 I would like to welcome members to the fourth meeting in 2018 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. We have apologies this morning from Elaine Smith MSP. Agenda item 1 is business in private. Can the committee agree to take agenda item 4 in private? This is an item on the budget process. Agenda item 2 is sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct and the committee's inquiry into this area. Joining us today are Maurice Golden, business manager for the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Rhoda Grant, business manager for the Scottish Labour Party, Patrick Harvey, business manager for the Scottish Green Party, Bill Kidd, chief whip for the Scottish National Party and Willie Rennie, business manager for the Scottish Liberal Democrats. Thank you very much for joining us this morning. I am going to start off the committee's questioning and looking at the area of the Parliament's survey results, which were published last week. They revealed that, among those who experienced sexual harassment, 45 per cent of those said that the perpetrator was an MSP. MSPs make up fewer than 8 per cent of those who were issued with the survey. I would like to ask the panel why it was the case. What were the reasons for that? I think that it is a salutary lesson for everyone in the Scottish Parliament to hear those figures. We really need to look at the processes of each of the parties and of the Parliament on how best we can address such significant figures. I think that it is incumbent on all MSPs who are the people elected here, the trust put in them by the people of their constituencies and the people of Scotland, to ensure that we set a high benchmark for society in general. We are letting people down to some extent with those figures. We need to ensure that, in the near future, we can turn those figures around and make people feel safe and comfortable coming to their work. Whoever they happen to be employed by is going to have duty of care to them. I think that those figures let us all down. It is a salutary lesson for us. I think that we should be deeply concerned, but probably unsurprised by some of the findings of the survey. We have seen in many walks of life, whether in the public eye or out of the public eye, that the abuse of power is part of that dynamic. I do not think that we should be surprised that power is abused in a workplace, in show business, in religious organisations, in any of the other organisations where we have seen scandals come out and a growing recognition of a problem that is intolerable. I do not think that we should be surprised that it is the case in politics. All of us need to take a collective responsibility, not just for the scale of the problem but for the power dynamics involved. That obviously has a relevance to political life where elected office and in particular those who are protected from the kind of consequences that might come to bear in other workplaces. That is an unavoidable reality at the moment of political life, but it is something that we need to take responsibility for in designing the processes and systems that we use to respond to the problem. I find the findings deeply disappointing. I think that we all had a higher degree of expectation from our colleagues and I think that those figures are quite stark. I suppose that what we have to do is try to drill down into those figures, because it does not mean that 8 per cent of MSPs are doing this. It means that they are responsible for 8 per cent—sorry—45 per cent of MSPs are doing this, because it means that it could be one person. I think that if you drill down into the report, you will see that it was seldom one incident that was being reported. It was quite often a number of incidents and sometimes almost a perpetual bad behaviour. What we find quite often is that one person is abusing their power, and maybe two people are abusing their power. I suppose that we are no different than any other walk of life in that, but we need to make sure that people have the comfort to come forward and report that, because the chances are that we are speaking about a minority of people who are abusing the power and the position that they have been put in, and that they need to be dealt with to stop that behaviour recurring. I think that what we need to do as a Parliament is to create the right circumstances for people to feel empowered to come forward and get the right support. I was shocked and surprised by the results. I think that Rhoda makes a very good point in the sense that, if it is indeed a small number and a tiny proportion of individuals perpetrating those acts, that is quite a different issue than having a culture that is the problem. My sense in Parliament overall, although I appreciate that that culture could vary in individual parties, but my impression of Parliament coming in as a new Parliamentarian is that the culture in that institution is similar to other public bodies. For example, those that I have experienced are people such as Scottish Enterprise or Scottish Natural Heritage. That culture does not mean that there could not be issues but that there is not a cultural issue to address. That would be my sense from my experience in Parliament. Therefore, in terms of how you then look to deal with those issues and what processes that we can put in place as parties and indeed as Parliament, the steps that have been taken over the past few months are something to be welcomed in terms of making sure that everybody is aware and actively helping people where there is an issue to look to address that in an appropriate manner. I suspect that it might shake us from our complacency a little bit because we did believe that we were better. We thought that Westminster was the place where it all happened and up here somehow because we had a different culture and a different approach. We are a new institution and we weren't subject to that. I think that, hopefully, it might have just shaken everybody up a little bit to test the procedures and make sure that we are understanding what kind of culture we have established here. I accept all the points that have been made. It might be one person who has made me a number of people, but the fact is that there is 45 per cent of experience that shows that it is quite a widespread issue. We need to try to review procedures and make sure that we have it right. However, the response rate to the survey was quite high. The Westminster survey response rate was quite low and, therefore, I think that the authenticity of it was probably less. However, it was quite high here, so perhaps it is even more reflective of what is happening. I was in Westminster before and I was there for four years, so I experienced both cultures. The late night voting culture of having to be there until 10 o'clock. I am not saying that everybody goes to drink, but everybody goes for a meal and there is an awful lot more socialising than perhaps there is here. You would think that there was more propensity for it to happen down there, but the fact that those figures are so high should give us a bit of a wake-up call to look again at our procedures. Going back to the survey again, the most common response among those who had experienced inappropriate behaviour was to take no action. Why do you believe that people are so reluctant to come forward when they have experienced that type of behaviour? I had a think about that because I have spoken to quite a number of members of staff over the past few months about the issue. Some people might feel, because, previously, as was just said by Willie Rennie earlier, that the culture's mindset is different here, that they might have experienced something that they were on their own or alone and they did not know that there were other people in a similar circumstance. That makes it much more difficult for them to come forward and say something. Maybe, hopefully, the survey has uncovered some figures that are higher than, obviously, I would have hoped, but they are certainly higher than I thought. That might open people's ideas up about the right thing to do, to come and make representation about it, to make a complaint if necessary, but to let people know that that is happening. Those horrible things happen in recesses away from the public eye, and if we can bring it into the public eye, I think that that can help to address it and reduce it significantly. I feel really bad about people keeping this to themselves and being afraid of actually seeing anything. I suppose that I would mention three factors, one that is relevant to the whole of our society, is that there has been simply putting up with the endemic nature of sexual harassment and sexist and sexually entitled behaviour. Part of the reason why this inquiry is happening is that there is a mood, a foot, that time is up on this, and there is a need for change and a refusal to tolerate it, but that has been the case throughout our society, not just in this country but around the world, a sense of women in particular simply feeling that they have to live their lives with the expectation that this is normal. If we are saying now that this is not normal, we need to recognise that that is a moment for change in our culture. The two particular factors that I would mention that are relevant to this Parliament as an institution that might be additional inhibiting factors to people reporting. One is around loyalty. Most people working in the political part of Parliament—I am not necessarily talking about SPCB staff or officials or what have you—but in the political part of Parliament, most people have a sense of loyalty and commitment to the party group or to the politicians that they are working with. There will be a sense of feeling that there is a reluctance to do something that would damage an organisation that people are hearing because of a personal and a sincere commitment to. For me, that is an additional reason why Parliament has its own procedures for reporting neutrally that do not rely on people raising an issue inside a political party. They should be able to do that absolutely if they wish to, but they need to have the additional option of a neutral, non-party political route to raise those matters. The second factor that is particular here, of course, is around scrutiny. If an issue, as we have seen recently, becomes high profile and becomes the subject of public comment, that may be an additional inhibiting factor. People may simply not want a face going through that and having it potentially drag on for months and affect their lives and prevent them from being able to get on with their lives. There is probably not a simple solution to that, but I think that having quick resolution to complaints that are raised will help rather than allowing the perception that, if you raise an issue, it is going to dominate your life for months and months. I think that it is down to power dynamics because people use and abuse their power to harass other people. They are picking on people that they hope are not going to come forward because they are senior to them. I think that that happens in most walks of life. There is also another issue that really impacts on the Parliament and that MSPs are the employer of their own staff. We have a grievance procedure written in our contracts of employment for our staff, but we are the employer. If you have a grievance about your employer, there is very little place to go. You are also employed by that person. The Parliament or the party does not have any locus over that. If you are going to complain about an MSP who is your employer, you are going to be worried about the roof over your head. Are you going to be able to continue to work for that person if that relationship totally breaks down? I would argue that that relationship has already broken down if you are being harassed and treated that way by your employer. As a Parliament, we need to look at that dynamic and see what protections we can build into the way in which we employ staff that protect people from having to make the choice of reporting or losing the roof over their head, which is pretty stark. People also need to know that they are being believed. If it is a power dynamic again, the person is senior to them, they are probably well respected, so people are concerned that they will not be heard. Just picking up on the point that Patrick made about loyalty to the party, and maybe I am a bit afraid to raise that, because it is going to cause bad headlines for the party that you are committed to as a member of staff. I suggest a difference. If that person is harassing you, they will probably be harassing a number of other people, and that is more reputationally damaging to the political party that you are loyal to. If you are loyal to that party, it is almost incumbent on you to weed out that really bad behaviour to protect your party, so I would put that as another option. However, I know that if you are talking about your employer, then it becomes very difficult because people need to have a roof over their head, they need to eat, and most of the time I would imagine that people will seek alternative employment to get themselves out of that situation and maybe never report it. I think that that is the crux of the matter, especially with MSPs, that we need to wrestle with and deal with. I think that an additional point to add is that the vast majority of people in Parliament have not chosen to work in public life. That is an obvious and clear barrier in terms of the confidentiality of reporting an incident, because, given that the vast majority of people have not chosen to be in the newspapers, to report and to have journalists wanting to hear your story, well, to be fair to lots of people, they might not want to put themselves in that position, and I completely understand that. That almost links to the second point, which is confidence in the process in terms of how that is dealt with. From my perspective, that has to be dealt with with confidentiality for both individuals as much to protect the individual as anything else. I think that ensuring that the process is robust is absolutely critical to ensuring that the incidents are reported separate to that, but prior to the revelations coming out, I proactively contacted all the Conservative members of staff to say that if there was any issue at all, I was available to speak to them. Again, not specifically on this topic, but just on any topic, including other grievance procedures and anything else. I think that that is something that can be helpful in terms of ensuring that individuals will report because they have confidence in the system and the process that will follow. I do not think that I have much more to add, but reflecting on when the Me Too initiative broke, it was like a dam bursting where people felt that all of a sudden they could speak and be heard, and they were respected for it. Perhaps through that process we may get a bit of a dam bursting in the Parliament where the balance between damage limitation, which is often a focus of a political party when there is negative publicity around, is tilted more in favour of doing the right thing rather than just damage limitation, which inevitably is what an awful lot of political parties are focused on. I agree with all the points that have been made, particularly Maurice's last point, about not a lot of people who work in here did not really come in to come into the spotlight. Therefore, dealing with a sexual harassment case is bad enough, but I have to tell the newspapers at the same time when your air, your washing, your dirty linen in public is quite a difficult thing to do. I completely agree with Maurice's last point, and that is why I think that we need to provide easier paths for people to make the complaint and be dealt with in a sensitive way. Of the fact that so few people who have experienced harassment actually take action, two of the themes that we have heard over the last few weeks is that it can be because they do not know what the procedures are or when they know what the procedures are, they do not have confidence in them. Moving on to your party's procedures, what might stop people currently from coming forward in light of what your procedures are right now and what action have you taken of any over the last few weeks as parties to raise awareness of the procedures or to actually change the procedures? In particular, if I could turn the focus on one area, that is who their first port of call is. If their first port of call is an MSP, that strikes me as a bit of a problem. There are a variety of different channels that members of staff can choose. The business manager, me, is one of them, but the ethical standards commission is another. The party, because of our experience in recent years, has set up a pastoral care officer who is a UK-wide person. Although he is employed by the party, he has clearly been seen by people in the party and has been separate from the management structure, so he is respected as such. We did that two or three years ago and it seems to have been bedded in reasonably well. Of course, we are prepared to review that because some people have suggested that you could have an independent person outside of the party who would conduct that role. We are wanting to stay with this procedure, which is relatively new for now to see how it settles in, but we have set up a number of different channels. Business manager, ethical standards, but also through to the pastoral care officer. The pastoral care officer gets regular correspondence about a number of different issues, so there seems to be a major part of the party structure. How has that been circulated? How are all members of the party aware of that? Everybody has received a letter that was from Mike Rumbles when he was a business manager at the time, but they have received it with it and it all sets out very clearly in a short letter. How do you define bullying and harassment? It is pretty transparent for members of staff. That is what was described by Willie Rennie, which is a logical approach in the SNP. I am the chief whip in the SNP group in the Scottish Parliament, but we have a team of whips and they are not all men. On that basis, I am hopeful that, if people feel uncomfortable and it may be going and speaking to someone who is a man, if it is a woman who has got the issue, it might find it easier to find someone to speak to. I am not trying to say something more about how the party operates things in the Scottish Parliament, but there should be a camaraderie element where people do not feel as if they are isolated and have no one to talk to because they are sitting in their own wee box in an office or something. There is a mixing that goes on. I know for a fact that, when people have had issues with an MSP or someone else, I have heard about it not directly from that person in the first instance, but from others who have spoken on their behalf because the person, as was mentioned earlier, might find it something that they are embarrassed about or worried about, whether because of their job or because of the focus of attention that might shift on to them. That does happen, but that is anecdotal to some extent. In terms of party, all SNP staff and all of the parliaments where we have SNP representation and at the SNP's headquarters received a letter from Nicola Sturgeon as party leader. Within that was outlined the duties of care, which we all have to each other, but also a named person who is a solicitor with the firm of lawyers used by the SNP, who people can go to and report things. There is also a point of contact at the SNP headquarters, which is the party clerk. There are people out with the group of MSPs where SNP members are allowed to go and encouraged to go if they feel that there is any issue. If I could start on the party side first of all from the Scottish Green Party's perspective, you will be aware that we have gone through a huge amount of change over recent years since 2014. Our membership is much bigger than it used to be, so we have been trying to review and reform a great deal about how we organise the party. The number of elections and referendums that have come along since then has delayed some of that, but on the conducting complaints side of things, we have made more progress than on other things. We used to have a system where what I would describe as a slightly arcane process took too long to resolve issues. That refers to the first part of your question. One of the reasons that people would be unhappy to take part in a process or to raise an issue internally within the party is around the length of time that it can take. The process also involved not just some elected members of the party but random selection of party members in the sense of a jury, if you like, for certain circumstances. Again, that gave rise to lots of problems around people having access to the right amount of support or understanding of issues and timescales. Recently, we have done away with that system and set up a new process whereby each local branch appoints a welfare and conduct officer. That has to be somebody who does not have any other position within the party, whether as an officer or a candidate or anything like that. That group then, across all those branches, works together. Our national conduct and complaints committee is developing new processes. The policy that was to be put in place was to go to our party council meeting, which was cancelled because of the bad weather the other week, but that was the meeting at which we were supposed to put in place new procedures for the interim period between the old system going out and the new one coming in. Basically, we are in the middle of an extensive redesign of how we deal with all matters to do with complaints, conduct and the welfare of our party members. Once that is in place, our parliamentary group will more than likely apply that in the same way that a branch would by having one person who does not hold another office, so it would not be an MSP acting as a welfare and conduct officer and tying into the rest of the party. If a complaint goes through that process, that would involve our operations manager, that is our senior staff member, working with two of the elected committees, our standing orders committee and our operations committee to develop processes that were right for each circumstance. For a small political group, you will be aware that we do not have a big team of whips, as might be relevant in the SNP group, for example, so we would be very keen that an issue could be resolved without relying on somebody who is either involved in or a close colleague of the person who is being complained about, so we would be keen to make sure that that tapped into the party's external processes. I would add one final caveat, which is that one of the themes that I know the committee has discussed is around the lack of an ultimate backstop of an MSP not being able to be dismissed from their job. If complaints like that all go through political parties, I fear that we may still be in a position where that backstop is not possible. The outcome of an investigation needs to be available to a body that has the authority to make a decision about disciplining a member to the point of expulsion or removal from office. A political party would not be in that position. That, again, leaves me asking, should we be expecting people to go through party procedures in those circumstances? For the most serious issues where you would want a serious disciplinary option to be available, it seems to me that that needs to be tapped into an independent and official process for disciplining MSPs, not necessarily a party, because that may not have the option of taking that kind of disciplinary measure. We have a formal process, which the committee has a copy of. In recognition and I think that everyone recognises that a formal process is probably not the first port of call for somebody experiencing this, we also have a contract with rape crisis for a confidential helpline for people to contact. We are also clear that we need to do as much as we can to support people and encourage them to come forward. We have reminded staff that they can contact our leader or our group exec members. That is a range of five different people that they can contact within the party group. I know that people might be reluctant to contact someone whom they see as a friend of the person that they are complaining about, but to give them enough variety of people that they can contact and raise the issue with is really important. They can also raise the issue with the general secretary of our party. There are a number of routes in. There is also the police. Sexual assault is a crime, and if people are facing that, they do not necessarily have to go through a party procedure. They can report that to the police, and, indeed, if anyone is disclosing behaviour that falls into that category, I would suggest that they should be encouraging them to do that. However, what is most important is to get beside the person and support them, because it is quite a frightening place, especially if you feel your life or your work is being affected by that. It is really important that people beside them help in supporting them through the process, but also allowing them to be in charge of the steps that they take. I think that that is really important as well. I think that within the Conservative group, there is widespread knowledge of how to report an incident. There are a number of channels in which any individual could do that. There is a confidential phone line, a confidential email address, and there are, if you like, slightly more informal mechanisms via myself, as chief weapon business manager, the director of the party, or indeed—this is not specifically on this topic, but we have staff reps in Holyrood that individuals can go to, and we also have trained mental health members of staff as well. There are a number of routes that people could choose to follow in terms of this particular topic, but there are a whole range of other issues that could be raised. I certainly have confidence in that code of conduct and the system in terms of how it would work. I think that we would need to be very careful about how a, if you like, non-party system was put in place and how that would work. An example that I would use on that front would be—this would be my concern—on this topic if we put in another system that was not from the parties. At the Scottish parliamentary elections, once everyone was elected, members from another party put in a claim to the police that there had been a dispute over irregular election expenses, and then immediately phoned the journalists, who then managed to confirm that the individual was being investigated on a breach of election rules. That story ran for six months until the police dropped the case. If you are in a situation like this for MSPs and where it is a vexatius claim, they would need to be protected from that where they were deemed not guilty. If individual parties were choosing to make vexatius claims about individual MSPs, that would do two things. One, it is very inappropriate for the individual MSPs, but if we remember why we are all here, it is to make sure that individuals have confidence in the system, that they can be kept confidential if they want it. We deal with the issues around sexual harassment and bullying, and I am not convinced that another system would necessarily solve that. That needs to be the focus of any recommendations on behalf of the parties or, indeed, from this committee. A brief supplementary and perhaps just one or two could answer. If there was a situation involving individuals from two or more parties, what is the solution? I think that, for instance, if someone were accusing an MSP of my own party and maybe a member of staff from your own party, I would believe that both parties would work together. I would expect your party to be supporting your member of staff and giving them that. I would expect our party to be taking that very seriously and dealing with the perpetrator of that abuse. I do not think that that is party political. I do not think that anyone would use that. It is much too serious to be used as a party political kind of game playing. I think that it is in all our interests to weed it out and make sure that that happens. If that means that we are all working together, I think that we certainly will. I would have no problem whatsoever in working with another party if I thought that one of my members was causing that or perpetrating that kind of abuse to anybody, certainly within the Parliament or another party. It is an important question. I agree entirely with Rhoda. I am absolutely definite that between parties or across the parties, we would work together in order to address such a challenge. However, I believe that the parliamentary authorities are very helpful when it comes to issues such as that as well, in helping to bring us together in order to resolve such an issue. I know for a fact that the chief executive's office, the HR department, would be very willing to provide support should those situations happen. I am just going to move on to Mr Arthur. Can I ask the panel members if they could keep their answers slightly shorter? I know that we all like to talk. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. I would like to pick up on a point at Patrick Harvie's race. That is the issue of an ultimate sanction. Clearly, this has a significant bearing on the confidence of any complaints process. Given the unique nature of an MSP's employment, it can only ultimately be disqualified for acts in which it is a threshold of criminality, whereas in other occupations where dismissive could occur for acts of gross misconduct, it does not necessarily apply for MSPs. I would like to hear the views of the panel on the issue of an ultimate sanction, potentially how that could be administered, and any specific thoughts on the power of recall in relation to those matters. I have been a long-term advocate of having a system of recall. You need to be careful that it is not being used for political motives, that it is based on disciplinary issues, but I think that the Westminster system that they come up with, which is a combination of different thresholds that have to be met, including a public threshold, would be an appropriate one to do. The Westminster recall system is based on if you have received a prison sentence of less than 12 months, because if you are over 12 months, you are automatically excluded. If it is less than 12 months, if you have had a suspension from the standards committee in Westminster or through Ipsa, the expenses body at Westminster, if you have been found to put in misleading or fraudulent expense claims, those are the three triggers. Then the speaker would issue a notice for a petition and would have to raise the support of 10 per cent of the electorate in that constituency. Because we have a different electoral system with a regional list, obviously we need to take that into account, but we would also need to consider whether those with the right thresholds internally. It is not a free-for-all, it is not something that a politically motivated group of people could go out there to try and oust an MSP that they happen to disagree with politically. It would have to have met a number of different thresholds. I think that that would in some way help us to police ourselves in certain circumstances. We have had a number of individual cases that I will not mention in the Parliament, going back a number of years and we have felt helpless to be able to do anything about it. I would support a system of recall being introduced here. We need to look at the Westminster system, we need to understand whether those with the right hurdles, the right thresholds to be met, but I think that it is worthy of consideration. I would have serious concerns about that. I can see a case for a system of recall in relation to political matters, if, for example, the constituents of an MSP were so angry at a political decision that the MSP had made, perhaps conflicting with their manifesto commitments or their stated policy. I can see that the constituents in that case might say that they have a democratic right to change their decision about the election of that MSP. Having that kind of recall process in relation specifically to issues like sexual harassment does seem to me inevitably to turn the matter into a public campaign, even if the threshold that has been reached is around disciplinary matters that have been properly investigated and even where the intention has nothing to do with the political matters or the political identity or affiliation of the MSP. Even where it is not being used for that vexatious motivation but being used for the right motivation, we would still ultimately be turning what should be a disciplinary matter into a public campaign at the ballot box. I am not suggesting for a moment that the Scottish political landscape should be compared directly to that of the US, but we have seen elsewhere that the situation in which someone bragging about committing sexual assault can win high office. It would exacerbate two existing problems that may inhibit people from raising a complaint, one being turning the issue that they are complaining about into something that dominates their life and makes this very high profile, and a lack of consistency in what the actual disciplinary consequences of the action being complained about are. People need to have confidence that unacceptable behaviour will be dealt with properly and consistently, and I would have concerns that a recall mechanism would not achieve that. I think that there is a far stronger case for reviewing the disqualification criteria that currently exists and ensuring that where, like in any other workplace, certain standards of behaviour have been failed, there is a disciplinary process that can result in somebody being dismissed on grounds of gross misconduct or something similar. I think that that should be taken outside of the political process. There has to be a process to deal with people who have committed what will be crimes and abuse their power. I do not think that on political issues people are elected and they go to the ballot. They are re-elected again every five years and that is when people make a judgment about their political ideals. However, there has to be a process to deal with somebody whose behaviour has fallen short. It should not be a political process, it should not be a public process. We have standards commissioners on the like that look at people's behaviour. We should be looking at that system to see if there are ways when a case is proved against a person and their behaviour has fallen way short of what we would expect from an elected representative that there are steps that can be taken. Just more generally on recall, I think that with the list system it does not lend itself to that particularly well, given that in many regions irrespective of what any individual MSP has done, there will be enough voters of the other party to ensure that a number of petitioners would be reached. We need to make the distinction between matters that are subject for disciplinary action and matters that are subject for criminal and ultimately criminal convictions, because they are quite different. There could be cases where criminality is seen in a political sense to be justified. For example, with the campaigns against Trident, where people felt that they were doing the consciously objecting to something, and as a result of that, political consciousness ended up with a criminal conviction. We need to concern ourselves with that. I think that where it is a disciplinary matter, it needs to be dealt with by the party itself and that should be proportionate to the act as well. Thank you very much for the question. It is important, as has been said by everyone so far, that what we are doing now is looking at the perpetrator rather than the victim, should I put it that way. It is important that we do not just say that that was a bad thing to do, do not do it again. That does not fill anybody with much confidence. We have to take some direction in terms of disciplinary matters seriously. Perhaps that is something that requires the parties all working together, maybe through the SPCB, to try and look at how we can take that forward and what would work best in our Parliament borrowing from other parliaments' experience and maybe even coming up with some new ideas as to how we handle the future prospects of those who have either committed gross misconduct or criminal acts. We need to figure a hierarchical system of response from the Parliament and from the parties for that. I think that it is something that we really have not looked deeply enough into as yet, and maybe that could be the first stepping stone to doing so. Thank you. Confidentiality was identified as one of the big issues when we took evidence and also the survey has touched on that. There is a lack of confidence in victims about how it would be treated and the support that it would receive, and that has come through already. What are your parties doing to manage that, and are you giving external support from the party to try and bridge that gap of the confidentiality? People believe that it is being managed by the party and that they do not have the confidence in dealing with that. What support mechanisms have you put in place to ensure that outside sources can support you and support the victim to have more confidence in the process? As far as the SNP group is concerned, the decent and caring approach that everyone would like to see is that we hope that we are taking forward in terms of support for complete confidentiality for those who are complainants of misdemeanours against them. We have, in practice, ensured that names are removed from any documents. There are redactions if the person could be identified through a statement, and support in terms of any needed outside interventions that can be brought to bear in support of someone who has suffered such behaviour towards them. That is very important. It is a really good question from that point of view, because, as we were talking about earlier, a lot of people are frightened of reporting anything because they do not know whether that is going to leave them and nor do they actually know whether or not they will be left to deal with things on their own. It is particularly important that we ensure that those who have had a misdemeanor committee against them can have a full apology for a start. That might not be enough, but a full apology is certainly a beginning. I think that that apology should come from the person who has committed the conduct, but also from the political party whom that person has represented. I think that that is important. The individual receives support from whichever body might be the most appropriate. As was mentioned, it could be by road. It could be a rape crisis or it could be some other counselling office that can help people. The person who has committed the misdemeanor committee should be offered some kind of support to change their behaviour patterns. We are not a court. We are a body of individuals who have come together for a particular cause. That cause is not to provide for a criminal style of approach to people who are not imprisoning. What we are doing is to try to bring that type of behaviour to an end and to also change the type of behaviour that some people have been indulging in. Our formal complaints procedure is anonymised, as is our confidential helpline, so that is totally anonymous for people to use. It is important when people make informal complaints that they are in the driving seat of that complaint. It is up to them if they do not want their name known or what action they want taken on their behalf. Given that this is an abusive power, I think that it is very important that the victim is empowered in the steps that they can take to put the situation right. Just to say that the interim policy that I mentioned earlier, which is being put in place during the redesign of our party's internal processes, does go into issues around confidentiality and data protection in relation to sensitive information. The welfare and conduct officers currently being appointed have access to external training, which will support them to understand their responsibilities in that regard. However, as I said, we are still at the process of implementing this newly designed system. I would say that the one area that we are not yet being clear about is communicating how all of this works to our members, whether in the parliamentary group here or wider party members, once the system is fully up and running. That is obviously the next point of action, to communicate how people access it, how people can use it and the confidence that they should have in doing so confidentially. I just wanted to ask how you balance the duty of care to the person who is making the accusation with the duty of care to the person who is being accused, particularly in relation to if they work in the same building or in the same office environment. How do you balance that duty of care to both? That is a particularly important question, because, as we have talked about, people going forward were not, hopefully, in the vast majority of cases. In some cases it may be that someone will leave the Scottish Parliament on the basis that they no longer can or wish to work there. However, what we need to have, as we were talking about earlier, is support for those people who have had unfortunate and bad behaviour committed towards them, and some kind of counselling behaviour for those who have committed that. In every day basis, the place is a certain size and shape, and it is difficult to isolate people away from each other on a permanent basis. It is important that we co-operate with the parliamentary authority to try to ensure that people are not cheek by jill as they go forward, so that they have some degree of separation in order to allow for them to particularly feel comfortable coming into work in the future. As I said, no party can do all that by themselves. It is required that we will have to co-operate with the chief executive's office, presiding officer, etc., in order to try to make sure that we can have a decent working environment for anyone who has suffered such behaviour against them. I know that the Scottish Parliament is willing to co-operate and do so. I think that, in general terms, the principle duty of care has to be to the person making the complaint in the first instance, but beyond that it would be a mistake to be too prescriptive. Different circumstances will apply if it is a complaint being raised informally and where the expectation is that unacceptable behaviour is to be constructively challenged and changed and learn from and understood. That is very different from a situation in which there is a much more serious action being complained about and a disciplinary process at a formal level being put into practice. Again, it would be different if somebody was working here in this building, as opposed to a small number of people working together in a local office, for example. The important thing would be to judge the situation on its own terms and to listen to the needs and wishes of the person who is making the complaint in the first instance. We would be guided by our pastoral care officer as to what would be appropriate for those circumstances, because Patrick Stewart is right that every case will be different. I think that to have a professional adviser who can say what would be appropriate in the circumstances that we would find ourselves in, we all work very closely together and we all perhaps want that to continue in as easy a way as possible. Having somebody professional who is slightly removed from it is perhaps the way to achieve that approach, but we should also make sure that we treat everybody appropriately and fairly and do not automatically assume that, because somebody has been complained about, they are automatically guilty. Likewise, we should not dismiss those who have complained, so keeping the balance right is pretty difficult in many environments, but that is what we have to try and achieve. It takes me back to the issue that I raised very early on in the questioning, if you are talking about an MSP and harassment of their own staff, you are in a really difficult position, because the structures in the Parliament do not really allow you to put things in place there, because that is their employer. You cannot say that you do not have any contact with that person because you have no locus over their employment. There are things that you could obviously do if there were other MSPs in your group that had a staff vacancy, so that you would protect their employment and move them on to work with somebody else, but you have no ability to do that other than appealing to good will. That is the real issue, and until we sort that out and find a way of dealing with that, people will not come forward because they will be worried about their job, because they know that there are no formal steps that a business manager can take to give them alternative employment and remove them from that situation. He followed the process all the way through to dismissing the MSP if we had a way of doing that for gross misconduct. We have a really difficult problem ahead of us, and we need to give it serious thought, and I hope that the committee will do that to find a way around that so that we can provide that safety and confidence to people so that they can report in confidence and know that their future, their livelihood, is not at stake. That is a kind of speedy, effective, confidential and commensurate process, and that ultimately helps to deliver for the duty of care for both individuals concerned. As some of my colleagues have highlighted, there are opportunities based on each individual case to ensure that that process is carried out effectively, whether it is through the individual working for the group or a different office or a different floor. There are ways and means in which we can make sure that every instance is treated with the utmost care for both individuals concerned. I thank the witnesses for coming along this morning and providing us with some very important evidence on how the committee will consider its inquiry, and I will suspend briefly to allow the witnesses to leave. Agenda item 3 is for the committee to consider the correspondence that we have received from the Equalities and Human Rights Committee. Are we content to note the letter? Thank you, and now, as previously agreed, we will move into private session.