 Rhaid dda i ddiwethaf, ein gael i ddiwethaf i gynnig i ysgrifennuгеidiau yng Nghymru o ddiwethaf. Rydyn ni fathiau eich cyfnangod yr ysgrifennuedd cyfan ar y Gael i fy режydd luni nhw i'r gael i gael i gael i gael eich gallu rigth a newydd yn gweithio'r cyfrifennu. Mae nid yr unrhyw iawn i gael i Ollie, ond rhaid i ddim ynser i gael i gael i gael i gyda'r cymdeithas fel y cyfnodau, yn lle cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r eich cyfrifio'r gynnwysau. Y genda y Peth yw, mae'n ddweud am gilyddiaeth, yn cyfrifio'r cyfrifio a'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r ddatblygu o'r hyfforddiadau ar gyfer gwellanol a gynhyrchu yn yr ysgrifennu ond yn cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r cyfrifio'r I agree with that. Mark Griffin. Sorry. I should of welcomed Mark Griffin to us today, of course, who's here as a substitute for Mark Griffin. We can't be with us today. Welcome. Agenda item 2 is to take evidence from a panel. Let me welcome the members of the panel. Ieithaeth ar y cyfwз, Llyrfydd, myth yng Nghymru i rôl gyda troi gyda Gwyddoedd mewn gyllid, Fygo XXI, mae'r cyfwyd Fygo XXI, yr altygau cyllidion Llyrfer, ac yn oed gyda Professor Paul Kerney, Professor of Politics i osbydd y gyfwyd yn gydech croatriau o gyd, allan y Gwyddoedd yng Nghymru. Ieithio ar fy gwerthi'r eich ysbydd yno ar yr wych i hynny, If, at the end, any of the witnesses feel that there are matters, we've not covered that it be useful to give us some information on, I'll give you a little opportunity to do that at the end. So let's go straight to questions, and opening the batting today is kind of help. Good morning panel. Just to kick off with a general question, the legislative process in the Scottish Parliament has got three stages. In principle, do you think this model is the right one, or are fundamental changes needed? Clearly, obviously, I'm not a legal expert and my colleagues to the left might have more to say around how that operates. I think in general though, I think how the three stage process seems to be appropriate. I think to go back a bit and to make a further point is that I think generally the process and how the Parliament operates, we have to recognise that it is relatively progressive and that in many ways it is very open. So I think for me, the question around how it operates is probably relatively well, but we have to find ways I think to strengthen that. And there are clearly issues reviewing the evidence so far, reviewing the last week's session, and many of it's like an eon, a number of themes I think around what needs to maybe perhaps improve. But let's start from the basis that we have something that does work well and how do we build on that? Well, it's a very interesting question, of course, because it goes to the root of what is the purpose of the legislative scrutiny process. And I think that if you're looking at the ideas that we put into our memorandum of comments about making law which is necessary, clear, coherent, effective and accessible, then having a three stage process where you look firstly at the principles, then you zero in on the actual technicalities in the bill and then finally wrap up the effect of the two preceding stages, that thematic looks as if it might be what you would expect. I suppose, as Lynn has said, the pre-legislative process is something which is not touched on specifically in this inquiry, but it's important in setting the context for the legislative process. And if you have a sound and robust pre-legislative process and a sound and robust legislative process, then you should end up with better legislation at the end of it. I think, whilst I say that that general scheme of three stages is appropriate, clearly there are parts of it which could do with some improvement and perhaps we'll get to those later in the session. I would say that the rules are just as good as the people that are responsible for using them, I think. If you go back to why they were introduced, one of the reasons is that this is supposed to be a unicameral front-loaded system. That requires a certain amount of give and take on both sides. You expect the Scottish Government not to bounce committees or the Parliament by bringing in substantive amendments at stage 3. It works if they don't do that. You expect committees not to use stage 2 to negate the Scottish Government and assist in a whole bunch of changes that will affect the tone of the bill. If that happens, everyone is happy. It is the same with the reason why you have two and three in that order. The idea was that committees would always go first. It would be a relatively business-like Parliament. The committee itself would be business-like and, as far as possible, non-partisan. It would be responsible for processing most of the technical legislation. That would just leave stage 3 for final revisions and broad debates on principles again. Those stages are good as long as everyone sticks to the deal. You made reference to our being a unicameral jurisdiction. The numbers I have, and you may be more up-to-date than I, is that something like 60 members of the United Nations of the 193 there are, are a multi-cameral, the majority are unicameral. Are there particular challenges that we should be looking at in our process that derive from our being unicameral, or is it simply that we have to have a set of behaviours that respect the fact that we are not going to be reviewed by another chamber? That is going back to my politics degree, which was a very long time ago. The question for me around that would be how effective is external scrutiny of what is going on? If there is no second chamber to re-scrutinise, how do we make sure that, at each stage, the legislation is being scrutinised effectively, particularly by external bodies and potentially by those who would be affected by the legislation? That is going back to the point that Michael made about the good law project and the five principles of lawmaking. It would seem to me that there is probably one principle that is missing, and that is what is the impact of the legislation. Is there a common good or social benefit there? For me, based on that point, how do we make sure that, at each stage of the bill, pre-legislative scrutiny but also throughout, is that there is enough chance for those of us whose job this is, but also for those who are affected by legislation to have a say in how that legislation will be shaped, and how it will impact on their lives? Since the Professor raised the subject, do you want to come back? If necessary, correct my numbers? No, I can't correct your numbers. I was going to say that my politics degree was a long time ago as well. The usual thing is that there is no chance to have a process in which you can effectively slow down or stop a bill from progressing if there is something wrong with it, and that is the thing that often the Lords can do simply by suggesting some amendments. The other thing depends on which type of second chamber you have. The House of Lords' argument is that it is staffed partly by people who have had a huge amount of experience in a previous job and who want to use that in a professional or technical way to improve legislation. Does any of it have more experience over their careers of legislating than relatively new members of Parliament might have? There are those sorts of reasons. I do not have a politics degree and, as everybody knows, I am not a politician. The important thing is that when you are dealing with a unicameral system, you have to set it in the context. The context for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act was that the voting system was supposed to be designed so that no one party would have a majority. That would lead to there not being the capacity for a Government to effectively get its will all the time. That, in terms of the founding principles of the Parliament and the consultative steering group ideas, meant that the committee system was to work as a robust check upon what was going to be inevitably a coalition Government. Situations changed. Ideas that were once thought to be graven in stone turned out to be graven in sand. Therefore, you get a majority Government which can, if it wants, get its will all the time. When one looks at the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, that is the way in which the House of Commons would, under any Government that I have ever dealt with there, have in some way or another had a majority. That majority means that, in the House of Commons, the Government can get its way. When it comes to the House of Lords, where there is no inherent Government majority amongst peers, the fund begins and the checks and balances in that dual-cameral situation are allowed to operate, or by-cameral situation are allowed to operate. I think that that is the issue about the way in which structure or behaviour convener, which I think you were leaning to, the structure of the United Kingdom Parliament puts a check on Government. It is not the behaviours that do that. The behaviours are that power accresses power to itself, I think, and that power, when it is given by an election to a Government, is within the mandate and a Government is within its right to use its mandate. Therefore, one has to temper behaviours with process and structure, otherwise one could get into a position where a Parliament is supine in the face of a Government that decides that it will not listen. I have a couple of members who want to come in. Let me just make the rather obvious comment. We have travelled a little distance from the brief that we are trying to deliver. Relevant if we find out from that discussion what we might do here within the legally laid-down unicameral structure we have, we could have a political discussion otherwise in the middle of the time. Kara, have you any other matters that you wish to raise before I bring in your colleagues? Richard, I saw you first. I am sorry if I may stray for a second but it is interesting from the SCVO's submission that you covered that scrutiny within the context of a majority Government. I found Mr Michael Glancy's comments quite interesting. I do not have a politics to agree but I am a politician. At the end of the day, the House of Commons and the House of Lords of Lords do not want to play with the House of Commons when it goes back to the House of Commons. They can change it through the Parliament Act. I would like to ask Lynn Williams. Voting along party lines can be seen to reduce the effectiveness of scrutiny processes. I do not think so. Why do you? I think that it is a number of issues here. I want to pick up on some of the evidence that was submitted to yourselves. In particular, there was a submission from Children in Scotland, which is a first sector organisation, maybe every centre of organisation. They had noted that there had been quite a lack of amendments in some areas at stage 2 and stage 3. It comes back to some of the experience, particularly around recent bills, where you are making what you believe is quite a strong argument for some amendments and you have people onside. When you get to committee stage, they are voted down. There are reasons for that. That is how politics operates. For me, I wonder sometimes if we may be perhaps the least sight of the chance to perhaps improve a bill or to have a stronger voice for key groups and bills. I think that there is a risk, to some extent, that if we have some voting along party lines, that happens. I do not understand that. Do we miss the chance of improving legislation? It is a question mark, I think. I would raise rather a main point. I think that getting back to the public bodies bill, which a number of us worked on quite closely and extensively, and we are looking at, for example, recognition of key groups within the bill on top of the statutory partners. Many of us have been agreeing that with a number of politicians across parties who have agreed on that, and yet that was voted down at different stages. To me, perhaps that bill is less strong because of that. We are now in a stage where we are consulting in a set of regulations, which perhaps might be after the fact that partnerships are already being set up. I think that that is a question that I want to raise. Is there a risk of that happening? Is it that we have less good scrutiny of legislation because of that? The point that Mr Glancy made is that a majority of the Government is a bad thing? The point that, at the end of the day, the system was set up that no party in this Parliament would win power, but the SNP party did. Is the majority of the Government a good thing? The point that minority Governments should take on more amendments is the point that one Williams was putting. Before you answer that, it would be helpful if you made reference to the majority but coalition Governments in sessions 1 and 2 as well. I do not think that I said that the majority Government was a bad thing. What I said was that when the Government is elected, it has the mandate and it can do what it wants. I am not making a moral judgment on that, whether it is good or bad is another question. The point that I was saying was that it is possible then for the Parliament to just do what the Government wants to be done. There is no challenge, no effective challenge, which can be made to the Government unless the Government is prepared to listen. I do not think that the majority of the Government itself is necessarily a bad thing. At the risk of getting slapped down by my convener, I just wanted to say that most Unicameral Parliaments have a review clause—I cannot remember if it is called a sunset or a sunrise clause—after five years to review the legislation. Do you think that this is the right way to go about it? Do you think that this is a good thing? In my experience, I have only had limited experience of sunset clauses. Generally speaking, they produce interesting results because, for example, they allow legislation to be tried and tested to discover if it actually works. However, whether one would have them in every instance, I do not think that that is necessarily a good thing. There are many pieces of legislation that do not need to benefit from that kind of arrangement. A couple of Unicameral Parliaments have a sunset clause automatically, but it is not always debated. After five years, if there is no controversy, it just goes on. I just wondered if that was the right—that is what I was really meaning. From my point of view, having a piece of legislation that may or may not be operated, I do not think that that is necessarily a good thing. I would rather have specific items, specific sections, which actually have a purpose and which are actually used. I think that the question for me about the majority of the Government is that it has worked relatively well. However, if you look at the external perception of how that operates, I want to give an example. I am going to put a personal hat on here because I am an unpaid carer, as many of you know. Many of us supported the self-directed support legislation around the Parliament, but there was one clause in that where we were fighting about the lack of rights for unpaid carers. Many people, whom I know who were activists externally, worked really hard to change that, and yet it went through, and there was a lot of support for that. The risk to me is that things generally work well, however, is to be wary of external perceptions and the element of trust. Many carers afterwards were saying, what is the point of his lobbying to try and change things for us? We felt that there was the argument that he had been lost because that is the perception outside. I think that there is an element of trust that we have to look at and that people will say what is the point of trying to try and change things when it is going to go a certain way. That is the point that I want to make about that. Fiona Hyslif. When Kara asked the question that she talked about, was the model that we have got the three-stage model right or more fundamental changes needed? I think that it is interesting from what Lynne's just said because I was here in the first Parliament as an Opposition member when there was a coalition Government which had a majority, and I can remember that you have to work through amendments at committee. Is it that there is more fundamental change needed? We have only in all four sessions had one Government that was not in a majority. This one is in a majority because they liked to put it there. The first two were in a majority because they made a coalition. Is it the case that there is more fundamental change needed or does the three-stage system work? I think that generally looking at the evidence across the board that you have received speaking to colleagues that what we have put in this place might be the question is that generally it works. I think that it is how we tweak those stages to make effective external scrutiny is the issue. That is potentially the scope of this inquiry. The pre-legislative stages is absolutely critical in getting that right. There are some really good examples of pre-legislation consult consultation. I gave an example around carers. The recently announced carers bill had sessions that we came to allow carers to attend to our work. There are examples of that. Some examples I think from Stuart McMillian last week around the Children and Young People's Bill is how you engage people in different stages. How do we capture the good practices there? If that is not the case across different committees then why is that the case? Where are the weaker points in the different stages that need to be taken about? One of the points I think that was made by Michael Paul was around the lack of a draft bill prior to stage one. It was yourself, Michael, that sometimes the bills come and Parliament has not necessarily seen those bills before that point. You may have seen policy documents and so on as well. How do we make sure that there are at least some idea of where the draft bill is heading? Stage two, I think that there are issues in terms of following martial amendments and the committee process for those of us who are external. At stage three, clearly there are some issues around do we separate stage three to allow proper scrutiny at stage three, given some of the recent experience you have had? Maybe we are talking slightly more major tweaks. I do not know, but there are tweaks, I think, nonetheless. I want to get back to what I said at the beginning. In many ways, the Parliament is incredibly open. Again, for me, it is building on those strengths. I am always going to three questions behind here, but there are a couple of things on majority-minority. From looking at the Scottish Parliament experience, there is a big difference between what in principle you might expect from majority-minority and what actually happened. It goes back to what I said about the people involved. My impression of minority government was that there was a very brief, maybe a few minutes, sense of an opportunity for doing things very different. The committees could be more assertive, for example, because there was no majority. The governing party could not take plenary for granted and they could all become more business-like and independent. I do not get the impression that ever happened. I am trying to be even handed here, but I think that the Government was able to operate, just as if a majority one, because it had most resources. It still was able to produce draft bills that could not really be changed by the team that came to Parliament. Some opposition parties—not naming names—were not as engaged with those committees as they could have been, so they did not use those opportunities. You can contrast that with majority government where MSPs often of the same party as the majority can have more of an influence that way through, for example, meetings with their party or their ministers before committee meetings. That is a double-edged thing. Often they are described as ways in which you can stitch up votes before committees, but often I think that there is also a way that people on committees can feedback concerns and try to influence things behind the scenes. I am not convinced that the minority period was more effective for the opposition than the majority period. If you go for that experience, it is a very difficult one to say. The only other thing I would say about why voting along party lines can undermine scrutiny, which is what you are talking about, is that, particularly at the plenary stage, very few MSPs have any incentive to know what is in the bill, because they have a list of amendments. The chances are that, if you have not been involved until then, you are much better off checking your email and then pressing the right button than you are getting involved in trying to amend things. In fact, it might be quite irresponsible to suggest amendments at that stage, because you do not know what is going on with them. I suppose that there is a big difference between the principles that we are talking about and what I say is done in practice and, again, it comes down to the personalities involved. I should say that I like to talk about Sweden occasionally. The alternative there is, with a lot of pre-legislative scrutiny and ideas, that the opposition parties get involved at the bill at the very early stage at the same time as public and interest group consultation. In previous Scottish parliaments, that has been rejected because many people in Parliament want this clear division between executive and legislature so that they can hold them to account. The argument is that, if the Parliament is involved in developing legislation, it cannot step back and evaluate it at the same time. That has been the thing that has held back that major reform. I will just exercise my convener's prerogative to say that, as a minister in the minority government, the committee that had oversight of my ministerial duties had seven members, only two of whom were Government members, and the convener was an opposition member. He did not always feel quite as comfortable as I thought I heard. When we took the climate change bill through at stage 3, we accumulated by opposition amendments over 20 mandatory reports, so there was quite a lot went on. If we managed it so that it looked seamless and perfection, I am delighted to hear that. I did not always feel that way. However, that is rather indulgent on my part. I want to pick up on the question of sunset clauses in a particular context. I think that we would all recognise who are involved in the process. There are often bits of bills that are never actually commenced at all. They are passed, but they are never put into the force of law. I wonder if you had a view as to whether, in relation to commencement, there should be a sunset clause that makes everything commenced, say, after five years ready or not, because I think in sunset clauses that might be somewhere that would be interesting. This is something I haven't given any prior thought to. It just came out of the discussion, which I wonder if you had any views on. You may not have thought about this. Any prior thought about it until just now. It is an interesting idea. I think it would be probably a difficulty if it was to come into effect ready or not, as you put it, convener, because frequently pieces of legislation need a lot of support to be effective. I think that it would be quite a perilous path to tread to have a sort of catch-all implementation long-stop date for legislation. I think that we have got to take things as they come. That allows the Government of the day to consider whether or not this legislation ought to be brought into effect. It might be the same Government that promoted the legislation before to consider whether there have been changes in circumstances that make that item redundant now, or whether it needs to be refurbished. To make it more amenable to circumstances at the point of implementation. It is an interesting idea, but I think that one would need to look at it from all sides. I suppose that my concern is that there would not of necessity be any parliamentary process associated with a new Government of a different political flavour from that, which took the legislation through, deciding not to reject what Parliament had actually passed by simply doing nothing. However, let's pass on. It's not a process, it's a principle, which is that a Parliament cannot bind a future Parliament, and a Government cannot bind a future Government. Therefore, I suppose that if the outgoing Government decides not to implement this and leads it to the incoming Government, then it is effectively ceding the decision to that Government. We're opening this discussion to some very wide and interesting subjects. The panel says it's been a long time since they did their studies. I've just realised it's 50 years since I started my university studies. Anyway, let's move on to other things. Fiona McLeod. In this discussion, we've got quite close to talking about pre-legislative scrutiny, and also about stage 1, which is stage 1 that I wanted to ask about. In the light of your comments on pre-legislative scrutiny, you might want to talk about that as well. One of the things that strikes me is, are there any changes needed to the rules on the supporting documents that accompany each bill on introduction, and have we got the right number of supporting documents in our rules? Is each of you, I noticed, talked about that in your submissions? This is my job, and it's my job to play through all these documents, although when the regulations for the public body's bill dropped to my desk last weekend, my heart sank a bit. For those of us whose job it is to wade through these documents, that's fine. Again, my question would be what is the external perception, how do you make sense of some of those documents? Some of them are incredibly complex, some of the language used is sometimes inaccessible, particularly if it's a particularly technical bill. As the public body's bill was, it was incredibly technical. I get the sense of looking back at some of the work you've done, that some of these documents have been in place for a long time and that's been the process. So I think it's a question of how that process is working. You've got the policy document, you've got the financial memorandum, all the stuff that sits around that. It's an awful lot to wade through. So I think I don't know who it was that suggested to me with some way of sucking up and making a summary document of some kind that hears this. Here's the key points in the legislation, here's some other key points to consider for those of us who may be, or for people who are external to the process, so they understand what the point of the legislation is, if it's a way of making it easier and more accessible. One of the things around disability access is easy read versions of these documents as well, so making sure that generally that happens, although I think that's the community empowerment bill, certainly one of the third sector organisations in Glasgow pointed out there wasn't an easy read version of the bill. So there's things that I think maybe sometimes we don't get that quite right. I think that the other point I would want to make is that the variability in pre-legislative scrutiny as well is that sometimes you have a very in-depth consultation process involves the public, other times you don't, and sometimes you've got a draft bill and sometimes you don't. So my question would be why is that variability there? Is there maybe a more standard process as needed or is that down to the type of bill and what we're looking for? But I think we've got really substantial bills that have massive impact, some of the children in Scotland have said and others as to how well does pre-legislative scrutiny work, so we have as many views as possible before the bill actually gets to the bill stage. I think when I made comment in the memorandum I spoke about the four separate documents with the competence statement being attached to the bill. The explanatory notes I think are the area where I would focus on as being fruitful for close examination. Frequently explanatory notes reword the words of the section of the bill and I made the suggestion in the memorandum that that could be enhanced by consideration of the policy context, perhaps the case law or comparative analysis to make it a much more useful explanation of what this section of the bill is. That could be exactly a bridge to the issues that Lynn was talking about about accessibility because it would be in non-statutory language, it would be in plain language for people to understand and of course all the various formats could be applied to it. But if one were to make the explanatory notes more like the spice briefings, which one sees occasionally, that I think would be a big help. The other big help that I suggest here is that the presiding officer could give reasons for considering that a bill is incompetence. Because that then leads one to clear out issues surrounding compliance with EU law or ECHR or whatever. I think that that too would effectively lay the cards on the table about whether or not there were points of argument because frequently, as many of you know, issues can turn up during the process. Of course of stage 1 scrutiny where a particular view about ECHR compliance is advanced, which is directly contrary to that advanced by either the minister or the presiding officer when certifying the bill. I think that that is a debate that could be avoided by some transparency. I was just going to say the same thing about the spice briefings. If it was me, I would make sure that the Parliament had the resources to produce a decent spice briefing for every bill because I suppose I've got the privilege of looking at a lot of these things after they've been passed and when I read the explanatory documents, you can't read just things if you're tired. The spice briefings were written from the perspective of someone who's interested as an outside observer, which most of us would be, and that seems very helpful. If they were routine, that would be good. I think that the spice briefings are routine. I think that every bill gets a spice briefing with it. Are you seeing across the piece that the policy memorandum and the explanatory notes need to be less, I don't want to be disrespectful, but civil servants speak and more like a spice briefing, memorised to be a librarian, so the spice briefing is obviously very good. For me, the difference is that the explanation of the Scottish Government is to the Scottish Parliament. I think that the role for the Scottish Parliament is to explain it to the public. That's its central role, isn't it, to tell the public what's going on? It's probably better placed to do that in one sense than the Scottish Government is, which can then focus on the relatively detailed stuff that a very small audience would be interested in. I wouldn't necessarily disparage civil servants. It's quite important that, when we're dealing with legislation, which affects us all, it's precise and understandable, but in its context it refers to the legislation appropriately. I think that the characteristics of the spice briefing about context and comparative analysis and things like that, that's what's missing in the explanatory memorandum. Just as I was thinking there, what are the other documents which are below the radar, things like the business and regulatory impact assessment, the equality assessment, and things like that. These are also useful documents which don't get the fresh air, which I think many of them frequently deserve. Would I be right in summing up to say that the current documents are necessary? There are documents that we already have that we may need to highlight more, but in terms of this committee and suggestions, perhaps the spice briefing becomes part of the suite of documents that must be produced, because the spice briefing is always produced but it doesn't have to be produced. Would that be a fair summary? I think sometimes to get into the depth of legislation for really technical legislation, but anybody is difficult. For me what's important is how the consultation is ordered and how that operates and how clear that makes the process of what the intention behind the legislation is. So, where there is something that self-directed support legislation, whatever's lots, where there's a lot in it, is that when you're consulting on that, whether it's per year part of the stage 2, is that that consultation and how you, for example, calls for evidence are word-dating so on, as well as really important. So that choice is to work effectively and be transparent as well. Which nicely takes me on to my next question, which was how effective is stage 1 and our changes needed, but can I take you back to, we keep talking about pre-legislative position and our clerks had a look and of the bills in this current Parliament, 80 per cent the Government consulted on before they introduced them as a bill and 25 per cent they actually produced as a draft bill. So, I think when asking how effective is stage 1, how do you feel that every bill needs a draft bill or is it, as Lynn's just said, about making sure that that pre-consultation process is structured so that when the committee goes into stage 1 it can then structure its stage 1 inquiry? The proportionate, I think it depends on the legislation. One of the comments that was made in the evidence, I'll go back to it, was the children in Scotland briefing, because I thought theirs was very good, was stage 1's important, but sometimes you get a focus in particular issues, so for example it would be the criminal justice bill and the focus and corroboration. So, that was the example they gave us, where you maybe lose sight of the wider aim of a bill. So, for me then stage 1 becomes less a bit overall scrutiny and you become focused in a particular point and then becomes politicised. In terms of the figures you've described, it's good that we've got quite a high level of consultation going on. I think the question always has to be how effective is it? Is it going to change people's officials' minds, ministers' minds? In most cases, I think most of that is taken on board. So, is it consulting with the right groups? How wide is it? Do we take enough time to do that so that we get the bill right so that you don't have masses of amendments at the other end? So, for me it's absolutely critical and certainly, to a third sector perspective, we are doing a lot more of that and we are getting involved in that and that's good because you bring a whole range of voices to that. So, I think it's important we get that stage absolutely right, so you've got the strongest basis possible for developing the legislation and then it goes through its parliamentary processes at that point. We look at a large number of consultation documents over the course of a year. I think that last year my department responded to 98 consultation documents across the Scottish Parliament and the UK Parliament and quite all ministers' ministries in the Scottish Government. So, there is a sense that relatively well resourced organisations can do that job and people who are not relatively well resourced cannot. And so, in structuring the consultation in order to structure stage one, then thought would have to be given to how you organise consultation so that you reach those who are likely to be affected and have a reasonable way of taking their views on that piece of legislation. Pardon me. Whether there should be a draft bill with every piece of legislation, I agree it's a question of proportionality. Some issues are relatively simple. Don't need a draft bill but others are much more complex and benefit from that process. I recently dealt with a draft bill in Westminster, the draft deregulation bill, and gave evidence to a committee in the House of Lords in late last year. So, when the bill was finally introduced, the provisions which were most problematic had been removed from it. That meant that at its passage, or during its passage, there was relatively little to say about the bill and it could have a speedier passage. And that wasn't just said by me, it was affected by other people too. That, I think, is part of the business of having a draft bill is that you can learn things about the measure and you can take the temperature of those who are going to be affected. In that instance it was about whether or not in repealing subordinate legislation UK ministers should take the consent of Scottish ministers. I advance the argument that not only should it be Scottish ministers but the Scottish Parliament who should give their consent to those repeals. That provision was then dropped from the bill but there was no need that UK ministers could not advance repeals of subordinate legislation which affected Scotland. It's that kind of issue which makes the ultimate passage of the Bill an easier thing to deal with. At stage 1, if one is true to the founding principles of the Parliament, then getting out into communities is a good way to do it. I talk in our comments of using social media but not everyone has access to social media and even those who have access to it can't use it like me. I think that we've got to think about actually talking to people on the ground who are going to be affected by these things. I suppose what you're trying to work out is should you change standing orders? I think that I would offer more of a fudge which is that a lot of these things can be influenced by shifting conventions. In that case, I think what the convention might be is that the Scottish Government should always provide a draft bill unless it has good reason to do otherwise. That shifts the expectation that it's surprising if they don't provide it. They're thinking about why it's not possible and they can justify their activity more in a way that in the current system they don't have to do. In a sense, in this system, a draft bill is a bonus whereas, in a different convention, the lack of a draft bill would be a notable loss. Even that, without being in a standing order, that expectation could be important. The things that our committee of course can do is not stand the orders but guidance. I think we will probably have to think a lot more about pre-legislative scrutiny versus a draft bill in which it produces, as Lynne says, what we need, which is engagement. I thought it was Michael's comments on the ideas on different engagement, which we are already doing in this Parliament, Facebook, Twitter, Council, committees, et cetera, but it is about how do we make sure that it actually gets to the people we need. Thank you. That's been quite interesting. Now, we as a committee in this session are in slight danger of doing what the Parliament has to say. We haven't even got to stage 2 and 3 in our discussion yet, and we're well through our schedule. So I'm going to invite Cameron to address that deficiency. Thank you. What are your views on the amount of time a lab between stages 2 and 3, and do you think they could be structured differently between stages 2 and 3? I would say that the period should be harmonised in terms of the same amenities. Sorry, can I just pick up? Is that just your natural sense of order, which is a mathematician I, you know, some sympathy with, or is it founded on a view of the processes that need to be undertaken, being the same? If you knew as much about me as I know about me, you would not say I had an actual sense of order. It is partially that, but it's about being able to have time to consider the amendments that made at stage 2 because there has to be a period where you can reflect on that. I think in the run up to stage 2, you have to have time to formulate the amendments that you want to promote. Both of these processes are pretty similar, and they require an equal amount of time, but I wouldn't be overly prescriptive. If there were mechanisms to adjust the time between the two without going to the stage of suspending standing orders, then that would be an equally efficient way to do things. I'll bring Richard in shortly. I did interrupt Lynn Williams, who is about to contribute, so I'll let her. I wouldn't want to comment. I think the timing is an issue. There's a number of themes that struck me when looking at the evidence where at stage 2 and stage 3 is things like timing between the stages. How the size and complexity of bills affect those stages in terms of number of amendments, what the bills actually say, what's happened beforehand, and how effective is the bill in its right form, and so on. One thing I picked up, I think, was around the rationale for amendments. Sometimes you get these marshaled lists and you're thinking, well, what's the point of that amendment? Sometimes it's just about change of wording. The Public Bodies Bill, again, was a perfect example. A lot of it was a round-chain, but then you go through five pages and you're thinking, right, okay, I get that. In some cases it's a way of explaining what the rationale for each group of amendments is. If it's a change of words or a shift of a paragraph, then fine. I go back to getting it right before you get to the legislative stage. For many of us in the sector and across the sector, we find that there's these concentrated bursts of time where you're really focused on particular stages of the bill. Again, the Children and Young People's Bill would be a perfect example. I came up in your session last week that your life stops for that period of time. I meant to be a family-friendly Parliament, so for me I spent a lot of time looking through, and I spoke to a number of MSPs who were looking through stuff at weekends for you as well to have a life outside of your job too, is that you had me short bursts of energy. My question is how effective is that, and how effective scrutiny is that for you as well as for us externally. The last point around stage 2 and stage 3 is if there's not enough time, how do you then do that temperature check outside with the external view of the legislation? Halfway actually got it right. For many organisations there's not that chance to take a breather and then look at stage 2 and what's been achieved at stage 2 before you move on to stage 3. So I think clearly there are issues with those stages from the evidence that we would certainly be sympathetic to many of those views. Does Paul Cerny want to contribute before Richard? Yeah, a couple of things. I mean that was one of the most striking points I think from the submissions, the effect that the timing had on the bodies expected to contribute. Most of the submissions is that the way you work out the timing is that you work out at the end point and then you work out what's convenient for the Scottish Government and Parliament according to their schedules, rather than what's convenient for the people you're supposed to be representing. So there is an issue to add. I have no idea how you solved that, but there is an issue there. The second one, I think I can make a contribution to this one. In a previous job, I looked through all of the amendments for the first session in 1903. I think that's 9,000 including the mental health bill had 900. That point is exactly right. The only way I knew, the way we divided it was, most of them were very technical. They were about the changing words constantly throughout the bill. So you might change resources to money or medical professionals to doctors 100 times in a bill. Then there were the very small detail ones. Within that there were maybe less than 10% were substantive bills to pay attention to. I had no idea which were the substantive ones until I'd read the official report and read the explanation given by the people proposing the amendments. So I couldn't imagine a way in which I could know the significance of those amendments before that debate took place, which is the problem for those groups. If I couldn't do that as a full-time researcher, then I can't see how anyone in the world could be reasonably expected to know what the amendments mean before they're talked about. You're talking about how difficult it was post-hoc? I think that it took me maybe six months full-time work to go through the first session. He picked that down about 50 bills. That's a few days per bill, just to understand it given all the information. So I can't imagine how someone without that information, how much time it would take them to work out what's going on. I turn to the submission again of the Law Society. You said that stage 3 is an area of greatest potential for improvement. It should be a two-part stage 3, part 1, involved in consideration of amendments with part 2, a debate, with an option of further amendments to correct evident mistakes, strong case to amend the rules so splitting stage 3 becomes the norm. Could you expand on that? For the one or two new members who are in this session, some of us believe that having the debate after voting on the amendments is wrong should we have the debate and then vote on the amendments. I think that as a matter of principles you'd have the debate and then vote on the amendment. To expand on it, I think that there have been a couple of instances in the past where, because at the end of stage 3, that's the end of the bill and it then subsequently has passed at the decision time, there might have been errors which have crept on the bill. The example that I can bring to you is that of the Alcohol Minimum Pricing Scotland Bill 2012, where a provision was removed at stage 3 but left a provision, sorry, 210 alcohol, etc. of Scotland Bill 2010, where a provision was removed at stage 3. Related to a section that had been deleted during the course of stage 3, and so this has resulted in the Alcohol Minimum Pricing Scotland Act 2012 having a provision to repeal a section because it makes provision for the expiry of amendments made by a section which is not contained in the act. I mean these things happen but if we had a 2 stage 3, then at stage 3 1 you would have taken on board the amendment, then a couple of weeks later at stage 3 2 you would see that, oh, by the way, section 1 of the Alcohol, etc. of Scotland Act 2010 has this hanging section. It relates to something that is no longer in the bill, you would be able to remove that and we wouldn't then have to have a section in a future act repealing it. I think that's a much neater, more elegant way to do it and it means that you don't get an explanatory note which says this section has no practical effect as it makes provision for the expiry of an amendment made by a section which is not contained in the act. That is an instance where an explanatory note does what it says on the tin but we want legislation to be as good as it can be to be effective and the analogy is between a report and third reading in Westminster and I know that that has its defects but it at least gives the opportunity to think again. That's always a good thing when making legislation. Fiona Hyslop. Just really briefly, the work that you did, Professor Kearney, on all that, did you publish it and can you give us the reference? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. To the blacks later. Oh yeah, I can do that, yeah. Excellent. My university, we're very pleased with that. Sorry. Have I lost the plot for a second? Professor Kearney is going to give us the reference. Oh, I see. That's fine. Good. Sorry. I just received some input from my left which I was paying some attention to. Cameron, anything more? George? Yeah, I think. My question's almost been answered but are there any changes needed to the rules and the deadlines for lodging amendments during the process because I know with some of the bills I've worked on it can be quite intense for us so I can understand what would be life on your own side. So is there anything that could be changed there? I think these have to be looked at. I think, you know, if you're keeping the minimum period that's allowed in the orders then in some cases that may be appropriate depending on the bill. I think it's my disproportionality issue but for some of the more impactful bills where you're looking at a direct impact in people's lives in a really complex way or, you know, is that, yeah, I think you have to look at how much time is there particularly for you to look over it all and to understand. I mean, this is your job and this may be a look at one or two bills but your job is to look at all of them so for all of us to have that effect of scrutiny of the amendments and what they actually mean and what the impact will be. And going back to that I think is what's the rationale for these amendments as well so timescale as well as understanding what's the point of having these amendments in the first place. How else you can try to construct your stage one submission in such a way that it actually leads you to the amendment that you want to make? That would be the ideal. It isn't always possible to do that and to have more time rather than less is always a virtue without getting into a position where it becomes indolent and lazy and there are months stretching between. But I think when we're looking at, as we did last year, 18 bills in the Scottish Parliament, 10 bills in Westminster, we're producing a significant number of amendments across the range. And in order to compress that into the time allowed, it takes quite an effort of planning and making sure that you've got all the material and the right phraseology. The people that I would like to pay tribute to this really are the officers of the Scottish Parliamentary Council because they do a tremendous job in doing amendments for government under high pressure. And the fact that they can do it is something which I hope inspires all of the rest of us who deal with amendments to do that kind of thing to their kind of standard. You don't have to. I will always like to talk to the academics. I suppose there are a couple of little things. The debate question, I would say that you would decide what these debates are for. If they are for deliberation and you really think that you can change people's minds, minister's minds before amendments take place, have it before. If it's for the public to say, either it's a great bill or it's terrible, we would have done better, have it after. The other thing was, I'm going to sound like a Scottish Government civil servant, but I would say that what you want is two things. Flexibility, rather than hard and fast rules for every bill, and you don't want any of these changes to come at the expense of the technical quality of the bill. A lot of these things could solve a problem for groups interested in the legislation and for the committees considering amendments, but it could also have this unintended consequence that people producing the bill have less time to do it. If they produce a worse bill, you have more time to consider it, but you have far more work to do, so there is a real balance in act there. Can I also ask one of the things that in my limited time here that keeps coming up, and I know the Law Society put in their submissions, there should be more use of post-legislative scrutiny than the Law Society said. There's one of the things that keeps coming up all the time, and I know conveners of certain committees would say that the work that they do for the committees is quite intense, there's quite a lot of work there as well. How would we go about making sure that there was more post-legislative scrutiny in various bills that have been passed? I think what struck me in preparing for today was looking at the work that they did around the inquiry about post-legislative scrutiny, and I think a lot of the recommendations that the user committee made were very sensible. So what are the trigger points for legislation being scrutinised? I mean, if we raised earlier the fact that clauses haven't been enacted, that would question to me why was the clause there in the first place. Things may have changed, obviously circumstances may have changed. For particularly impactful pieces of the bill, and maybe those which have been quite controversial in some ways, that would suggest to me that there's something there that might require us to go back and look at how it's been implemented. I think the point about that is how is legislation working on the ground? Is it having a desired effect? So examples would be the self-directed support act, things like the public bodies bill, the children and young people's bill, where you've got that kind of focus in people's lives and how people live their lives, would seem to me to be an important trigger point around that. So I guess my question back to you would be is how do you then take forward your recommendations from that inquiry? Because a lot of it seemed to me to be eminently sensible is that maybe it's not required in every situation, but what are those important trigger points for you as a Parliament to be clear that actually we've done our job here, this is what can relatively well? That was kind of coming from a very practical perspective having previously been a councillor and been in a licence in Scotland 2005 act. You know, I would be in a committee making a decision where effectively a lawyer would or solicitor would be saying, well, that's a problem with the act councillor, and I'm going right, okay at that stage, because I'm at a different body at that stage, and it was difficult for us to say, so where do is the Parliament get the opportunity to look at something like that post-legislation and say how do we solve some of these issues? An extraordinarily interesting avenue of discussion, and probably in the time allowed we can't do justice. Just say for help this, I'm minded to let this run for about another 15 minutes, so if we can all crisp in that be helpful. I think when you're looking at an issue where someone says, well, this act doesn't work, and the only solution is legislation, one has got to remember that when the Parliament is dealing with these things it can only deal with what it has in front of it at the time, and the workload of committees is something which the committees are not the master of. The Government is the master of the workload of committees in many respects in terms of legislation. Clearly committees can create their own enquiries and pursue other work, but when legislation is the bulk of the work of some committees, particularly the Justice Committee in its submission made that clear to you, then one has got to think about how does it get to that point where a committee cannot undertake post-legislative scrutiny because of the agenda which it is trying to satisfy on the day-to-day work. As Lynn has reminded us, the committee has already reported on post-legislative scrutiny and the recommendations of that are still to be worked through in the main, but it's quite a difficult topic to grapple with when you set it against overworked committees. How do we get to overworked committees? It's because we need the expertise of those committees so the Justice Committee develops expertise over the period of some years, dealing with justice issues, with other committees such as rural or environment, and so on and so forth, and health. The conundrum that Parliament has to crack because the committee is fulfilling two functions. It's fulfilling a scrutiny or accountability function, and it's fulfilling a legislative function. If you were to detach the legislative, then you might be able to create more time for post-legislative scrutiny, but you might lose on accountability because it's going to end up with a split committee system, which this Parliament had set its face against from the very beginning. We're going to confront this problem again and again of legislation that, in practice, we discover doesn't work. It might come up in an instance where someone has scrutinised it because it's going to be adjudicated on in some way, either at a court or a licensing committee or whatever, or it might come up because of a more structured review of an act of Parliament. I favour a more structured review. That's my natural inclination once more, convener, but I freely accept that you can't do that for everything, and there will be instances where someone recognises for the first time maybe some years after legislation has been brought into effect that this piece just doesn't work, and it needs to be fixed, and that's why we have emergency legislation. Paul. I was just trying to remember what I said when we gave evidence on post-legislative scrutiny. I don't want to contradict myself, but I suppose you could just say it's all good flexible debate. I suppose there are a couple of things. One thing about this system is, and that goes back to stages one, two, three, often what happens at stage three is that MSPs will raise issues and the minister will say, well, we'll deal with that in regulations, and they make promises, and it's probably a good idea to regularly check if they've got them. There's one reason for post-legislative scrutiny. If you want meaningful post-legislative scrutiny, you have to build it into the legislative process in that the evaluation of any success of any bill is always going to be party-political just as much as the introduction of it. What I think you would want from the Scottish Government is for them to say what their aims are clearly, and for them to state how they should be evaluated so that that structures then that scrutiny. The alternative is you have an inquiry process which can be much more open-ended, but it doesn't give you that chance to say, well, this is a structured or a relatively objective evaluation. If you wanted that more technical evidence-based sense that something had failed or succeeded, you would have to know what they had set out to do in the first place in a clear sense for those measures to be entrenched in the legislation of the guidance. Let's just move on to a few final items. In particular, is it easy for parliamentarians and for people outside to understand with the documents that we provide what's going on at stage 2 and stage 3? In particular, picking up on what came out before, given there are no mandated documents of explanation required for amendments, although there is for the bill, should we do something about that? I think that there is an issue there, convener, absolutely. I was going to say in Kenny Douglas's film, maybe I, maybe he's no. I think that in some cases it probably is that a bill is relatively clear. The documents are clear, but I think clearly from the third sector's experience, laterally, there's a speed around bills which concerns us to some extent as we're not taking that bathing space to think about things and understand the drive to put some bills through, and that's fine. But sometimes that might actually be counterproductive. So I think clearly when the evidence is the same to us, there are issues here at stage 2 and stage 3 that there's complexity here that people can't lead through. Again, for those of us who's a job, if we're finding it difficult, then how much more difficult is it for those who are watching with interest in particular pieces of bill? I'll go back to self-direct support legislation, which was being court carefully watched by carers across Scotland, and behind the scenes trying to make sense of what it meant for them, is if it's difficult for us how much more difficult it is for those who want this legislation to go through and to change their lives. So to me that's always got to be the like mistest, is how clear is that? Well, so do forgive me, I'm hearing the problem described. It would be helpful if there are any ideas, we may have to come up with them as to how we might actually solve that problem. Michael. Well, when the law society sends out amendments to committee members, it provides an explanation and an effect to each of the amendments which it promotes, and that is designed to help the member understand where we're coming from, what the impact is on the section, if there's any corollary impact on other parts of the bill. And we know, because it happens, that when ministers are presenting their amendments, they are speaking to notes which have been written for them, which do exactly the same job as our rationales. So, therefore, the material exists. The only problem about making that material public along with the amendment is that it would deprive ministers of actually seeing something during the course of the conduct of the debate. We don't want to do that because ministers have to justify what they're doing. You may give a reason, you may give an effect, but the question is justifying it. I think that these are different things. I would certainly be in favour of there being a short explanatory note with each amendment, which would guide one to the rationale for that amendment. So, in essence, you are suggesting that there might be utility if the explanation is not provided at the point where the decision is being made, but sufficiently far in advance to allow some wider consideration by opposition members, by the Government, by the Ministers, so that the quality would be improved. After all, stopping the minister's speaking is not necessarily a bad thing. I did a post-scrutiny on myself on the climate change bill, and I actually spoke for over four hours at stage three, which I could have probably managed with last. I think that if the rationale is given well enough in advance to allow people to contemplate what the amendment is actually designed to do, it would assist in making an amendment to the amendment, and it would also mean that stage three appearances might be less grueling for ministers and for the rest of us. I think that in a land reform, we certainly had amendments to amendments to amendments, but that's not occurred again as far as I'm aware. I would say that I'd be supportive of that. I think that if there's a way of explaining the rationale behind that, and if the work is being done already by officials, then there's a way of obviously crystallising it in some way that you've got a clear explanation for each of that, that would make sense. I think that the role of the Scottish Government would be to explain it to the Scottish Parliament and then the Scottish Parliament could decide if that explanation was adequate or if it could explain it more to the public in a different way. My sense, when I go back to that research, in reading those things, was that the way most ministers explained amendments was pretty much as written down, you know, reading from something prepared for them by and large, so if it's already written down then you would imagine it would be too hard to just give people the script before they read it. I suppose the only issue that would be difficult for ministers to ad-lib because you wouldn't want a written record that's different from the spoken record. I mean, I don't know for legal reasons that sometimes what they say in Parliament is taken as the justification for the bill, so you might not want them to divert too much from the script. I mean, I think that's a fiddly issue compared to the benefits. Yeah, I have seen over the shoulder of one minister, minister do not depart from your brief written in red ink at the top of it, but yeah, you're right Paul, I mean, for peppery heart purposes if a minister is giving an explanatory statement of a provision in a bill which might be ambiguous in terms of its interpretation, it's important for us to have a clear explanation of that ambiguity or at the interpretation of ministers so that it can later be used for peppery heart purposes in court. Mark Griffiths? Griffin, sorry. I do apologise. When I think this question's been answered partially around a statement of reasons attached to an amendment, but just to speak more broadly about the legislative process just to ask whether you feel that that is open and transparent enough and if it properly encourages engagement with outside bodies right throughout the stages as the bill makes its way through Parliament. I think generally that there's a real openness there, Mark. I think there's lots of ways that people can engage with MSPs with ministers. I think in that sense the beauty of the Scottish Parliament is incredibly open. You can meet with ministers where you can make the MSPs have a discussion across party groups. There's a whole lot of ways that the Parliament is open. I think that, going back to what I said earlier, there are ways to improve that openness and transparency but without losing what we have already. I think that that's the uniqueness of the Scottish Parliament is beauty in going back to its finding principles. Let's build on what's there and let's try and find ways to make it as transparent as we possibly can. I think that, to be honest, some of the suggestions that we've had today would definitely help there. I would like to think that Parliament is very open and transparent but it's always good to be able to try to improve that and some of the suggestions and some of the discussion which we've had today go some way to advance that openness and transparency. I don't know if I'm a typical social scientist now but I think that it's probably more open than transparent because the idea of openness is that you pretty much tell everyone what you're doing, which is what the Scottish Parliament does for Mark will be well. There's a difference between that and people understanding what that means. It's not just you. I put out almost everything that I write on my blog but I know that the chances are that no-one's going to understand half of it. I'm being open but I'm not giving people the language to make it transparent. There's a real difference there. Cameron, do you want to just wrap up quickly? Thank you very much indeed. The secondary committees, I noticed that Michael Clancy says the secondary committees are how effective they are. You think that perhaps having members of these committees attend the lead committee consideration at stage one and two for a secondary involvement of secondary committees. I just wondered if you think that is possible. How do you think the involvement of secondary committees is in the legislation process, is it useful, is it essential? I think it's essential because the focus of, let's say, law reform and delegated legislation is on those elements in bills where subordinate legislation is going to be used. Yes, I think that it is something that would be useful where our member of that committee to be present during the discussion of those provisions in a bill where delegated legislation powers were going to be created. That would then enable that member to inform more proximately than simply reading the official report of the discussion, the flavour, the mood of the committee as the lead committee when they report to the law reform and delegated powers committee. I said I'd provide the opportunity to panel members to make any concluding remarks that they wish to make to us briefly. It's not compulsory. Thank you for your time today. It's been a fantastic debate. In some ways, this inquiry is incredibly timely at a time when we are beginning to look at ourselves as a country generally, but also just to take stock of where we are. Given where we are in terms of things like electoral turnout, how do we rebuild trust? The transparency point that Paul made is that getting this right is incredibly important for the perceptions of the Scottish Parliament and how it operates and people's trust in it as well. I'm really pleased to have the chance to contribute today. I think it's important to always keep the focus on why we're doing what we're doing and what's the outcome at the end of it. The one thing that has not been mentioned during our discussions today is the referendum and the impact of the referendum, whether the vote is for yes or for no, and the impact of that on the Parliament in terms of either a vastly increased range of powers or some increase in range of powers dependent on the outcome. At some point in the future, there's a discussion to be had about the legislative capacity of the Parliament for dealing with a range of new powers in subjects that hitherto have not necessarily been within the province and thinking of the finance committee dealing with the new taxes and things like that. I think we've got to be looking to think about the legislative capacity of the Parliament. Your capacity for provocation never surprises me. Paul? I'll just give you my stock answer. My view is that the MSPs don't have the resources that they require given the demands and the time, and scrutiny is always going to be limited because of that. I think the big solution to these problems that we discuss in this committee is to vote yourselves more of the budget before you give it to the Scottish Government. That's our absolutely first class note upon which to end this evidence session without my making any observation as to whether I support or disagree with that. Can I thank you very much indeed for your generosity and both the time you've taken to prepare, which showed through in the evidence you've given and the contribution you've made in attending and informing our deliberations? Thank you very much indeed. Right, we'll suspend while you move on, although we will start almost at once. We absolutely must finish by half past, and I suspect the agenda is a bit challenging in that regard. Right, the next two items are in public, I'll just remind you of that. First of which is on cross-party groups, and we're here to consider some of the draft report we have and looks at some of the positive work undertaken by groups. It also demonstrates the new monitoring system for cross-party groups is proving effective. With the vast majority of the groups now routinely providing more detail of information on their activities and finances, paper details for groups have undertaken work to require them, such as holding AGMs, out with the timescale set in the code. In addition, it highlights two groups that are not currently compliant with the rules on ensuring a group is sufficiently cross-party in nature. Do members wish to comment? Richard? I think it's an excellent report, convener, and I compliment the officials on it. It gives a flavour of what are some of the 88 cross-party groups. I brass the start of another two, so we might get to 90, or even 100 before the end of the session. The fundamental problem is trying to sometimes get a room. I'm not going to mention the group, but I was outside the door waiting on a committee meeting, finishing for the group to come in. The committee overran substantially, which meant that the AGM couldn't be held and had to be put back about a couple of months. Therefore, the group ran into difficulty because the AGM ran outside. I'm not going to name who they are, which I think would be unfair. I think that writing to conveners of groups requiring an explanation of why things aren't happening correctly is the way to go before we, as I would suggest, stick the boot in. I think we've got to basically ask them to comply with the rules and regulations, and if they don't, then that's brought back to the committee and we make the recommendations. I thank you for the report and I'll only flag up one thing, that sometimes it is very hard for a group to get a room. Can I just respond? I don't think it is our role to ask anyone to comply with the rules of the Parliament. That is a given. It's certainly our role to ensure that any apparent failure to comply with the rules is drawn to the attention of people. For us to act if there is a continuing failure, I think that's certainly true, but the system will work if there is self-discipline. We rely on that in many of our things. Fiona? Excellent report, thank you very much. When we turn to paragraph 20 about the different things we can do, writing to conveners of groups, I think that the clerks have done that as we've gone along. We've got the explanations for most of them, and almost everyone is understandable. Can I particularly pick up on the cross-party groups on Russia and Scots language? To say to the committee members, I'm doing that because I've been here before, and we've had problems with Russia and Scots language cross-party groups. I would like, at this point, given the work that we've done for those two groups, to suggest that we actually ask the conveners of those groups to come and give us an explanation of why they're still failing to meet the requirements. What remedy is the plan, perhaps? Would that be fair? I see disband. Is there something we could suspend groups? For instance, Poland, for example, might be because there aren't enough people who are interested in Poland in this session from the last session. We can't. They either exist or they don't. There is no middle ground. One might argue that there should be, but there is no middle ground. There's nine stop a group returning. In the notes where they can come back again, it might be because something like Poland, perhaps, is because there aren't enough people who are interested. In the last session, there were people particularly interested in Poland or Russia or whatever it was. I don't know. Maybe there isn't in this session. Or the convener has gone or has departed. It is perhaps just worth reminding colleagues that the cross-party groups end at the end of a session. They need to be in action for them to open again. They don't continue across the end of a session. I just made that point for clarity. Fiona has made a proposal to us, which I think we should consider before we move on perhaps to a wider debate, that we request and require perhaps the conveners of the Russia and Scots language groups to appear before us. Is that something that members are minded to agree to? Yep, we're all agreed on that. That's helpful. Anything else anyone wishes to say on the report? Agenda item 4 is our annual report. We have a draft in front of us. We have to produce a report under the parliamentary rules, understanding order rule 12.9. Do colleagues have any comments they wish to make or amendments they wish to suggest? Richard? Agenda item 5 shows how the committee has been working under previous conveners and yourself as the new convener. I compliment the officials on it. Do you recommend it to the committee? I've written a note in Paragraph 3, but I might be wrong because of the timescales procedures for considering legislation. i'w fân, o casodau ffordd sunggledigau, ydy'n gwneud hynny byddai'r ffrindigau ffrindigau ond rwy'n blaen i gynnwg yn gynwedd? Rhyw fod, mae gynghwil ddaeth siwr ar 010 maes 2014. Rwy'n digwydd, rwy'n digwydd, nad oedd, mae'n digwydd? Rwy'n digwydd, nid yn gyfnodd ddymaewch i'r byddai'r ffrindigau i'r dweud. That concludes the public part of the committee and I now move this committee in to private session.