are excluded from that exclusion. Patricia Ferguson asked about whether we would look at monitoring the amount of information and the amount of contact with senior civil servants to inform a future review of the bill. I think that that is something that we can look at. Of course, as I said in stage 2 that any changes we wish to make in terms of senior civil servants, we would have to discuss with the trade unions and we would have to evidence why that was an appropriate step forward and we didn't manage to achieve that at this stage. I mentioned in my opening speech the Government's desire to achieve as much consensus as is possible for the establishment of register of lobbying activity in Scotland. I think that we have achieved that. I think that some of the comments, particularly from Salt with positive comments there, show that we have made progress in pulling together people from all sides of the argument. Initially, some of the organisations like the Federation of Small Business were very critical of what we have done but I hope that they now see that we have a bill and in future we will have an act which, as Cameron McCannan says, is proportionate in moving forward. It gives us that increased transparency without being overly burdensome. The bill, I think in the main, although some of the comments that he might suggest differently, has generally been developed in a positive climate of Scottish democracy and the engagement that I have had with stakeholders on all sides has been positive. It is a sign that that public engagement remains as strong as ever in that dynamic in support of the openness of this Parliament. The Government does not want the bill to discourage public engagement in Scotland's politics and we have kept that principle firmly in mind when promoting measures aimed at increasing transparency. The terms striking a balance might seem cliche but the extensive coverage of the bill highlights the importance of getting that balance right and giving close consideration to the wider implications of any policy proposals. I would like to put on record my thanks to the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, Stuart Stevenson and his committee have devoted a significant proportion of their time this session helping to develop thinking on our approach. The successor committee will of course be heavily involved in implementing processes for the lobbying register and therefore today is only part of a careful and methodical process. I would also wish to thank a wide range of stakeholders who have taken the time to engage with me and my office over the past three years. That engagement has ensured that the Government has been well informed of contrasting views and ideas and helped us to reach a proportionate balance. I would like to thank my bill team who have been working on this for some three years and I want to put on record my thanks to them in helping me to present a bill that I am very proud of and I think will do this Parliament proud. I consider this bill as it is now framed in its coherent and above all proportionate initial framework for the registration of lobbying activity in Scotland. Once again, I ask members to join me in supporting the passage of the Lobbying Scotland Bill at decision time. Thank you. That concludes the debate in the Lobbying Scotland Bill and it is now time to move on to the next item of business which is a point of order from Mr Kelly. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I wish to make a point of order covering 8.17.1 of the standing orders in relation to the publication of yesterday's Government expenditure and revenue statistics. As a result of an error in the calculation of the oil reserve figures the data released yesterday was incorrect. Indeed, the Government has now had to publish two further revisions of these statistics and as they have been subject to both parliamentary and public debate, I think it's a real matter of concern that we're now on to the third version of these figures. I therefore ask Deputy Presiding Officer that you ensure that the Deputy First Minister makes a statement to Parliament confirming that all stakeholders have been advised of these corrections and that the latest version of the statistics is complete and accurate. Thank you very much Mr Kelly for your point of order. I would say that the publications of yesterday's figures are certainly a matter for the Government. Corrections to them in my view are also a matter for the Government. However, you have made your point and I don't think it's a point of order if Mr Swinney wants to address it at this time then he's not offering to do so so we will leave it at that. Thank you for making the point but it's not a point of order. Now move on to the next item of business stage 3 proceedings on the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill and in dealing with I'm sorry, is there a problem? Right, thank you Mr Bailey. The next item of business is stage 3 proceedings on the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill and in dealing with the amendments members should have, the bill is amended at stage 2 and the marshal list and the groupings and division bill will sound and proceedings will be suspended at stage 3 proceedings. The period of voting for the first division will be 30 seconds thereafter or allow a voting period of one minute for the first division after debate. Members who wish to speak in the debate on any group of amendments should press the request of speak buttons as soon as possible after I call the group and members should now refer to the marshal lists of amendments and I now call on group 1 and call amendment 1 and group 2 to 6, 8, 9, 12, 15 to 18, 21 and 22 to move amendment 1 and speak to all amendments in the group please. I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak to those amendments. The Fiscal Framework requires the Scottish Fiscal Commission to prepare forecasts of tax revenues, demand-led social security expenditure and Scottish GDP. We currently have competence to legislate on functions based on the fiscal powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Acts of 1998 and 2012. We therefore propose those amendments to provide that the Scottish Fiscal Commission should prepare rolling five-year forecasts of receipts of fully devolved taxes which will initially cover land and buildings transaction tax and Scottish landfill tax and in due course further taxes wholly devolved to the Scottish Parliament including air passenger duty and aggregates levy. Receipts from non-domestic rates and receipts from the Scottish rate of income tax. The Non-Statuary Commission currently has a role in scrutinising the economic determinants of the Scottish Government's forecasts of non-domestic rate receipts. The agreement reached in the Fiscal Framework covers the entirety of the NDR forecast and amendment 1 also caters for this change in function. Amendment 22 ensures that the Commission will have direct statutory rights of access to the data held by the Scottish Assessors and by local authorities which it will require to prepare NDR forecasts. The Commission's existing function in relation to borrowing has been retained. The Commission will continue to be required to prepare reports setting out its assessment of the reasonableness of Scottish ministers' projections of borrowing requirements. We further propose that the Commission should retain the general function currently provided for in section 2.3 of the bill which enables it to undertake work on the fiscal matters in addition to its specific functions. Amendments 2 and 3 are intended to ensure that this flexibility reflects the Commission's new statutory functions. The purpose of amendment 8 is to require the Commission to provide the Scottish ministers with forecasts in sufficient time to support finalisation of the Scottish budget. The prior notification... I wonder if, at this stage, does he have a view on what he means by sufficient time? Is it a day, a week, a month or does he not have a view at this stage? In reality, I suspect that the time is probably less than two weeks before the date of the budget would be my view. That will not be specified. Of course, in the memorandum of understanding which I suspect will be deployed to inform relationships between the Government and the Fiscal Commission on working practices we can perhaps shed more detail on that. That would be a point. We will obviously say that the commission would be fully empowered to determine what they thought to be reasonable in that context. The prior notification is essential to the Scottish budget process as the commission's forecasts will determine the overall resources available to deploy in that budget. The timing of this advance access to forecasts will be specified in the protocol as I have indicated to Mr Brown and as provided for in section 4A. Amendment 9 adjusts the process for lame reports before Parliament in consequence of the change to the forecasting model. The purpose of amendment 12 is to dispense with the requirement on the commission to provide the Scottish ministers with a copy of a report prepared under section 2 1 where it has already been sent by virtue of the changes introduced by amendment 8. Amendments 15 to 18 are technical consequential amendments reflecting the shift to the forecasting functions in amendment. The purpose of amendments 20 and 21 is to protect the core forecasting function as set out in the new section 2A1 from being removed through regulations. That means that primary legislation would be required to remove the general forecasting function from the commission. Those amendments create a statutory framework that could be added to by regulations as the competence of the Scottish Parliament is expanded by the Scotland Act 2016. We have undertaken to consult on the scope of the commission's expanded powers and will bring forward a timetable for doing so after the bill is passed. I move amendment 1 and invite Parliament to agree to the remaining amendments in this group. Thank you very much. I rise to speak in support of amendment 1 and all the other amendments in this group and I very much welcome and support all of the amendments. Scottish Labour first argued that we should have the Fiscal Commission produce the official forecast in January 2015. We support all of the amendments in January 2015. We supported the finance committee's view, reached after something like two years of deliberation, that the Fiscal Commission should do the official forecast. I have to say that it is one of the best reports produced by the committee and I commend those involved, in particular the convener who said that we are strongly of the view that not only should the Fiscal Commission be independent but it is vital it is perceived to be independent. That is why we are calling for the bill to strengthen the commission's role and to give it responsibility for producing the official forecast. We are all surprised when the bill was introduced. The cabinet secretary appeared to have ignored the finance committee. He had ignored his colleagues. It was a pale imitation of what was required. The government were intent on keeping control. The commission was not to do the official forecast. At stage 1 consideration of the bill with one exception the committee maintained its position and rejected the Government's attempt to make the commission a less powerful body. John Swinney was sent away to think again. To secure the independence of the Fiscal Commission and the robustness of the forecast we were clear that the commission should be responsible for that official forecast. A matter of a few days later that all changed. SNP members, including the convener had somehow become converted. Some less generous than myself might say that they had been knobbled because suddenly they were convinced that it was a case of thumb screws being applied or did the convener believe that he had been wrong all along? I cannot ask him that question because neither Kenny Gibson, the convener nor Mark McDonald, one of the SNP members is in the chamber. I am disappointed that all that work just appeared to be thrown away. Having marched them up to the top of the hill the cabinet secretary abandoned them as he made a deal with the chief secretary to the Treasury that the Fiscal Commission would, contrary to his own view, would now indeed do the official forecasting. Mr Swinney must be positively dizzy with all the about turns he is making but I do very much welcome them. Presiding Officer it is right that the Fiscal Commission does the official forecasting as a consequence it will demonstrate its independence from government. With new powers and new responsibilities coming to this Parliament the institutions that we put in place are robust and transparent. Those amendments in the name of John Swinney help us to do just that. Thank you. Excellent. Now call on Gavin Brown. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The journey has indeed been a rich tapestry in relation to fiscal forecast but I am delighted to say that we are getting there in the end. This is probably the most important change that needed to be made to the bill. It's quite right that official forecast should be carried out by the Fiscal Commission not by the Scottish Government. There are a number of reasons for that but, most importantly, they have to be independent forecasts and they have to be seen to be independent. By so doing, those amendments also got rid of, I think, a rather weak reasonableness test which I don't think was going to offer much scrutiny. It gets rid of the messing about with economic determinants for non-domestic rates and I think it avoids or at least weakens the built-in optimism bias that any Government producing forecasts is at risk of producing and for all of those reasons I support all of those amendments in the name of John Swinney. As I said we got there in the end I was hoping that we would get there at stage 2 but I failed to convince the Cabinet Secretary I just wasn't quite up to the mark of convincing Mr Swinney that George Osborne was up to the mark. George Osborne managed to convince John Swinney that this is the right way to go and I say thank goodness for the persuasive powers of George Osborne. Thank you, Presiding Officer and I think I have to say it is no secret that I as one of the members of the Finance Committee have not been convinced all along that the SFC should be doing the forecasting. The main reasons for that have been that, one, it is fundamentally better to have one organisation to do the work, in this case forecasting and a separate organisation to check it. That is what happens with audits and both auditors and the SFC look to the future and look to the past. Secondly, it is going to be more resource intensive and therefore more expensive to have this kind of duplication of work. Thirdly, I am not convinced that the OBR model is that great and it is certainly in a minority internationally. Fourthly, the question of independence and who does the forecasting are two completely separate issues and should not be conflated. However, I do accept that the bargaining with Westminster over the fiscal framework has meant that we have not got the ideal situation in every case this being won. I will vote for the amendments tonight but if I am returned here and it all goes belly up I will be standing here to say that I said it before. Thank you. First Minister, if you wind up and press or withdraw your amendments. Presiding Officer, the first thing I have to say is that to reflect on Jackie Baillie's initial comment which Jackie Baillie said that she was rising to support the amendments and I just would like to say if that was a speech in support I would hate to see a speech that was not supportive. I suppose that that is how the Labour Party goes about its business. That is how they operate in such a ferret in sack-like mode on a constant basis with Jackie Baillie delivering speeches of support of that nature. I accept that this has been a long and winding journey on this particular question and I want to place on record the resolute consistency of Mr Mason who has been absolutely and totally consistent on his arguments throughout this process but if it wasn't for the fact that the finance committee at stage 2 had voted against these provisions I would have had nothing to give away in the fiscal framework negotiations and if it came down to a bargain between saving the Scottish budget a Tory attack of £7 billion of cuts to the public expenditure and me compromising to put these powers in place then I thought it was a price worth paying. Of course I'll give way to Mr Brown. Mr Brown, then encourage or attempt to persuade SNP members on the committee to change their view at stage 2. I would make absolutely no attempt to try to persuade members of the committee to do anything other than what they thought to be the right thing to do in given circumstances in a parliamentary process. Of course. Did he perhaps share with him the negotiations that were going on with the fiscal framework? As Jackie Baillie knows I have maintained absolute confidence around the conducting of the negotiations with the Treasury as was a proper approach for me to take the issues that were resolved. I am glad that those amendments seem to command support within the parliamentary chamber. They are part of the fiscal framework agreement that we are putting into place. We want to ensure that all details of the fiscal framework are put into practice in the fashion that is envisaged by the fiscal framework agreement. That is precisely what the Scottish Government has placed on the record of the amendments today. I invite Parliament to support amendment 1 and when it comes to the appropriate moment to support the other amendments in the group. Many thanks. The question is that amendment 1 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are. Now move to group 2 and call amendment 29 in the name of Jackie Baillie in the group on its own. Jackie Baillie to speak to and move amendment 29. Thank you very much Presiding Officer and I am pleased to move amendment 29 in my name. That amendment seeks to give the fiscal commission responsibility for scrutinising the Government's performance against fiscal rules and secondly to consider the sustainability of our public finances. In so doing I have reflected on the cabinet secretary's comments at stage 2 of the bill and the original intentions of the finance committee both in their report on fiscal institutions and their stage 1 report on the bill. Across the world fiscal institutions have a role in looking at fiscal rules and the future sustainability of public finances so this is actually nothing new. In the 17 OECD countries that have been researched 15 have responsibility for looking at the long term sustainability of public finances 11 have a role in monitoring compliance with fiscal rules. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Portugal Sweden and the United Kingdom to name but a few. So this is the normal thing for fiscal institutions to do. Mr Swinney asked at stage 1 and he has asked since what the fiscal rules are. As finance secretary I would expect him to know this but let me just help him here. These are the fiscal rules that are set out in the Public Finance and Accountability Scotland Act. There are the fiscal rules in relation to capital borrowing, revenue borrowing, the budget exchange mechanism, all of three which will change when the new Scotland bill becomes an act. The fiscal rules set by the Scottish Government itself, the 5% revenue finance projects can. Then there are the rules set out in the fiscal framework agreement including the Scotland reserve. We should be interested in making sure that these are scrutinised and reported to Parliament. Let me turn to the sustainability of public finances because when you consider the international monetary fund fiscal council data set you can see that the second most important function of the emerging new generation of fiscal councils is to judge the long term sustainability of public finances. I don't see why we shouldn't want to do that. The majority of expert witnesses to the committee agreed that both areas were important. The Scottish Fiscal Commission in a letter to the committee itself said that it believes that it should have responsibility for assessing the forecast on the sustainability of Scotland's public finances such as adherence to fiscal rules and it would welcome the bill being amended now to anticipate this additional responsibility. Indeed, Professor Hughes-Hallot, a member of the commission said to the committee that the bill should be amended to make explicit that the commission has a role in assessing fiscal sustainability. Professor Campbell Leith, another member of the commission, remember that these commissioners are appointed by the cabinet secretary himself. He said that one of the main objectives of creating a fiscal commission is to ensure that there is fiscal sustainability. The committee convener, Presiding Officer, Kenny Gibson, reflecting the committee's unanimous view on this, said that we believe that it should assess the Scottish Government's adherence to its fiscal rules and assess the long-term sustainability of the public finances. That will further strengthen the independent scrutiny role of the commission and reflect the view of many witnesses who have appeared before the committee. Not my words, Presiding Officer. Kenny Gibson's. OECD, the Fiscal Commission members themselves, the Finance Committee and numerous expert witnesses besides, I hope that the cabinet secretary is listening and will indeed support my amendment 29. Are you moving your amendment? Which I move, Presiding Officer. Gavin Brown. I rise to support amendment 29 in relation to the fiscal rules and sustainability of the public finances. As Jackie Baillie said, the committee agreed that in its entirety in our report there was no dissent whatsoever and so I therefore look forward to hearing John Mason's comments on this matter to see if he is as keen on consistency in this group of amendments as he was on the previous group of amendments. The agreement of the committee in January backed up the committee's previous report on the fiscal framework from June of last year where we made exactly the same a day after the stage 2 process the Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster seemed to support our view as well where they said, an enhanced Scottish Fiscal Commission should monitor and report on the Scottish Government's performance against those targets namely the fiscal targets set out. The framework itself section 98 and section 101 is about relying if there is a dispute on the technical input on the dispute coming from the Scottish Fiscal Commission. If they are going to be of use in a dispute I think they have to have as wide a remit as possible and not only produce the official forecast as they are destined to do at the moment. There have been a number of changes from the amendment put forward at stage 2 by Jackie Baillie. She has removed any reference of policy objectives and she has sought expert advice and she has shared it. I know, as a matter of fact, at least a week ago with all members of the committee to make sure that there were no technical objections to it so that we could debate purely the principle. I note previous arguments that it is the job of Parliament to assess the long-term forecast of public finances. Yes, it is, but Parliament would certainly be aided in doing that job and scrutiny by having access to the Fiscal Commission. The Scottish Fiscal Commission Jackie Baillie read out two quotes, but in their written submission to the finance committee they believed that they should have responsibility for assessing the Scottish Government's forecast on the sustainability of Scotland's public finances such as adherence to fiscal rules as an example and it would welcome the bill being amended now to anticipate this additional responsibility when it arises. For all of those reasons I support amendment 29 and I genuinely hope that the Government will back that amendment so that we can have a fiscal commission really worth shouting about. Thank you very much, Deputy First Minister. Presiding Officer, I welcome the opportunity to debate further Jackie Baillie's amendment which, as she indicated and as the Government Brown said, has been debated in a different form but largely similar principle at stage 2. I remain unclear of the added value or enhanced scrutiny provided by way of the commission assessing Scottish ministers' performance against fiscal rules. The Scottish Government is subject to budgetary rules which Jackie Baillie includes in her definition of fiscal rules, performance against which is already effectively assessed by the Auditor General as part of the annual audit of the Scottish Government's annual financial statements. We are also subject to statutory aggregate borrowing limits set administratively by the United Kingdom Government. There are already established mechanisms for reporting to Parliament on those issues. It is a matter of fact as to whether or not the Scottish Government operates within those limits and so it remains unclear what public value the commission could add in carrying out assessments against those limits. Should the Scottish Government gain borrowing flexibilities in future which would enable us to set further and more flexible fiscal rules so that we revisit the issue and consider whether the commission could add value in reporting on the Government's adherence to such rules. In relation to fiscal sustainability I remain of the view that this is primarily a role for elected members of the Scottish Parliament who hold ministers directly to account for the robustness of our financial judgments. I'll give way to Mr Schiffford. We did not be very difficult for members to do that unless they have the level of analysis of the fiscal commission or such in order to have the information in order to hold the Government to account on that issue. My judgment is that there is not a lack of financial information that circulates around in relation to the setting of the budget process. Mr Chisholm and I were both former members of the House of Commons. The degree of financial scrutiny and financial provisions in this Parliament is significantly stronger and more detailed than anything that I experienced in the House of Commons. There are spring and autumn budget revisions and there is all the information that is set out and the scrutiny to which we are subjected by the Auditor General and the wider role that the Auditor General undertakes. I think that members of the Parliament have a very strong access to data and information to enable them to undertake that task. I'll give way to Mr Bannisgold. I was struck by his earlier comment that as further borrowing powers for example might emerge, she might be prepared then to come back and look at this, but is that not to concede that in principle Mr Bailey's amendment is sensible because the whole point about the fiscal commission is we are creating something, a very important body which we have never had before which I think has the attraction to many onlookers of being the first time we've had a composite umbrella body with a very important job and a very important form with very important duties and I'd have thought that the cabinet secretary far from seeing this as in some way tiresome, restricting or distracting actually a support to the very important job he is charged with doing. At no stage did I use any of the language that Bannisgold has just suggested were reasons why this amendment should not be supported. At no stage have I used the word tiresome scrutiny. What I've said is that I believe that the financial scrutiny is there by virtue of the current exercise of functions by Audit Scotland and by virtue of the fact that the fiscal rules under which I am obliged to operate, whether that is living within the revenue limit set by the United Kingdom Government which is the rule in which I have to operate or the capital del requirement or a fixed borrowing limit which will be set at 3 per cent of the £450 million per annum if we couldn't borrow £450 million because we would be prevented from doing so because it would breach our administrative limits. My point is that I don't see and the description I said was that I could not see what the added value of this was in relation to the amendment that was being put forward by Jackie Baillie. So I don't think it's an appropriate role for the Scottish Fiscal Commission and as I've indicated in my responses to interventions risk duplicating the rules already fulfilled by the Parliament and by the Auditor General. I therefore ask Jackie Baillie not to press her amendment feeling which I recommend to Parliament that Parliament does not support the amendment. My thanks. No call on Jackie Baillie to wind up and press or withdraw her amendment. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I intend to press the amendment. The Cabinet Secretary has deployed some of these arguments before. So let me take them in turn. Firstly, he says that this is a role for Audit Scotland. Let me just read out the Auditor General's role is to appoint auditors to Scotland's central government and NHS bodies to examine how public bodies spend public money to help them to manage their finances to the highest standards and to check whether they achieve value for money. I don't see fiscal rules or indeed sustainability of public finances in that. Now Audit Scotland have published in a second because Audit Scotland have published a number of reports on developing financial reporting in Scotland. They have written to the finance committee recently on the fiscal framework as well. They are very strong in wanting a comprehensive, transparent, reliable and timely reporting of Scotland's public finances. A key part of which is the overall account of revenues, expenditure, assets and liabilities of the Scottish public sector as a whole. Scrutinising the sustainability of public finances is something with which they agree. That is complementary to Audit Scotland's work. I am sure that, as with other bodies that the cabinet secretary has referred to when we were debating this at stage 1 and stage 2, that a facility of a memorandum of understanding could be put in place that ensures co-operation between both bodies. I will take an intervention now. John Swinney. The point that I wanted to intervene on was the point when Jackie Baillie set out the functions of Audit Scotland. Those functions are about assessing essentially the quality of judgments that are made about financial decision making that are undertaken. That is already part of the remit of Audit Scotland. That is why I think that this provision would duplicate that essential role. I do not think that it is unnecessary. I do not think that it provides duplication. I have suggested to the cabinet secretary a way of ensuring that that does not happen, which is a memorandum of understanding that is quite commonly used with other bodies. Can I turn to the issue of the role of Parliament? Ultimately, it is always the role of Parliament to hold the executive to account. Parliament can and should be assisted in this task. We currently benefit hugely from information from SPICE, from the financial scrutiny unit and indeed others besides. I expect that the Finance Committee and the Parliament itself will benefit hugely from the Fiscal Commission's work in the future. Malcolm Trism is absolutely right. We should be equipped with the financial information, the factual information on which we can then make informed judgments. I would have thought that that is something that Parliament aspires to. My final word, Presiding Officer, is really a reflection again about the committee. It is a reflection by every single member of the Finance Committee, in their first committee report on fiscal institutions and then in the stage 1 report on the bill. I would be hugely disappointed if today those members changed their minds. I cannot ask the convener, I cannot ask Mark McDonald because they are not here, but I would genuinely be hugely disappointed if they changed their minds and as has already been referred to. I will take John Mason. John Mason. For the sake of completeness, the issue mentions me. I have to say that this is not an issue that I think is absolutely central and that I feel very strongly about. I did feel very strongly about the forecasting and, as John Swinney said, I have been consistent on that. I struggle to understand the difference that this would really make. I have simply observed that for two years you have struggled to understand what difference this would make, but you have nevertheless supported it. You supported it in the original report, you supported it in the stage 1 report and I would have had much more respect for people if they had stayed consistent to that. Particularly so, because, as Gavin Brown said, I consulted each and every member of the Finance Committee to make sure that I was properly reflecting the committee's view. Needless to say, I did not get a response to my email from many of the SNP members which, again, is disappointing. Presiding Officer, this is what fiscal institutions do. If we want to be in line with what the rest of the world does, then we should be supporting amendment 29. Clearly, based on what the cabinet secretary has said, I am unlikely to be happy when this is voted on. The question is that amendment 29 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are not agreed. There will therefore be a division. As this is the first division of the stage, the Parliament is suspended for five minutes. Order. The result of the vote on amendment 29 is yes, 43. No, 63. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. I now call amendments 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, all in the name of the Deputy First Minister and all previously debated. I invite the Deputy First Minister to move amendments 2 to 6 on block, please. Does any member object to a single question being put on amendments 2 to 6? Since no member objects, the question is that amendments 2 to 6 are agreed. Are we all agreed? We are. That brings us to group 3, review of accuracy of forecasts and I call amendment 7 in the name of the Deputy First Minister group with amendments 10, 11, 13 and 14. I invite the Deputy First Minister to move amendment 7 and speak to all of the amendments in the group, please. The purpose of amendment 7 is to provide a basis for scrutiny by and accountability to the Scottish Parliament in relation to the previous commission's forecasts. I believe that it is important that the forecasts that underpin the Scottish budget process are robust as possible and informed by previous experience. The commission will therefore conduct a self-evaluation of its previous forecast for each financial year. It is for the commission to determine the content of those forecasts which may include comparisons of assumptions, risks and projections used by the commission against the actual outturn and results. Amendments 10, 11, 13 and 14 are consequential amendments which ensure that the reports on the accuracy are laid before the Parliament and published by the commission. I move amendment 7 and ask members to support the remaining amendments in the group at the appropriate time. Since no one has requested to speak, Deputy First Minister, do you wish to wind up? No further comments. Question 9 is that amendment 7 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? Yes. We are. Call amendments 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18. I invite Deputy First Minister to move amendments 8 to 18 on block, please. Move them block, please. Thank you. Does any member object to a single question being put on amendments 8 to 18? Since no member has objected, the question is that amendments 8 to 18 are agreed, are we all agreed? We are. That brings us to group 4, Scottish Minister's statement and a call amendment 19 in the name of Deputy First Minister in a group on its own. I ask the Deputy First Minister to move and speak to amendment 19, please. The Fiscal Framework Agreement specifies that the commission should prepare the tax and GDP forecasts that support the operation of that framework. I consider it to be equally important that we take legislative action to ensure that the commission's forecasts have official status and to create a presumption that those are the forecasts that will inform the Scottish budget. The intention of amendment 19 is to ensure that the Scottish ministers are required to give account to the Scottish Parliament if they do not use the forecast prepared by the commission in the Scottish budget. In such an instance, which I would expect to arise only in truly exceptional circumstances, the Scottish ministers must make a statement to Parliament to explain the basis of any disagreement. The statement must be laid before Parliament at the same time as budget documentation. That requirement, read together with amendments 1 and 8, will create a presumption that those ministers will use the forecast prepared by the commission in the Scottish budget and requires them to report to Parliament so that the basis of the decision taken by ministers is transparent and can be appropriately scrutinised. I move amendment 19. Many thanks. No other member has requested to speak to Deputy First Minister. Do you wish to add any further comments? Many thanks. The question is, that amendment 19 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are. That brings us to group 5, due to co-operating with the office of the committee. The committee has agreed that amendment 19 be agreed to. The question is, that amendment 19 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are. That brings us to group 5, due to co-operating with the office of the committee. That brings us to group 5, due to co-operating with the office for budget responsibility. I call amendment 23 in the name of the Deputy First Minister in a group on its own and invite the Deputy First Minister to move and speak to amendment 23. The purpose of amendment 23 is to implement a requirement in the fiscal framework agreement that the Scottish and United Kingdom Governments will introduce a reciprocal statutory duty of co-operation between the commission and the office for budget responsibility. That amendment will support the two independent bodies in discharging their statutory functions, both as they exist now and as they will be amended once the Smith proposals are fully implemented. Although that amendment places a duty on the Scottish Fiscal Commission only, we expect the United Kingdom Government to introduce a reciprocal arrangement through a section 104 order under the Scotland Act 1998 order in due course. The fiscal framework anticipates that the statutory duty will be underpinned by a memorandum of understanding between the two bodies that will set out more detailed, practical working arrangements. I move amendment 23. I have no further request to speak. Do you wish to add anything? The question is that amendment 23 be agreed to, are we all agreed? That brings us to group 6, review of commission's performance review period and a call amendment 24 in the name of the Deputy First Minister group with amendments 25, 26, 27 and 28. I ask the Deputy First Minister to move amendment 24 and speak to all of the amendments in the group. The amendments bring forward the timing of the first external review of the commission's performance so that the first review will occur after two years of commencement of its statutory functions. After that review will be required at least once every five years. Those measures will help to ensure an early review of how the commission is performing its functions and to provide assurance that the forecasting arrangements are working well. It is particularly relevant in the early phases of the commission's work, where there is not the same legacy of reporting and forecasts upon which the commission can build. The commission itself will determine the scope of the first and indeed every review. That means that there is scope to ensure that the scope of the first review is proportionate to the status and situation of the commission at that time. There is a clear public interest in ensuring that there is an early check on the commission's work and governance arrangements. By requiring the first external review after two years, we are taking additional steps to ensure that this Parliament and the people of Scotland can have confidence that the commission's forecasts, which will underpin the Scottish budget, are robust. I move amendment 24. Many thanks. I have no further requests to speak. Do you wish to add anything, Deputy First Minister? Nothing, Presiding Officer. The question is that amendment 24 be agreed to. Are we all agreed? We are. That ends consideration of amendments. I will allow a few moments for the chamber to clear before we move on. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ond, transparansate and accountability to the Parliament and the public, and I commend the bill to the Parliament this afternoon. The finance committee has devoted many hours to scrutiny of the Government's proposals for the fiscal commission, both prior to and during the legislative process. I am grateful to the convener and to members of the committee for the thoughtful consideration that they have given to those issues and the challenge that they have brought to bear. That challenge has helped us to test and refine our proposals so that we can all be satisfied that the bill delivers the strongest possible arrangements to safeguard the forecasts that support the Scottish budget. I would also like to place on record my thanks to the individuals and organisations who took time to respond to the Government's consultation on our legislative proposals last year and to the various calls for evidence on the topic that has been issued by the finance committee since 2013. Those contributions have provided fresh perspectives that have helped us to guide and shape our policy. Parliament is aware that in order to secure a fair deal for Scotland on the block grant adjustment that ensured that there was no detriment to Scotland's budget. I agreed to compromise on the production of forecasts in the fiscal framework agreement. I have previously expressed significant reservations about this forecasting model. However, I am confident that the arrangements in the bill before Parliament this afternoon will ensure that the commission is equipped to produce robust forecasts to underpin the Scottish budget and that Parliament can appropriately hold the commission to account for its work. The amendments approved by Parliament this afternoon mean that the commission will prepare five-year forecasts of receipts from the fully-devolved taxes from non-domestic rates and from the Scottish rate of income tax, and that those will be prepared in time to meet the needs of the Scottish budget process. The commission will be required to publish an explanation of the methodology and assumptions that it applied in preparing its forecasts so that those can be scrutinised by Parliament, academic commentators and others. Furthermore, our amendments ensure that the commission's forecasts are the official forecasts that support the Scottish budget, the commission's core statutory function is to prepare forecasts and assessments that inform the Scottish budget. I have gone further than the equivalent obligations on the UK Government by providing in statute that the Scottish ministers must make a statement to Parliament if they depart from the commission's forecasts and prepare in the Scottish budget. That ensures that Parliament can properly hold ministers to account for choosing such a course of action. I would anticipate that the Scottish ministers would not take such a decision lightly and that the only and truly exceptional circumstances would turn to forecasts to be used in the Scottish budget. Can he tell us what resources the Scottish Government will have? He is obviously talking about the possibility of them rejecting a commission forecast. Will the Scottish Government have the same resources now in terms of forecasting or will there be lesser resources? It is not clear to me what the case would be. I intend to maintain those resources within Government to ensure that we can satisfy ourselves that we have a forecast on the fiscal commission that we believe to be credible and deliverable to underpin the Scottish budget. The timing of commencement of forecasting responsibilities is still to be discussed and agreed with the fiscal commission. I want us to be in a position whereby the commission can exercise its full forecasting responsibilities as early as possible, but it is important to allow the commission time to put robust resourcing and operational arrangements in place so that the Government and Parliament can be assured over the integrity of the forecast that is underpinning the Scottish budget. I have every conference that the chair and members of the commission will do just that as they oversee the transition to a statutory body, but I place on record the fact that we will need to agree those transition arrangements with the fiscal commission to ensure that we have robust forecasts to underpin the Scottish budget. This Parliament currently has competence to legislate for a fiscal commission with functions related to the tax and borrowing powers devolved by the Scotland Acts of 1998 and 2012. Once the current Scotland bill has been enacted, we will be able to move quickly to expand the functions of the commission in accordance with the fiscal framework agreement. We plan to use the regulation-making powers in the bill to require the commission to also produce forecasts of devolved demand-led social security expenditure and Scottish GDP, as well as modify the existing function in relation to income tax to reflect the wider powers due for devolution in 2017. The Government has brought forward amendments that not only deliver the changes in statutory functions necessary to fulfil my obligations under the fiscal framework agreement, but which build in additional safeguards to strengthen the scrutiny and accountability arrangements that underpin a forecast preparation model. I have already referred to the requirement on the commission to publish details of its forecasting methodology, as the Scottish Government has done for the past two years. In addition, the commission will be required to prepare a report evaluating the accuracy of its previous forecasts, providing transparency over the past precision and accuracy of its technical analysis. The commission will also be subject to an external review of its performance two years after the commencement of its statutory functions. That recognises the strong public interest in ensuring that the forecasting arrangements that underpin the Scottish budget and the operation of our new fiscal framework are operating effectively and supported by robust institutional governance arrangements. All of those reviews and reports must be laid before Parliament, providing additional tools by which Parliament can hold the commission to account. I also want to ensure that we retain a form of the challenge function currently carried out by the non-statutory commission, which I believe has greatly enhanced the Government's forecasting abilities. I envision that forecasts will be prepared in future by a professional group of staff appointed by the commission, and those forecasts will in turn be scrutinised by members of the commission. I have shared that view with members of the commission who will determine how forecasts will be produced and what quality assurance processes are required to vouchsafe the integrity of those forecasts. At introduction, the bill delivered a Scottish Fiscal Commission, which was structurally operationally invisibly independent of government. Independence has been a key feature of our proposals for the commission. With Audit Scotland commenting on the consultation paper that was published almost a year ago on 26 March 2015, it rightly identifies the independence and impartiality of the commission as being of Parliament importance and sets out proposals to achieve that. The bill expressly provides that the commission will not be the subject of direction or control of any member of the Scottish Government in performing its functions, guaranteeing its operational independence. The amendment that I brought forward at stage 2 to require the commission and the Government to agree and publish a protocol to deliver greater transparency in the interaction between the commission and Scottish ministers. The commission will retain the flexibility to determine its own work programme within the scope of devolved fiscal powers enhancing its operational independence. The commission will rightly be directly accountable to Parliament for the discharge of its functions, and Parliament will have a key role in approving the appointment of members of the commission. In light of issues raised by the Finance Committee in its stage 1 report, I brought forward amendments at stage 2 that allow members of the commission to be appointed to serve a second consecutive term of office on which to specify that an appointment term will be a maximum of five years. Everybody across the chamber should welcome the creation of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. It demonstrates how seriously we are committed to establishing robust forecasting arrangements to support the operation of new tax and borrowing powers. The continuation of the Scottish Fiscal Commission as a statutory body is another important milestone in the journey to enhance Scotland's fiscal powers. The commission already plays a key role in supporting the exercise of the tax powers devolved under the Scotland Acts of 1998 and 2012. The bill provides for an institutional and operational framework that enhances that role, protects the commission's independence and creates a solid basis for the commission to expand its functions over time, in line with the fiscal powers of this Parliament. I move that Parliament agrees that the Fiscal Commission bill will be passed this afternoon. I welcome the opportunity to participate in the stage 3 debate of the Scottish Fiscal Commission bill. At the outset, I want to thank my colleagues on the finance committee, the clerks, all those who gave evidence to the committee and, indeed, I want to acknowledge the role of George Osborne, the Tory chancellor, for apparently it was he who convinced the cabinet secretary to make the Fiscal Commission more robust. It was, of course, in January 2015 that Scottish Labour set out our plans for a Scottish Office of Budget Responsibility—a truly independent body, one with teeth—that would ensure that we have greater transparency and scrutiny of Scotland's public finances. Its importance cannot be overstated, because we have substantial new powers coming over taxation and welfare. No longer will it be just about spending money that somebody else has given us. We are now responsible for raising some of it, too. Being honest and open with the Scottish people about what the economic future holds, placing forecasting in the hands of experts free of political manipulation, is absolutely the right thing for us to do. Of course, that applies to all Governments of whatever political colour. Let us look at the context that we face. At stage 1, I pointed to oil for the first time in a decade, down below $30 a barrel. GDP growth figures clearly affected in a negative way. Growth in Scotland, both onshore and offshore, is not good and certainly not performing, as well as the rest of the UK. Just yesterday, the jazz figures were published. I understand from James Kelly not once, not twice, but indeed three times, because the figures provided by the Scottish Government were incorrect. I am sure that the cabinet secretary regrets that, but I think that he will also acknowledge that that does not fill people with confidence. Jazz, which is the Scottish Government's balance sheet, tells us that there is a staggering £15 billion gap in our public finances. That is more than the funding for the entirety of the NHS. When Labour called for a Scottish OBR, the existing fiscal commission had a limited role. No forecasting responsibility, members appointed by the cabinet secretary, serving as both advisers at the same time as providing scrutiny, did not provide reassurance about the independence of the commission. I am very pleased that that has now changed. The fiscal commission is now, to be honest, statutory footing, responsible for the official forecast for assessing expenditure and income across the Scottish Government's responsibilities with better governance arrangements than we had before. I am, I confess, disappointed that the cabinet secretary has rejected my amendment on scrutiny of fiscal rules and the sustainability of public finances. I regret that he and his party have turned their face against making sure that the fiscal commission is truly robust. Having those responsibilities is the normal stuff of fiscal institutions across the world, but it is not to be that in Scotland. Yet it says—or at least it certainly was, something that SNP members on the finance committee agreed with. I was delighted to see, for a couple of seconds, both Kenny Gibson and Mark MacDonald make their way to the chamber to vote against my amendment, something that they have believed in for more than two years, but, of course, they have left again. I do not know why that is. Maybe it is to hide their embarrassment. The finance committee previously produced a much welcomed report on the need for a robust fiscal institution. That was followed by an equally thoughtful and robust stage 1 report. In both, only one member descended from the commission producing the official forecast. As I said earlier, that was John Mason. I respect his consistency on that issue, even if I disagree with him. However, I regret his subsequent lack of consistency in other areas of the committee's thinking. However, what genuinely disappoints me is that other members and the convener changed their minds at the 11th hour just before stage 2. Low and behold, days later, before the fiscal framework was announced, they changed their minds again. Official forecasting was now to be the responsibility of the fiscal commission. When it comes to the commission scrutinising fiscal rules or considering fiscal sustainability, they all agreed, but now they have changed their minds. The cabinet secretary had clearly marched his SNP members up to the top of the hill and promptly abandoned them. He said that he did not influence them. He said that he did not tell them about the fiscal framework negotiations. I ask people to think about that. They have held a consistent view, a strongly expressed view for two years, and remarkably, they changed their minds at the 11th hour. I do not know what happened. However, it is a matter for individual members to determine how they protect their own credibility as politicians, but I care about the credibility of the committee. The flip-flopping was embarrassing. It did no credit to the committee. It did no credit to this Parliament. I hope that we can all reflect on that for the future. Scotland is on the verge of gaining substantial new powers. With those new powers, come new responsibilities. We need openness and transparency in the stewardship of the nation's finances, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission will be a very welcome addition to that process. We support the bill at stage 3. I want to begin on a positive note by saying that the bill that we now have, the bill that I hope will pass today at decision time, is considerably better than the bill that was drafted prior to stage 1. My own view was that the bill from stage 1 had a number of flaws, first of all, allowing only the Scottish Government to do the forecasts, not even really encouraging any alternative forecasts to be published, along with the cabinet secretary making clear his view that there ought not to be any alternative forecasts. We had a position where the Fiscal Commission was simply to assess the reasonableness of the Scottish Government forecasts. In looking through that over the course of this budget process, the reasonableness test was such a low bar that it was difficult to foresee a situation where it would do anything other than pass the Government's forecasts as reasonable. When quizzed on whether there would be any numbers at all that they could suggest that would be deemed to be unreasonable, they were unable to say so, and they stated bluntly that they did not look at the numbers, they did not look at the outputs at all, they looked at the models underpinning those numbers. I welcome hugely the amendments that were passed in group 1 of the process earlier today, because I think that they were absolutely fundamental. Without them, I genuinely think that we would not have had a Fiscal Commission worthy of the name. Without them, what I think we would have had is a series of educated, useful, intelligent advisers who would make the budget process better than without them, but it would be nowhere close to what is known internationally as an independent fiscal institution. That change really rescued the bill from what would otherwise have still been perhaps a little helpful but have almost no real regard in terms of scrutiny, particularly for the powers that will be coming forward in the years to come. There is a huge improvement, and obviously for that reason we will continue to support the bill and vote for it at stage 3. However, I have to say in all honesty to the cabinet secretary after working on this for well over two years. I am left with just a bit of a feeling of dissatisfaction at the end of the process for a number of the reasons that Jackie Baillie outlined in her contribution, but I have just been working on it on that committee for a couple of years extra and taking into account a huge amount of evidence over the process. So I am disappointed that we do not have an amendment in there to look at the sustainability of the finances and to look at the adherence to the fiscal rules, because that seems to happen all over the OACD. When looking at the contribution from SPICE who got a document from the OACD with looking at 17 countries, all 17 of them do one or the other. All 17 of them look at either the long-term sustainability or the monitoring of fiscal rules, and nine out of the 17 do both. The fact that we will do neither makes us a bit of an outlier. I was dissatisfied too with the stage 2 of the finance committee report, and now we will return to this in closing. However, in attempting to be helpful and answer a question from me, the cabinet secretary for me has just opened up more questions. At stage 1, we all agreed without any debate or without anyone going away from it in relation to fiscal rules, we all thought that was the way that we had to go. We had held that position for well over a year. However, all of a sudden, when it came down to stage 2, four members of the finance committee voted against that amendment and the amendment failed. I asked simply if the cabinet secretary did not attempt to put any pressure on them at all. If the confidentiality was maintained, as he said, and I have no reason to doubt him whatsoever, what was it that made them change their mind? What was the intervening evidence between that report being published in the middle of January and the vote being taken in early February that made them vote the way that we did? I think that, as a committee member and as a Parliament, we are entitled to an explanation of why that was the case. I just hope that we get that over the course of the debate. Many thanks. We now turn to the short open debate, and I call John Mason to be followed by Malcolm Chishol in speeches of four minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I am very happy to speak in today's debate. I very much welcome the fact that we have a fiscal commission in place, and we are going to have a strengthened fiscal commission in place, and through this bill it is going to be put on the statutory footing. As has been said by other members, we have spent a fair bit of time in the finance committee examining and discussing such commissions and how they work, as well as being the lead committee when the bill went through its process. While Scotland aspires to be an independent country at some point, with all the extra powers and responsibilities that that involves, we are clearly not at that point yet. Internationally, there are not that many examples of devolved administrations or states in a federal system that have independent fiscal institutions. I think that some of the US states do, Ontario does and Catalonia, but not very many others. So we have tended to look at smaller independent countries as models, and some of the committee went to Sweden and a couple of us went to Ireland. Therefore, in the first place, Scotland has the opportunity, I believe, to set an example and really to be leading the way for devolved Governments and Parliaments in having such an institution or commission. As we studied more of those international examples and as we thought through how a commission would work, I became increasingly convinced that the normal international model of an independent commission commenting on or endorsing forecasts was the best model. That is the norm internationally. The UK is an exception. In that respect, I agreed with the Government and disagreed with the majority of the committee. In fact, the commission members themselves were not convinced by the OBR model. I have to say that I have a huge respect for all three of the commission members, and I very much hope that they will be able and willing to take on the different role from the one that they had expected. However, as part of the negotiations over the fiscal framework, I accept that Westminster was keen to have us adopt their OBR model, and I accept that the Scottish Government agreed to that as part of the bargaining process. That was obviously the main area of disagreement at committee. There has been mention today of the one amendment that we had at stage 3. I have to say that there is a bit of tokenism going on here. Labour, as the Opposition, is trying to fight off the Tories and is trying to show that they must oppose something, and they hunted through the bill and found a little thing, and they created an amendment on that. I have time, yes. That is something that you have believed in for more than two years now. It is not about hunting for something to disagree with. It is about making sure that we have a robust fiscal commission that is worthy of this Parliament. I think that we have that. As I have said, a major issue is who does the forecasting, but today's amendment is a very peripheral issue. I find it very hard to get excited about it. I do not believe that Jackie Baillie is excited about it. I think that she is just making a bit of a mountain out of a molehill. Independence for the Scottish Fiscal Commission was one topic that we all agreed was essential. Partly that comes from because of having appropriate structures, but I remain convinced that the other essential element is the integrity and the independence of the individuals involved. In that respect, forecasting and independence are two distinct concepts. It really does not affect the independence of the Fiscal Commission whether they are doing the forecasting or not. We have the good example of Audit Scotland who check other people's work and comment on it and are hugely respected. I find that amendment 7 is a slightly strange amendment—we have voted for it—but it talks about the commission preparing reports containing an assessment of the accuracy of its forecasts prepared by it. We have been forced into the slightly odd position that the commission is having to comment on its own forecasts. Just on the cost, we have been very generous so far with the Fiscal Commission at £850,000. That is more than the Irish or the Swedes get. I do not think that we should be throwing more money at them without a lot of caution, but I welcome the fact that we will have the Scottish Fiscal Commission and I hope that members will support it at decision time. Members have explained that this has been a long and twisting road. I am afraid that I have not been able to follow every turn since I am not on the finance committee, but I am pleased at the destination that we have arrived at. When the original model was proposed, I had two worries about it. First, although the theory was that we would have the Government forecast, which the commission would then comment on, it seemed to be that the SFC was acting much more as advice to the Government. There was constant interaction during the process, which might have meant that it had influence, but it also reduced its independence. That was a flaw in the model, but the more fundamental flaw, of course, was that it was not involved in the forecast at all. We are told that there is not a single Fiscal Commission anywhere that only looks at official Government forecasts. That needed to be sorted out. David Bell gave an interesting quote about why that was necessary. I think that it is essential that the forecasting is done outside the Government, and then you will know that if they are wrong—which is probably going to be true—they will be honestly wrong rather than dishonestly wrong. I suppose that a more neutral way of putting that is that Governments tend to indulge in optimism bias. I am pleased that we have an enhanced role for the commission. It is going to be reviewed. That is good. There can also be external valuation of the work. We can have a mechanism perhaps to have external valuation through local or international experts, as is recommended by the OECD. However, I am slightly worried beyond that about the perhaps overemphasis on checking that we are still hearing from the Cabinet Secretary. I may have this wrong, but it seems to me that there is going to be certain forecaster appointed and the FSC members are going to check them. That seems to me to be rather over-engineered. I was slightly surprised to hear that the Scottish Government is going to have the same forecasting capacity that it currently has checking the SFC. I was slightly surprised by all that checking going on. That departs from the OBR model. We need to keep a watch on that. One reason to keep a watch on that is that it is going to have increased expenditure, because if we have all that capacity still in the Scottish Government and, obviously, extra capacity in the SFC, that will have financial implications. Obviously, tax is going to be critical for that, but it will also have a role in terms of the new social security powers. I think that the main issue that could be controversial in the next five years between the two Governments relates to the spillover effects. I think that the cabinet secretary pointed out at one or other of his committee appearances that information from the OBR and the FSC would be helpful in resolving any controversies in that particular area. John Mason said that he is not excited about Jackie Baillie's amendment and he claims that none of us are, but it is a very important amendment that Jackie Baillie put forward. I hope that that will be revisited in due course. Many European countries have one or other of the responsibilities referred to. I am particularly interested in an assessment of the long-term sustainability of the public finances. That is not one of the functions of Audit Scotland to look five years ahead, projecting what we know about policies and tax and project that forward five years. The cabinet secretary says that I and everybody else can hold him to account and that we cannot. We do not have that information unless we have experts projecting forward as the OBR does over five years. I think that that is one of the problems that there is almost a prejudice against the OBR among certain members of this, but I think that the OBR does produce good reports on financial sustainability looking five years ahead. I do not see why the Scottish Fiscal Commission should not perform the same function. I welcome the changes that have been made in the bill. I hope that that is not the end of the process. I am sure that members who are coming back will keep a close watch from inside. I and no doubt Gavin Brown will keep a close watch from outside. Thank you very much. We now turn to the closing speeches and I understand that this will be Gavin Brown's last speech. On behalf of all the Presiding Officers, I thank you for your contribution to the Parliament. I wish you all the best for the future. Presiding Officer, I did not realise until now that this is going to be my last speech. You obviously know something that I do not. Indeed, the whip in this Parliament must move in very mysterious ways. I just hope that I do not get dragged into anything next week or indeed the week after. This has been a very short debate, summing up just a handful of interim speeches since I last spoke. It is always a difficult job, but I think that the starting point has to be all of us want to see this bill to pass today. As I said in my introduction, it is considerably better than it was at the start. For that reason alone, I think that it deserves the entire support of the Parliament. If you look at the genesis of fiscal commissions across the world, why did they come about and why did they come about? In almost all cases, the reason why it came about to start with was because there was a big recession, there was a downturn that was not predicted, there was a downturn that turned out to be demonstrably worse than anyone had predicted. All of that was driven by optimism bias from Government. Government after Government has set up a fiscal commission in order to make sure that we manage the pens and the pounds, to make sure that we minimise or indeed eradicate optimism bias and to get independent expertise along with a set of checks and balances. That is one of the reasons why I think that we are doing it now, coupled with the fact that we already have some financial powers and we are getting considerably more. If you only have financial powers looking at, for example, LBTT, if you get it slightly wrong, you can quite often find a way of accommodating that change to make sure that it does not impact on the services that you can provide. However, once we move into income tax, once we move into looking carefully at non-domestic rates, once we move into a portion of ultimately VAT, with the greater number of powers we have, the greater the risk is for getting it wrong. If we get it wrong at the forecast stage, particularly in predicting that we are going to get more than we actually get, then we have serious problems in relation to the Scottish budget in making sure that we can then correct those errors going forward over the course of the year. For that reason, the fiscal commission becomes even more important, and it is a reason for all of us backing it today. On the debate, I want to pick up on the one key point of that debate. John Mason, a man who I respect hugely and who has done a very good job as deputy convener, I think is just simply wrong when he says that the issue was tokenism. I think that the amendment today reflected, in my opinion, the second most important thing that the committee reviewed and looked at. Issue number one for me, far and above the rest, was indeed the forecasting, but issue number two was having a responsibility for the long-term sustainability of the finances and for making sure that the fiscal rules were adhered to. To suggest that it is tokenism, I think is just incorrect. If you look again at the OECD principles, principle 3.1 outlines the kind of functions that the fiscal commissions ought to have. They look at economic and fiscal projections, they look at baseline projections, they look at analysis of the executive's budget, and they monitor compliance with fiscal rules or official targets. In terms of the main things that any fiscal commission, anywhere on the planet, does, this is one of them. This is one of the key things they have to do. It's something that the committee thought they had to do all the way through. It's something that I hope Mr Swinney and rejecting it today can at least keep the door open, because as our powers increase, as we become a stronger fiscal parliament, it's critical that we get that right, and we need somebody other than Government to keep control there. It doesn't just mean that it's better for the country, it actually helps Mr Swinney or his successor to do their job even better as well. For that reason, I hope that we ultimately do get that in the Fiscal Commission, and I'm happy to close there. Many thanks. I don't know, Colin. Dr Richard Simpson, five minutes please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I've come late to this. I haven't served on the committee, but I've watched some of the ambulations of the committee over the period of time. We've reached a point that is on the whole, a very good one, and this bill will be supported tonight unanimously, I'm sure. There is the international recognition that independent fiscal institutions play a vital role in supporting the operation of a country's fiscal framework. There's been a rapid growth in the number of such institutions over the last decade, particularly as Gavin Brown said since the 2008 financial crisis. Prediction is a difficult game. Who would have known the oil price today would have been what it is? Certainly the Government weren't able to predict that, and I don't blame them all together for it. Their comments on the GERS today are not being relevant, seem to be extraordinary. However, we've no argument with pricing the Fiscal Commission on a statutory basis. It's a significant improvement on the basis of what it was before, when it was helpful, useful, but was essentially an adviser to the Government. The next questions that we're facing us today have been only half resolved. The first one, of course, is the question of producing the macroeconomic forecasts. The Deputy First Minister called it a winding road, and it certainly has been, but the resolution is in line, at least with the original view of the committee on that issue. Although the SNP members, as we've heard, have been following the Deputy First Minister rather like the Duke of York up and down the hills, except, in his case, he abandoned them at the top, as Jackie said. The IMF, in evidence, said that the Scottish Fiscal Commission could contribute to the credibility of the Government's fiscal policy by assessing the realism of the Scottish Government's forecast. However, having independent forecasts is a much better way of doing it, but they are to have their own forecasts, so we will watch with interest, in my case, from afar, to see if those forecasts actually do match. Of course, we have got the very welcome amendment today that, if they don't match, the Government will have to give Parliament an explanation. I think that the important thing is that these are five-year rolling forecasts. That, I think, is critical because we've had, I think, in the whole of the period of the Parliament, perhaps we haven't had the necessity for it, but we haven't really looked far ahead. Audit Scotland has repeatedly said that all our institutions fail to look ahead. They look on an annual basis. They are still trying to balance the books at the end of a year, and that is not the way that we need to run the country, particularly when we go through huge changes as we are in health with health and social integration. That will take five to ten years. Balancing the books on an annual basis is going to be difficult. The OECD talks about nine principles—local ownership, independence and non-partisanship, mandate, resources, relationship with a legislator, access to information, transparency, communications, external evaluation. Again, Gavin Brown gave us some of the additional wealth of information behind those, and I think that many of those have been met. However, the one that hasn't been met as a result of the rejection of what John Mason described quite extraordinarily as tokenism—I don't understand that because there's been a consistency over time on this issue—is the question of measuring the performance against fiscal rules and sustainability. That seems to me to be the bit that is now missing. I think that it's a great pity that we're not going to have that. To say that Audit Scotland would do this is just quite inappropriate. It's not Audit Scotland grow. I've got a great time for Audit Scotland. They've been hugely valuable, as Mary Scanlon and I said and committed the other day, enormously important contribution that they've made, but that's not the contribution that they are making. I do welcome that, despite the contorsions of the SNP members on this issue, which have been quite revealing in terms of how our committee structures worked in this Parliament. At least, the Deputy First Minister, if I understand him correctly, has agreed to reexamine this, particularly if we get greater flexibility in setting our own fiscal rules. I think that that at least is to be welcome. I would very much welcome the changes to the appointment system. Some might want to go further and have hearings on the chair before they're appointed. I would certainly favour that, but the Finance Committee at least will be able to call members in evidence. I think that the reciprocal arrangements for co-operation between the Commission and the OBR is welcome, and the external valuation, although there's lacking in detail on this, I think again that that's important. I think that I'd make one final plea, Deputy Presiding Officer. Ever since the Parliament has started, there's been a lack of strategic clarity and transparency in the budget process over a period of time. I don't deny that the books have been balanced and that's great, but, nevertheless, it's looking ahead, as Audit Scotland has said, and I mentioned earlier. I think that it's this long-term view of where we're actually going to go that it is really important. I hope that some of the discussions that we had in that opening session about Oregon and how it worked and how well it worked might be reflected in where we go in the future. Seventeen years on, there are so many issues on which we've had no progress, health inequality, child poverty, although there was initial progress, in fact, said by the OECD's mayor amongst the fastest they'd ever seen, as going backwards. Homeless target has not been met. There are so many social objectives that we need to meet, and it has to be done within an overall framework, which I think we will partially have tonight, and I hope eventually have in full measure. I will be supporting the builders up. My party will tonight. Many thanks. I now call and join us to end up. Seven minutes, please, Deputy First Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me begin with one of the comments that Malcolm Chisholm made about his concern about the fact that the Government would maintain its capacity to undertake the tax forecasting responsibility—we're not responsibility—that that function to enable us to be informed about whether or not we could come to a view that we accept the estimates made by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. I think that that's an elementary proposition. I think that the Government would be in dereliction of its duty if it wasn't undertaking that assessment to satisfy itself that a body not accountable to Government—accountable to Parliament, I concede—is able to formulate a set of numbers that will be so significantly influential on the public finances of Scotland that the Government will not want to be assured that that commission has come to the correct judgment and proposition or the correct range of functions. Members are absolutely right that there's not a precision about those points, but we certainly need to satisfy ourselves that the estimates that are in the forecast that have been put forward are appropriate and dependable for the purposes of the Scottish budget process. The arrangements that we've put in place whereby if the Government decides that those forecasts do not command the confidence of the Government, the Government is able, as is a part of the OBR framework as well, the OBR can be challenged by the UK Government. If the UK Government doesn't believe the forecast put forward by the OBR, there is a mechanism that enables the Government to undertake that approach. That is absolutely correct to enable the Government to properly exercise its responsibilities for financial management to the people of Scotland. Richard Simpson set out some arguments about the international evidence of external forecasting. If Dr Simpson was to look at the analysis undertaken by SPICE, he would find that the OBR model is the outlier. Robert Chote made that point when he came to give evidence to the French Committee that the OBR was the model that was not the norm. Of course, as part of the negotiation of the fiscal framework, I have accepted a proposition that is closer to that model. If that matters to the United Kingdom Government to get them to agree a reasonable fiscal framework, I am prepared to agree that, to get us into that position. I think that when we are coming to this considered judgment about it, we have to bear in mind the fact that the Scottish Government's position to begin with in this debate was founded. A very strong body of international evidence that indicated that the approach that we were taking was a robust approach that would fulfil the function that was envisaged of the Scottish Fiscal Commission. In the course of the debate, there has been a lot of discussion about the amendment that Jackie Baillie put forward today. Gavin Brown indicated that there were two functions that he thought had to be observed as a consequence or should have been observed as a consequence of that amendment. There was clarity about the responsibility for the long-term sustainability of the public finances. Secondly, the Government was observing its financial rules. On the latter, on observing the financial rules, my problem with a lot of what was put forward in the amendment debate is that the question of whether the Government is observing its financial rules are entirely black and white questions. They are matters of fact, as I explained to Baroness Goldie in response to her intervention earlier on. On the question of where does responsibility lie for the long-term sustainability of the public finances? That judgment ultimately, in my view, rests with members of Parliament, informed, yes, by the consideration of the French Committee, informed very significantly by the judgments of the French Secretary. Ultimately, that is the responsibility of Parliament to determine whether or not members of Parliament believe the public finances to be undertaken on a sustainable basis. Of course it falls to Parliament, but, as time and time have we heard again, members of Parliament will be aided by the analysis of the SFC. We will do our job better as parliamentarians in looking at the public finances if we have the analysis from the SFC. That is a matter of opinion in which Mr Brown and I are going to have to disagree, because I think that there is plenty of information and plenty of analysis that is available that will enable Parliament to form that judgment, which is ultimately a judgment for elected members of Parliament. It is not a judgment for people appointed by Parliament on its behalf. It is a responsibility that we all should take very seriously as elected members of Parliament. I hate to close my speech tonight on a discordant note with Mr Brown, because it is, of course, Mr Brown's final speech to Parliament. It seemed to take Mr Brown by surprise that it was his own speech, but I can advise him that the source of that information was, in fact, the Conservative chief whip. Maybe Mr Brown will take a message from that revelation. I want to share with Parliament a little story about Mr Brown, where I was on my summer holidays last year, escaping from it all, waiting in the queue to get on the ferry at Obann for my summer retreat to the Argyll Islands, so magnificently represented by Mr Russell in this Parliament. As I pulled up my car to join the queue for the ferry to Mull, who was in the car next door, but Mr Gavin Brown and his family, so it was a real get-away-from-it-all break for the Swinney family. I want to say to Mr Brown that he has been a credible and commendable adversary for me in this Parliament, but also a friend in this Parliament. I commend him on his distinguished contribution to Parliament. Parliament will be the poorer for his—not being a member of the Parliament—after the election. If I may give some private advice to the Conservative Party, it will be significantly weaker for not having Mr Brown in its ranks. I thank Mr Brown for his contribution to Parliament. If Jamie McGregor will forgive me, I will have to bring my answer close. Mr Brown has not always been my strongest ally in all that I have brought to Parliament, but I thank him for his distinguished contribution to Parliament. That concludes the debate on the Scottish Fiscal Commission. We now move to the next stage of business, and I am minded at this stage to accept a motion without notice from Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau bringing forward decision time to now. I now put the question. The question is that decision time we brought forward to now. Are we all agreed? We are agreed. Let's go to decision time. There are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is at motion 15870, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on the Lobbings Scotland Bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to, and the Lobbings Scotland Bill is passed. The next question is at motion 15869, in the name of Don Swinney. On the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill, be agreed to, are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill is passed. That concludes decision time, and I now close this meeting.