 Ok, examine those. Good morning, colleagues. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first committee meeting of 2016. Can I remind all members to either switch their phones off or put them on to a mode that I certainly can't hear. I don't wanna interfere with the processes. A TAVUH will join us. I think that it'll be about 30 minutes late. He's got an important constituency meeting this morning at TAVUH Scotland. First of all, I need to just probably ask anyone if they have any relevant interests that they want to declare this morning. ond gallwch gael cyfnoddach, yn falchfeydd ac maen nhw i'n cyffredinu peidio'i ddweud. Ie ddim yn gyffredinu llaw, ond mae'n ddweud â'r defnyddio'r drwrs. Ie ddim yn gallwch chi'n gyd, nes i chi'n gweld ei wybodaeth yna. A hynny'n gweithwyr mewn ymgledig o'r adloedau, fel y dyma ein bod yn ddweud i'r edrych lleidiau iawn. Mae unrhyw o ond sy'n gweithio iawn yn ei ddweud iawn yn gweithio ar gyfer hynny i'n private future meetings of the committee. I can ask members if they agree that. Agenda item 2 involves taking evidence on the UK Government's trade union bill, and I very much warmly welcome the witnesses to the meeting this morning. We have with us Councillor Billy Henry, who is the strategic human resource management spokesperson for COSLA, supported by Jane McDonald. We have Shirley Rogers, who is the director of the health workforce in NHS Scotland, and Dave Moxham, who is the deputy general secretary of the STUC. For the record, the committee clerks did approach four individuals to provide an employer business perspective to give evidence at meetings. However, they were unable to do so due to prior commitments, but we may receive some evidence and writing from them. I think that we will start with a very general question to the three of you just to get the proceedings under way. I just wondered what your view might be overall of the trade union bill and, obviously, at a higher level indicate any particular concerns that you have with all this to get into the detail of some of those concerns as we go through the session this morning. I would like to also ask you what evidence you think exists for bringing forward this bill from the UK Government, particularly given that I read in the Government's memorandum that, since 2007, the number of industrial disputes in Scotland had decreased by 84 per cent. I do not know who would like to take that off. Dave, would you like to begin that? Thanks very much, convener. I was going to start with the statistic that you just cited. You will not be surprised to hear that the view of the STUC is that this is a bill that is designed to fix a problem that does not exist with strike levels at a historic lower across the UK and, as has been pointed out by the Scottish Government, even lower in Scotland itself. We consider this to be an ideological attack on the very basis of trade unionism, which is designed to provide an effective balance in the workplace between the interests of workers and the interests of managers. I could spend an awful lot of time talking about a whole range of the aspects of this bill. From a Scottish perspective, our particular concern is with the aspects of the bill that are designed to undermine the capacity of unions to represent their members in the workplace. I know that we will go on to talk in particular about facility type. We know from an array of polling evidence that the primary reason that people join trade unions remains because they require security in the workplace and they want individual representation when they have a problem at work. A lot of the focus of this bill from the UK Government has been on strike thresholds, political levees and a range of things that are important and which I am quite happy to address. Fundamentally, this bill affects the capacity of unions to represent their members in the workplace. We believe that the Government calculates that by removing that capacity from unions, they undermine every single aspect of trade unionism as an institution. The international evidence is very clear that, where trade unions exist and where collective bargaining exists in the workplace, countries are more equal. This is evidence that is a matter of left-wing dogma. The right-wing agrees with that, too. The only difference is that the left-wing thinks that it is a good idea and the right-wing thinks that it is a bad idea. That rebalancing in the workplace obviously has implications for the individual worker, but it also has wide societal impacts. We believe that that feeds directly into this Parliament and this Government's commitment to greater economic equality in Scotland. I will leave it there just now. I have plenty to say on any other point in the proceedings. Thank you very much indeed for the opportunity to come in and speak a little bit about the circumstances that we find in the NHS in Scotland, as you all understand, one of the bigger employers. For us, the maturity with which partnership working exists within the NHS is already significantly developed and highly sophisticated. We do see industry relations as an absolute cornerstone to what we do in the NHS. We believe in co-production and we believe in co-producing in a tripartite relationship between Government employers and staff. So, partnership working arrangements in the NHS are very well established, very highly regarded. We have independent studies that cite our partnership working arrangements, if I might quote, as partnership in NHS Scotland has matured into the most ambitious and important contemporary innovation in British public sector industrial relations. So it is not me saying that partnership working does well for the NHS in Scotland, it is independent people saying that. Obviously, I would reflect on Dave's comments in terms of unions' rights as representatives of their members and all of that stuff, which is absolutely critical and important. It is also important that, in a modern industrial relations platform, we see our trade unions as strategic partners in the design and development of services and in our journey around continuous improvement. One of the anxieties that we have around the facilities time arrangements that are being proposed is that that seeks to compartmentalise how we relate with our trade union partners in a way that is, frankly, significantly less mature than that which we have already developed. Others have already commented on the industrial relations platform in terms of industrial action. We have had these partnership arrangements in the NHS for almost 15 years now and in that time you can count on the things of one hand the times where we have got into industrial disputes simply because we co-produce, we work with partners, we value the contribution of our staff, it is a highly sophisticated workforce in a very sophisticated working environment. We believe that we get better results because we are able to co-produce and we frankly believe that our partnership working arrangements as they exist within the NHS are already more mature and more sophisticated and better fit for purpose as a result of the actions that we have taken over the past 15 years. Thank you, convener, and I, too, would like to thank you for your invitation to give evidence today. From the costless point of view, we have had a long-established commitment to joint working with trade union colleagues. This commitment extends beyond industrial relations to working in partnership on the delivery of essential and valued public services across Scotland. Local authorities employ over 250,000 people in Scotland, so it is a considerable figure. Corsal leaders are extremely concerned that the changes proposed within the bill are being brought in with no evidence to back up the assertion that it would modernise industrial relations between councils and trade unions. At present, we have a constructive environment where we work very well with our trade union partners to the benefit of all local communities right across Scotland. We are involved in many different forums with them and, to date, COSLA has found these forums to be very helpful in maintaining positive industrial relations. That ensures that services are delivered smoothly to every community, and that is something we would all want to see continued. The UK Government, through the bill, would, in effect, force councils into changing arrangements for check-off and facility time, which work well for both parties at present. The costs of those arrangements are already covered by direct contributions from the trade unions themselves. Scottish councils are devolved public bodies, and we wish to make it clear that we consider ourselves as local government empowered to make those type of decisions with the trade unions for the benefit of the local communities that we serve. After all, we are elected members, and we are held to account for the decisions that we make in respect to facility time and the issue of check-off. COSLA's position in summing up is that the Westminster Government should reconsider this unnecessary and unjustified imposition that could ultimately lead to more industrial unrest across Scotland. That is our fear through the progressing of the bill as it stands at the moment. You touched quite rightly on facility time issues, and I think that I will go to Malcolm Chisholm to lead the discussion in that area. Malcolm Chisholm Thank you very much, Bruce, for your opening contributions. I agree with all that has been said, but I suppose that the NHS angle gave my involvement in that at the start. However, on facility time, Dave Mockson has already touched on it, but it would be useful to get on the record the advantages of facility time, not from the point of view of employees, which we take for granted, but from the point of view of employers. I believe that there is quite a lot to it, but it would be quite useful to establish that in some detail to begin with. I am happy to speak to them generally, and I will probably stay away from the NHS and local government in view of the other witnesses that you have. The headline figures in relation to the public sector that we are talking about now of facility time—people have talked about £80 million across the UK, maybe £100 million represents a very small proportion of the overall spend on public services. Two pieces of evidence are particularly useful. One came from and bear itself in 2010, and an analysis by the University of Essex, I believe, in 2012, both of which I am happy to refer to. It looked not just at the cost but at the benefits of facility time. It identified five areas in which the benefit of facility time could be gauged. Those included the lower incidence of dismissals in workplaces where facility time was offered. The lower use of tribunals—an extrajudicial process—and the health and safety savings lower incidence of workplace injury, lower workplace sickness. It came to the conclusion that, for every £1 that is spent on facility time, a spectrum of between £3 and £9 is gauged. Now, no-one would expect the NHS to take a view about a particular treatment that they were paying for without looking at the broader impacts of what that meant for health more generally. We would therefore argue that no-one should take a view of the cost of facility time without taking a broader view about what problems that might obviate. On a very basic level, facility time provides the opportunity for reps to cut off what would otherwise be potentially quite serious problems in the workplace at source and deal with them at a lower management level to the benefit of all. There is also very clear evidence that facility time properly used within a partnership environment can help with changing workplace cultures. I will refer again to public services in particular. We know that public services are incredibly person-centred. There is no way that you can deliver public services without an effective person workforce. Increasingly, it becomes absolutely vital, therefore, that, as cultures change and as Government quite rightly looks to introduce public service reform, the workforce is taken with them on that. In that respect, facility time and partnership working is vital to deliver that. The final thing I would say is that some of the biggest private sector firms in Scotland fund facility time. They fund facility time because they understand that, even in the cutthroat world of profit-making private enterprise out there, facility time and trade union recognition and collective bargaining can play a vital role in the profitability of their companies. I wonder if I might add to that with a little bit of detail about how the NHS facility time arrangements work and some thoughts around that. I might start by saying that I am not aware of a truly world-class organisation that thinks that it can be world-class without talking to its staff. When we are talking about facility time, it is very easy to revert to a position that says that is about trade unions going along to represent somebody at a disciplinary or whatever. I think that, in the facility time sense, we took a view in the NHS some years ago that we wanted to invest in co-production, that we wanted to front-load our investment in facility time to allow us to have a better product rather than to spend our time in conflict resolution and dispute management. The proof of that pudding is that, over the last 10, 15 years, we can literally count the number of disputes on one hand. That is one of the blunter, less valuable pieces of evidence, as far as I am concerned. At the same time, as we have been wrestling with all the transformational change that the NHS has undergone, we have produced with our staff side a workforce strategy that is held in very high regard. We have been able to put forward a series of proposals and policies around absence management, employee conduct, disciplinary procedures—you name it—and a whole suite of policies that have had a great deal more effectiveness, because they have not been about management designing stuff, which is applied. They have been about something that has been co-produced, something that has been actually able to be delivered. The NHS is a big organisation, not quite the numbers that Councillor Henry was quoting, but about 156,000 people. We recognise that, in order for partnership working to be effective within the NHS, we needed to have some structures. We could not just hope that people were going to talk to each other. We have a national partnership forum, Scottish partnership forum across the NHS, co-chaired and a tripartite relationship between Government employers and staff side. At board level, every board in Scotland has a partnership agreement, and every board in Scotland has an employee director. This is somebody whose focus, role and purpose it is to be a representative at board level to make sure that staff views—remember that in staff views, we are talking about doctors, nurses, dentists, people across the range of professions whose voices we need to hear to be able to design services—have that voice at board level to be able to influence right from the outset the kind of strategic direction that organisations in the NHS want to take. Some of the boards are much bigger than others. A board such as Glasgow will have a variety of facility time arrangements. Some individuals will be on a full-time basis, others on a part-time basis. Some of the smaller boards have facility time agreements on a part-time basis with staff doing other duties as well. What we have found is that, universally, that means that when the boards are looking to do something, when the Government is looking to have policy that can actually be implemented and is designed to be effective, we have measures that are much more able to be implemented, and are sponsored not just by somebody like me saying so, but by a workforce agreeing and harnessing and putting themselves behind those efforts, too. I have to remember that there are 32 local authorities in Scotland, and the umbrella body, the COSLA. We have national and local partnerships between the employers and the trade unions. Every council is different. I have to say that there is nothing broken about that. That is something that has been working for many years now. It has been a national strike within local government. There will always be some local tensions. That will always happen, but what made that possible, in my opinion, is the forums that I alluded to in my opening remarks, the partnership committees, the formal and informal ways in which the employer and the employee representatives can try to iron out particular problems. I think that that is central, and if we are in a position where that is being reduced and diminished in any way, what we will see is that opportunity to talk, to, in some cases, argue things out, but, at the very least, the time there affords us all our opportunities to have a say and do the best thing, ultimately, for the communities that we serve. At the beginning of my opening remarks, I said that that this is working at present for us in local government, so we really do not see the point in changing it in any way. From an umbrella local government point of view, COSLA very much agrees and promotes with localism. Again, that is the type of thing that is being promoted by the existing structures. Every single council having a partnership agreement forum set up to fit their particular needs, their geographical areas, etc. Facility time has to be preserved in my view, or we will be facing a situation where there could be problems further down the road with the potential industrial action. It seems clear to me that this is quite a significant interference with areas of devolved policy and priorities. Although we are not here to consider legislative consent issues specifically, I do wonder if Dave Moxham would like to comment, because I think that you believe that this is one of two areas where there is such a significant interference with devolved competence that you think legislative consent should be sought. We do. I suppose that I start from—I know that there is a potential question at some stage about the level of consultation that has been undertaken by the Westminster Government, but when we had our first meeting with Westminster officials in relation to this bill, and it was actually just before they announced the provisions with respect to Chekhov, but the facility time provisions were already there, we raised with them the issue of the devolved competency. They had not even considered it at that point. It was one of those meetings where lots of scribbling takes place and lots of quizzical eyebrows are raised. At the point, and we are talking well more than eight weeks into past the first reading of the bill, this has not been considered. This is not a question in our view of Westminster having considered this and being ready for it. It dropped into their laps because they had not thought about it at all. That is the starting point. One of the questions that we put to bear at the time, and we continue to put to Westminster, is why is this provision on facility time only in reference to the public sector? Why is it not in reference to the private sector? If there was some ideological or political or administrative objection to facility time, why would this not apply to all employers across the whole of the United Kingdom? The response that has come back to us is very clear. It is because the UK Government considers its role to safeguard public money. Our question to them comes straight back. This part of public money is not yours to safeguard it, it is the Scottish Parliament's to safeguard of its costs, of its the NHS. For us to start with, there is a fundamental problem, which is if the basis of the facility time regulations is the protection of public money, then that fails the test of devolution in Scotland. When it comes to legislative content in particular, and we recognise that this is a complicated area, we certainly recognise that we are in a situation where, which I think is unprecedented in relation to the UK Government not having taken the view that legislative consent might be required in it being generated, if you like, from the Scottish Parliament itself. We really are unsure of the view that this does not affect the administrative competence of the Scottish Parliament. The defence that this is relating to an entirely reserved bill, we do not believe, stands up either. It seems to us self-evident that amendment could be made to a UK act, an entirely reserved act, that had implications for the administrative competence of the Scottish Parliament. That would be a matter for this Parliament. For a number of reasons, we were disappointed, to be frank. Disappointed that the Prime Minister took the view that she did. We are very hopeful that a suitable mechanism will be found within the Parliament to allow this Parliament to bring forward, and I will see her. We are going to go to Rob. May I try to bottom out what the actual costs and savings are? The UK Minister suggested that there could be a saving of £150 million a year by reducing the spending on facility time. Could I put it in two ways? Shirley-Rodgers talked about having a more mature system already, with co-production and partnership. The point is, can we quantify what that helps the NHS and local government to function more effectively? Can we counter the argument that reducing facility time will save money? Obviously, the quantification is not an easy science. How do you estimate the value of a better running NHS? In a sense, you have to take the evidence of the experts, one of whom is sitting next to me. We have the report that I referred to, which was a UK-wide report that looked very specifically at savings relating to a whole range of better employment, health and other outcomes. Of course, that leaves the side of how you quantify the effect of a better operating organisation. The NHS by and large does not have anybody to compete with, so it does not have a set of figures that it can put alongside a similar private sector organisation to say that we do better on that basis. At the end of the day, we have to trust the professionals, but they are professionals in local government or NHS. They do not have money to throw around. They are not people who are currently not under budgetary constraints. If they believed that this was a waste of money, I believe that they would be taking a very clear view on that basis. It is very difficult to refute £150 million, because I am not sure that I have seen the evidence that constructs £150 million. It is also very difficult to quantify how you do business. At a granular level, I can say that good representation, which prevents somebody going to an industrial tribunal, might potentially save several thousand pounds. At a more strategic level, I can say that if we are serious about bringing forward a public services reform agenda and a journey of continuous improvement, it seems to me to be inconceivable that the NHS in Scotland would wish to do so without some kind of opportunity to talk to the doctors, nurses, radiotherapists and all sorts of other professions who contribute to delivering that service. Change is not easy anyway—change without talking to people. One becomes a very high risk, and two is highly unlikely for me to be sitting here as a successful workforce director in a couple of years' time, I suspect. I could, as I indicated earlier on, look to various boards who can identify how much they spend in terms of individuals who have facility time, but it is, if I may say, an unfair reflection of the mature system that we have if we think that the value of somebody is the amount of hours and the pounds, shillings and pence that is spent on them being in that particular room. My difficulty with the facility time thing is not about cost. Boards are already in a position where they see that as an investment. Those investments have already been made. My issue about facility time is about if we are honest and have integrity in our view that we are looking for proper, mature engagement with our workforce, it seems to me to be somewhat retrograde to then say, and we are going to give you 27 minutes and we will have another process if it is going to take 28. I was just going to add and say that, just following on from Dave's point, if this was something that was a waste of money on council needs and balance, I would get absolutely no doubt that there will be councils within that authority. I am sure that right across Scotland who would be putting down amendments, motions, whatever to try and prevent this, that opportunity is already there, but I know that it is generally believed right across the political spectrum in Scotland within local government that we actually see the benefits now when it comes to actually quantifying that financially. That is difficult. Yes, if we save money not going to an industrial tribunal, yes, you could put something to that, but that would be a very, very extensive exercise, but, from my point of view, where I see the benefit for everyone is the continuity of service delivery. That is the important thing. If there are no strikes, the men and women within each authority are getting the services that they pay for and the services they need and the services that they deserve. In another area, if I could just touch on this slightly, in relation to the work that we do in COSLA, we work very, very closely on SJC, in particular, on new initiatives. One of the things that we are doing just now is that we are looking at developing the wellbeing theme across local government. What that means is health and wellbeing, I should say. What that means is in all areas of the public sector, there are fairly high levels of absenteasms, and what we want to do is reduce that. Not about in any way bringing out draconian measures or anything like that, but working with draconians to see how we can make it better for people to be at work and stay at work. Obviously, that takes pressure off the public person. It also helps co-workers. Quantifying it is difficult, but if we get more people in work, staying in work and delivering services, that is something that we should be content to promote. I do not want to supplementary it yet. I quickly give me a chance to put my trade union credentials on the tables. I trade union member for nearly 50 years, 25 of those years as a shop steward, the shop steward's convener, and a full-time official. I am trying to pick up on Shirley's explanation here about her reference to what it was like 30 years ago as a young steward to that dispute resolution and the time and involvement that are multiplied by any amount of number right across the health service to a more satisfying involvement and partnership in supporting change. I did that not just in the public sector, but I did it in one of Scotland's most successful private enterprises, which is the whisky industry, a classic example of that. To get to the question about how we know that it was a very difficult journey to build a trust, to be able to create change and to create a status of partnership where on-going change can be agreed in a very constructive way. How quickly does that trust go? How quickly do you believe that what we now have in place would fall into dispute and we would be slowly slipping back into a situation in which we are resolving disputes and arguments every other day, which would take up managerial times, stop progress and change, delay projects? How quickly do we lose what we have gained over the past 25 years or so? You are absolutely right. Trust is something that is hard won and easy lost. If I refer back to my opening comments about the fact that partnership exists within the NHS on the basis of a tripartite relationship, that only works if those three parties are mutually respectful and have a sense of the importance of each other. If it becomes the case that we revert back to 10 minutes off to go to a meeting about X, that shades the conversation considerably about how people can contribute. If I think back to the last couple of years, any potential for dispute that has happened within the NHS in Scotland has been resolved by a reversion back to our partnership values and about how we behave. Gibson has a question about quantification. How do you quantify the cost of not having a dispute in that way? Trust, for me, is absolutely critical. I referred earlier on to our workforce strategy. When we were co-producing that in the first year, over 10,000 NHS workers in Scotland who contributed to the development of that strategy—it is now three years old—I suspect that the number of that has doubled. What they said to us was that the values of the NHS—about respect, about care and compassion—the stuff that is the founding principles of our partnership working arrangements—were absolutely fundamental, not just to the delivery of health services as they are now, but also as we addressed some of the challenges that Billy was referring to earlier on about health and social care and future services and all that kind of stuff. At the moment, we have a very honest and trusting relationship. I speak regularly to trade union officials. I speak regularly to STUC officials. They speak regularly to me. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't have conversations, some of which are strategic, some of which are very practical about how we resolve particular bits of issues. Our ability to be able to promote change is fundamentally dependent on those relationships of trust. Anything that diverts us from that is not a good time to be diverted from that, even if we thought that it was a good idea. Is that substantial enough on what Shirley-Anne Gryffin has given us, or is it any other gender that we want to add to that? In which case, I will go to Stuart McMillan first on the consultation matter and then I want to come to Alex Johnson after that in regard to the wider issues. I think that it was Dave who touched on the consultation issue, which he had certainly had with me. If you do not mind Dave at this stage before being shooted, you mentioned Bayer, but could you just put on record what that is longer title is, please? I will need you to remember it now. Business enterprise and regulation. I regulated the problem because I could not remember, so I will ask Stuart McMillan. Dave, you touched on the consultation meeting that you had at Westminster, but have you been involved in the consultation process with either the UK Government and the Scottish Government? Only as a representative of the Scottish Government is an official of SGA in terms of my role in health workforce. I decided that we would be taking up a lobbying role and we will be dealing with them via a letter. Do you think that the consultation process up to now has actually been adequate? As I indicated earlier, I do not. There are a couple of examples of that. The tried and tested in our view mechanism of introducing a first reading just before a summer recess, which was what happened, and then a fairly swift second, third reading and commons phase, which for us normally presages an attempt to rush through a bill. The reference that I made earlier to the non-preparadness, frankly, of Government departments in terms of the one visit that they did make to Scotland to speak with us. A lack of recognition of the current devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament. One can take a view, and people are welcome to take the view that they want about the specific competence of aspects of the bill. What is absolutely clear is that the Scottish Government has key enterprise and economic functions. It has key functions as an employer itself, and it has key strategic interests in a whole range of major industries. What that suggested to us at the very least was that the UK Government should have been interested not just in the perspective of the Scottish Government itself, the Scottish Parliament and the powers that it held, but to talk specifically to some of the leaders of industry in Scotland delivering some of our key industrial targets. None of that happened. None of that happened, and we moved very quickly to a committee stage. Anybody who witnessed the committee stage will have noticed that the quality of questioning from the opposition, both Labour and SNP, was very, very high. The quality of engagement of the Tory representatives of that committee was, frankly, pure. They literally did not, at any stage, put any serious scrutiny in relation to the bill itself. We have a failure to consult, a very rushed process, a committee stage that, in our view, is very, very poor. Along that process, the introduction of a couple of key additional aspects of the bill—we did not know until well after the first reading about the introduction of the check-off arrangements—was not subject to any consultation and it was not subject to any assessment of the costs. We essentially have a piece of legislation that is now passed to its common stage, which asserts that there is a large cost to the public sector of check-off, which is clearly not substantiated by any evidence. That adds up to us to a very, very poor process of consultation. If I may, I think that there is a perhaps better place than I am to comment on the politicking of that. I think that the observation that I would make is that we continue to look for the evidence that supports those initiatives. That concerns me and I suppose that, in the absence of having the full evidence to support that, our role seems now to be much more constrained than I would wish it to in having to think about the impact of it. I think that others are better placed than I am to comment on the legislative and political framework for it, but it goes back to the question that Mr Gibson asked about cost. In the absence of an evidential platform that I can use to make those assessments, it is difficult for us to comment on whether or not the end justifies the means in that sense. We are now, I think, more concerned with trying to make sure that we understand the impact potentially. Just very briefly, time scales are undoubtedly very, very tight and in answer to your question about consultation, I think that the cause of the position is that it would have been helpful if there was more time for us to engage in the process, but we are at the moment and we must press our head with our opposition to the various parts that we are discussing today. Mr Mock, you mentioned the lack of dialogue with Scotland on that. In terms of your own opinion on that, do you think that that is down to the folk in the UK Government not fully appreciating the powers that the Scottish Parliament has, or whether it is at a political level or at a civil servant level, or whether it is at something else that pleads with that particular thing? I am tempted to say that because of that one meeting that I cited earlier with officials that it just did not occur to them, which in a sense is worse than if it did occur to them in many ways, but we have, through a series of questions and through the action of particularly Chris Stevens MP who is the SNP lead, or was the SNP lead on the bill committee, we have attempted to scrutinise and to ask a number of questions that would identify whether that is a problem that the Government anticipated and chose to ignore or not. For instance, again, I can cite the letter as evidence, a letter from Chris Stevens to Nick Boles, the responsible minister at Westminster, which asked how they foresaw the application of the regulations in relation to facility time and how it would potentially affect an organisation like NHS Scotland, because it was not clear to us how they saw it working. Now, what that letter essentially indicates, and I think that there was an aspect of thinking on their feet here, was that the minister in charge of the NHS in England will essentially be responsible for dictating the facility time arrangement and implementing the aspects of the bill as they relate to the NHS in Scotland. That is almost worth repeating, because there is more than one way that you could deal with that situation, you could deal with that in a number of ways. However, the way that they seem to have chosen, as Nick Boles has put this in writing, is that the minister for the English NHS will be empowered under this bill, so it seems, to be able to take the decision that the NHS in Scotland's facility time is too great and therefore should be cut. That seems to us to clearly not be something that they thought about in July or August of this year and something that they had come to because they simply had not considered the implications of what they were doing. I know that Linda Fabiani is particularly interested in it, but I need to go to Alec Johnston now to pick up an opportunity to get in. Thank you very much, convener. We have covered a few of the issues that I was going to raise, but there have been a couple of issues for clarification that would be very useful. I am a good old-fashioned Tory whose opinions on the trade union movement were formed in the 1970s, and I am fully aware that things have changed radically since then. One of the things that I wanted to clarify, and that Dave Moxham touched on a couple of times, is the distribution of trade union membership. It used to be rooted in the industrial base, but it has changed radically over time. My impression is that when we talk about trade unionism in Scotland, we are essentially talking about something that manifests itself primarily, if not exclusively, within public services. Is that a fair assumption to make? It is not. It is quite true to say that the proportion of trade union members per capita is far higher in the public sector. We estimate 55 to 60 per cent, and it is significantly lower in the private sector. However, nearly as many members in Scotland are private sector employees as public sector employees, because the private sector is three times the size of the public sector. More than half of the largest private sector companies in Scotland are quoted on the stock exchange. Are unionised, have trade union recognition and offer facility time, and in many cases check off to their employees. Sometimes we make the mistake of looking at the proportions, rather than the absolute numbers. Nearly as many people in Scotland in the private sector are trade union members as in the public sector. We talked earlier about the way that that would apply to public services and to those who are outside the public service sector. In that respect, taking that into account, do you feel that we are talking about something that needs to be addressed in the broadest possible sense, or is it disproportionately important to talk about the effects in the public services? No. The reason that we have talked most specifically about the public services here and possibly in relation to the bill generally is because the UK Government has chosen some provisions that will apply to the public sector but will not apply to the private sector. In our view, they are differentiating between the rights of public sector employees to negotiate with their employer the right to check off the right to facility time and private sector employees. In a sense, it is the Government's choice. It is the UK Government's choice that we end up talking more about the public sector because they have chosen to differentiate between those rights to treat public sector employers differently to private sector employers. We would recognise that one of the aims of the Westminster Government is to recognise that the effect of industrial action in the public sector can be argued to be somewhat different in many cases than the effect in the private sector. There is not, if you like, an employer's profitability. There is not a profit margin to be affected. The main effect is in terms of the service that is provided. That is one of the reasons that public sector strikes are so low because public sector workers do not like doing that very much. However, at the end of the day, the basic rights of a public sector employee should be the same as the basic rights of a private sector employee. We have the information that is needed there, but it occurs to me that, in opening remarks, the convener commented on the fact that there were other people invited to come along here today and chose that they were unavailable for whatever reason. Given the spread of impact, is it necessary for us to work a bit harder to get a broader input and evidence on the subject? To be frank, whether we are at Westminster level or here today, it has been very difficult for either Parliament to garner very much enthusiasm from business organisations for this legislation. A number of the organisations that were listed initially on the Westminster evidence list, frankly, just did not trap. We feel that a number of the business organisations have had to be squeezed quite hard to say very much about this. This is because organisations like the CBI are on record just two or three years ago and are positively welcome in the role of trade unions in the workplace and welcoming the facility time of these. Frankly, the business organisations and most of the major private sector employers have not identified a problem, and I think that it is going to be quite difficult for you, frankly, to get a range of business organisations to sit here and robustly defend this bill, because I do not think that they are very enthusiastic about it at all. Finally, should we—I would just like Shirley to respond to that point, because I think that she wanted to respond to it as well. My career has operated in both the private sector and the public sector. I think that the dynamic that I will have observed over the past 30 years is that if we can agree that we have moved away from the industrial age, I would certainly contend that we are now firmly in the age of engagement and that workforce expects to be engaged with their employer. They expect to have a relationship with their employer, which is very different from that that we might have typified 30 or 40 years ago. I take your point that the evidence that is being presented here is obviously by two of the biggest employers in Scotland in sheer volume terms, but I think that looking more widely across my industry as a professional workforce industry, if we can call it that way. The issues about how we make sure that our employees are engaged with are universal. Just finally, the nature of what is happening makes this essentially a public sector issue. Should we, as a committee, be content to treat it as such, or should we be trying to broaden it out? I think that that is a matter for the committee. One other objection, I suppose, is that there is cross-fertilisation here. You have mentioned that you work to the private sector and the public sector, trade unions work in the private sector and the public sector, and good practice is a benefit to all. If you create that, if you can create change in a major industry like whisky by using partnership, some of the benefits that come out of that are picked up by others and good practice is developed. If that is not allowed to happen here—in turn, in the witness movie—then it can damage industry relations across the board. If I may just make one observation in light of what Mr McNeill has just said, we were all of us. My team was certainly engaged with the Working Together review, which was precisely that. It was looking to adopt good practice in industrial relations across the public and private sector to find a model that was fit for Scotland. I am struck listening to the arguments that are being put in relation to the decision by the UK Government to focus on the public sector rather than across the peace. Dave, I think, highlighted the notion that the Government views themselves as having a responsibility for how public money is spent. I always assumed that the Government also had a responsibility for how the wider economy functions. Given that we have just come through a period in which industrial action was narrowly avoided in the offshore sector, one would have assumed that the impact that that could have potentially had on the public finances would have perhaps led the Government to take a wider view. To me, that demonstrates the ideological nature of that rather than it being simply about protection of public money. However, I wanted to ask about the ballot thresholds, which is obviously looking to be changed. I know that we have heard the argument that I have some sympathy with politicians who have been elected on very low turn-outs claiming that they have some kind of authority to tell unions about turnout levels, but I wonder whether the impact that that could have in terms of industrial relations if thresholds are altered in that respect? I would make one very general comment and it will not be about turnout in elections. You will be glad to know that. It is fundamentally wrong that an abstention should be counted as a no vote. That is just democratically wrong. What the threshold proposals do is that they misunderstand the process that unions essentially go through when it comes to reaching a point of potential industrial action. In the public sector, for instance, you would expect members to be balloted in the first instance on whether a particular pay deal was acceptable or not. They would then be balloted assuming that lots of them said not on whether they wanted to take industrial action or action short of strike. If they decided that they were in favour of industrial action, they would then, as individuals, have the right to take that industrial action or not. You are essentially talking about a three-part democratic process, one that is very hard for us to run because all of that is done by postal ballot. It is difficult, but it is a three-part process. All the way along that process, being frank and Duncan will remember this well as will others, the union is taking a view about how likely that third part, that industrial action, is to be successful or not. Being frank, you will not see many pieces of industrial action out there, where 51 per cent of people on a 22 per cent turnout decide that a decision is taken to do industrial action. That is because point 3 is not going to be effective. If you march your troops up to the top of the hill, being frank with you, you better make sure that they do not fall off the top of the hill. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the breadth of what takes place and the judgment that democratically elected officials take when they do that. Along that process at the moment, there is quite a lot of stopping-off points. The stopping-off points are where you say, okay, the views are not as strong as we thought, or management are coming back with a deal. We have a period of time in which we can take these judgments. What the Government is doing through thresholds, through its changes to ballot notice periods, through its whole changes, is essentially making that situation a sharper one for unions. Unions will have to take decisions probably quicker and potentially on a more aggressive basis as to whether to move into industrial action or not. The real risk of all that is not that industrial action is less, but that industrial action is more because the process is one that is harder for unions to navigate without recourse to industrial action in the final analysis. There has been an allusion from all of you to the difficulties that could be created in industrial relations with the legislation to go through. Are you able to quantify that in any way in terms of what we could be looking at if the legislation goes through in terms of the difficulties that are going to be created? Again, that is difficult because you have not really got a point of comparison. All I can say is that, on a very regular basis, following a process in which an industrial action ballot has taken place, that industrial action does not happen because there is a process and a time period in place whereby management and union can get back round the table and have that discussion and industrial action is averted far more frequently than it actually takes place even after an industrial ballot is successful. Do you think, then, that there is the potential that that incentive, if you will, for management to get round the table again and discuss, could be diminished? Were they to view it that, well, they are not going to get the turnout on this ballot that would meet that threshold? I think that there is a risk that incentives for both sides of an industrial, around a potential industrial dispute, are reduced because the window of opportunity for resolving that dispute for further discussion will be and will be less. I don't know if you want to comment on that. I think that it's very difficult to quantify that because the way that I've described partnership working in the NHS is now a long-established practice. I think that people are used to resolving difficulties through conversation and through dialogue. I think that the natural inclination of managers and staff side within the health context, I would hope, and I'm fairly confident, would be that they would continue to try and seek those opportunities for dialogue. I need to make sure that we're quite full. I still got to get check-off issues in and regulation issues in, but Alison, you want to follow up in this area as well? Yes, please. Thanks, convener. It seems to me, as a committee, we've been scrutinising further powers, and one of the things that we've been looking at really closely is intergovernmental relations. One of the impacts of increased devolved powers is that we're going to have to work more collaboratively with Westminster, but here we have an instance where there seems to be a real impact on our current devolved powers. I suppose that the heart of this is what happens to workers' basic rights. That is a concern that I have because this legislation is wide enough to affect the terms of employment of those who are working in our public authorities and local authorities. My colleague, Mark McDonald, raised a case in point. I just wonder what concerns you have about that. We are having a tremendously, potentially negative impact on relationships at all sorts of levels with the bill. Obviously, the Scottish Parliament is seeking to ensure that this legislation doesn't impact on Scotland, but what are your concerns at the workers' level that it might have? I think that it's probably important—I haven't mentioned it yet—that it's important to point out, just in case anyone is under any doubt, that nothing in current legislation compels surely or anybody else to provide facility time for employees or check-offs. We're essentially talking about the relationship between individuals and their representatives and employers on a workplace-based basis. Our view is that that should essentially be a contractual matter. Obviously, there are a range of regulations in place for where that happens and how it might happen, but it's essentially at the end of the day that it should be a contractual matter between the individual and their representative and their employer. When we talk about government relations, we're not talking about the Westminster Government somehow fleeing the NHS in Scotland for something that they're forced to do. It's about preventing them from doing something that they currently choose to do. I think that, within the current devolved context, that should be approached with far more caution than the other example. It impacts upon the individual because it says that we are taking away not a duty that the NHS has, but a right that you have to request a contractual relationship with your employer that, if your employer chooses to agree to, you may have. We're going to tell the Scottish Government that it is forced to implement that. It seems to me that that is a pretty poor state of affairs, particularly for a Government that says that it's committed to aspects such as localism and employer choice. I know that I'm probably talking more specifically about your Government relation aspect of that, but I think that it does impact upon the individual because, essentially, it removes a right that the individual currently enjoys. I think that, very nicely, we have chosen to make that investment because we believe that that has worked for us. The only other point that I'll make very briefly, Chairman, is that I'm concerned about the view that industrial relations are a continual steady state, which has not been my experience. For ministers to, for example, prescribe facility time, do they do that on a normal Monday when everybody loves each other or do they do that on a day when we've got a significant change agenda or indeed a dispute? These are things which are by their nature flexible because there are times when we spend more time fixing something or developing something than others. The only addition that I would make to the comments that Dave has made is that the reason that we've chosen to do partnership working in the NHS in the manner in which we have is that we've found it to be extremely beneficial and to have the flexibilities that reflect the NHS, where there are daily occurrences that require discussions with staff. I don't think that I've got anything to add to what Shilla said there. It's fair to say that you think that the impacts on local and public authorities haven't been fully considered. I think that they haven't been fully considered and I think that it's properly a matter for local authorities and devolved employers to make that consideration—to be the ones that make that consideration. I'm going to move on to Stuart Maxwell now, but from that conversation that I've just heard, I think that what we've just said is that if this system didn't exist in the public sector in the way, there's another private sector organisations to improve industry relations would go about creating this sort of architecture to make it happen, to make sure things were proceeding in an appropriate way. That's a comment rather than a question. I've not said that in for a while. I was missing your words of wisdom. I was going to ask about—I think that you just answered it in response to Alison. Given that it's not compulsory to do check-off by any employer effectively, you choose to do it because in any analysis of the benefits and the disbenefits of such a move, you have chosen that this is more beneficial than it is disbeneficial to your organisations. However, can I move on slightly given that you've answered that in relation to Alison's questions? Taking it from the UK Government's point of view, are there any particular benefits that you can see in a reduction in costs or any other benefits that may arise from the removal of the ban on check-off? If I might start from that perspective, I think it would be foolish for us to proceed with the notion that NHS pay is a number that is spat out once a month and check-off is the only variable that is requiring this vast amount of time to go in and do. NHS pay is covers from porting staff to senior consultants, covers staff who work full-time, part-time, who have varying allowances, who work on-call, who work in variable shift patterns, who have particular allowances for public holidays, particular allowances for non-public holidays and all sorts of other things—everything from shift-working premiums to distinction awards. If there is a sense that check-off means that pay that doesn't have any attention in central payroll at the moment will become massively simplified and therefore reduce a significant cost burden, I think that that is a misguided premise. NHS pay is a complex thing. It runs well, thankfully, through good computer-based systems. I am not aware of any part of the system identifying check-off as a significant burden to that payroll cost. Respect to local government, all councils, there are many different types of deductions from salary that could be in relation to childcare initiatives for people who have buying bicycles to get to work, you name it. It causes us absolutely no problem whatsoever, and it has no financial bearing at all in any way. It is something that we have done. We have had no issues with payroll. I have never flagged up any problems as far as I am aware, so to change it in my view again is unnecessary. I have a second question. Given that the ban is purely on check-off but not on ruble of charitable donations, loans or any other things that you do through your payroll system, can you come to any other conclusion that this is entirely ideologically driven, given that no other facility from payroll is being affected by this? That is probably not for me to comment on the ideology. Perhaps what I could say is that check-off is, by its nature, something that is entered into on an individual arrangement over a period of time. People who have been members of trade unions have probably been members of trade unions for some time and do not do that on a once-only, never-to-be-repeated, special offer basis. While there is no significant cost to us in running check-off through payroll now, there may be a cost of having to remove all of that information at any given point. The NHS has a workforce that has up to a 40-year service, not as an exception. Those arrangements have built up over time. If it was required that all of those check-off arrangements were removed at any one point in time, that would potentially have a cost to the system. You will guess my conclusion. However, if there was going to be one form of payment that one might argue was legitimately made through the payroll, it would be the payment that was most allied to your status. You work and you choose—or not choose—to pay your dues to a union, which are directly related to that employment. When the employment ceases, you may well choose, you certainly won't be paying through your payroll any more, but you certainly might choose, because there is no other payment—one might argue pensions—there is no other deduction that is so intrinsically linked to the fact that you work and that you get that wage. If there was going to be one single payment that you wouldn't touch—and I'm perfectly in favour of payroll deduction for all of the things that it's currently used for—then that's the one that you would protect. Why is it happening in the public sector just, even though the evidence is quite clear that, number one, it isn't in most cases any meaningful cost to the public sector, but not in the private sector, tells the story that it's ideological. In a sense, you wonder why would the Westminster Government not want to do that to the private sector, too? I think that the ideology of not interfering with the private sector is bigger than the ideology of wanting to make things more difficult for trade union members. What's behind this? Obviously, there's some significant sections of the public sector teachers, for instance, who collect dues through direct debit. Many unions are quite open to the idea over a period of time, as long as the member wants it, and as long as it's suitable to everyone to moving across to direct debit payments. What's behind this is that a window will be provided. When this legislation passes, there will be a three-month or a four-month or a six-month window given in which the union will be required to transfer everybody from payroll deduction to direct debit. That's just a hard job to do. What it requires is going in and meeting and speaking in a whole range of diverse workplaces to every single person and getting their signature. Now, the Government has evidence because it already did this through areas of the civil service in the last couple of years. It has evidence that that's really, really difficult, that unions are forced to devote all of their resources to doing that, and that even then, as with any system where you're changing from one system to another, you get friction and you lose people. It's an attack on the individual member's right to have their dues paid in the most simple way and a straightforward way that they choose. It's also an attack on trade union capacity and attack on trade union finances, too, because they know that however hard we work, we won't hit 100 per cent. If you change it, there's no doubt that, common sense, that's going to create more work and cost. In relation to cost, it's worth pointing out that trade unions make a contribution to that. That varies across Scotland, and it comes back to the localism issue. Different areas have different partnership agreements and there are different contributions. It's cost-neutral, as far as I'm aware. It's not costing us anything at all. My fear is that local government is experiencing a very difficult time financially. Any burden is a burden too much, and changing payroll systems is something that I wouldn't like to say. I think that most people associated with local government would not like to see a change in that. To me, I just don't see the point in it. I understand that. I just want specifically to Dave on this question about how would you deal with a situation where, if Chekhov's abolished and effectively you're somebody playing by direct debt, how would you know that they move from one particular area of work to another area of work in terms of holding a ballot or any other way that you organise within a workforce? For example, if you've got a large workforce and there's dispersed sites, effectively they could be a dispute in one, but not in another. If somebody's paying you by direct debit rather than through Chekhov, does that not create difficulties for unions in terms of trying to organise who, indeed, would be able to vote or not vote in a ballot, for example? It's difficult. There's already fairly rigorous rules in place through the certification office, which requires unions to keep up to date with not just the place of work in a diverse workplace but also addresses and various other things. Because we have to do postal ballot, we have to be in a position where, if members are balloted on something, they get the postal ballot. It's already quite difficult and quite time-consuming to do that. This will make it somewhat more difficult. I wouldn't suggest that it's the largest problem that we face, but it will make it somewhat more difficult. Fundamentally, at the end of the day—maybe I'll give you one example—perhaps once a week, we received the STUC that receives a call from a former union member who believed that they were still a union member who phoned up their union and found out that they hadn't paid their dues for nine months. One of the reasons that that will have happened is because they have made a direct mistake. In some cases, unions will be in a position to say, listen, we'll represent you anyway, but there's a bit of a union rule that you'll probably understand that you can't just let people not pay their union dues and still represent them. The payroll means that that doesn't happen. Payroll deductions mean that that doesn't happen ever. I think that if union members want to avail themselves of that security, that's the most important thing about check-off. Linda, I'll be any. A very quick clarification point on check-off, convener, before I move on. I think that probably Dave can answer this best. I do have a memory of HMRC and the Government trying to stop check-off for the employees through PCS of HMRC. What essentially happened was when the former Westminster Government, the coalition government tried to move the banning of check-off for the whole of the civil service, they provided any Liberal Democrat-led department and all devolved departments were essentially given the choice. Mr Swinney was given the choice and Mr Swinney understandably took the choice that he wasn't going to ban check-off. In certain UK Government departments at that time, check-off was banned, including HMRC, but in others it wasn't. What we're now seeing, of course, is the end game to that, which is that a check-off being banned for all civil service departments. Yes, so they already trialled it, and now they're trying to expand it. Yes, wherever it was assented to by the lead cabinet office or relevant minister, it's already happened and the rest is still to come. Okay, thanks for that. I'd like to go on to picking up from where Alison left off. I guess the devolution and respect agenda about the regulatory powers. We know that the bill originally stated that, Secretary of State, we are given the responsibility to make the regulations on those issues that affect us. Then it was changed and now states, a Minister of the Crown will be enabled to make changes to regulations about facility time and check-off in the organisations that we've been talking about in the public sector in Scotland. It doesn't seem very clear to me or to many of us whether this is referring to a UK minister or a Scottish minister. I know that Dave You raised it earlier on in these discussions about your perception at the meetings that you have had. I wonder if you could expand on that now. I will make sure that the committee has access to the response from Nick Boles to Chris Stevens MP, where he appears to make this clear that, in a sense, the civil service is an unusual case in point because the civil service continues to be a UK Government department, but it's quite clear from us in our interpretation of what Nick Boles said. Just so people are clear, there's two parts to the facility time provisions within the bill. Firstly, that all public sector employers should be required to give account of their current facility time and then an optional power of intervention for ministers of the Crown to cap that facility time. I know your question, Linda, is where is that power going to be vested? Everything that we've seen so far, referring back to that letter, suggests that it will be in the relevant UK department, even where that power is, even where the department has a devolved mirror in Scotland. We can't come to any other conclusion that the Minister for Health for Westminster will be dictating whether the facility time in the NHS in Scotland should be kept on. Can I ask for each of your views on the workability of that and how you feel that would affect relationships within Scotland, within your own organisations? I think that I made reference earlier on to what one might plan for by way of study state and what might present itself on a daily basis. We have an enormous change agenda. We discuss with our staff side very frequently, both at national level and at board level, what those arrangements may look like in the future. We engage with staff side on a regular basis, either through our partnership working arrangements or on bilateral discussions. I think that it would be very difficult for us to prescribe how often we were going to do that and seek that kind of cap. I think that it also becomes worrying when the quantification of that could be viewed as simply a cost and that boards may then be in a position where they are required to justify why they are spending X amount in terms of facility time without us having the opportunity to influence that discussion with the kind of mature industrial relations stuff that I have been talking about this morning. I am just interested in the views of those giving as evidence as to the difficulties that there may well be when you are responsible to devolved ministers, devolved cabinet secretaries and indeed the Scottish Parliament in many ways, but that regulations can be handed down over functions that are the responsibility of the institutions here. Regulations can be handed down by a UK Government of whatever ideology. I think that it is fair to say that in trying to stay at the NHS in Scotland, we are responsible to the Scottish Parliament for the delivery of a health service fit for the people of Scotland. Of course, reflecting if nothing else our history, we do that with very close relationships with the Department of Health, but our efforts I think over the last several years have been to clarify and simplify. Our primary point of contact in local government is the Scottish Government. We do not have if any many connections with the local government department in Westminster, so certainly from our point of view that there has been that working established. How would that affect on the ground? I am sorry to keep going on about it, but we very much do not want to see the change and we want to make the decisions within the councils. We do not want to have anyone elsewhere making the decisions on how we deal with our colleagues in the trade unions. I am bound to speculate that it would be politically interesting if such a dictate to be passed down by, let us say, a UK health minister at the same time as the Scottish Minister for Health was suggesting to the NHS in Scotland that they do something different. Thank you, convener. I think that we need absolute clarity on this. It is a hugely important point from Westminster. I accept that. That is an important point. Given the regulation issue, given that the only place that the statutory instrument can be brought forward is in the House of Commons at the UK Parliament, it is pretty clear from that that the only people who could promote that would be a UK minister. We will get clarification, but from my perspective I am pretty clear on that. Stewart, I want to come up to some of the things that I need to get on the record before we move on. It is a very quick point of clarification, just to make sure that my assumption is correct. Given the definition of who would be affected by the relevant public sector employers, I will give you a very, very quick example. If there are two councils, one council has all its services in house and the other council has almost, as Amtlent organisations, ledger trust, etc. Is it the case that Chekhov would, for example, Chekhov is one example, be banned in the council who has retained those services in house, but it would not be banned in the ledger trust, etc., the Amtlent organisations? I am going to invite Jamie Donnell in here. That is a technical point, I think, that you will probably know more about than I do. Just for clarity, I think that that is potentially the case. We need some clarity around that. Obviously, local authorities do have different decision making for their different services and it would be very difficult for us to deal with that when we have colleagues working in allio and in a council and have different arrangements. Potentially was the word there because the bill is far from clear just now, not just in respect of the facility time and the Chekhov provisions but also other aspects of the bill as well, what exactly will be defined as a public sector organisation. It is arguable that the bill will be interpreted to include any organisation that is primarily undertaking publicly funded functions, but it is not clear. So, where allios, where a range of even voluntary sector organisations might sit within this, is not yet clear from the bill. That was the next question. Does that then affect possibly third sector organisations as well? It absolutely could do, because if a third sector organisation is delivering either a key service with reference to certain provisions of the bill or a public service with reference to other sections of the bill, it is entirely possible that the final bill and the final instruments might interpret those as public sector organisations. Sorry, I apologise. I apologise for the clarification. Am I right again in assuming that Chekhov again, trade union fees would obviously be banned because through Chekhov we would be no longer allowed, but if you were a member of a staff association that would not be banned. I would need to check that, actually. A couple of questions from me just to make sure that we get some stuff on the record, because we will need to try to produce a report sometime next weekend on the proceedings from today. The UK's Government's own Regulatory Policy Committee described the impact assessment supporting bill as not for purpose and highlighted a severe lack of evidence to support the legislation. Just for the sake of the record, would you agree that the bill is not for purpose? I will go for a yes on that one. I certainly agree that there is a lack of evidence. In which case, and it is unlikely that the UK Government will not decide to proceed with the bill, but if in the case that it does decide to proceed with the bill, would you support the proposal that the UK Government removes Scotland from the territorial extent of the bill through amendments in the House of Commons at the Lord's Committee stage at report stage? Effectively, removing Scotland from the bill in the later process in the Lord's at the report stage, would you think that that would be a good idea? The STC's existing position is that employment law, including the regulation of trade unions, should be a devolved issue. It follows from that that any piece of legislation should be a matter for Scotland. That does not mean—I think that it is important to point that out—that we are careless of the interests of the border trade union movement, nor would it be the case in our view that, were Scotland to be removed, it would not feel some of the consequences of bad legislation being passed at Westminster. Billy, do you want to reflect on that? I am just going to say that I would be happy to speak for local government that Scotland was removed from that question. Shirley-Anne is the biggest employer on the NHS side. If you are in a position to say so, I am not sure if you are. I think that I defer to my colleagues either side for that. What I would be happy to say is that the partnership arrangements that have existed for a long time in the NHS in Scotland would not necessarily be added to by any of the proposals that we have seen. If all that was to fail, do you think that it would be appropriate that the Scottish ministers should have conferred on them directly the issues directly related to public services in Scotland, such as local authorities, the NHS, Police Scotland and other devolved matters, that the regulation issues should be left to Scottish ministers? Absolutely. Shirley-Anne agrees with that as well. As far as I am concerned, health is a devolved matter. Just for the record purposes, because we need to draw this report up. So I am very grateful, folks, for coming along today, providing us with substantial evidence. Thank you very much. We are now moving to private session.