 Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting in 2016 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I remind everyone to switch off mobile devices as they may interfere with the broadcasting. Our first item today is for the committee to agree to take agenda item 3 in private. I would ask members if they agree to that this morning. Thank you very much. Agenda item 2 today is the Commissioner for Ethical Standards and Public Life in Scotland and his annual report. Joining us at committee today are Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, Ian Bruce, Public Appointments Manager and Ruth Hogg, Investigation Manager for the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland and a very warm welcome to you all to committee this morning. I invite Mr Thomson to make an opening statement. Thank you, convener. I am grateful for the opportunity to address you on the annual report and to answer questions that you may have on it, and for that matter, on some of the updated material, which I hope you now have before you. You will have noted in the briefing paper that my remit covers the investigation of a range of complaints. This consumes roughly two thirds of the resources of my office, and the balance is applied to the public appointments remit on which there is actually a very good story to tell. I will start with the complaints side. The vast bulk of the complaints workload involves complaints against councillors and a few complaints, albeit a growing number of complaints against members of public bodies. Complaints about the conduct of MSPs are relatively infrequent, and even though the number received in the year covered by the report represented a significant percentage increase on previous years, most of those actually fell outside my remit. They were excluded complaints or simply inept, and therefore they were inadmissible. Just for your benefit, the average number of complaints about MSPs since 2004-05 is very near, and the 24 is 23. Something. Last year may have been a little bit of a blip in terms of numbers. Those numbers, of course, are set out on table 11, which is on page 11 of the annual report, and table 13, which is on the next page, page 12, shows how they were dealt with. If, convener, the committee is interested, I would be very happy to go into more detail of how those were dealt with. In the interests of brevity, I will skip over that detail at the moment. During the year, I will point out that three complaints led to reports being submitted to your predecessor committee, and one complaint was still under investigation at the point where the Parliament was dissolved. In the first six months of the current year, the number of complaints about MSP conduct that we received was 11. If that pattern were to continue—obviously, I have no idea what will happen to it—the total number received by the end of the year would be very near to the average that I have referred to across the past 10 years or so. I did make reference to there being a good story to tell in relation to public appointments, and very briefly, I think that there are two parts to that. The first part is a significantly improved working relationship between my office, including the public appointments advisers, and the staff of the Scottish Government who are involved in the arrangement in the management and in advising on public appointments. We have, in effect, a partnership approach, which included, among other activities, Ian Bruce on my right, participating in a group set up to take forward a range of projects designed to promote and co-ordinate efforts to improve diversity on public boards. I am pleased to report a measure of success in taking forward these co-ordinated initiatives. The combined impact, I would suggest, has been a marked improvement in the representation of several of the underrepresented groups on public boards to which appointments are made by Scottish ministers. I would also like to emphasise that the appointment of people from underrepresented groups in society, which is a good thing, is only one part of diversity. The other is not limited to the protected characteristics set out in the Equalities Acts. That aspect is important. It is diversity of thought and outlook, based on skills, experience, knowledge and other relevant attributes of the individuals who present themselves. I would also like to draw attention to the fact that this is really important. The appointment of board members must be made on merit. That is what determines who is put forward for appointment. In my opinion, there is no room for tokenism. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and you will find that in table 25, which is on page 21 of the annual report, that shows the demographic profile of board membership at the end of 2015. Table 26, which is on the following page of the annual report, shows how that has changed over the period from 2004 to 2005. I have also, I hope, made available to you an update to table 25, bringing it almost bang up to date. That is showing continuing improvements in respect of some, but admittedly not all, of the target groups. I would just like to finish by referring to the strategic plan for the office for 2016-2020, which was published at the beginning of this financial year. I have two strategic objectives, one for each side of the work. The first is an accessible complaints process with trusted outcomes. The other is public boards, which are effective and reflective of society. Thank you for your attention. Thank you very much, Mr Thomson. I am going to open the session now to members who have any questions and invite Clare Hockey to open the proceedings. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the panel for coming along this morning. That was really interesting. Your opening statement was really interesting, because it leads me very nicely into the question that I was going to ask you, which is about, as you are saying, two-thirds of your resources are used to investigate complaints, and yet we see from the report that a lot of those complaints are not progressed. Could you perhaps explain to the committee why those complaints have not been progressed, but perhaps what work the commission has done in publicising what they do so that they are not in receipt of complaints that are not appropriate for you to be investigating and therefore using up your resources? I would like to draw a distinction between complaints about the conduct of MSPs and the other complaints with which we deal. First of all, we are dealing with MSP complaints in your remit. I think that the MSP code is quite a lengthy document, and I am not sure how many people who might be minded to make a complaint can reasonably be expected to understand it inside out. In fact, it is clear that some MSPs do not understand parts of it because of the complaints that I receive. I can say that with some certainty. I do not mean that as a criticism, but I just think that it is quite a heavy tome, and some aspects of it are quite difficult to find. I do not think that it is all that surprising that some of the complaints that I get about MSPs are not actually complaints that I can follow because the excluded complaints are set out in section 9 of volume 2 of the code, and you have to be fairly determined if you started at the beginning to read that far. If you were looking at the index, I am not sure that it would jump out at you. My suggestion is that it is perfectly understandable that people who have an issue about the conduct of an MSP send it into the commission for ethical standards, but the majority of the complaints that I get are outside my remit. Some are outside the remit of anybody dealing with complaints. As you will see, some go to the First Minister because there are complaints about a member's conduct as a minister, and that is quite a difficult distinction for some people to make. Some go to the Presiding Officer because there are complaints about conduct in the Parliament. Usually, there are complaints about what is now section 8 of volume 2, which is liaison with an engagement with constituents. Understandably, that causes some people to feel the need to complain. Some are simply not competent at all. There have been complaints that—I am not mentioning names—a presiding officer failed to stop a First Minister making a certain statement in response to a question at FMQs. That just is not capable of being investigated as a complaint. If you are interested in my observations on the other sorts of complaints about cancillers, which are, as I say, the vast bulk of the complaints, we have a position where the volume of complaints relating to the key principles and the key principles alone was quite significant. It was over a fifth of the complaints that were received. Those cannot go forward unless there is something else to do with the detailed rules. The code says that. It is like the MSP code in that respect. It says that the key principles are there for guidance alone. However, I do not think that that is—I do not know how to make that obvious to people. It is on my website. It is in the complaints leaflet that we issue to people about how we investigate and what we can investigate. However, I think that if somebody is really annoyed about what they see as dishonesty, self-serving, failure to be accountable, failure to be open or whatever it is, it is very tempting to put the complaint in under the key principles. It shows that they have actually paid attention to the code, which is good in itself. However, it is not reasonable to expect them to have a full grasp of all the detailed rules. We make contact with people when a complaint comes in to establish whether there is any more to it. I am glad to say that the volume of complaints relating only to key principles has gone on a downward trend. The other reason why we do not pursue things is because there is not a shred of evidence in some cases. It is reasonable to say that some people read a newspaper report about what a politician may have said, and they are incensed about it, so they write in and make a complaint. Sometimes the newspaper report—you will find that it is strange—is not accurate, and I cannot then find the so-called statement to which the complaint relates, so I cannot investigate. We do search on social media at times for things that are allegedly said. We sometimes find them quite interesting. Other times they do not exist or they were not said by the person. They cannot be shown to be said by the person who has complained about it. I am sorry, that is a very lengthy answer, but there are a lot of reasons. I hope that that helps. That does help. You raised an interesting point there about the MSP's code of conduct. Do you have an opinion on whether that should be revised, simplified? I am going to try and dug that one, convener. I suspect that I will not get away with it. If it could be simplified, that would be a good thing. As it happens, I have just somewhat diffidently submitted comments to the parliamentary commissioner for standards at Westminster, who is revising the MSP's code of conduct. I am not suggesting that it is a model far from it, but I simply observe that it is drafted in a completely different way. The code itself is very short at three or four pages. The trouble is that there are then rules that relate to it and then there are the house rules and there are various other things. One of the questions that I have put to the commissioner there is, what is the hierarchy? How do you work out which of those takes priority? So whichever way you do it, there are difficulties. It is very hard to find your way through aspects of the MSP code. I have been working with it on and off for about 16 years now. Do you, commissioner, to know that the clerks of the committee are actually looking at the code and not with a review of the content, but a review of the accessibility about it and how we can move that forward? Mr Barvey wanted to come in. Thanks very much just to follow up on those questions. Given that you have to look at the outpouring of some social media, I think that we can all just be grateful that your remit does not cover Mr Trump. Hopefully, nobody in Scotland is giving you challenges of that nature. I was wondering whether there has ever been any sense that there is a correlation between the complaints that come in and the political cycle, either in terms of complaints being directed at incumbents during an election campaign or complaints about new politicians, newly elected politicians, once they are in office? Some of that might be about political motivation for complaints rather than legitimate complaints, so those might be the kind that get dismissed. Has there been a correlation? Does that impact on your workload, the political cycle and any connection there? I do wonder about that, convener, but I do not have a straightforward answer. In part because, during my period of office, which is two and a half years, there has not been a quiet time politically. There has always been something major going on, and of course, there are more to come. I would suggest that, rather than being to do with the big events such as elections, a referendum or a major campaign, it is more to do with what I think is probably best described as breakdown in relations. These are sometimes relations between political parties or people representing political parties on, in my case, largely local authorities. In some cases, there are breakdowns within the groups themselves. In other cases, I am talking about councillors, there are independents who, in some cases, are really independent and therefore not very easy to handle, if I can put it that way, and not subject to any party political discipline. In other cases, they may have been in one or other political parties and have left for whatever reason, and that, obviously, can lead to continuing conflict. Some complaints are very clearly political. It does not mean that they are inept or that they should not be investigated. If there is a foundation, in fact, then, obviously, they can be a legitimate complaint. If all of the political complaints were taken out of my sphere of activity, I doubt if it would remove more than a third of the total number. It does not have an impact on your workload in terms of the political cycle of your planning for knowing that this is going to be a busy year because there are big events coming up. It is not a connection to that level. I live in hope that I will not have a busy year, but that has not materialised so far. Thank you. Can I bring Mr Johnson in? A clear-hawnging's question looked at why some complaints do not proceed. The flip side of that question is a little bit about what competent complaints are untapped. You mentioned accessibility in your opening statement. What steps are you taking to improve your accessibility? Do you have a sense of the size of your untapped market, if you forgive the business speak? The honest answer is that I do not have a scoopy, frankly, about the size of the untapped market. I would like to think that it is quite small. It takes quite a lot of effort for people to make a serious complaint. The odd one who reads the newspaper is incensed and sends in a quick note. I am not counting, but those who go to the trouble, as a lot of them do, setting out what the circumstances are and why they are upset about them, that takes quite a lot of effort. You have asked two questions effectively. In terms of accessibility, we keep trying to improve the form in which people at the moment have to complete. We are moving to a point where that will be able to be completed online. That will make it more accessible for some people. It will make it more accessible for everybody. We have improved the way that we deal with the complaints when they come in. As I said earlier, if they are not well expressed, they are only relating to key principles, and therefore do not look as though they amount to anything. We go back to people and do not help them to put their complaint in, but we ask questions to prompt information that would allow us to proceed. I have, in human terms, an understandable reluctance to open the doors very wide, in the simple sense that I do not currently have the resources to deal properly with the volume of complaints that we receive—not within the budget, that is not possible. The remit is about to be extended. There are some details in relation to MSPs and registration of certain interests. I do not think that that will cause a major flood, although some of the areas that could lead us into could be quite contentious in terms of election expenses. The other imminent extension is in relation to lobbying. I have suggested recently to the newly appointed registrar that consideration should be given to the approach that was taken in Ireland where they introduced the system, but not the penalties immediately. In other words, there was a sort of running-in period. I think that that would allow people to become familiar with it. I think that it would allow honest mistakes to be picked up, and it should reduce the risk of complaints that should be dealt with by my other means. To what extent would you say that it is difficult for someone who might struggle to articulate themselves in writing or, indeed, use online forms of communication? How easy is it for someone in those circumstances to make a complaint? Without help, it is impossible. That is the position. It is clear that some of the complaints that we receive have not come directly from the person who has complained. That does not matter, provided that they have put their name to it. However, as the law stands, they do have to be in writing. I think that there is a risk that that excludes some people. I think that there is an even bigger risk, if they did not have to be in writing, that people would just pick up the phone or send a text or whatever it was. We would be inundated with Snash, frankly. Thank you. Mr Anderson, you wanted to come in on a supplementary. Thank you, convener. I have the… Sorry, don't mind. I added to many things, convener. I knew you meant me. You talk about the potential complexities of the code of conduct. Do those complexities give any flavour to the whole idea of how effective and how efficient and how fair the whole process is that you have to manage going forward? Or does that not feature within the process? The complexities are handled, in my experience, or so it would appear, very effectively by… I am not trying to embarrass anybody or the clerks to the committee over the years who have given advice to members who have had quite difficult things to be advised on. I suppose that the primary responsibility lies with them and with you and other members yourselves. The complexity can make it difficult for me intellectually in sorting out whether there is a valid complaint or whether the circumstances disclose behaviour. That is not, to me, a breach. I do not have a complaint about that. I think that it is reasonable in my post that I am prepared to tackle whatever comes up in that respect. There is a dilemma. Arguably, all the rules would be clearly set out in the code, but if you tried to cover every possible situation, you would have a code that is even longer than the one that exists, and that would be counterproductive. I apologise, Mr Stewart. You mentioned in your opening statement about the degree of success that you have had, particularly in women's representation on boards, which is to welcome to everyone here today. I wonder whether you are able to share any particular measures that you have taken that you feel have led to both increasing applications from females and the success of their appointments to boards? Yes, convener. I will pass to Ian Bruce once he is ready to speak. However, before he does, credit must be given where it is due. It is the minister to make the appointment, so this is not a political statement. It is the Government who has responded to suggestions, advice and taken their own initiatives. The political climate has put diversity up there, which is a good thing, and that has impacted on attitudes across the board. There is also a clear openness to work with my office and the advisers who are contracted to the office to support public appointments in trying out new approaches. I would like to hand over to Ian just to give him a flavour of things that seem to be working. Good morning, convener. Members, thanks again for the opportunity to give evidence. It is always a privilege. I thought today because we over the piece have given an indication of the broad steps that have to be taken in combination because there is no magic bullet to achieve diversity, but the broad steps that have to be taken in order to achieve more diverse boards. Today, in preference, I thought I might give some illustrative examples of specific appointment rounds where diversity has been achieved, just to give you an indication of how those things work in practice. In terms of gender diversity and looking to achieve gender balance, the example that I would like to draw on is for Visit Scotland. There, you had a board with nine members, one of whom was a woman. Obviously, they had to seek to redress under representation, but they are working in a context in which the nature of the visitor economy in Scotland has changed significantly. You have, as I referred to previously, two targets to meet. You need to redress under representation by gender. At the same time, you have specific new skillsets that the board would benefit from in order to meet the challenges that it currently faces. The first thing is engagement with the appointing minister. What are your priorities for Visit Scotland over the next three to four years, which is the typical term of appointment for new members? The minister gives you a clear steer on the different types of skills that they are looking for in order for the board to be successful. On that basis, that information is provided to the panel and they then understand that we need to design a competition. Basically, we are running four competitions in tandem to find four different types of people who are going to meet the needs of the board. At the same time, you need to then take positive action, so we know that we have under representation by gender. Which groups do we now have to connect with in order to encourage applications from people who have those skills and who happen to be women? That means contact with bodies with whom we are already working, the likes of changing the chemistry, women on boards, the institute of directors. You have an open event and you actively encourage people from those organisations to have these skills to come forward. It is not exclusively for women but they are encouraged to come forward. You design your competition, you ensure that the material that you are using is welcoming. One of the things that we have introduced over the course of the last year is our advisers. Now advise panels on bias mitigation techniques that they can use and that even extends to the type of language. Believe it or not, certain terms and phrases are more attractive to men than the arts of women, more off-putting to women than men. You adapt the materials in order to ensure that they are attractive to everyone. You design a simple assessment process, you do not ask for too much, you do not set out a whole long list of criteria for selection because we understand on the basis of behavioural science that that may be advantageous to men. That was done, you publicise the opportunities widely, you run your competition and basically you get the right result. That is what happened in this case. There were five appointments made, they met the needs of the boards. Four out of those five appointments happened to be women because of the additional effort that was put in. That is fairly typical of the sort of activity that is now going on. Obviously it has to be bespoke in relation to each underrepresented group and it entirely goes back to what is this board needs at this point in time. That is an example of the sort of work that is going on. That is extremely helpful. Thank you very much. Do you think that Mr Arthur wanted to come in at this point? Yes, I sat actually on that very point. Reference is made on a page 56 to taking steps, I suppose further steps, which we have already built upon, particularly increasing more numbers from the under-50s, and we will also declare this as LGBT. I wonder if you could perhaps expand upon what steps you will be taking going forward. Absolutely. In relation to disability, which is clearly an issue for us, in fairness to the Government they did conduct a data cleanse, so we believe that the quality of the information that they now have on the current cohort of board members is more accurate than it used to be, but we did identify that there was a significant issue there. They already commissioned Inclusion Scotland to take an overview of all of the public appointments activity that is going on. That in itself has led to the production of a draft report. The commissioner mentioned our advisers earlier. It is a bit of a brain trust, so although they are all expert in recruitment and selection, some of them have particular specialisms. We have assigned one of our advisers, who is an expert in redressing underrepresentation by disability, to work with the Government on rolling out that action plan to ensure that we are redressing underrepresentation by disability. LGP is slightly trickier. We have an initial meeting set up with SWAN, the LGBT network, for April this year, and we are going to discuss with them the perceived barriers. It is probably worth mentioning at this point that we are going to be doing much more work with public bodies themselves, because much in all we can do things about designing a barrier-free process. The culture of the public body itself has to be welcoming to people, so it is no use just putting a positive action statement in an advert saying, we welcome applications from. If people don't look at the culture of that body and think, well, I could see myself fitting in there, I feel I would be welcomed there, then potentially that's an issue. We are working with public bodies as well. After the session, myself and the commissioner are going along to an induction session for recent appointees. The commissioner will be talking to them about standards, but one of the other things that has been very helpful this year is a breaking down of the barriers within Scottish Government. The public appointments team is also working with the public bodies unit, and that gives us a clear link into public bodies themselves to help them with succession planning, so it is wider than simply appointments. You mentioned younger people. We already have a link with the Scottish Youth Parliament, so we are going to be talking to them largely on an educational basis about the potential for them to consider positions in public life, not necessarily now. We have a seminar lined up with the this is via the national union of students, and that's to do with officers who are assigned to colleges with a view of them, so they have some board experience at that level with a view of them perhaps considering taking on roles. We're also speaking to employers, so the likes of the Royal Bank of Scotland standard life about the possibility of being released because time commitment is an issue, so seeing that as a development opportunity. We have irons and a great many fires. We do understand that we have a lot of work still to do, and we do have another. We did speak about our action plan the last time, another much more detailed action plan because we've ticked a few of the boxes, but we've got many more things to do, and I'm sure we'd be very happy to share that with the committee once that's completed, if that would feel to be helpful. I'm sure my colleagues would be delighted to receive that information, Shreddin. I thank you for that comprehensive answer. Your voice is certainly holding up very well. We're just to turn to a potentially related matter, but the Scottish ministers can approach the commissioner to request that certain provisions of the code can be set of side. Of 40 such requests, 17 were granted. I wonder if the commissioner can explain what types of circumstances led him to agree to those requests. Yes, convener, I can. This is going to sound slightly dry, but this is the detail of it. On five occasions I was asked to agree changes to panel composition. For example, in one case that involved a newly appointed chair becoming involved at an early stage, but not at the very beginning of the process, the code of practice, by the way, requires the panel to be set and to remain so that you don't have three people interviewing five candidates one day and a different group of people interviewing candidates another day, so that there has to be consistency. In a number of cases, the term of appointment of a board member has been extended beyond a normal eight-year maximum. The code of practice sets an eight-year maximum. That's been agreed with ministers and with the Parliament. It was extended on three occasions and two of those were health boards to provide continuity at the time when the integrated joint boards were starting to get up and running. I'm going to say that I haven't agreed to all requests that have come in of that nature, but three were agreed. In four cases, the field was so strong when the appointment round was run that the minister, instead of appointing, said that two people wanted to appoint three because there were such good candidates. That has happened in four cases. On two occasions, I have allowed changes to the application and assessment method. One of those was because of the online system failing at a critical point in the Government's application process. It ended up with people putting in different types of applications at different points. In one case, there was an emergency appointment made much quicker than the normal process because a body chair had to leave unexpectedly early. That obviously can happen. Even body chairs are human. On two other occasions where vacancies occurred unexpectedly, I have agreed that the minister can go back to the list of people who could have been appointed at a recent appointment round but were not appointed and offer the position to one of those people who had already been through the recruitment process and identified as suitable for appointment. I am sorry, that is not wildly interesting, but that is what is the reality of it. I think that it is very useful to capture that and share that information with the committee. I wanted to raise a final point. A strategy that is outlined is public boards that are effective and reflective of society. In the statement commissioner, you stated that diversity of thought, characteristics and outlook are also important and that there is no room for tokenism. In terms of diversity of thought, characteristics and outlook, how can you capture that information? There are ways—I think that Ian Bruce is a slightly more expert on that than I am—it will not always work. I am going to say that there are a number of challenges in increasing diversity of board membership, not least of which is handling it when people are appointed. However, on how they are identified, I will hand over to you. One of the things that has been particularly interesting to me is the fact that ministers have taken the opportunity to look for new things. I mentioned Visit Scotland, but one of the examples that I have used with the people that I am working with in the Scottish Government on some of our outreach activity—I think that is a very good example—is the chair of Support Scotland, who was appointed this year. The minister in that case said that my priority is someone who is passionate about sport, but equally someone who looks to achieve equality and social change through sport. That means that the type of person that you are looking for is very different to what one might have in one's mind as the traditional board member. The person that was ultimately appointed to that role was the co-founder of the big issue in Scotland and the founder of the Homeless World Cup. All you need to do is think about proliferating that for all types of appointments. We are now engaged along with the Government and I feel duty-bound to name-check Evie McLaren and Kirsty Walker as I did the last time from the public appointments team because we are very fortunate to have that continuity. We are working together now in partnership with them and the Public Bodies Unit on a new project to try and capture what is perhaps an ineffable thing. It is very easy to count the numbers—how many women are boards and how many people are disabled—but some of these other characteristics are a bit more ineffable. There is lots of evidence from the private sector that difference makes a difference to board effectiveness—the bottom line. You can look at profit and loss and the public sector—nothing equivalent has been done. We are embarking on a groundbreaking project in Scotland, which is, along with boards themselves, having a look at the difference that difference is making to their governance. What are the different behaviours that are going on boards as a result of the different perspectives that you now have around the table? Is the chair harnessing those perspectives effectively? What difference does that make to the quality of the debate that we are having, whether proposals are being properly scrutinised, whether executives are being better supported because of the range of advice that is available to them? It is a four-year project and we hope to be able to report to the committee in due course about the difference that diversity is making to our boards in relation to those. It is difficult. I look forward to hearing. Thank you very much. I just want to be clear. We are looking at the impact on governance. That is what we are concerned with with the research project. I am sure that those updates would be very welcome. Going forward, Mr Harvey, you wanted to come in. I want to follow up the questions about diversity. On two of the characteristics disability and age, is there any attempt to get beyond a binary understanding of whether somebody is disabled or not disabled or under 50 or over 50? The age one is particularly underrepresented, but if we end up recruiting lots of able-bodied white men in their mid-40s, we have not necessarily had a huge impact on diversity. Similarly with disability, we might see an increase in the number of people who are disabled but without overcoming the barriers that still exist to people whose disability requires a more significant kind of adaptation to enable them to take part. I wonder whether there is scope for more of a kind of spectrum understanding rather than a binary one. Those are very fair points. The figures that we produce are given to us by the Government and Ian McRaffens earlier did not make reference to our data cleanse in terms of disability. The Government is in turn dependent on what board members are prepared to disclose. That means that the question that you have quite properly asked is difficult to give a reassurance on in terms of the statistics because it is dependent on what people are prepared to disclose. Going back to what I said at the beginning in my introductory remarks, we are looking at diversity in its broadest sense, not binary as you put it. I entirely agree that you could either have a board entirely made up of people who apparently have completely different characteristics but all think the same way, or you could have a board of people who all look the same but actually think quite differently. We are now getting into the research project that Ian mentioned, which is our attempt to dig down into that. It is quite a difficult area, but we are optimistic that we will be able to at least get some information to start with. That will open a conversation and encourage people to think differently about the difference. Even on a characteristic that many people understand in binary terms like gender, how do we take account at the moment of people with a non-binary gender identity? Is that recorded at all? I think that the short answer to that is no. That is perhaps another interesting one to think about for the future. I want to ask a few questions about your budget. The biggest portion of your £853,000 budget is staff, so I want to ask a few questions about staff, composition and so on. I would like to start with your workload first and foremost. Last year we received 245 complaints that formed 132 cases, which was up from last year but down from two years ago. Would it be fair to say that your workload is relatively consistent? Is it trending around a stable mean? Yes. In terms of numbers, yes it is. However, there are problems if the assessment is made purely on the numbers. There is very significant variation between the complexity involved in complaints. Some of them probably only consume several hundred pounds of resource within my office. Others may consume tens of thousands of pounds worth of resource. There is a trend at the moment. Although the numbers are absolutely right in statistical terms, you could find a mean. It is around 130 cases a year. There are significant variations from one year to another, but it does come back roughly to that mean. As I mentioned, the number of MSP complaints over the years is roughly 24, 30 last year, which is statistically a big shift, but it is actually not a big number. However, the complexity seems to be going up, and that is in part down to—this is a question of being a victim of your own success—reducing the number of complaints that, if you like, are easily dismissed because they are not properly formed or not competent. Therefore, those that are left have a larger percentage that has to be gone into it in more detail. In part, it is down to a tendency in some cases to involve for those against whom complaints are made to involve representatives—usually legal representatives—and I am a lawyer, by the way, but lawyers complicate things, but that is true. It is the way that it happens. I think that, particularly among some of the politically-motivated complaints, there is a growing tendency for people to want to throw as much into it as possible. We are not unusual as a complaints body in this respect, but we get hundreds of pages of stuff from people sometimes. No matter how hard I try to ask them to tell me which bits are relevant, it does not always work. Then you have people who find something else three weeks later, and then you are just about ready to finish it three months later if something else comes in, and they are determined that they are going to get whoever this is—or make you get them, in my case, me. The further complication is that, after I have made a decision, if it goes as a report to the standards commission, they almost always hold a hearing that, with an MSP complaint, comes to this committee. At the hearing, I present my findings, or I am represented by one of the people in the office. If there is no breach in my opinion, then there is no right of appeal, but quite a number of people do not accept that. Because of freedom of information, which, in principle, I support, I think is a good thing, they can ask for a great deal now. If there have been hundreds of pages of documents looked at, they can ask for a lot of information, and then they can come back with almost endless comments on little bits here and there. That consumes, possibly, wastes quite a lot of resource. So, in the last year, you have employed two new members of staff. Is that correct? Two new investigating officers, yes, on a part. I am sorry. Three new investigating officers? Three new investigating officers, and your total staff is 17, is that correct? Yes. So, what has been the driver to increase? I note that that has driven your median salary cost from £39,000 to £47,000 a year. The three new investigating officers were, if you like, replacements for two who had retired and one extra. They have actually been employed at a lower salary scale than those who were employed before, because those who were employed before have protected terms and conditions from previous iterations of the office, which I now hold. This is the third version of it in about as many years. There were two separate commissioners, then there was a commission, and now there is one commissioner. So, there have been complications there. We are also, in the course of this year, preparing to tender for a complaints management system. Although we have one, it is very old and it was developed by a member of staff in the office, and it is in danger of falling over because it is not supported on the platform in which it was developed many years ago. That has put quite a lot of strain. 17 sounds like a large number of people, but it is not, because a lot of them work part-time. The investigating officers are home-based, with one exception. They are not actually in the office at all, so we have one, if you like, supernumerary member of staff to ease the administrative burden throughout the year. The other fact is that staff salaries, which follow the corporate body's scales, have gone up by small percentages year on year. Your total salary, of course, has not gone up by a small percentage, but it has gone up by over £50,000. Some of that is down to the amount of time that is spent on investigations, and I cannot readily control that. Just coming back to the workload point, you are dealing with about two to three full investigations on average per month, with a total of 245 complaints. Per staff member, what is it? One or two full investigations a month dealing with two or three complaints? No. In practice, investigating officers are generally implied one and a half day a week. I am afraid to skew your calculations. The number of current investigations that each investigating officer is dealing with varies during the year. At one point, it was averaging at 10 each. It is currently down at between four and five, I think, on average. It is not easy to appreciate where you are coming from. I am not trying to be difficult, but it is just not as simple as that, I am afraid. No, but at the same time, I am just trying to understand your staff costs, because it is that the fundamental is the biggest line item on your P&L. Yes, all this will be. If I am just drawing the very crude comparison, as an MSP's office, we get around £80,000 to spend on our staff. In terms of the total number of constituent contacts, it would be several times the 245 figure and indeed the number of cases correspondingly high. On our median staff costs in an MSP's office, it would be around £25,000 to £30,000. I am just trying to get an understanding of why you need to employ people on a considerably higher salary to do what I think in terms of dealing with complainants and so on, ostensibly not substantially different type of work. I am just trying to understand what the driver for that high-salary median salary is. I think that it would be a good idea to have a bit more information about the comparison that you are drawing between the sort of work done in any of your constituency offices and the sort of work done by an investigating officer. So, your highest paid member of staff has been paid more than an MSP though, is that correct? Sort of £62,000 a year? That is a protected salary scale for somebody who works not a full week, but yes, if that individual were employed full-time, yes, they would be paid more than an MSP. So, is it the preparation of the reports then that is taking the work? I am just trying to, because in terms of pure volumes, I do not think it is necessarily about the volume of communication or is it... I mean, what... I am just trying to understand what the driver of the work is and the requirement for the higher salary. Well, we have talked this morning about the complexity of the codes and my office deals with a very large number of codes because there is the MSP code, there is the councillor's code and then there are the individual public bodies codes. They are not all in the same terms. There is complexity in the issues, I think, Mr Stewart asked me about this, which the investigating officers who are the highest paid staff have to be able to assess. They are involved in gathering information, which sounds simple, but it is not. They are assessing sometimes complex information, sometimes apparently simple information. They are interviewing people who may have a reason not simply to come out with all of the information that I need. Some of those people are in positions of authority where they are not used to being challenged. Writing up the results of investigation is actually quite demanding exercise. I would be very surprised if many of your constituency staff would be expected—I am not saying that they would not be capable, but I would be very surprised if they were expected to write the same sort of reports. They are my reports, I have to say, because I am answerable for everything that is in them. I do not just sign them off, it is not like that at all. I do question them, discuss them and change them. I am not sure whether that gives you the answer. It is the best that I can do off the top of my head. The cost of an investigation varies, depending on the complexity of that investigation. What I see from the report is that the majority of your investigations are relatively low-cost. At what stage would you stop an investigation or would you stop an investigation if it was continuing to move in a direction that was incurring more and more costs for the organisation? At the moment, I have no authority to put a cost limit. I do have discretion as to whether or not I investigate and how I investigate. However, I am governed by administrative law, which means that my decisions have to be, in simple terms, reasonable. I think that if I had started an investigation, particularly if it looked as though it was going to uncover evidence of a breach, I would then stop it because we had already spent up to the limit. That is not what you are putting to me. I appreciate that. However, I am trying to think how we would be able to manage cost increases in a way that was competent. I have not got an answer to that. I appreciate the point that you are making. I think about it quite a lot. I have endeavoured to come up with ways of limiting the range of investigations that we conduct. I am afraid that I did not get my response when I tried that. It is tricky. At what point do you decide that this is not important? It is important to the person who has put it in. If there is no evidence, I will stop it. I then spend, in some cases, two years or longer toing and froing with the person who thinks that I should have spoken to so-and-so whoever I heard, such-and-such or whatever. That then racks up costs that I cannot properly allocate against a current investigation. That is part of the reason for the cost, I am afraid. I do stop things, but there are consequences. If the complainant does not like the answer that you give, that can continue that whole process. We are always trying to improve. I think that it is only fair that I answer people's questions. If they are not clear about what I have decided or why I have decided it, I think that it is only fair that I try to explain that. It becomes difficult if we have been doing that for months and the questioning is still going on. We do have a policy on vexatious complainants, but it is very difficult in a public post simply to stop communicating with somebody, particularly if they are clever enough to come back with a different question—which, of course, people are. Cymru, you mentioned a couple of pieces of legislation that are likely to be of interest to the committee. That is the Lobbings Scotland Act 2016 and the interests of members of the Scottish Parliament Act 2016. Can you give us any indication of how those acts might impact on your workload, the working practices and the resource constraints that you have spoken about? I am not expecting the changes to members' interests legislation to throw up much in the way of additional work for the office, but anything that does come through could be quite difficult because of the complexities that we should be aware of in terms of the way the legislation has had to be framed. I have given evidence in the past to the effect that I am assuming that there will be very few complaints that I have to investigate. That assumption is founded on hope rather than evidence—I do not have any evidence, obviously. It is one reason why I have suggested today and previously that serious thought should be given to introducing the whole regime in stages, giving it time to bed in before it kicks off in anger with complaints. There are criminal offences here, which I think that people could stumble into quite innocently through lack of appreciation. There will, of course, be education and information. People are busy and they do not always pick that up, I am afraid, or they may not realise. I thank you for your contributions today and your colleagues. On that note, we will move into private session.