 I welcome to the ninth meeting of the Local Government and Communities Committee 2019. I remind everybody to switch their mobile phones off and to give apologies for the convener, James Doran, who is trapped on a train outside Haymarket, I'm told. So, there you go, that's probably not a surprise to most train users. The first item is the consideration of whether to take a giant item six in private. Can we agree to take it in private? Thank you, I agreed. A giant item two is supporting the legislation, is the consideration of a statutory instrument, which would give the public the right to request information from registered social landlords and their subsidiaries about public functions they perform. The committee will take evidence from Graham Day, Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, Jerry Hendricks, head of freedom of information unit, Graham Cromby, head of policy, freedom of information unit and Christine Rae, solicitor Scottish Government. Welcome. This instrument is laid under affirmative procedures, which means that the Parliament must approve it before the provisions can come into force. Following the evidence session, the committee will be invited at the next agenda item to consider the motion to approve the instrument. Minister, would you like to make a short presentation statement? Thank you, Deputy convener. I'm pleased to speak in favour of this motion. Today's order is the third such order to be laid by this Government in the past six years. It will increase further the reach of Scotland's freedom of information legislation, which aims to promote open history, transparency and accountability. The order proposes to extend freedom of information to around 160 registered social landlords and their subsidiaries. Those bodies undertake key public functions by providing housing accommodation where an RSL is granted a Scottish Secure Tenancy or a short Scottish Secure Tenancy. Bringing those bodies when in scope of freedom of information will increase the public's information rights. Once the order comes into effect, the public will have the right to ask those bodies for information under both the Freedom of Information Scotland Act and the Environmental Information Scotland Regulations. Scotland's first order, under section 5, brought when in scope of FOI, a wide range of arms-length organisations established by local authorities to provide leisure, sporting and cultural services. Evidence from the previous Scottish Information Commissioner presented in her special report to Parliament in 2015, found that for most arms-length bodies, request levels stayed the same. The report also found that becoming subject to FOI had not made responding to information requests more or less difficult for the affected bodies. However, the report noted the importance of allowing adequate time for preparation of designation, so it is clearly important, as with any new regulation, to be prepared for its impact from day 1. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Scottish Information Commissioner for his commitment in offering to support over the coming months those organisations now proposed for inclusion. Once the orders enforce, we and the commissioner will be closely monitoring its impact to inform proposals in preparation for future orders. I know that not all, including some who responded to the most recent consultation, are satisfied with the rate of progress in terms of extending coverage. However, I want to take the opportunity to restate that we, the Scottish Government, are committed to extending coverage. We have said that we will consider whether bodies that provide health and social care functions should be included and work is under way in that area. The Parliament also agreed last year that the Scottish Government should consult on proposals to further extend coverage of freedom of information. For example, to companies providing services on behalf of the public sector. Consulting on proposals for further extension is crucial to the success of further section 5 orders, and my officials are considering options for designating more bodies. I look forward to updating the Parliament when we weigh further report on the use of section 5 powers later this year. I ask that the committee support that motion. Andy Wightman In your policy note, you say that, in the interests of transparency and accountability, the Scottish Ministers consider appropriate the RSLs and their subsidiaries to be subject to the provisions of the act. You say that designating such bodies as Scottish public authorities would remove the anomalous situation where identical services such as the provision of housing competition by local authority are already subject to. Given that, for example, private schools already provide statutory education services, is that an anomalous situation where public schools are already subject to FOI? How far would one take this alleged anomalous situation? I am going to bring my officials in to deal with the specific details of that. Graham, do you want to give in on that? Graham Simpson The approach that ministers take is an incremental one overall. I would say that, in the second designation order, which was made in 2016, certain independent special schools were brought within the ambit of FOISA, and that was done at the same time as others. That was done in order to resolve the perceived anomaly that other special schools were subject to the legislation, but those independent ones were not. The ministers look at those matters on an incremental basis and when they are brought to their attention and they consider carefully for designation bodies in accordance with the principles that they have already set out. The Scottish Government has, as a matter of policy, the view that such anomalous situations are candidates for FOI extension. We have a programme lying ahead of us of further work that we are going to undertake to look at designating other bodies. If, Mr Whiteman, you have specific concerns that might influence our thinking, I am happy to hear from you. You want to write to me on that subject and we can certainly take a look at that in the context of the upcoming work that we are going to be doing. Moving on to evidence from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, they note that other legislation that RSLs will also come under as an unintended consequential extension. They talk about the general data protection regulations and the definition of public bodies given within those regulations. Are those bodies classed as public authorities under FOI SA? They talk about payroll legislation. Again, a public authority is defined as those covered by FOI. Conversely, they draw attention to the Lobbying Scotland Act which will no longer apply to RSLs because the act specifically exempts bodies that are subject to FOI. There may be other legislative provisions whereby public authorities are defined in reference to whether they are covered by FOI or not. Have you analysed the impact of those consequences? Have you taken any view on whether it is desirable that RSLs should no longer be covered by the Lobbying Act? There has been quite an extensive exercise undertaken to look at how we get to the best possible position around capturing RSLs. All aspects of that have been considered. We think that where we have ended up is the appropriate place. Can I again bring the official in to respond to this, because this is obviously a situation that I inherited when I became a minister? I agree that I would have a more detailed understanding of the process that was going through earlier on. In relation to the pieces of legislation that have been mentioned by the Federation, I would make two points. The first is that we have both considered and engaged with the Federation in relation to those matters that were raised with us. It would be fair to say that we do not necessarily share the analysis that the Federation has arrived at. The second point to make is that, as I suggested, those are not unintended consequences of designation. What has happened in each of those cases is that Parliament has decided when passing the other pieces of legislation, for example the Lobbying Act, that it will take a particular position in relation to bodies that are or are not designated for FOI's purposes. That is a policy decision that was taken at that time. If Parliament decided that bodies that were subject to FOI's are should not be subject to the lobbying legislation, that is a consequence of the decisions around lobbying, not a consequence of the decisions around FOI's. I think that the Public Order Committee has done a bit of post-legislative scrutiny around the legislation. If you have concerns in that area, you might want to feed in your thoughts to that committee when it is carrying out a piece of work. Sounds like I have some work to do. The campaign for freedom of information draws attention to the fact that this is, I think, the first time that we have designated public authorities for the purposes of FOI, but have further restricted the definition by only making reference to particular functions that those bodies carry out. Is that correct that this is the first time that has happened, as opposed to just designating the bodies as public authorities and making them subject to FOI? The answer is that we do not have an answer specific to that. I am afraid. I think that what you are getting at is that we have looked at specific elements of the activities of ourselves and not just captured them in general. There was a concern that we ought to take into account factoring, for example, and that is not to be included in that. The reason that factoring has not been covered is that ministers can only extend coverage to bodies that appear to exercise functions of a public nature. The order has to say that what those functions are. We consulted on whether or not the provision of factoring services should be one of those functions and there were a number of competing arguments made about whether it is or isn't a function of a public nature. We had to consider that carefully. After that detail consideration, we have arrived at the position that we have, which was a conclusion that it is essentially a private arrangement between the RSL as a factor and the owner. However, that is not necessarily the end of the story. We are factoring's concern because we have noted that certain aspects of factoring, which apply to all factors, not just to RSLs, might be considered to be functions of a public nature. We could therefore consider consulting on factoring services more broadly in the future. That is an option that is open to us. We could eventually capture that. One example of that is what has been drawn to her attention by Ann Booth, who introduced petition 01539 on the question where she talks about the fact that she is factored by housing associations subsidiary and she lives side-by-side with tenants who are factored by the local authority. I think that she is suggesting. Therefore, those are very similar functions. Therefore, she feels that we have owned. Is that not a private house, though, that is factored? I think that that is where there will be competing views on whether that should be captured or not. I can't give you a definitive answer. The substance of the campaign for freedom of information, as I understand it, concerns us that, because we are defining it and that the functions are limited to those for which the RSL has under the Housing Scotland Act 2001 granted to Scottish Secure Tenancies, defined in section 11 or a short Secure Tenancies, defined in section 34 of the act. It is going to be difficult for users of FOI legislation who, at the moment, can request information from Scottish ministers or the local council or the Forestry Commission, and any information that they hold has to be released unless it is subject to an existing statutory exemption, which is now fairly broadly understood. People who are looking for information from housing associations are now going to have to face the additional threshold of interpreting whether the information that they are seeking relates to those specific functions under the Housing Act. Is that not going to cause some confusion and difficulty? I don't see that at all. To me, to my reading, it is quite simple and straightforward. It is obvious what should and will be available to people to request and what isn't. We are doing this to further extend the scope of FOI and to assist tenants to be able to access information. Clearly, with such measure, we would monitor it going forward. If there was any difficulty, we would take that on board, but I really cannot see that in this instance. Are you wedded to the notion that this will come into force on 11 November 2019? Again, SFHA makes reference to the fact that there are staffing considerations, training systems, procurement and legal advice. There is a lot of work to be done by often some very small bodies. In order to be set up to be compliant with FOI legislation? Yes, is the answer. This has not come as a surprise to RSLs. Everyone has known about for considerable time that these measures were coming in. We have engaged over an extended period with RSLs. Some have expressed concerns in that regard. However, we have also engaged with the commissioner, and the commissioner is of the view that that nine-month period is perfectly workable. The commissioner, and I am grateful to him for his work in this regard, is going to engage with RSLs to assist them. I think that nine months is an appropriate period in which to get prepared for this and to hit the ground running. You are absolutely right, minister, that they will have seen this coming. According to the campaign for freedom of information, it has taken 17 years to get to the point where we are at. If I can go back to the factoring argument, which is about subsidiaries of housing associations, if I am a tenant of a housing association, and I am also factored by that housing association, why would I not be able to make a freedom of information about the factoring services that are effectively offered by my landlord? The simple answer is that factoring is not covered by this, but why shouldn't it be? I am going to ask Graeme to come in on that. I think that it may help to clarify slightly by saying that factoring services are provided to homeowners, but they are not provided to tenants. The registered social landlord will manage the housing accommodation for its tenants in the same way that any other landlord would manage that. However, in some cases, registered social landlords' housing associations, for historic reasons, provide factoring services to private homeowners. Those are typically people who have exercised the right to buy. Those properties were once upon a time tenant properties, but they are no longer tenant properties. That is why there is a factoring relationship, rather than a relationship with landlord and tenant. There are two separate relationships—one between RSL and its tenants, one between RSL and the people who have purchased those properties and are now homeowners. Can you say that you are minded to extend FLI legislation to factors? Couldn't this be a start? I think that what I was saying was that there is an option further down the line that we could do that in future, but that would have to be applied on a consistent basis and not simply be targeted at RSLs. I think that it is a case that you would look at factoring as factoring across the board. I think that this has been very useful because it has clarified a number of important issues. It has also flagged up that this has been under discussion one way or another for considerable time. If the mood is to do it, it might be the recommendation. In that regard, I understand from my committee papers that the Scottish Information Commissioner is supportive of the order, but perhaps for the record that could just be clarified. Yes, the information commissioner is supportive of the order and of the nine-month period. As I said earlier, it is committed to working with the RSLs to get them best prepared for the commencement date. It seems to me that, if that is the case, I understand that the SFHA is also supportive of the order and that it would be my inclination given the time lag just to get on with it. I would imagine that any changes to the FOI legislation involve reflection, consideration, consultation and incremental. I think that it seems the nature of the beast. I think that that falls very squarely within that process and I, for one, would be supportive of just getting on with it and extending the legislation. I am grateful for that view. I mean, just to illustrate perhaps in support of your interpretation of the situation, we do go through a very extensive process before we arrive at this point. If you take this particular order, there were two consultation exercises carried out, not only with the stakeholders but with other individuals who had an interest in this. There was further extensive engagement with stakeholders beyond that in order that we get to a point where we have an order that is right, appropriate and proportionate and that we are good to go with the subject of the committee's approval. There is no doubt that the theme of information has now moved into becoming an industry over the timescale from where it started. That, in many respects, is a good thing, because MDFJs and organisations get the chance to have that engagement and get the information that they require and request. There will obviously be some implications from that and resources and costs. Do we have any idea as to what other estimates have been done to think of what the added on to this may well be and any of the potentials that may happen from that? I can move on to the point about costs, but just to pick up on your point about the development of FOI, there are some people who are frustrated about the pace in Scotland. As I said earlier, this will be the third order in six years. I understand that frustration from a layman's perspective, but I have come to learn over the last few months how this legislation really works and the requirements of it. If Acute offers a little bit of perspective, the UK legislation came in two years before Scotland did, and in that entire period the UK has designated six bodies. Its commissioner has been very critical of the lack of pace and contrasted that unfavourably with what has happened in Scotland. The way that this works—and obviously the Public Orch Committee may take a view on section 5—how it works can appear to be time-consuming, a little bit cumbersome, but we are in Scotland going at a faster pace and have the ambition to build upon that than colleagues elsewhere. In terms of costs, do you have something on that? When we carry out our reviews of the orders, we have not seen significant increases in the number of requests that other organisations have had. Request levels have tended to stay the same, so there has not been as big an impact as we may have expected. The other thing that I would say is that the commissioner is looking to support those organisations through training and general support as they go forward, and we are providing funding to the commissioner to support that element of this work as well. I think that that is vitally important. There is that continuity that organisations get the training and the support and the mechanisms to ensure that they can impart that information, because individuals and organisations that want that information want it to be as transparent and as quick back to them as humanly possible. That has sometimes been a log jam in the past, because it has not had the personnel or the individuals that are there to manage that situation, so that has caused some difficulties. I look forward to seeing what progress will be achieved in this whole sector, because I think that there is scope for development as you have rightly identified. That gives us an opportunity to see where we are. In the next two years' timescale, we will be able to get some clarity as to what knock-on effect will have been. Do you plan to come back and give us information on how things have progressed or how things are progressing on various timescales? The point that Jerry makes about experience is that other organisations that have been captured by FOI have not reported a massive upsurge. Perhaps the organisation that has seen the largest upsurge is the Scottish Government. We cover a far wider range of activities than some of the other bodies that have been captured. We also attract requests from journalists, political researchers and the public. I suspect that RSLs and others will not necessarily be in that category. It will largely be their tenants who are interested in securing information. On that, let me provide a bit of detail of what we are looking to do with a view to the future. We are engaging with a number of organisations—this was already flagged up in 2017—including Audit Scotland. We are looking at organisations that deliver health and social care functions. We are looking at charities where they provide services that are of public nature. That process is on-going. It will follow the normal procedures. I am not going to say to you that this will all be done very quickly. Getting into some of those landscapes will be far more challenging than thus far, because of the sheer volume of bodies that would be covered, but also the varying functions that they have. That is not to get the excuses in early. It is just to recognise that that will be challenging. However, we are committed to progressing in those areas in an appropriate and, as I said before, proportionate way that follows the processes. Rest assured that the Government's direction of travel on that is to expand the reach of FOISA and to give the public greater access to information. Agenda item 3 is a formal consideration of motion S5M-15924, calling for local government and communities committee to recommend approval of the draft freedom of information Scotland Act 2002, designation of persons and Scottish public authorities order 2019. I invite the minister to speak to and move the motion. Nothing I'll say on, thank you committee for its consideration and to move the motion, convener. Thank you very much, Andy. Thanks very much, convener. I'll be voting for this today. However, it does raise some, I think, distinctive challenges compared to previous FOI extensions. The fact that this is only restricted to these public authorities and so far as they carry out certain functions. Given the evidence that we've had, I'm pleased to see that the information commissioner is supportive of this and his advice weighs heavily on our deliberations, but I'm acutely aware also that some of these authorities are amongst the smallest public authorities in Scotland. I'd be keen if the minister could confirm that he will keep the implementation of this under close scrutiny and take account of any concerns that come forward from either requesters of information or ourselves themselves, the information commissioner or other and be open to amending the implementation date or amending the order in light of experience. I do note that we're in a strange place where we passed an act just last year. This committee scrutinised at the housing amendment act where we categorise RL cells as private organisations. We made sure that there were not public authorities for the purposes of debt and now we're saying there are public authorities for the purposes of information. I have no problem in principle with that but it does create a rather odd situation, which one day may come back to bite us, I don't know. On the point about the assurance about keeping this under scrutiny and making sure that this implementation can take place without any problems, I'd be grateful for the minister's comments. There will be a review in November 2020 of how the implementation takes place but, with regard to the nine-month date, I think that we are looking to stick to that. That is the intention. I don't want to envisage us moving away from that. I don't think that it has got to be necessary. My understanding is that, within the sector, there has been a lot of work done already to prepare for this. A lot of support has been offered within the sector, so I think that there will be a review in November 2020 of how the implementation takes place. In the meantime, I will have my ear open to any issue and I don't want to cover what has been put out to those who were here. I have no idea what has been put out to the issues that have been in those issues, but it's not going to be all right to issues that I have to look at. Each issue that I've been asked to work on is going to be given to individuals and not to people who have been serviced to deal with those issues. I think that there will be a review in November 2020 of how the implementation of the nine-month date comes into play, but I don't think that there will be a review in November 2020 of how the implementation of the nine-month date comes into play. but there will be a review in November 2020. In the meantime, I will have my ear open to any issues, legitimate issues that are being aired. Thank you very much. In that case, the question is that motion S5M-15924, in the name of the Minister for Parliamentary Business and Veterans, be approved. Are we all agreed? Yes. Okay. We are all agreed. That is agreed. The committee will report on the outcome of this instrument in due course. I invite the committee to delegate authority to me as convener to approve a draft of the report for publication. I agree. Thank you. In that case, I will suspend briefly to allow the minister to leave and the witness change over. Agenda item 4 is consideration of the new volunteer charter, which was written by Volunteer Scotland in the Trails Union Congress and launches at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations Gathering event in February 2019. I would like to welcome to the meeting today George Thomson, chief executive of Volunteer Scotland, and Dave Mawks, deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trails Union Congress. Good morning. We will start off with a question by myself. What are the main differences between the new charter and the previous version? Why has it been updated? What is the new context mentioned in the charter? I could speak a little bit to the context, and George may be to a bit of the detail there. From my point of view, I think that it is generally accepted that the world of work is changing to some extent. The headlines in relation to that are the new gig economy, the forging of new relationships between the worker and the client for want of a better term. There is also a blurring between work and free time. Some of us are guilty of that as we look at our phone every second minute to do an email when we should be relaxing. There are other examples of that as well, where company and company time begins to reach into the free time of the individual, sometimes freely given, sometimes not. We also have probably more than a decade now that we have developed an idea of employability. We would argue that cases are being made that there is an increased responsibility on the individual to have themselves work ready. We might argue from a trade union perspective that that has gone a little bit too far, and there should be more responsibility on the employer to bring on to develop and to support people into employment. There is definitely a changing context. When we first wrote the charter, I suppose that the key concerns from the trade union movement—this was at a time of contracting public spending, arguably not out of that situation yet—were particularly concerned at the organised replacement of paid labour, particularly in public service by volunteering. Something that, to be fair, was taking place a more accelerated rate down south than it was here, but we definitely saw some examples of it. Then, very precisely for the trade union movement, as a matter of democracy for us, suggestions that volunteer labour might be used during industrial disputes to replace labour, which we would argue was strike breaking. We had some particular concerns, but all of that was in the context of the trade union movement embracing volunteering as a positive thing. We are an organisation that is populated by probably 20,000 volunteers, but 20,000 people have some sort of position in Scotland that makes them named volunteers, and there is a large number of other people, too. We are wanting to be sure that all of the positives, frankly, the beauty of volunteering could be preserved, and not to be contaminated by genuine concerns of workers that their work would disappear as a consequence of the wrong application of volunteering. I will let George talk maybe about the specifics, but our particular aim in the updating of the report is to move on from that concern to look at some of the new forms of work and how we might protect volunteering and protect volunteers and workers in that context. Thanks, David. I think that one of the different emphasis of the charter now is this question about what is legitimate. I think that what I have seen over the past 10 years since the first one is that there are different voices that are coming into this in a more contested space about it. What we have seen is some really critical examples, particularly about young volunteers, and we are challenging that. We do not see that as a legitimate kind of volunteering, and that has inspired us to revisit it, strengthen it and provide us a process within which people can work through looking at difference take-holders, whether or not the actual volunteering is regarded with a consensus to have some of the legitimacy. I think that that is a key difference in it. It has been strengthened somewhat, but it is largely based on what we had 10 years ago, and that mirrors the TUC charter that is operating in England, Wales, and there is also one in Northern Ireland as well. There is a strengthening up of things. I think that what it also does is very different to the last thing. It is as well as showing what we do not want, if you like, question marks about what circumstances we would like to avoid. There is also a very positive picture about what we want in volunteering. I think that it is really quite significant from that point of view about projecting a different kind of picture about what volunteering is, which is based on the evidence that it is largely a social networking participative helping out activity. I think that we have all fallen into the trap of over-identifying with formal roles the transactional type of volunteering, which we know and love, but the unsung hero kind of perspective, rather than seeing what it largely is in fact. I will finish off by saying that. That poses quite a major challenge for all of us, especially with a growth and inclusion agenda at play about the benefits of a more participative society, that we have not been looking at those that are not involved. That charters an invitation not just to look at what is a legitimate but also to look at why so many people are not engaged. Let us look much more closely at them and their circumstances and find the ways in which we do in fact bring a more participative society in Scotland. I am glad that you mentioned the latter part of your response. Is there not a fear that maybe a charter such as this might put people off volunteering unless you can sell the positives of volunteering? As you quite rightly said, it is about what we do not want, to some extent, is what we do not want volunteering to be. If I could start off with that one, I think that very strong evidence shows us that among those that are least involved, because, at the moment, the sad statistic is that over half of the population in Scotland say that they have never been engaged in volunteering at any time. When they are then asked about what volunteering is, they then tend to look at the formal type of role and it is not attractive, especially among those that are the least engaged in the more difficult circumstances. The idea of unpaid work and taking on shifts and various other things is just not attractive. From that point of view, volunteering gets a bad name, rather than something that is much more social, much more engaged, much more friendly, friendship-building, solidary, and all those things that we know that the benefit of volunteering brings about. It is up to us to change the narrative and the communications and the listing with people to embrace the terms and the meanings that they have in their own contexts, rather than to impose the notion of, here is what volunteering can do for you. I suspect that many people volunteer without realising what they are doing, like running football teams and stuff like that, that would all be part of the voluntary process. I would suggest that as somebody who used to do it for many years. You might have challenged that notion in that. We tend to use that as a bit of get-out-of-jail card, and we sometimes say that we know that it is not all formal volunteering, but when you actually look at the things that we are not capturing, then there is a lot more happening. The Scottish household survey does not ask anybody if they are a volunteer. It asks them whether they are participating in a whole wide range of different things, so that is a really significant piece of research that gives us a great understanding of what is happening and what is not. Largely, we have got a disengaged population at all levels of activity. Sorry, I was not talking about the information that you have gathered. I am talking about the individual not recognising the fact that they are involved. Graham, do you want to come in? Make sure that the supplementaries are not going to be taken up by somebody else later on. They certainly will not be convener. I am just wondering if you could tell us who the charter is aimed at. The charter is aimed at all potential parties, for want of a better term, the volunteer transactions. From George's point of view or George's organisation's point of view, it would be aimed at the organisations that he engages with who provide volunteer opportunities. I imagine that we would probably share this. It would be aimed at all organisations that seek to promote what I would describe as community empowerment so that we can begin to understand volunteering in terms of the collective activities that people undertake voluntarily in order to change and improve their circumstances. Particularly, as George says, those, frankly, in the areas and parts of society who are less likely to engage in that community activity and volunteering now, which, for want of a better term, is working-class communities. From our point of view, it is about empowering unions formally to engage in discussions with something. Nothing ever gets resolved by a bit of paper. It only gets resolved by talking around a bit of paper to empower them to have those discussions in a positive rather than in a way that they always feel defensive about things that might be faced with them. For the young people who we increasingly engage with, they are not part of the formal trade union movement yet, but through campaigns like Better Than Zero, where we are having a real discussion now in Scotland, different from the rest of the UK, with young people about the nature of work, their expectations of work and how that fits into their sense of themselves in wider society. They have something to have a discussion around. As I say, there is no such thing as a contract, but we do think that it is a tool for all of those players to use to have the right sort of discussions about volunteering and how it interfaces with pay to work. I will add to that that when it came to the launch that we made at the gathering, we had nearly a sale-out of 80 people who came to it and represented all the different sectors there. One stood out for me that the Scottish Countryside Rangers Association were present, and they spoke to the charter and spoke about how it would be a highly relevant document for processing their dilemmas, which is about how volunteer rangers fit in alongside professional rangers. It is a perfect example of how that could be applied. There is no black and white about that context, but there are real concerns about, for instance, no adverts for posts that would be 37 hours for seven months for a volunteer position. They are grappling with decision makers on that to get the right balance between the volunteers and the professionals and have publicly stated that they would use the charter as a means to assist them to do that. Andy Wightman Thank you very much, convener. Are you talking about volunteering based on the UN definitions? You go on to say that we envisage that charter will be most relevant in formal service, so that is where people are on the board of a charity or things like that. What would you define as formal service? Andy Wightman I would say that that would be more like the Ranger example of just giving a contracted role to be a volunteer ranger with training and responsibilities and set times and various others. That would be the formal service. It can cover all elements of what we would typically see in charity shops—befrending, drivers, sports coaches—all of those kind of roles would be where the person would clearly know that they are a volunteer named himself and a volunteer coach at the swimming, and that would be a formal service activity. The point that we are trying to get across is that, in fact, that is very much the minority of what volunteer activity is, but we have become quite fixated on those roles rather than all the kind of helping out and more, if you like, less formal roles that we have to engender much more of. Andy Wightman You are saying that charter will be most relevant in formal service volunteering contexts. Andy Wightman The reason for that is that the area where there has been contention with regard to displacement is in where it is on-paid work type positions. That is where it is most relevant to guide people through. Is that role a legitimate one, or is it one that could be criticised for displacing somebody that was previously a worker in this setting? Andy Wightman In a sense, that is not targeted as volunteering as a whole. It is focusing on where the problems have occurred and trying to resolve them. Andy Wightman In many respects, it is, as I said earlier, but it is also about what we want as well as what we do not want. It is trying to project a focus around growth and inclusion, which is how I would put it. Can that help us to shift our way of thinking about that, to be more expansive, as well as protecting workers and volunteers from exploitation where that might be a risk? Andy Wightman Okay. You say in the charter that this formal service volunteering context is where there has been—you talk about recruitment, management, induction, et cetera. This is where there has been legal challenges and conflict. Can you say a little bit more about the nature of those legal challenges, sort of examples? Andy Wightman Yes. I am not going to give very specific examples, but I will give examples specific enough to elicit, hopefully, the information. Obviously, when somebody enters into a voluntary relationship with somebody who also acts as an employer and contracts, although it is not an employment contract, to do that work, there can be and there have been questions arising as to whether that essentially evades minimum wage legislation. You are, to an extent, asking somebody to work a number of hours, and you are saying that you will not pay them, and they are voluntarily agreeing to do that. That does not necessarily make an employer or an authority exempt from a range of employment legislation, but minimum wage would be the most likely. Where we have been able to identify that we think that that cuts across minimum wage legislation and therefore a minimum wage legislation in British might be taking place, we have tended to use that as the way to discourage what we consider to be a bad volunteering situation. What that charter would do, in a sense, is that, if it is adhered to, it would make that a safer situation so that less employers contracting voluntary workers would be likely to fall foul of minimum wage or other employment legislation. Andy Wightman There have actually been legal challenges on that that have led to a resolution in the law. There have been companies who have decided to stop doing what they are doing as a consequence of our legal letters and legal approaches. Andy Wightman Okay, but there are no cases that have actually come to court. Andy Wightman No, I mean, does this and other areas of legislation including trial shifts and others sit in a particularly grey area, so trial shifts would be a good example of where there is an understanding of where in a very extreme example a free trial shift would fall foul of legislation, but there is no definition of how long a trial shift should be. Indeed, a student of Donald MP from Glasgow actually tried to introduce legislation in Westminster to try and clarify the situation, but volunteering would be similar in the sense that there is not a lot of test cases out there. There is a general understanding that there is the risk that bad volunteering could run across there, but no test cases are my way. Andy Wightman Do you envisage, given that you have said that this has already or your engagement with people who employ volunteers has already led to them stopping doing things that they probably shouldn't be? Do you envisage that this could develop into some kind of an accreditation scheme rather like minimum wage employer? You could say volunteering Scotland, volunteer Scotland employer. I'm just thinking, for example, my daughter volunteered for Celtic Connections looking after artists and stuff. She wasn't paid, but many young people will volunteer for music festivals and things like that typically. They'll get fed and watered, might even get accommodation, although that's rare. There's a free ticket for Thursday weekend. Is that one of the places where, A, there might be a bit of a grey area in terms of compliance, and B, whether an accreditation scheme might help to deliver the charter? We certainly use it as a form of accreditation on the online national database for volunteering so that we ask for any organisation that wants to promote its opportunities to agree with the charter principles. In that sense, there's a form of accreditation there. It's a good question in helping us to maybe get across that we see this very much as a guide and as a process for looking at what's the motivation, for example. If the motivation behind our role is clearly there about the fundraising and the mutual support that's around, it then will not become a question. If the motivation, and it doesn't matter who it is and it can't change it, the motivation is to prevent paying for somebody when that should be the better approach to it, then that can raise questions about the legitimacy of it. We can't really foretell what the circumstances are. It does become a matter of thrust and the different parties that come to play on looking at the question. All we're saying is that we're seeing in this last period a lot of interest coming from outside the normal quarters to say, well, we're looking at that and not really seeing why would you not pay for that role when you paid for it last year. Why would you set up over 100 volunteer opportunities when, before, they were paid? It's a question that's coming in. That would be a clear breach of principle 5, so that can be well evidenced whether there's been a breach. On the question of to what extent the circumstances are a standard or a mechanism, I might make a comparison with something like the fair work framework, where there are aspects of the framework where it would be very clear if that was a breach. We're looking, just for context, for public service employers and other employers. Many have to adopt the fair work framework because it outlines a number of ways in which we think public and authorities and other employers should act. That's not as enforceable as something that would sit under the black and white of procurement legislation or certainly anything that's covered by employment law. It is a legitimate question to ask of anybody who offers these opportunities and why they haven't adopted it and whether they believe that they can legitimately describe themselves as offering volunteer opportunities if Georgia's organisation and my organisation on the back of the chart haven't said that it is. It's short of a role-making mechanism but we think a useful one in terms of asking people to increasingly adopt it as a way of judging whether their opportunities are significant. I think that what we're seeing in a positive sense is that still in council has made a very ambitious target to achieve a 50 per cent participation rate. To move quite significantly, it's already at 36 but in particular it's going to have one areas of the way down at 16 per cent. It's made this big commitment and it's working really hard strategically to look at ways in which it could bring that about. It's signed up for the charter and it's doing that on the basis of establishing the trust between all the parties that its motivation is not to come in and do a displacement approach. That is quite a big charge the distrust about why would a council be trying to develop more volunteering? Is it just a means by which it's saving on its financial difficulties? It can also be used at the outset in that kind of process to say that we're buying into this, that's where we're coming from, we're building trust and we're going to work a whole variety of different ways in which volunteering can manifest itself and not fall into the trap of looking at it as a displacement activity. There was one point that Andy Wightman mentioned that I was just going to talk about. That's specifically things like music festivals. It's a really interesting example for us. The principle here is obviously that lots and lots of people, largely young people, not all young people, do enter into that arrangement for one of a better term, transport to sometimes and free access to a gig in return for two, eight hour shifts over a period of two days. From my point of view, the fact that the individual concerned has voluntarily consented to that doesn't obviate the examination of further issues. If we saw a large profit making company with questionable ability to describe itself as simply undertaking that function for the public good, they were making a profit, we would still say that there were questions to be asked of that company and there are still potentially circumstances in which they could fall into the grey area of the law that we talked about earlier. We think that this chart comes in useful, but where there also needs to be discussion around those things is, from our point of view, that would be different from the Commonwealth Games. George will tell me how many people volunteered for the Commonwealth Games, but it was like 13,000. I knew it was a double figures of thousands, but I thought I might be guilty of exaggerating that. Is that the same and is that the same in all circumstances for a large money making commercial festival choosing to employ its bar workers through a voluntary mechanism? We would say not necessarily, and there are things in here around profit and common good and motivation that allows that to be explored and we think that that's really important. I think that might be a good example to illustrate the points there. When you look at the Ryder Cup, the Ryder Cup was a great volunteering experience, but there were some rules in there that were about shop assistants being volunteers. Those shop assistants for selling the merchandise would breach the eighth principle. It's really good to say that for the Solheim Cup coming up in September, which we are very closely involved in sporting that, that's been stopped. There's been a shift, a move away from saying that's not the right kind of activity, but we will continue to have all our stewards. There's got to be a big youth engagement this time and it's got to be a more inclusive games or a tournament than before. There's a lot of really good changes that are happening there and that's one that I think is a specific example of how the charter is saying that's not acceptable. You shouldn't have a volunteer merchandise worker selling t-shirts for private profit in a context like that and that's been accepted. The principles of this is, nobody would really disagree with that, but if I can maybe make just a couple of points where you want is where you talked about displacement. If you look at what's been happening in a lot of local authority services over the last number of years, the areas that I've taken, the biggest cuts, is areas like the local environment, so most parts departments and most local authorities will have taken massive cuts in terms of the numbers of workers that they actually have and you can see that across a whole range of areas. Is the danger not that, as that gap appears in terms of public services, it's increasingly being filled by volunteers, so they're not directly replacing jobs but indirectly they are. In terms of the deal for the volunteers themselves, you talk about effective structures being in place to support and train and develop. Should volunteers, for its large organisations, not have some kind of rights that they understand clearly what it is that they're going to get from their process in terms of employability, for example, of what skills they're going to have? Should I do the first bit and you do the second bit? There is that risk and you and I are both long enough in the truth in terms of local government to see what most of us are to see that local services sometimes disappear for reasons of budget cuts and we both will have witnessed circumstances in which, in order to fill that gap, communities have got together and worked to replace that particular service. To suggest that this charter should take a definitive view on where a community left to its own resources, for what we would argue were bad budgetary and fiscal decisions, should, if you like, be unable to do anything about that, to create their new facility, to work together to do that, I think that's well beyond the realms of this charter. I think that where it is relevant, and remember those aspects of this charter happened around 2009-2010 when particular ideas were being promulgated as policy that there were sections of public service that should no longer be funded because they could the responsibility for that provision should be passed to the community. It's a slightly different thing, so it's a different thing and making no comment on the individual decisions that councillors, councils and other public service providers have to make when a service gets cut. It's a different thing to support a community resilience when that happens than it is to make your strategic and budgetary decisions based upon a policy view that that's what should happen. The idea that you decide not to provide any libraries anymore because you can just get the community to do them is a bad thing. The idea that if a service does go and the community decides and is supported in some way to make alternative arrangements, I think the idea that that should not happen would be beyond the practice and the scope of this. That's slightly differ a little bit in terms of what you're saying, David, in the sense that, I mean, I remember a conversation with Carnegie and this has gone back a few years, but why was it that some library closures generated trust and resolution and why in other settings did it lead to conflict and protest and difficulty? We didn't really have the answer to that, but we guessed that the circumstances were very much about the motivation, about the information that was shared and about the different negotiations at play. I'd like to think that this is a guide for negotiations as much as anything, rather than it's a black and white matter. You can have a situation where the protest continues, you know, we're not having this library closure or you can actually legitimately have a circumstance where some people are wanting to play a role and in the Ayrshire library there's a group of 20 volunteers that do all the IT support, you know, or not it's what's IT support, but IT hand will help to the people coming in using it. So you can find a mutuality in there and it's really just a matter of can we work through the reality of the circumstances we're in, build the trust between workers and volunteers and the different players and find the right resolution, but not full foul of temptation perhaps, that if we think we can save some money on the basis of wages because we can transfer that to another, then I think that's where people have to come to their own conclusions. No, that's not legitimate and we're not accepting that, but it is a grey area that one. And what about the matter point which is in terms of should volunteers have some kind of rights in terms of being told, you know, about almost like an individual learning plan, an individual training plan, that type of thing? Yeah, I think we do give recognition to that about good treatment and support and safety and absolutely would agree to that. I think the only thing is the word rights I've got an emotive element to them and certainly where I come from, I would avoid the temptation to talk about volunteer rights because that then starts to move us into that territory of seeing volunteering as an unpaid work parody when, as I said earlier, the vast majority of us volunteer in a helping out context, so rights doesn't quite work in that sense, so absolutely taking good care, good management, good practice with volunteers is of its essence, but I wouldn't move it into rights per se. Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen. I'm just picking up on that broad area. I mean, when we're looking at gaps, if you like potential gaps in state provision, I happen to visit an open day coffee morning of the Cowdenbeath food bank, the other Saturday, and they have impressively some 30 volunteers, and that is very much in the helping out vein that George Thomson spoke about, where there's a failure in the safety net of the social security system of the state, and so that is very much a helping out activity that is going on and great credit to all of those involved. Looking to the promulgation of the charter, what do you envisage in terms of information awareness raising, both for volunteers, for those who will have volunteers working alongside the paid workers for paid workers in employment? How do you see this rolling out in terms of people being aware of it, because it's all very well for it to be there, but if people are not aware of it, that would be a pity. It also occurs to me that, from the volunteering side, I used to sit on the CPG and on volunteering in this Parliament, that this could actually be a recruiting sergeant, to use that phrase, for volunteers, because it's taking the debate on a bit, and it's interesting. It sets a parameter around which their activities can be performed, so I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Right away, I would say, we're really delighted that your own cabinet secretary, Eileen Campbell, will be launching any day now a new volunteering outcomes framework. That's a key phrase that's volunteering for all. Much of what we've been saying here is absolutely co-terminous with that, and it's a real effort to look at a shift in the mindset and activity. I think that that will be a real good shot in the arm, within which this is an enabling type of support. The other thing that I would say is that it has generated a lot of connections with us. We've had just the other day that volunteer Glasgow has met and discussed it with their constituency, and they've offered to work with us to generate more case studies. I think that that's going to be an important part of the sharing of it. The principles are here, but how do you bring it to life by giving examples of different settings, and how, in some cases, has that run foul of the principles, and how in other settings has it applied it? You're absolutely right. We will be looking at, in some senses, the encouragement of this committee meeting today as well as a part of that. You'll get any feedback to us about the value of this, and we will absolutely have our plans in place for moving it out over this next year, fitting in with a number of different things. When the gathering itself was a major launchpad and it got a good bit of coverage. Do you have any comments from the president? Yes. The structural influence and promoting it through the structures is worth pointing out. VDS is the portal for an awful lot of those volunteering opportunities anyway. The fact that it simply exists and that these organisations already refer to VDS is a fairly big step in terms of its use. We will obviously promote it so that our branches and so that those organisations that we have that interface with employers are aware of it, and as you suggest, in a positive way, so that we're able to say, back to the convener's point, about do we know that we're volunteering, so that all of these people who were involved in these discussions around the interface in volunteering realise that they are themselves volunteers, that they are doing valuable work. We would look to do that. We also have an extensive range of school visits that we undertake from a trade union point of view. Again, we talk about the kind of nature of work and the rights and responsibilities at work, and this is something that will incorporate into that so that young people are hearing from trade unionists about the positive value of volunteering. I think that that's particularly important because I do think that there is, in some cases, a glowing expectation that young people will somehow produce themselves as work ready before they've even had a job, that my daughter of her own volition decided that she wanted to go and work in a charity shop on a Saturday morning, and that was great. She wanted to do it partly because she supported the charity, but she was also acutely aware that it wasn't going to be unhelpful for her when she went for her first university and other job interviews. Again, I really do think that it's important that we get this right for young people as they're considering the interface between their voluntary activity and work and the stuff that we can do there. The other way that we'd like to promote this, frankly, is through local authorities and people who are writing up contracts, particularly contracts for events, so that when they're laying out procurement contracts, which include community benefit, and some of that community benefit, it's going to be really important that there's a clear understanding of what community benefit means, both of all the volunteer and the wider community, and that contracts for major events are written in such ways that they're consistent with this. That's interesting. Just one last minor point. What about business though? FSB and other larger business organisations, because it would be important to ensure that they were aware of that in terms of the paid worker aspect to it. Are there plans of foot for that engagement? Perhaps it's already. There are now. Thanks for that. I think that as long as I've been involved in this, we've spoken about employer-supported volunteering. It's a bit of a sleeping giant, but the problem is that the actual facts show that very few people source their volunteering activity with the help of their employers. Given that the major break and the major reason why people stop volunteering is the time pressures on them, I think that we've got a lot more to do to embrace the commercial side of employers into the common good agenda about how they can help facilitate more time for their workforce to take part in community things and for us to move away from that more parody, challenge-anica type of activities, which is all too common as well—the team things, the paint and the classroom type of thing. I'm afraid that too much of the thinking is based on that rather than a more modern approach to engagement. So I think that we've got a big job to do to shift that one as things stand. So, yes, it's here as something that's a need for commercial companies as they look at like festivals in other places, and that is a factor. But for participation in Scotland as a whole, the numbers are very low. On that point, there's not a couple of some of the larger organisations that do quite good work around about that. Will they give their staff a day, a month, or I'm not sure what it is, but will they not be able to help you to sell the benefits of that to other companies? I'm not the part that's going off all the ideas about how to deal with this. All I can say is that my own company, Volunteer Scotland, has got a three-days availability for staff and there's not a great take-up in my own company. So I can't really criticise others, but what I would say is that that approach doesn't work. So what we're seeing is, and I suppose back to the earlier thought, I move away from transactions to relationships. If you are building relationships amongst staff, things like the walking to work, the wonderful leero step challenge, getting teams to do things, and getting out and about in that kind of activity, I think that's got a lot going for it. But the transactional side, it just doesn't relate to what I've got a day to take in the year. There's not a great take-up. Okay, and challenge Annika, seriously. I know, sorry, I'm showing my age. Sorry Annabelle of you. No, that's fine, thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm just wondering what challenge Annika actually is. Never heard of it. I'm just thinking about what you've just been discussing with the convener and thinking about my own experience that used to work for the Scottish Sun. That company had probably the kind of volunteering setup that you're not in favour of George, because they would give you probably a day every couple of months, and they would organise things like, I mean, I took part in some tree planting in Glasgow, but I suppose that that's a bit like fence painting, and it's a sort of thing that is just a one-off, it's not a regular thing. You don't need to answer that, I'm just reminiscing. Dave, you mentioned procurement, and there are a number of organisations that get public contracts, but who also have volunteers, and the SCVO has made some comments on this, and they advocate that such organisations that want government support must offer proper contracts. Not zero-hours contracts and pay the living wage. Have you got any thoughts about, you know, how government should tackle all this? Yeah, obviously we've got a big shopping list in terms of standards that should be laid down for procuring companies, obviously with respect to their employed staff. I would very much like to see this charter being adopted by companies being insisted upon by procurers for companies who deliver volunteering as part of a wider contract. We're certainly not taking a view, and I'm not sure if it was the point of your question that companies using volunteers shouldn't get procurement contracts or that it should be insisted that they should. I think that there's a mixed economy of provision when it comes to that. Sorry, I didn't really get the other point. I suppose what they were saying is that maybe when government or councils are handing out contracts to organisations that have a large body of volunteers, maybe those contracts should be more specific about what's required? We would absolutely support that. To be fair, in a lot of the environments where we do observe a lot of volunteers, it's not the rights that Alec Rowley talked about, but there are clear expectations, rights and responsibilities laid down, both in terms of safety, supervision and a whole range of things. Should that be stipulated, I would say yes, but I wouldn't want to pretend that it doesn't currently exist because there's many many fairly positive examples of where those relationships work and work quite well. All I would say is that back to the question of motivations, which you can never really answer in an abstract, we're not clearly not saying that there's not a role for volunteers. We want more volunteers to be coming in and helping and providing a service, but if the motivation for that engagement is to have a competitive edge over another contractor because of savings that you incur in there, then that opens up questions for that system to say is that a legitimate way forward on it. If the motivation is about engagement and a bit of wellbeing and the community interest in what's happening, that could shift the judgment. If I might say, because you did also ask about the role of companies when you gave the example of the tree planting day off. The trees are still alive apparently. Are they? I think what I'd be saying there is no disagreement in principle with the idea that a company says let's all go off for a day and do this instead of work. Although it begins to get a bit close to is that volunteering or not, we're going to give you a day off so that you can volunteer to do something that we want you to do. It doesn't quite do it for me. I think what's more important in terms of the flexibility is companies recognising that people do things out there for the common good. That can be everything from sitting on a children's panel all the way through to things. It probably ceases to be volunteering if you're saying we're going to give you three days off to do that, but there are flexibilities which are really, really important in that. I may not be asking for any additional hours to go and do my volunteering, but I might be asking for a flexible hour so that I can go and do this on a particular morning, because, as we know, 95 doesn't always assist with such things. Where employers and particularly the private sector could look at this is to say, how do we support the volunteering activities of our employees through providing the type of flexibilities that recognise that this is a public good and that it should be promoted? I think that one of the difficulties in all my ex-chair Bill Howard gave evidence to one of your committees and he shared with me what had happened then. One of the things that strikes me is that the commercial sector tends to look at volunteering as a charity thing. They look for charitable possibilities to go and do some work which I was thinking mistakenly, largely, I know I'm generalising mistakenly that there's a need for them and there's good evidence and good research to show that that becomes a burden on most charities when a group say, we want 10 or 12 of our team to come and do some work with you and they think that all that can be done without cost. So there is a shift now in the thinking and amongst the companies as well to say, this is not really that meaningful, so how can we get more meaningful activities all round and I'd like to think this can help us to start shifting the ground into more community building, community relationships, finding out about your community where the company is based. Rather than thinking, oh, there's a poor charity that requires our day's activity and they'll thank us from high heavens because of what we've gone and done. I know I'm exaggerating, but you know it's a bit like that. I completely agree with you, it's this kind of thing that looks good in the company newsletter, makes the company feel good about itself, but doesn't maybe actually provide any long-term help. Can I move away from the third sector and ask you, to probably direct at you, Dave, what's your view on the use of internships? MSPs use interns occasionally? We're, again, I'm not even sure if this is a grey area, we're against unpaid internships. We don't see that as being necessary. We think that there's plenty of ways and the STC is about to agree. You know, a very well-structured internship, which is essentially paid by the funding organisation. So providing opportunities, genuine opportunities, we think it's a good thing. I think that the concern about internships is fairly well rehearsed. They're more available to people of certain financial means than they are to others. So we're against unpaid internship. All of that, is there any volunteer activity that requires a lot of hours to be given starts to shift it away from the norm or what we would normally see as volunteering? It shifts it into a different domain. So it's not to say that it's necessarily wrong, but it's something that would take further attention towards it. Can I just turn that round slightly? So say you've got, I know in terms of the Scottish Parliament, you will get, say, a university will approach Parliament MSPs and say, look, we've got the X number of students who, as part of their course, we would like them to spend time in an MSP's office. We're not asking you to pay them. It's part of their course and at the end of it they'll produce something and it's short term. Is there anything wrong with that? If the MSP is not looking for anyone, particularly just helping someone out? So let me be clear. If it's part of a structured educational opportunity and one presumes that due diligence would have been done on such structured educational opportunities, we would make a differentiation between that and somebody who was saying, come and work for free for us for three months, not as part of a structured educational opportunity. So we would make, in general terms, again, not going to say that every single one of those is fine, but in general terms we'd make a distinction between a structured educational opportunity and a general come and work for us for free for your own advantage in the long term kind of arrangement. I'm actually going to say something very similar to Graham, actually. I mean, 100% of my staff budget has committed so far. I was taking an intern on it could only be on that basis, really, because otherwise, you know, you'd have to make room for the salaries of your existing staff, but Dave earlier on touched without mentioning it on The Big Society, which was an idea that sank without trace. It came from Dave. Where is he now, Cameron, back in the day? I think now everyone accepts that volunteering really should grow, but not at the expense of paid employment. What you're looking to do is, for both paid employment and volunteering, to grow and minimise the overlap. I would suggest so. From my perspective, it's about how you really manage that and minimise that overlap. It's about how you really try and address it without conflict. I mean, you've said to me, for example, that the Charter is a tool for conflict resolution addressing media interests. I'm just wondering if there's any practical examples. I mean, you've talked, for example, about country ranges or any other examples of how that would work. Just one other thing I would say is when you talk about employers assisting volunteers, one obvious one is employers, for example, allowing people to time off work to crew a lifeboat, for example, which is a very important community aspect. I'm going to start in this. One thing that struck me about The Big Society was that it was also a kind of statement that the state is withdrawn, and so more will fall upon you. In that sense, it didn't work. I think that the counter side of this is to say that there is a real willingness in our population to engage and do things. It's absolutely palpable. I did myself some door knocking. I went around 400 different doors. I spoke to 100 people in five different communities, and well over half were willing to be part of something. I think that the local government, the local state, the community planning have a far greater responsibility than they're currently undertaking to generate the circumstances for that community participation and common good, and we have got to really do a lot more on that front and not over rely on the charity sector to be the place that brings things in. I've made my soapbox point, and I can't remember the question to come in more in that. There's two almost diametrically opposed ways of looking at The Big Society and what we should mean by The Big Society. I will say that David Cameron, as John Swinney just said, was talking about the withdrawing of the state, and we all know, I think that most of us would agree, that the withdrawing of the state leaving a degree of resilience amongst those who are most organised, frankly, best off and in the communities where that was possible to do. Hold these up as shining examples, and then ask why other people in other communities with other levels of resource and resilience are unable to do it. You almost get into this kind of blame dynamic that people need to stand on their own two feet because, frankly, the poshers around the corner are managing to do it. There is another way of looking at that, which is that that level of community resilience working together should actually be engendered, and it should start in the working class communities in our towns and cities. I'll give my example. I'm a member of an allotment. I get to do quite a lot of things as a member of a 40-strong allotment with a committee. There are certain things that we take responsibility for. We go out, we do food initiatives with the local community, schools come in to see us. It's within a framework that is supported and promoted by the local authority, so some of that is done by the local authority, and they make grants and support, and others, sometimes they do it well, sometimes not so well, but that's always a dynamic between community organisations and local authorities. However, as a framework, it works because they are putting their resources into an area that needs it. They are promoting us to do additional things, but it's correctly targeted. For me, that's diametrically opposite from saying that we're not going to fund allotments any more, but we know that the ones in the west end of Glasgow are going to manage to stay on their feet, but the ones in the east end and north of Glasgow probably won't. I think that you've touched on a really important issue, community capacity and resilience, because even my constituency has huge differences. For example, when a community organisation some years ago set up, there weren't the retired professionals, if we want to put it that way, who had the time and the experience to commit to making somebody's project work. I think it's difficult sometimes to get significant projects off the ground without that level of community capacity, so how do we extend and boost community capacity and resilience so that all communities can gain from volunteering, George? There are so many different elements to that. One, for us, is that we have to create starting points for people to meet. Perhaps it's for the first time in a neighbourhood to actually meet and discuss the community context that they're in. We've been experimenting with what we call community bubbles, and it's a wonderful technique. You don't have the time to hear more about that, but we've been taking it to Tilly Cwtry. It's going to Brussels or all places, but more importantly, in the sterling-based work, it's going to be our outreach effort to go into those communities and find legitimacy for that first point, which might be some survey work or photography or community radio type things to generate some interest and get people actually talking about the community spirit of their place, what builds it and what detracts from it, and then from that dialogue to work out what they could connect with, if it's a group of guys that could connect with the local men's head, we can make that reference, but if it's about what's happened in Tilly Cwtry about drugs work, about drugs conduct, it's about festivity, and it's also about housing management. There are three different things that have emerged from those community bubble events. There are three different groups that are working on these different elements, and we are nurturing that and seeing where that goes. So starting points, I think, is of the essence. An issue for me, I've found in my constituency and I'm sure it's an issue in many others, is that when you look, for example, the lottery grants, you know, you put in awards for all, a 70% chance of getting a grant up to £10,000, you go for the major projects, only 67% are successful, that's because community groups are sometimes expected to put together one or 200 page business plans and all that kind of stuff. Exactly not everyone's got the time and the experience ability to do that, and that sometimes holds back a major project. I would just say, in terms of that, I think that that's a fair point, but there's another way of looking at it, and that is that we're a very rich nation which, where there are ideas that people want to, let's just say that group wants to set up a recovery cafe, I think they will find the resources around to help them to do that. So it's not so much, for me, the question of finding resources to do the things you want. It's whether or not you get people together to have the ideas in the first place and they work out for themselves what it is that's important. And I think we have got a crisis in our hands and the stats show it. Like in Perth, in Kinross, in Stirling, you've got in Quintile 5, the better areas, half the population involved in volunteering. In Quintile 1, in Perth, it's right down to 13 per cent, and in Stirling where we're working, it's 16 per cent below the national average. So it's not that people are any different, actually, it's that the circumstances have not been brought about across the playing field to find ways in which we listen or are humble in listening to where people are at and what makes sense to them and work it out from them. So it's a long journey, but it's encouraging when you give that opportunity. Last question, convener, for me. I was a member of the predecessor committee 20 years ago. We did a major inquiry into volunteering, and one of the things that the recommendations was that public agencies should be funded for three years, and yet we still have an issue in which that is a problem. So I wonder if you could comment on that. Yeah, I mean, there's so many reasons to go for a more stable, long-term and assured funding mechanism for the delivery of public services out with the direct sector that volunteering is only one of those. But I mean, absolutely, if you want organisations to provide services and also to have plans, which would include plans for how they engage with communities and how they, you know, develop strong, robust volunteer policies, then security of funding is going to be a major component in that. I wouldn't pretend that that's just about volunteering, as I said. I can think of a list full of reasons why that should be the case, but I would certainly agree with you. Okay, I'll just move on. Thanks, Alexander. Thank you, convener. You know, we've talked about the benefits of volunteering, and there is no doubt that individuals who give over their time and their talent to support whatever volunteering sector that is immense. Myself, I volunteered on my adult life, and I'm still volunteering on a weekly basis. I think that the benefits that you can put back into the community have been shown. Individuals are given accolades. I've had an accolade for my volunteering in the past, and I think that that's fantastic. That's not the reason I volunteered, but that came with doing the work and being commended and congratulated for it. However, I think that one of the big sectors that we now have today is social enterprise. That has become a much bigger part of our economy, of our structure, and those social enterprises are there because they want to, in part, and individuals want to become involved, but they are businesses to some extent, and they plough back their funds back into the community or into the social enterprise. When we look at it as an enterprise, and I think that for both your organisations, how can we ensure that people who are part of that social enterprise are not being used to financially support the management or the owners of those enterprises in going forward? As I said, that whole sector has now become much more prevalent in our economy. I would come in and say that that is a good challenge. It's an area that we have not really looked enough at, and that's something that we certainly take away from today, to look at the case studies and to seek out some social enterprise settings within which we look at volunteer participation. That's the overall agenda. We want to increase that, and social enterprises are clearly a good opportunity for that increase in participation to occur. However, the point that you're making is that that can come with some difficulties as well. I don't know enough about that, because I'm focused on that, to be able to give you a better answer, but I'm very happy to look at that as a case study in the future. I do think that that's a mistake that you're making, but I think that it's important that we make a clear distinction between what we call the voluntary sector, by which we mean the third and non-profit making sector, and volunteering. They share a word, but obviously we have very large third sector organisations that don't have any volunteers at all. They're simply service providers. There's no particular argument with that, but sometimes we can think that there's more of a crossover than there really is between the non-profit making motive and the provision of volunteer services. As we've discussed, they cut across all sectors. When you're talking about social enterprise organisations, the first question that's in the charter here, essentially, is the organisation making a profit, and is it making a profit because of the work that its volunteers are doing? Clearly, it's possible to make a profit, and the volunteering aspect is not to be the reason for that profit. Can we see a clear correlation between profit making activity and the use of inverted commerce volunteers in order to do that? My argument would be that, at least by that test, most social enterprise organisations would pass. They would pass that test, so as an entity, as an organisation, they aren't, if you like, guilty of that. You're more then talking about whether the role that it's undertaking is replacing a role, and by design, it's replacing a role that previously would have been done through more direct means, on the one hand, and there will be a question, in some cases it might, in most cases it won't. Secondly, is its actual volunteer policy a good one? That's the standard that should attach itself to all organisations in all sectors. It's not looking at it as one great big amorphous sector, social enterprise, voluntary sector, third sector. Are we making a statement about that sector as a whole, but breaking it down into profit, function and good process? If you're not making a profit, if your function is good and your place as a volunteer is good, then you're passing this pretty effectively. I've just got a question to community bubbles. Is there something that you could send us about that? It sounds like a good idea, and it sounds like something that could possibly be used in volunteers. We're taking it to Brussels next week, because we've made it as an installation for that thing. The panels are wonderful images, photographs of the four country volunteering and their stories. We've asked the Parliament here if they'd like for this to be put on in the Parliament itself. I could combine something like that with an invitation to come and try one out of one of our bubble experiences. Besides that, I clearly consent to you more information about it. We're definitely taking off some port. That sounds very useful. Thank you very much for that. I'd like to thank you, George and Dave, for your evidence today. That was very helpful. You'll consider the evidence that we've just heard when we discuss our work programme in private at the end of this meeting, and I suspend briefly to allow you both to leave the table. Thank you very much. Agenda item 5 is the consideration of negative instruments 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 and 77, as listed on the agenda. These instruments are laid under the negative procedure, which means that their provisions will come into force unless the Parliament votes in motions to annul them. No motions to annul have been laid. I'll go through these in order, set out in the agenda. Firstly, SSI 35, do members have any comments? Andy? Yes, I just want to put on the record that I think it's wrong that public revenues of approaching £3 billion are passed by Parliament on a negative instrument. I continue to be concerned about that. In that case, no other comments. I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. I'll be agreed. That is agreed. SSI 39, do members have any comments? Andy? I continue to be concerned about the small business bonus scheme. Many of the richest people in the world are qualifying for this. I welcome the Government's intention to review it, but I hope that this is the last time that this will come forward to this committee. The threshold is curtailed. If you have several premises, the rate of value cannot exceed 30K. Is it 35K now? Is that the richest people in the world? Is that Donald Trump? I don't know. Anyway, we've all got our comments on the right. I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? Thank you. SSI 40, do members have any comments? I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? I think that that is agreed. SSI 41, do members have any comments? I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? That is agreed. SSI 42, do members have any comments? I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? Once again, that is agreed. SSI 43, do members have any comments? I invite the committee to agree While that does not wish to make any recommendations about this incident, are we agreed? That is agreed, SSI 44. Thank you, convener. It is worth noting for the record that the transitional relief that has been granted here is on the annual gross bill. I have many constituents who qualified and claimed small business bonus scheme who have been paying modest amounts or indeed no rates whatsoever, who suddenly, because of a revaluation, the gross value exceeds the small business bonus scheme threshold and therefore they are experiencing a 100, 200, 300, 400 per cent increase in their rates bill because the transitional relief only applies to the gross value. Again, I don't think that this kind of fiscal proposal should be being brought forward in negative instruments with so limited opportunity for scrutiny. Okay, your comments are on record. The only other point with me is that I do think quite separately that the committee might want to consider getting information on the outstanding appeals from the revaluation that did take place because I think that there are still significant outstanding numbers of appeals, but you know quite separately that's my other point. Okay, right. We'll take that in a consideration later. Therefore, I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we all agreed on that point? That is agreed. SSI 45, do members have any comments? No? Invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? Thank you. Finally, SSI 77, do members have any comments? Invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are we agreed? That is agreed. That concludes the public part of today's meeting and I now move the meeting into private.