 Good morning and welcome to the first meeting of the committee in 2015 and a happy new year to you all. Everyone present is asked to switch off mobile phones and other electronic equipment as they affect the broadcasting system. Some committee members will refer to tablets during the course of the meeting as we provide meeting papers in digital format. We have apologies today from John Walsham MSP and Clare Adamson MSP, and Stuart Stevenson will be substituting for Clare Adamson, and you are very welcome, sir. Agenda item 1 is to decide whether to take item 7 in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Agenda item 2 is to consider the appointment of a European Union reporter. Can I ask that we defer that to the next meeting of the committee? Are we agreed? Agenda item 3 is subordinate legislation. Oral evidence taken session on negative instrument, which is the town and country planning general permitted development Scotland order 2014, SSI 2014-300. Members have a cover paper from the clerk setting out the background to the instrument. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee did not draw any issues to our attention in relation to this instrument. A motion to annul this instrument has been lodged by Cameron Buchanan. We will consider that motion after this oral evidence session. I welcome our witnesses. They are Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners' Rights, John McNairie, Scottish Government chief planner and actually have been McNairie. It's my brief that's wrong. Sorry, Mr McNairie. David Reakey, planning performance division and Norman McLeod, director of legal services in the Scottish Government. Cabinet secretary, can I ask you if you've got any opening remarks about the SSIs? I'll maybe just very briefly try and set it in context, the convener, if that's okay in terms of what we're trying to do. We are the town and country planning general permitted development Scotland amendment number 2, order 2014, introduces an approach which we think strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of rural businesses and protecting Scotland's environment, immunity and heritage. Following public consultation in 2012, we've listened to industry concerns that the full removal of all permitted development rights for agriculture and forestry hill tracks would be disproportionate at this time. Instead, this order retains existing permitted development rights subject to the introduction of a prior notification and approval process that allows planning authorities, for the first time, to intervene where appropriate and proportionately to ensure that the design, sighting and appearance of new tracks are acceptable. We've also legislated to ensure that there will be no fee for prior notification and approval in relation to agricultural and forestry tracks, so that's the overall setting for the SSI. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. Mr Buchanan, do you have any remarks or questions on the SSI? Thank you, yes. Is this what I can come in right? Thank you very much indeed. Good morning, everybody. This is the lodging of the motion S4M-18842 to null this— Welcome to that in item 4. Oh, I knew I was right about that. Thank you. So, if you have any questions or any remarks at this point, Cameron, feel free to do so. No, no. Thank you. Stewart Stevenson has a question. I've a couple of questions, convener, for me. The first one is the provision that this order brings for prior notification. Is that a provision that is already used elsewhere in the planning system or is this novel in relation to old tracks? No, I think that it's used elsewhere in the planning system. It's already used for buildings, agricultural buildings and forestry buildings. The proposition is to extend that into tracks. That's helpful, so we're not dealing with something that's novel. It's an established procedure that we're applying to a new area. Second question is one that I don't know if we can answer. If we can't answer it, that may inform the way we deal with this. My question is, have we a view of how many kilometres each year of new hill tracks are constructed? Cabinet Secretary, I'm going to pass that to David. Just before I answer it, can I give an indication? Having some forestry ancestry myself, I'm very keen that we get it right in terms of the forestry industry, because the forestry industry makes a huge contribution to the Scottish economy. What we're trying to do overall is get the balance right between ensuring that we have controlled sustainable development that's done properly, but at the same time we don't want to impose unnecessary buttons in the sector. That would be crazy because of its enormous contribution to the Scottish economy. In the forestry industry, particularly when you're talking about tracks, sometimes the image is of just a road track that's a fairly temporary track, not covering more than a couple of miles in order to facilitate logging in the transport of logs. In some cases, we're talking about roads. For example, down in Delfresha, there's a tarmac road of roughly 20 miles, which is called the A-link, A-y, which is a community in Delfresha, and it's called the A-link community road. That's 20 miles of tarmac road. It seems to me that it's reasonable, given that it's a very important part of our environment, that appropriate and proportionate control should be put on that development to make sure that it fits in with our general approach to the rural environment. In terms of the specifics and the numbers, I don't know if David's getting ready to hand, but if we don't, we'll certainly send him to you, but knowing David, he might have them in ready to hand. Mr Reiki. I hate to disappoint the minister. I don't know the exact number of miles that is built every year. We have engaged with stakeholders throughout the process, and as part of that, we've asked several stakeholders for estimates of the amount of tracks that are created. I think that the first thing to say is that what we're not dealing with necessarily is just completely new tracks. It's also extensions to existing tracks. Kearn Gorms national park estimated that, in that area, there are roughly about 800 existing tracks, and they reckon that there will be roughly 800 new or extensions in a year, as just in the Kearn Gorms national park area. Forestry commission have given us figures of between one and two and a half thousand track alterations, extensions, new tracks etc being built a year. Perhaps I can just take that one further step in questioning. What is a track? In other words, are we here talking about something that is designed for use by mechanical vehicles as distinct from something that is a walker's track? Just to be absolutely clear what it is that we're dealing with. The word track does not appear in the general permitted development order. It refers to what's called private ways, and private ways are defined as being either a road or a footpath. We are dealing with both one extreme footpaths and, at the other extreme, roads for HGVs to extract large amounts of timber. Any other questions from members? No, thank you very much for that. In which case can we now move on to agenda item 4, which is the debate on the motion to annul the Town and Country Planning General Permitted Development Scotland Order 2014, SSI 2014 slash 300, on which we have just taken oral evidence. Do any members wish to speak in the debate? Thank you very much. I hadn't expected to be the first speaker, but I'm delighted to be so. I draw on some experience of when I was planning minister and I'd omitted office from that now over four years ago. The subject is not one that has arisen in the last few days, few weeks, few months, and it's clearly been one that's engaged quite a wide range of stakeholders. I'm delighted to see this come forward because it's not about seeking to constrain or restrict the proper use of tracks for a wide range of purposes, forestry, which the minister has referred to as being one of them, but there are others. As we've identified, it will cover tracks for pedestrians. We shouldn't fail to understand that tracks introduced for pedestrians can have significant impacts on the environment, in particular on some of our more popular hills. Tracks can cause significant erosion just by pedestrians. I think that this is a very welcome step into understanding the effects on our environment and the benefits that are derived from the construction of the tracks. For an area in which there are such significant developments and the numbers that were provided, albeit at their estimates, were larger than I expected to be candid about it, but I think that it indicates how important it is that we understand that. The important thing that I took from my questioning of the minister was that there is nothing novel in planning terms in the approach that is being proposed. It's one to which agriculture is a ready subject. It has permitted development rights for agricultural buildings and developments in relation to agriculture and has continued to operate entirely satisfactorily and successfully, while subject to the notification requirement. I am not at all convinced that there will be any downside to those who make their living in the countryside and depend on those tracks. I am very convinced that there is a significant benefit to our understanding of the environmental impacts of that in our having a properly recorded database by prior notification of what's going on. I will therefore not be supporting the motion to an owl today, and I encourage all my colleagues in the committee to take that same position. Amryd, would you like to speak to what is your motion? My reason for this is because the forestry tracks have been lumped together with high altitude road tracks. I think that it's an unintended consequence of this legislation. There is enough legislation already in existence concerning forestry tracks on local authorities who are consulted anyway on all forestry applications. That just adds extra bureaucracy, which is not the intention of the bill. I think that this bill should only cover agriculture, not forestry. Forestry proposals in any case have to go through a 28-day period on the public register before being signed off, so there is due warning. The Scottish environment said that forest roads have not been a problem up until now, and I think that it's important not to go through a parallel planning process. Also, there was a case where we were promised that they would share the consultation before it went live, so I think that this is an unintended consequence of this legislation, and therefore I would seek to have it in ald for that reason. Does anyone else wish to enter the debate? Cabinet Secretary, do you wish to respond to the debate? Let me say that Cameron and I had a very useful discussion yesterday, and since then I've been doing some work on the points that Cameron has raised legitimately. First of all, I'll just deal with some of the points that Cameron raised, but before I do so, can I say that even if you accepted everything that Cameron said, to throw the baby out with the bathwater by annulling this SSI would obviously be completely the wrong thing to do because of the huge consequences of annulling the legislation? In any case, I'm going to go through each of the points that Cameron has legitimately raised and deal with them. The first one was in terms of consultation. Let me first of all make a distinction between the consultation on the regulations that are on the SSI and the consultation on the guidance that flows from the SSI once it is, hopefully, passed by the committee. In terms of the consultation on the SSI, we have consulted widely with Confor and others on the regulations, and any commitments that have been made to consultation have been kept. Further more, we have already started the consultation on the guidance, and there was a seminar in 11 December that involved Confor and others on consultation on the guidance. The commitments that were made by Derek Mackay and Paul Wheelhouse on consultation have been met. The consultation on the guidance is not yet complete and it is not yet exhausted, and there will be other opportunities. I will ensure that every organisation with an interest in this matter has the opportunity to put their input into the guidance. I'm happy that we produced draft guidance before we finalised the guidance so that people can point out to us any unintended consequences in our draft when we give it to them. I am absolutely committed to consultation because I want to get this right. As I said when I started, it is getting the balance between ensuring proper control of a rural environment to ensure that it is sustainable in the long term, but at the same time I do not want to impose unnecessary burdens on the industry nor do I want to impose a planning system that is disproportionate to what we are trying to achieve, and therefore let me make it absolutely clear that, before I approve the guidance, I will require to be satisfied myself that we have given every opportunity and not just the opportunity to listen but to take into consideration any substantive points that were made by Confor and others. I also say that there is already a commitment that we will review the implementation of the legislation after 12 months so that there will be a review from the date of implementation after the initial 12 months. I have decided that that will be an independent review, so it would not just be run by the Government. I will appoint somebody independently with the relevant qualifications to review how the legislation is working and being implemented after it has been up and running for 12 months, so that we can quickly learn where anything is going wrong or where there are unintended consequences that need to be dealt with. I give that absolute commitment to the committee. The second point raised by Cameron was in relation to the burden and the administrative burden. Let me see that there are already very substantial processes in place for foresters in terms of the plans that they have to submit to the forestry commission. Therefore, the additional requirements arising from the legislation are fairly proportionate, because much of the information is already available in the plans that are submitted by each of them to the forestry commission. We have an arrangement with the forestry commission that they will make all that information available to the relevant planning authority so that the company does not need to duplicate and repeat what they have already done with the forestry commission. The only part that would be required to be dealt with additionally would be any additional information that is required on top of what is already being submitted to the forestry commission. Now, an example of that is that when the company is submitted with the forestry commission, it is a longer-term strategic plan. Obviously, at some point, it may decide that it needs an additional track or an extended track that is not already in the plans that are submitted to the forestry commission. That would be required to be, obviously, through this process. However, I am very keen, as I have said three or four times this morning, to make absolutely sure—now, I will work with Cameron and with Confor to make myself—I am happy to involve myself in this—to make sure that the industry is satisfied that we are not putting a lot of duplication, a lot of unnecessary burdens on them. I have already emphasised to officials this morning again that when we do the guidance and when we implement the legislation, it needs to be proportionate and it needs to be sensible, while at the same time, of course, achieving the objective of balanced development within our rural communities. We will work with the industry to make sure that there are no unintended consequences. If any arise, we will deal with them within the 12-month independent review and get it sorted. I hope that the quality of the consultation will be such that no unintended consequences will arise. Can I ask if you wish to move or withdraw S4M-18842? In view of what the cabinet secretary said, I will withdraw it. Thank you very much. Are the committee happy that the motion is withdrawn? That is unanimously agreed. Thank you very much, cabinet secretary. If we could break for just a couple of minutes. Now that that motion is withdrawn, the SSI remains in force, and that concludes that item. We move on to agenda item 5, which is consideration of two negative instruments. They are the town and country planning fees for applications and deemed applications amendment 2 regulations 2014, SSI 2014-301 and the Charities Account Scotland amendment 2 regulations 2014, SSI 2014-335. Members have a paper from the clerk setting out the purpose of the instruments. The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered these instruments and drew several issues to our attention in relation to SSI 2014-335. Those are set out in the cover paper from the clerk. Do members have any comments to make on any of those instruments or the comments from the Delegated Powers Committee? Mr Stevenson. Thank you very much, convener. I just want to make a brief comment on the town and country planning fees for applications and deemed applications order, which is an annual event that comes forward. It is a subject that I first raised in 2003 and continue to take an interest in. I wonder whether the committee itself might care in some aspect of its future work to consider what I am about to say. I am not clear in my mind why centrally we tell local authorities what they should be charging for planning fees. I know legalistically why, because the appropriate legislation requires that the Government set the fees. However, there is nothing in the legislation to stop the Government setting the fees as a range from one penny to a million pounds for the sake of argument. In an environment in which we want to ensure that our local authorities have the maximum power to do what they need to and decide is appropriate to do, I wonder if, in the committee's future work, it might be appropriate to include consideration of whether planning fees should be set centrally or local authorities should set them. The more efficient authorities thereby would have a competitive edge, the less efficient authorities would have an incentive to improve. Thank you, Mr Stevenson. I welcome your input. It has been touched upon previously at committee, and I think that it is something that we should look at the next time we look at planning. I would imagine that members would agree that we do that at that appropriate juncture. Can we agree not to make any recommendations to the Parliament on either of those instruments? Thank you very much. If we can move on to agenda item 6. That is the annual meeting that we hold with the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and his staff regarding the annual report. I welcome Jim Martin, the Ombudsman, Nicky McLean, director and Paul McFadden, head of complaint standards from the SPSO to today's meetings. Members have a fair amount of paper to support them today, and I am keen that we have a constructive session. The principal purpose for the committee is to consider how the SPSO is performing in the exercise of their remit—a never expanding remit—and the extent to which they are managing to fulfil the difficult task set for them by the legislation. That is our principal focus, but we are also keen to hear the views and how our public services are performing, as seen through the eyes of the SPSO, who in many ways will have an insight into their operation through their work. There may be information that they can share with us, which could alert us to good practice in areas or perhaps some difficulties may be caused by the pressures on public services. We also have a number of questions submitted by members of the public, and we will no doubt ask a number of those today. Those we do not ask, we will pass to the SPSO for a written response. It is perhaps worth mentioning that it is not the role of this committee to act as an appeals body for those who are unhappy with the outcome of their complaint. The ombudsman's decisions are final unless a judicial review is taken. Whilst we invite members of the public to submit questions, the purpose of that is to give us a general awareness of their views and to supplement our thinking on corporate matters. We also need to be mindful that the questions received from the public may not be representative of all those who have used the service, as those who are satisfied with the service are unlikely to submit a question. Finally, we continue consideration of petition PE1538 at today's meeting. Members are grateful to the SPSO for their comments thereon. The petitioner has been given sight of those comments and submitted their thoughts thereon. We may probe the position on that further, although we are aware that the SPSO was subject to a review in 2009, during which section 19 of the principle act was considered. Would you like to make any brief opening remarks, Mr Martin? No, I think that we should probably use the time best by... You are happy for us to batter on then? Yes. Thank you very much. If I can maybe start on your expanding image, you are about to deal with aspects of the Scottish welfare fund in the near future. How are you going to cope with that and are extra resources going to be forthcoming to ensure that that additional burden does not impact on your current workload? I have been greatly heartened by the attitude of the Scottish Government on this, who seem to be very open to the argument that to give us more work will require us to look at more resources and the corporate body is currently discussing with the Scottish Government what form that should take. As you know, convener, from your membership of another committee, one of the difficulties that we have in planning for this is that we are uncertain about what the volume of work coming with the Scottish welfare fund will be. Under the old fund, when it was administered at a UK level, on an annual basis, some 6,000 people would take appeals to the body then the IRS. In Scotland last year, the number of appeals coming through was less than 200. We are trying to get to the bottom of why that is, whether it is signposting, whether it is that local authorities are doing a better job, which I tend to think a lot of cases are true. However, for our purposes, for planning purposes, it makes it very difficult indeed to work out whether that is going to be a small addition to the work that we do or whether we are going to have to create a separate unit. We are working with the Scottish Government quite closely and with the corporate body to try to work out how we can plan for that. However, I did indicate to another committee that it would be my view that whatever initial setup we come to, that that should be reviewed pretty quickly after we have taken on these powers to make sure either that we are resourced well enough to deal with cases who deal with very vulnerable people who need very quick answers to questions. On the other hand, we are not over resourced for a demand that is not really there. The planning stages are well ahead, convener, and I am quite content that everyone is approaching this in a very positive manner. Thank you, Mr Martin. In terms of reviews of decisions, we have had a number of questions from members of the public around the reviews. You have said that you are pleased to report that you have seen a reduction for the first time in requests for reviews of your decisions. You have stated that all customers, complainants and organisations can request a review if they are unhappy with a decision that is not made personally by me but is delegated to one of our complaints reviewers. There has been an indication that requests are not necessarily granted in terms of reviews. Have you any comment to make about that, Mr Martin? We are very open about the process that we go through with complainants when they come to us. As soon as someone comes to us, we inform them of what the process is, which includes the right to seek a review. A review cannot be sought of a report that we relay directly to Parliament. A report that is the decision that I would make, which would meet the criteria to come to Parliament, complainants and the body that is complained about would see a draft report of that, and we would be able to comment on that. The vast bulk of the decisions that we take are done through a decision letter, and there is a review process available to everyone, be it the body under jurisdiction or the member of public, to bring that. The highest number that we have had—peranum, if I am wrong, I will correct this later—is 7 per cent of the cases that people seek in review. Currently, the number is running at just over 3 per cent, so it is not a terribly high number. In order to have a review carried forward, that is to reopen the case. The criteria for review needs to be met. Lastly, that is around whether new and material evidence can be produced to show that the decision was taken without all the appropriate information available. When that happens, we do open cases, but we reopen a very small number, as you would expect, of those cases. We are pretty open about that. The numbers are quite small, and I am pleased to say that we are now giving people far more information about why we are not reopening cases, contacting them by telephone, and that seems to be helping people to understand the process better. It would be useful if we could get the accurate figure. You said about 7 per cent. If we could get that, I think that that would be extremely useful. I can confirm that now. The highest figure that we have seen was 7 per cent in the first six months of 2013-14. Do you want to come in, Ms McLean? I was just confirming that we published all of that data on our website, so people can access all of the detailed statistics if they are interested. That is great. Thank you very much for that. We have a question about the time barring for bringing complaints. I wonder if you have any comment on that, Mr Martin. The time barring issue is probably one of the most difficult that I have to deal with. The legislation is quite clear that people should bring a case to me within 12 months of their first knowing about the thing that they are complaining about. We try to interpret that to allow as many people as possible to bring cases to us. My understanding is that, in 2002 and in the previous local government ombudsman rules, the intention was not to allow people to rhetoric cases that were years old, where the evidence may no longer be available and it would be very difficult to reopen cases. I have discretion that I apply on the time bar. I have used it. For example, in a health case, I can think of where an incident happened and a family spent enough a long time talking to a health board without reaching a conclusion. It was put to me that the 12-month time bar would mean that those people would not be able to have their case heard. I took the view that the system was at fault and that, by prolonging people's stay within the system, people were being denied the right effectively to come to the ombudsman. Very early on, I made it clear to all the health boards, for example, that I would be taking a view that if a health board looked at a case, it would probably, in most cases, be suitable to come to the ombudsman, regardless of the time that it began. However, those are the most difficult cases that we have to deal with. Whether the time bar should be 12 months—it should be six months, as I believe it may soon be in Northern Ireland, which I think is far too short—or whether it should be two or three years, I think that at any point you are going to have to come to the decision where my successor will have to take the view as to how they use their discretion. It is one of the very difficult decisions that an ombudsman has to make. You have that discretion? Yes, I do. Stevenson, please. I wonder if the ombudsman has a view that, rather than the time the clock starting ticking at the beginning of the complaint, the clock in relation to the ombudsman's activity should start clicking once all the procedures with the public body in question have been exhausted. In practice, given that the ombudsman has discretion, is that the way that the ombudsman would, in general terms, look at discharging his responsibilities? I tend to take the view that if a body under jurisdiction has allowed a complaint to go into the complaints process, go through the process and be dealt with, and a final conclusion arrives with the body under jurisdiction. That would be a very important factor weighing with me as to whether or not I would use discretion on time bar. I do not think that we can lay it down rigidly. I think that to lay those things down rigidly would be wrong, but I do think that the area of discretion that I would use would take into account whether or not the body whose decision that I am taking a view on has itself deemed that it can take that complaint. That would be very important. One of the things that we do in our office, which other ombudsman offices in the United Kingdom do not do, is that we start the clock running in all the performance data from the time that we actually make contact with the complainant. Most of not all of the other ombudsman offices in the United Kingdom start the clock once they have all the paperwork together that they need to begin to investigate it. My view is that it is the citizen whose time we should be measuring and not the ombudsman's time. Similarly, if a citizen has been allowed into the system by a body under jurisdiction, I find it very difficult to see why that should be closed off when they have entered the system if I am the final decision-making body. I am going to ask question 17. I was very interested to see why you sought help from the Samaritans and also to improve your treatment of the complaint. What did you learn from them and has this helped you in any way? It has helped us immensely. I would advocate to the Parliament and to other bodies, similar to my own, that this is an exceptional way to enable people to learn more about how to deal with people who are under great distress and that threaten self-harm. I know that the question from the member of the public suggests that we had to do this to improve our treatment of complainants. That is a pejorative way of putting it. What our staff wanted to know was how best can they help people who come to them in a distress state? My team tells me that, of all the training that we have laid on for them in the five years that I have been ombudsman, that this has been the best training that they have had. It is the one that has had the biggest impact on how they work day to day. I can tell you this on two, three, four or five occasions that have been put to good use where people have been in really dire circumstances and where we have been able to assist them to deal with them appropriately and manage to divert them or to send them to places where they can get help. I would recommend this to the Parliament and to other bodies who deal with members of the public who may be distressed. I can also come back on another question, question 19, which was, how many cases in the year involve corruption or deliberate malpractice? Do you have any examples of this? Mr Martin? Corruption is a criminal offence. I think that behind this question is basically how often do we see deliberate actions that people take? I am quite pleased to say that quite rarely. On occasion, we have seen some. For example, we had one case in a health board that, in a particularly difficult case, it was suggested that the national guidance on how to deal with a particular condition had not been followed because the health board had in place a local protocol. Rather than just accept that, we pressed and pressed until we found out that there was no local protocol involved, but that a clinician had signed off that there had been and was involved in the original complaint. In that case, I would argue that that was deliberate malpractice, but I am pleased to say that we have seen that very rarely. Question 9 asks, are the SPSO's service-level agreements available to the public, thus allowing them to judge for themselves if they have received the expected level of service or not? I think that we have very few service-level agreements in place. The primary service-level agreement that we have in place is with the parliamentary and health services ombudsman to provide clinical advice to us. There is an SLA in place. Obviously, some of it is commercially sensitive, but it would be available with the relevant redactions if people were interested in seeing that. I think that the key issue is can people make a judgment about whether or not they are receiving the service that they should be with that SLA? That requires PHSO to provide the clinical advice to us, and it is for us then to decide how we use that advice within our decisions. So, in terms of the service that the individuals are receiving, the service is coming from SPSO. It is not coming from PHSO in that sense. I hope that helps to answer the question. In some regards, in terms of what you have in your website, your attempts are to be as transparent as possible. Would it not be a possibility to have that on your website with the necessary redactions to deal with commercial sensitivity? We could certainly do that, yes. Okay, thank you very much. Mr Rowley. Good morning. I might pick up a couple of things, but firstly, in your answer to question 17 about Samaritans, I mean, that is an interesting point because I know that front-line staff and local government of the river, what can they train and do they have, particularly around areas such as mental health and some of the issues that people are experiencing in these difficult times? Do you share best practice? Do you make recommendations around these kind of things? I think one of the areas of work and one of the most common questions that we get from bodies under jurisdiction is around how they can work with people where not necessarily in the arena of mental health but in the arena of unacceptable actions where there's a persistent and on-going relationship and we publish a lot of guidance and advice and we also deliver training to bodies under jurisdiction in that area. Okay, thank you. It might be good if we can get some links to have a look at some of that. Question 33, there's a specific question that's been submitted around case workers having no medical training yet are passed to go through medical records in order to submit requests for clinical advice. I suppose, I mean, if I think for a local government point of view, I know that cases that I've seen going to the Ombudsman previously around planning, for example, it could be argued there as well that the planners are profession and to themselves that tend to throw back different planning legislation at people and feel they've never got an answer. How do you deal with that type of need to have expertise in all these areas or do you? You're right, planning officials do throw planning acts at you until sometimes it can be like a blizzard. The way that we deal with this and remember the range that we deal with across the public sector so that we have different powers in different areas, in health, we can look at clinical judgment and so we keep a number of advisers in Scotland so that I have a nurse adviser, a GP adviser too at the moment, we have a medical consultant, a psychiatrist, a mental health nurse, various others who work with our complaints reviewers on medical cases. We also use a bank of advisers in medical matters that she's kept in London by the Ph.S.O. I've made no secret in the past that I think that the time is coming as the health service goes in different directions in many ways across the United Kingdom. I frankly believe that we don't have a national health service anymore, I believe that we have at least four national health services in the United Kingdom. We need to think about having a Scottish-based bank of advisers in health. I'll give you an example, the rules on how accident and emergency operate on taking people in or not are different in England and Scotland, so we have to be very careful. We keep these advisers, we keep planning advisers, we have a social work adviser who we use occasionally, we have water advisers and we've got an adviser on equality and diversity, so that our complaints reviewers will work with those people on the cases as they come through and will take the professional advice that is given to them. That's important because, as you probably know from your experience in local government, it can be very difficult when someone simply says to you, do you realise that the time and country planning act of such and such data says this? We find very often that the advice will get, well you know it actually does say that but it also says and that then enables us to come to a balanced decision. How do you ensure that the advisers that you're using have no interests in the case that the investigators are dealing with? My nursing adviser, for example, is a Lothian adviser, she'll not see Lothian cases. My GP adviser is based, I think, in Milton of Campsy, she'll not see Glasgow area cases, so we try to get them apart. One of the reasons I think that my predecessors used a bank of advisers at the parliamentary health service almost in London was that it was less likely that they would have any links at all to anything in the national health service in Scotland. The argument runs that if Scotland is such a small place, can you possibly get people to take objective decisions? My view is that you can, and when I spoke to the previous medical adviser to the Government as to whether or not we should move towards a Scottish adviser, Harry Burns warned me that the thing that I should be concerned about was not whether they would know the cases but whether they would have a view themselves about the people and maybe give me too strong a view against the practitioner rather than for the practitioner. We have to be very careful that we make sure that no one has got any conflict of interest when it comes to decision making. You think that you've got that balance right? I think that we have. I can't think of any cases where I've had any cause to take a step back and wonder whether or not that was the case. I wonder if I could raise some of the issues posed in question 26. It's about the adoption of quality management system standards, in particular ISO 9001. I have some experience myself and a past job using quality management standards, so it was a wee bit of a surprise that the ombudsman didn't think that the application of the ISO 9001 family was applicable to this sense of public service complaints handling and so on. I know that ISO 100003 might be applicable, because that deals with complaints that are not resolved by the organisation itself. First, it is to depict what you are thinking about, but then to ask you to follow up and tell me a wee bit about the internal assessment framework, the self-assessment framework that you are developing. Nicky McLean has been doing on this in the UK. I think that when we originally looked at ISO 9001, I think that there are elements of it that relate to commercial interactions with customers, which we didn't feel were relevant for public services, and so that put us on a journey of considering what we might use internally. I also think that there are elements of work that ombudsman schemes undertake that are unique to that animal, and that's reflected in things like the principles that the British and Irish Ombudsman Association adopted for all ombudsman schemes, so we felt that it was important also that we reflected those principles in the quality framework that we use, and so that's why we pursued the idea of developing our own service standards through consultation and discussion with other ombudsman schemes with the possibility of developing standards that could be used by all ombudsman schemes and possibly other secondary complaints handling bodies, so that's the route that we're now on. So we've developed a set of service standards that have been endorsed by the Ombudsman Association, the British and Irish Ombudsman Association, and we're now looking to build a quality framework around those service standards. Those service standards have also been passed, our own customer sounding board, which represents a group of a range of advocacy agencies across Scotland, so that we feel that we now have a reasonable set of service standards that's clearly linked into and reflect the specific nature of the work that the ombudsman schemes carry out. That's quite encouraging, convener, and will the scope of that internal framework that you're developing touch on the numbers of premature complaints that you're still getting? You were saying that it's 37 per cent cases that are still prematurely presented to you. Will that assessment framework try to reach out and to influence that, to try to bring that down, which is one of your stated aims? One of the things that we've been trying over the last two or three years to do is to tackle what we call premature complaints, which is, effectively, people who have got a complaint about a body under our jurisdiction who haven't gone to the body but have come to us before usually they've gone to the body. We've done a number of things, one is to look at it in service standards, that's one of the things we're doing, but we're trying to tackle that at source because, while it's premature complaints to us, it's missed complaints for the bodies under jurisdiction, and what we're trying to do is to encourage all those bodies to think about why that is, and you'll see in the information that we've sent to you that we went out to 10, 11 organisations, which represent the bodies we bring about 40 per cent of the business to our office, and we identified them using three main criteria, the volume of complaints coming, the volume of upheld complaints, and the number of premature complaints, and we've engaged directly with them to say, well, these are the numbers we are finding, for example, we had 60 per cent of the people who brought a social work complaint to our office came prematurely, 60 per cent's a big number, you know, and you think that the number's running about 37 per cent, but why is that? You would expect that with the new complaint handling procedures that are being brought in, largely designed by Paul McFadden here, that that number would fall and it is beginning to fall, but what we're trying to do is to target where we're getting the highest volumes of prematures because these are people who are lost in the system, we don't understand the system, and it's sending a message to the bodies that we're taking cases for, you're not getting your message out clearly enough if people aren't coming to you, so that's an area that we are focusing on very, very strongly. Those organisations where rather the complaints are coming from, but people are obviously engaged with certain organisations and they bring to you a complaint prematurely, but do those organisations that people have been working with have any quality management standards, do you think? It seems to me that if we both sides of the scale here had adopted some kind of management complaints, management standards, you would probably see a further drop in the complaints prematurely coming to you. I think that you and I are both addicted to the same stuff. I genuinely believe that people look at the quality of the service that they're offering and the quality of the customer, inverted commerce, contact that they have, then that has to be an element that comes into that and they have to be looking at quality. It's one of the things that we discuss with people a lot about what we're doing and trying to encourage people to follow that through, but we're dealing with a range of the public sector, remember, and we are the ombudsman, we are not the quality control unit for the public sector in Scotland. Last question, Cadena. At the tail end of the process, when you do make recommendations with timescales and so on, will your framework encompass that so that you're able to do some follow-up and verification and so on? Because it was one of the issues that I always felt with my role in the Audit and Committee, that Audit Scotland don't have that ability to do follow-up verification to try to make sure that organisations are carrying through recommendations, but you do do that, so will your framework encompass that and allow you to do that much more efficiently? It's part of our current quality assurance process, one of the aspects that we look at is how well have we followed up on the recommendations and ensured that the evidence provided by the body is robust and meets our criteria. Mr Martin, you just said that you're not the quality control unit and that we understand that situation, but when you come across best practice, do you ensure that those who are carrying out practices that are not quite so good are aware of what other bodies are doing to deal with complaints more effectively so that they don't come to you? Yes, I think that sharing best practice is something that the Complaint Standards Authority work has focused on quite a lot around complaints handling alongside the implementation of the new model complaints handling procedure. One of the main ways that we have done that is through the development of Complaint Standards Networks, as we've discussed previously in the committee in previous years. I think that that is an excellent forum for us to identify good practice, not just from the particular sector in question. The local authority, one of the most established of the networks, we can identify good practice from within that sector and share that. You mentioned the Samaritans training earlier on and how we would help to share that focus to front-line public service deliveries. That's actually one thing where we are putting them in touch with Samaritans and giving them our lessons from that training and the things that we've received in allowing us to share that across the whole of the sector. In terms of complaints handling, absolutely, that's one of the main ways that we do that, as well as through the various guidance and website forums that we have established over the last three years. If we can go back to social work, because that's obviously one of the areas where you're getting complaints very early before you should. I think that it's one of those complex areas where, if somebody is complaining, if you're not aware of the road map of where you should go to and you're not signposted properly, then inevitably, those complaints are going to cross your desk before all of the due process is carried out. Are there particular authorities where those early cases are coming from more than others? No, I wouldn't say that you could identify a culprit. I don't think so. I think that the social work area is one that is extremely complex and very difficult for the lay person to work their way through. I'm pleased that the Government is beginning to look at how we can streamline that and how we can make that easier to manage for people, and the kind of work that Paul McFadden has been doing on getting simple standardised complaint handling procedures should help that. I think that more bodies could do more to make sure that particularly vulnerable people understand that they do have routes and, secondly, enable them not only to find the routes but to find the advocacy agencies that can help them to articulate their case and navigate their way through the system. It's not sufficient to assume that every citizen has the same ability and knowledge to work the system. If we see health boards, local authorities, housing associations and prisons, if we go the extra mile to help people, we'll be very quick to pass that good practice on to others. Advocacy is extremely important for some folks. In terms of the moves that we have towards the integration of health and social care, which changes the landscape again, is your expertise being called upon to look at how we deal with complaints as we move towards that greater integration of health and social care so that we don't create a minefield for those folks who have genuine complaints to make? I'll let Paul McFadden say something about the mechanics of what they're into in a minute. Douglas Sinclair, in the Sinclair report that came from, if you remember, the career report, Douglas Sinclair in 2008, was saying that the difficulties of working your way through social care, social work, complaints processes needed to be addressed. I've been saying it since 2009 when I became an ombudsman. We have to make it easier for people. When we integrate health and social care and we bring together local authority systems and health board systems and we create new bodies, I've been saying to as many committees that would listen to this committee as well, that we need to make sure that we have a simple process for dealing with things when they go wrong and recognise that the system is there to help vulnerable people, therefore it must be a system that is done in that context. I'm pleased to see that there's some progress, but I'm not yet convinced that we're going to have in place a unified complaint system that will be the same for everybody across Scotland and easy to use, but Paul McFadden has been working on the mechanics of that. In terms of your question, is our expertise being used? We offer our service through the CSA around providing advice, supporting guidance to boys across public sector. In one area where we are increasingly asked for advice is the area of integration and how those complaints procedures can be brought together. Despite your raising issues with conflict and statutory processes over the past few years, people are now realising when they're beginning to pull together integration schemes to fulfil the requirements around publicity or bringing the complaints together. Those are very difficult to bring together. The experience of NHS Highland and bringing together integrated services there is that that creates problems in terms of having a process that is confusing, which is diverted through different numbers of stages, timescales and all the rest of it. We provide advice where we can around the existing statutory processes, but the first thing that we see is that this is outwith our control, whereas the model CHPs in all other sectors that we have had within our control have been able to bring improvements, simplification and streamlining. We aren't able to do that. As the hon. Gentleman said, things are moving here in terms of social work complaints. I think also in terms of the health service patients rights act complaints process for discussions with the Government and partners around how that can be brought together and standardised as much as possible to create a simple process. That is good, but it is taking time and the current estimate for the social work process to be amended is late in 2016. There is the issue of the interim between now and then on how we have these very non-standardised and complex processes that have been brought together in staff as well as customers are struggling to understand that. We provide our expertise as much as we can, but we are restricted with the legislation that is in place. Obviously, we have posed questions, written questions to you on this area and have received responses back already. One of the things that you stated in your response is that there may be areas that are covered by new integrated boards that fall out with the SPSO's jurisdiction. That, obviously, may create difficulties. What are those areas that may fall out with your jurisdiction? We are unclear as to whether the bodies themselves will fall within our jurisdiction. I mean, there are parts of the Scottish Public Services that currently don't. For example, a lot of social work doesn't at the moment. What we are trying to do is discuss with the Government and others how we can make sure that people who have complaints about those bodies can have those complaints appropriately heard. It is a pretty, rather than going through individual things, which we would be happy to give you if you would like. We want to understand what the status of those bodies are vis-à-vis the ombudsman and whether people have complaints about those bodies. At the moment, bodies are free to set up their own complaints processes. It strikes me that this is an opportunity where we could bring some clarity to what could otherwise become a very complex system. The simpler we make things, the better. My view is that they are public bodies and should fall within the ambit of the Public Services ombudsman. Citizens who have a problem should be able to raise it with the body themselves and then bring it to us. In terms of your discussions with the Government, have there been positive discussions? You talked earlier about the Scottish Welfare Fund. You had a pretty positive experience. Has this been a positive experience with the Government? The main issue that I have is the length of time that it is taking to get decisions on important issues around health and social care integration. I only look at that part of it, which could directly fall on my desk. One is whether there is a clear, simple and visible complaints process in place, whether things go wrong for the individual and whether we have something in place for when the newly-created bodies have complaints about them. Having discussions with the Government on them in some ways, I know the answer that I would like, but we have to come to an answer soon. We cannot keep going on not having an answer to those questions. I think that it would be really useful for the committee to get further information from you on that particular issue. Obviously, we have a brief outline of your previous response. Maybe a fuller response where you think that pitfalls are likely to lie, because I think that this is a matter that we would wish to pursue further to ensure that, in terms of the integration from the start-off, we have a pretty robust complaints procedure. Folks know what their rights are and what you have responsibilities for. I would be grateful for that, Mr Martin. Anne McTaggart, please. Good morning, panel. I was listening with interest in your last question that the convener had given to you. I am all for making the system more simple and for our lost customers, as you would call them, to use that system. What are you putting in place—and it may well be a question for Mr McFadden—to ensure that our lost customers get to use that system? Ultimately, the people that are articulate enough and know the system and are able to get through that system will do, however it is for the lost customers? I think that, from a general point of view in terms of complaints, what we have helped organisers to put in place is a very accessible system in terms of allowing them to bring complaints into the system in any form, for example, whether that be orally by telephone, as well as the more traditional written form of complaints. The big focus has been in particular on empowering front-line staff to deal with complaints very quickly and confidently in response to that. That is a big thing in allowing people access into the system, making it easier for them to make their complaint as possible and to make their response as quick as possible so that they are not having to trudge through various stages of four and five different appeals of various lengths and ones. That is something that we have now removed in relation to other sectors. In relation to the integration area, that is what we want to see in place. A single point of entry, a very standard, quick turnaround with a strong focus on empowering front-line staff to deal with complaints quickly. One of the questions that have been submitted, which I am moving on to, is question 36. Can the SPSO investigate complaints about each IE Education Scotland inspection reports? Yes. My favourite answer to Sunday Post quizzes was that we used to have the question and the answer was always sometimes but not always. That is the answer in this case. Depending on who brings the complaint, what the complaint is about, we can look at some things and not others. My powers are not complete over all areas. For example, in education, I am not allowed to look at curriculum or discipline matters, but I can look at policies on bullying and if they have been applied, that kind of stuff. It is a complicated area, so the answer is sometimes but not always. My last one, which is a fairly open question, has been extremely forthright with some of your concerns. What area is worrying you the most about moving forward with all the new remit that you will be receiving? If you set aside the new remits, I have to be confident that the corporate body in the Scottish Government will give me the appropriate resourcing to deal with that. When we surveyed our staff this year, we had an exceptionally good response from our staff. There were only two areas that our staff indicated were concerned with them—workload and resourcing. We have had a 14 per cent increase in the first six months of this year and the number of cases coming to us. In each of the past five years, we have had an increase in the number of cases coming to us. There are 30 per cent more cases on desks today than there were in 2011. On 1 December, there were 647 cases on desks compared to 477 in 2011. My resource base is static. I understand the financial pressures and I understand from the autumn statement that things do not look as if they are going to get much better. However, I cannot continue to offer the level of service that we are offering to people if the demand increases for the rate that is going and the level of resource that I have remains static. My team has given me productivity increases in each of the past four years. We are reaching the point where that cannot be relied on to deliver the kind of quality of service that I want to give to the people of Scotland. My biggest concern at the moment is that, in the coming year, will I have sufficient resources to be able to give the high-quality service that I believe my team is offering now? That is my biggest worry. Your concern, obviously, is about the productivity of your team. However, what have you put in place to ensure that some of those cases do not come to you and that they are dealt with before getting to your stage? The work that Paul McFadden has done with the complaints handling processes will help that, because it will make the sectors deal with things better. The work that we are doing with the 10 or 11 bodies that we have identified, we are coming with high-volume, high-uphold and high-primatures, are 40 per cent of my business. If I can reduce that number, then I can reduce the demand coming in. However, I think that there is a cultural change happening in Scotland where people not only are more willing to complain, but expect to see results from complaints that they bring. That culture, I believe, is a good development for public services in Scotland. It is a great development. There are consequences of that for how the system copes with those numbers. At the very end of that, I am a tip of an iceberg. At the very end of that, I get the backwash. How do you think then that we can reduce that 40 per cent? Is it the work that you foresee the work that Paul McFadden is doing just now that will enable that 40 per cent to be reduced? If you take, for example, Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board, I always expect to see a high volume of complaints about a body that deals with so many millions of people and so many interactions with the public. I expect to see that. Where that health board is doing good work is its beginning to say, how can we reduce the numbers? We are working with bodies to encourage a culture that is about reducing the number of complaints that come. There is good work being done out there. Scottish Water is reducing the number of complaints that are coming to us year on year, although I have to say that our commercial and business dream is not doing that at the moment. I am hopeful for that in the future. When you attack it from a cultural perspective, where you enable your front line staff to take decisions quickly, where you enable a quality response to go out to people, not only does that reduce the number of complaints but increases the standing of the public services in the eyes of their customers. I think that that is very interesting. I am sorry to cut across Ms McTaggart, but you talk about Scottish Water responding extremely well. The business arm, part of the same organisation, is not doing so well. Do we have examples in other public bodies where sectors in that body are dealing with complaints extremely well and others are not? Are there specific areas in either local government or within the health service where you are finding that kind of situation? To be fair, Scottish Water and Business Dream are operated as two different businesses within the same conglomeration. They are, if you like, the same but separate. I have to say that, in a lot of cases, there are folk who are sitting right next to one another in the two different organisations. Why are they not learning from the good practice of the other when they are within that situation? What we are trying to do is to raise those issues with people. Please remember, as I said earlier, that we are not the quality control unit for the public services in Scotland. We can flag things up, but it is for the public sector bodies, it is for bodies such as COSLA, SOLAS, the National Health Service in Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service, to take those things on and drive them. We can give them the tools and we can give them the encouragement, but that is about all that we can do. I think that it is also very useful for us to know where there is the good practice and the bad practice. Obviously, it is our duty to try and fall up in those situations. It would probably be very good for us to get an indication of good and bad practice, to be honest with you. I would be quite happy to offer a very brief seminar for the committee from my members and my team, talking to you through examples of good practice and bad practice, if you think that would be helpful to me. I think that we would certainly welcome that. From the people who deal with the cases rather than the ombudsmen? Absolutely. I think that that would be extremely useful for the committee. Really, to say that saddens might have obviously been a Glasgow MSP on the example that you used and I may well follow that up, but if you do not have the answer to this, what improvements have you used the Glasgow health board? What have they put in place and what have you ensured that they have put in place to try to make improvements here? I think that, as Jim alluded to earlier, his point about Glasgow health board is that, because of the size of the board, it is inevitable that you will see high volumes of complaints as compared to other public bodies across Scotland. I think that there are within Glasgow, in particular, some good examples of work that they are doing around complaints handling. Personally, I would say that some of the things that they are doing are ahead of other health boards. We talked about quality assurance processes and I know that that is something that Glasgow health board is looking at, how they can develop that further and implement. I think that there are examples of good practice there. I think that there are examples of good practice in other boards. I think that Paul and I and others look at how we can ensure that we share that learning and how we can create tools. We do a lot of training with organisations to try to ensure that you are getting that best practice out there. Paul, if you want to add to that. I was going to answer to a more general level about how to be put in place and how to help those bodies to improve the quality of their complaints handling and the responsiveness of improving their service on the back of what they are learning from complaints. The health sector aside, I can come to that in a second, but in relation to all the other sectors that we have worked with in relation to the model CHPs and the networks, the key thing that we are aiming towards is more quality, consistent and transparent information on how they handle complaints, process terms and outcomes of what they have learned and what the trends are and how they are sharing that learning. We are getting to that point now with local authorities where they are about to get that information together. At sector level, that is what it is going to be of benefit to share back the lessons, both in terms of where they can handle complaints better and how they can handle complaints better, but also in terms of how they can improve. That benchmarking approach putting in place all those kind of bound blocks is something that we are keen to share into the health service as we are now turning in the next year or so to work in more closely with health boards. It is really important to remember that this is the first year that all local authorities and all health boards have published all of their complaints data. That will be and is a powerful driver for pushing up standards because they are able to properly benchmark against each other now. Where do the public take complaints that they may have about the service that they get from the ombus? Page 55 of our annual report outlines the report from our independent external complaints reviewer, which is a non-statutory role, something that we put in place in 2007. I think that we were ahead of most of their ombus when we were doing so, because we realised that we are the kind of watchmen and someone who does need to watch ourselves in terms of how we are looking at that. We have put in place an external reviewer, which we have recently reappointed for a period of three years, a new one that we have experienced across this. That is where people can go. Once we have dealt with a complaint about their service that they have brought to us, they then have the opportunity to approach that external reviewer. We are quite pleased that last year there was a significant reduction in the numbers of complaints that people brought to that reviewer. I think that there was a reduction of a third in the report of the reviewer that is in there with the figures. Only eight complaints were taken to the reviewer about our organisation, which I think is an indication of, we think, better internal complaints processes that we have put in place as well as better responses to those. So you can not only review cases by request from the public, but the public can access directly the external review body to look at your decisions? Yes, the external review body will not look at decisions. The external review body will look at service delivery around how we have essentially lived up to our own service standards. The very frequent types of complaints would be around, for example, delay in how we have processed the complaints, how we have communicated the elements, whether we have followed a process, whether the person has had a good quality service. As you are right to point out, decisions would go through the separate process that Jim talked about at the start of the session, which is a request-for-review process, which is dealt with, ultimately, by the OMS men. Is that public knowledge? Is that publicised widely? Yes, it is publicised widely on our website. It also has its own information for people who are interested in it. At the end of every complaint response, we put full information on how the person can contact that reviewer. Just to make this completely and utterly clear, that external reviewer does not go back and re-investigate complaints and review complaints. That is correct, as your decisions are about that. The only way that that can be dealt with is by judicial review. My other question was going to question 2, but paraphrasing it, what percentage of request-for-reviews have been rejected in question 2, and what is your percentage that has been rejected by you? I think that at the very beginning of the session, we discussed the number of questions that come to us for review, and the numbers coming are very, very low—7 per cent, first and foremost last year, down to 3.4 per cent. I am just going one second until I find out the number for you. We changed the way that we record the request-for-review in 2012-13, so we can give you really good comparisons for the last two years. In 2012-13, I received 223 requests for review and all the complaints that we caused. In 2013-14, it was 276. We maintained the original decision in 96 per cent and 98 per cent of the complaints that we took to the request-for-review. The number of review requests that we saw was 4 per cent and 2 per cent of the request-for-review that we received. It is looking confused. Yes, because 98 per cent were rejected effectively. That is the number of reviews. If I could maybe turn to some of the issues that have been generated by petition 1538, on your response about the sharing of information, you state that our lawyers have assessed our general approach to the release of information, and they have agreed that we are acting in a way compatible with the rules of natural justice. The petitioners have the opposite view from that. Those issues were looked at as recently as 2009, where some changes were made. Can I ask for your general comments round about that release of information? Is there a danger in releasing everything that you might not be able to get to the bottom of some complaints because some folk will be wary about giving you the information that you require? I think that that is one risk. There are a number of risks, but Nicky McLean is a person who has been dealing with that in detail. I would not want to put anybody in a way of people bringing things that I was in confidence. I have to say that up front. I think that the important starting point is that our powers are very similar to other Ombudsman schemes. There is rightly, Parliament decided that we needed to have strong protections in place around what information was shared and what information was not shared during the course of the investigation. The reality is that anything that we rely on in reaching a decision is released either through the course of the investigation or within the decision. That is the reference to natural justice principles. Clearly, we cannot put out any decisions that are not properly evidenced and supported through the documentation that we release, but I think that your point is right that there are proper protections within our legislation to ensure that we do not release information. You have to remember that we have court of session powers to gather evidence so that we can obtain evidence that would not otherwise be obtained through either FOI or DPA. We do have an obligation to protect the information that is provided to us and take care in how we share that information. We take that very seriously. I think the issue about the petition is what we are doing at the moment is fulfilling our statutory obligations in terms of what we can and cannot release. I think if there is a desire or a wish for us to do something else, it would require a revisiting of our legislation. Can you give us an indication of some of the information that you would be able to gather that you would not be able to gather by use of the data protection act or the freedom of information act? For example, in a prison case, we will receive information on a complaint from a prisoner. The prison service feels that it is necessary for us to see that background information but, obviously, for security reasons, we are unable to release it. Obviously, we want to ensure that your service is open and transparent as it possibly can be. If you had any concerns over areas where you think that it would be of benefit to be able to release further information but that you cannot under legislation at this moment, would you call for a further review such as the one that was carried out in 2009? If I felt that I could not administer the office fairly, I would, yes. I will take legal advice, if I want to be able to release something, and only if my lawyers tell me that I cannot, will I not. That is the basic default position, as we will try to give people as much as we possibly can. How often do your lawyers advise you that you should not release information? There is a standard process that we go through, so there are exceptional cases that that would come up in them. Lawyers are also very expensive, so we tend to go and go to them when we feel that we really have to. If we think that the answer is clear, then we do not. You said that when you think that the answer is clear, obviously, there has been some testing of that one that we would imagine. There must be some guidance around that that you follow. Could you give the committee an indication of what that would be? Within our guidance to staff, we provide guidance to them about when and how to release information during the course of the investigation, and we could certainly provide that information to the committee if it is interested in seeing that. Sorry, Mr Martin. That has been the advice that we give to our staff, the advice that has been improved by our lawyers. It is not something that we have decided. It is what lawyers tell us we can do. The other point that I would make is that if you look at the numbers of requests for reviews that we received, which we were discussing earlier, the numbers of times that people raised this as an issue, I can only think of one, possibly two cases in the last two years where this has been raised as an issue. My perception is that, for the majority of individuals where they have concerns about our decisions that we have reached, that we hear about through the request for review, this is not a common issue that is raised for context, I hope that that is useful. I think that it would be extremely useful for us to get that information, that guidance that staff are given. The guidance that you give to staff is it publicly available? I believe so, yes. So, if somebody requested a copy of the guidance that you give staff around about these issues, that would be quite easy for a member of the public to access that. Yes, you would release it, yes. There is no reason why not, but I can think of something that I will come back to you. I think that that is extremely useful. Colleagues, are there any other questions? Obviously, we have asked for a date for written answers for the outstanding questions from members of the public, and we would be grateful if we could get that for the end of January, would that be possible? Beyond that, obviously, we have asked for a number of other things from you today, and the clerks will be in touch with you in that regard. I would like to thank you very much for your attendance here today. I suspend and we now move into private session.