 Y kniff charitywyr yn gweithio ar gyfer nhw ddig sydd yn dweud am info gerdus i gyff appreh overwhelming y完成 y llifon Gold. eich yraedd amddawid b 초esio aganddur o bron Стegwr wedi'w ddig guns yn dd companion. Ar drys i gyfer sydd yn gweithio ar gyfer nhw ddig ledg y Gweithring elementolol sydd wedi eu suchy maeN awesinciraviol yn seuchau gystadast. Mae gyrch honna ar gwaith yn gweld gwmishydd fwrdd sweetoedd y gaf пом Cruz. Group Head of Committees and Outreach, David McGill, Assistant Chief Executive, and Vicky McSherry, Culture of Respect Team Leader for the Scottish Parliament. I thank you very much for joining us this morning. I am going to start off asking some questions about the action plan and I wonder if you can tell the committee when the final action plan will be published and what the implementation will look like. At the moment, we have set up a joint working group. The three of us are on this with representatives of all of the political parties. We will be talking to them about how we are going to implement a more detailed action plan. We set out the broad thrust of what we want to do in our next steps document. Vicky probably would like to say a bit more just about some of the detail because we are looking at some priority areas that we want to take forward. We set out the next steps that we published. We have set out an outline timescales, if you like, and that was agreed by the last meeting of the working group. We have set out the priorities. One of the main priorities that we are looking at to deal with first of all is the reporting procedures because it is really important, obviously, that we tackle that first. Before we get to reviewing the actual procedures, we want to take a wee bit of time to gather more information from people who work in the building. One of the first things that we are going to do is hold focus groups. We are going to invite people to come along to them so that we can get further qualitative information from them on what they want to see the reporting procedures to look like. We will then take that forward a wee bit further in terms of looking at what our policies are like. We have broad timescales in place, priorities in place, and then, from the top of my head, what are the timelines looking like in several months? We want to take the time to get it right. We have training outlined in that, which will take us up to later in the year. Can I ask you some specific questions about the working group? How regularly is the working group meeting? We are set up to meet every fortnight, although we cancelled the meeting this week, but we are meeting regularly on Wednesday morning. We also want to be very transparent about everything that happens. We have a page on our website where we publish the minutes and the agendas and the papers from the meetings. You, Vicky, spoke about focus groups. Are those going to be open to all pass holders? Are they going to be by invitation? How is that going to work? They will be open to all pass holders. We will put a call out for people who are particularly interested, who want to come along, who want to input to our next steps on what the procedures are going to look like. Can I ask a little bit about how the action plan is going to address the underreporting and the survey results said that the most common response to experience sexual harassment or sexist behaviour was to do nothing? I think that was 45 per cent of the respondents gave that as what happened. How do you foresee tackling that particular issue? One of the things that we are hoping is the fact that we have put that this is in the spotlight and that we are doing a lot of work, particularly around what we are making a public declaration of what is acceptable, what is not acceptable behaviour, so that people hopefully realise that something that they might have dismissed as banter in the past is something that is not acceptable and will be treated seriously. A lot of what we are hoping to do through the training is about prevention, about making people realise the impact that their behaviour can have on other people. Our reporting mechanisms will be one way of doing this, but what we are hoping is that, by creating this culture, we have zero tolerance and we will explore exactly what that means in practice. People will feel from that that they can have the confidence to come forward and that things will be taken seriously. As you were saying, looking at the results, there was a large number of people who did not think that something was serious enough to report. I think that this is something that we need to try and get across that people perhaps in the past have put up with things, thought that something was banter, thought that something should just be put up with, but if we send out a clear message that that is not acceptable, we hope that that will help with that. I am backtracking a little bit here in terms of focus groups. How are you going to invite or encourage staff who are based in constituency offices to be able to participate in that? Members come from right across the whole of Scotland and it is perhaps not as easy for them to travel. Have you looked at other ways of engaging with them perhaps through teleconferencing? That is absolutely something that we will be looking at. It is also something that follows through as well as the training. When we start our training programme, that training is for all as well. That is also for people who are based all around the country. We need to look at ways in which we can deliver that training and focus groups so that we can ensure that everyone who wants to take part in that can do so. We will be looking at lots of different formats for that. Thank you very much, convener. You have covered one of the points that I was going to ask about the constituencies. Obviously, you are inviting people who might want to get involved, but how will you ensure that they are representative of all the different uses of this building? Lots of people in different roles, different times that they work, so how will you ensure that we get a good cross-section of the people who work here? Because people are self-selecting, it will not necessarily be that people who attend will be proportionate to the people who work here. Obviously, people have had the opportunity through the survey to give their views through that, so we have a lot of really good information from that anyway. That is, I suppose, taking it about to the next level with potentially people who have experienced sexual harassment. That is giving them an opportunity and a confidential environment to maybe give a bit more information on what we would encourage them to report. It is not necessarily—because people are self-selecting—it is not necessarily going to be representative of everyone who works here. Okay, thank you. Patrick. Thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to explore the underreporting issue a little more and in particular try to get a sense of what the survey results tell you about the potentially different reasons—reasons that perhaps might be in tension even between different motivations for underreporting or causes of underreporting. One of the examples that we have discussed is whether, for some people, the idea that if they make a complaint, it will be ignored or treated trivially or not taken seriously is a reason for underreporting. Perhaps for other reasons—for other people who are in different circumstances—they might not report something because they fear that it would be taken seriously and become a big issue and perhaps become publicly known about or more widely among their colleagues. The action plan, if it is going to respond to underreporting, needs to get a sense of what those different factors might be. Have you got anything to say about what those range of reasons might be and that tension between treating something too seriously and not seriously enough? I mean, you make a very good point and just come back to what Vicki was saying about the focus groups. That's why some of the focus groups will want to look at particularly people in the survey because those who had experienced sexual harassment or sexist behaviour were least likely to say that they thought that they could report things. I would like to use those focus groups to explore that a bit further because, as you say, there can be many reasons that people don't want to report. The highest percentage was that people thought that it might have a negative consequence on their careers. As you say, you have the spectrum from somebody thinking that it's not going to be taken seriously enough to somebody thinking that it's going to be taken so seriously that there are going to be repercussions for them. It's just trying to dig a bit deeper. Obviously, we had some comments through the survey, but we really wanted to dig a bit deeper, particularly with people who feel that they've experienced it and what they felt the barrier was for them not coming forward. Another issue that came out quite strongly from the survey was people's need for confidentiality. Is there anything to suggest that the reasons for underreporting or the causes of underreporting might be different in relation to MSPs than complaints about members of SPCB staff? Obviously, as a committee, we're responsible for the code of conduct and a lot of those issues that don't apply to SPCB staff, but I think that there's a general mood that we want to achieve the same standard of response to the issue of sexual harassment in relation to MSPs and we're aware that that's a substantial number of the people who've responded to the survey have talked about behaviour by MSPs. Is that a distinctive issue in terms of the reasons why somebody might not report issues around party loyalty or issues around whether something goes into the public domain? I think that from the survey results themselves, it's difficult to say that there is something distinct. Looking at the figures, a lot of things seem to be common across a number of categories of respondents, but that would be another reason why I would like to look at this in the focus groups to see if there are particularly some different issues. Again, going back to what I was saying earlier on about confidentiality, wherever people work within the building, they know that this is a place that is under the media spotlight. Yes, I think that some people will be worried that although their name will not be mentioned, there will be a spotlight on them and sometimes that can have an impact on whether people want to come forward or not. I think that the suggestion about getting what's been described as a standalone global policy on sexual harassment is something that applies throughout the building. Have you identified any barriers to including MSPs within that? Obviously, that's something that the committee has discussed and there are some complexities that arise from that. It's something that we're looking at very carefully. We're aware that the Westminster Parliament has decided to produce a code of behaviour for Parliament, so that would apply to not just people who work in the building but to people who visit the building. They've termed it that everybody who engages with the parliamentary community, and that's something that we're very interested in. We think that it would provide that absolute focus at the top level. There's no reason that we can see that something similar here couldn't be used as the highest-level strategic approach to harassment and bullying for everybody who works in the building, including members. What we can't do, though, is provide a single source that goes beyond that. That would be the statement that would guide the different strands of reporting and sanctions through the appropriate mechanisms that we have in places now, but it would provide that overall focus at something that we're keen to look at. The suggestion would be that, once that's in place, it complies with it as part of the code of conduct for MSPs. Yes, that's the way that we would see that happening. The survey identified that there was a culture or an atmosphere about individuals not feeling comfortable coming forward and it was discouraging them, they felt, from making the initial impact. How are we going to try and manage that situation? What can we do to monitor and what can we do to provide assurances to people that that whole culture that we seem to have needs to be addressed, and how will you manage that? As David was saying, we will hopefully look at something that is an overarching statement, if you want to call it that. That is something that is akin to behaviour that is acceptable and not acceptable. What we are hoping with that is that that sends a message out to people about what will be tolerated and what will not be tolerated. The kind of culture that we want to work within. When we looked at the survey results, what was most disappointing to me was the number of people who felt that they did not have confidence in being able to come forward. That would be a variety of things. One of the things that we've talked about is that we've got so many different lines of reporting that we want to make sure that we make that as simple as we can, but with the caveats that David mentioned. The main thing is that this culture shift is to say to people, no, we want to work in a place where people are valued, where people are respected, those are the values of the institution, those are the values that we expect everyone to adhere to, and that means that if you experience anything where you are not treated in that way, that will take that seriously. It's about engaging with the confidence within the authorities that we have within this Parliament to ensure that everything will be taken seriously, that everyone will be treated correctly. That is also a problem. Some people feel that they are frightened of the consequences, they are frightened of the potential publicity because of this environment. It's not a normal working environment where we are under the spotlight much more. Trying to manage that confidence will be very difficult for you to get that across. Monitoring that on a six-month or a year basis might be the way of managing that. Is that your plan? What we would like to do is because we want to see things shifting, we want to see things changing. Part of what we want to do is to look at how best we monitor that, whether it's in a year's time that we ask people what their experience has been. Ironically, it might be that we have perhaps some more people having reported because they feel more able to report, but we want to be able to make sure that the policies that we have put in place have made a difference. You touched on that Westminster is introducing any other areas that were looked at and other parliaments or other facilities that do something slightly different that might try to break down that barrier? We have looked across the piece and we have an external expert who helps us with our working group. Our impression is that there is not an awful lot out there that we can draw on. We are quite a unique organisation, so a lot of the things that we have seen are a lot of the things that we are trying to do. To be perfectly frank, I think that everybody is grappling with this at the moment. I do not think that anybody has the answers, but I think that the fact that everyone is actually trying to address that is something positive. It might help if I said that there was a piece of work that we kicked off before the publicity around sexual harassment. Anyway, we are looking at organisational culture, and we do recognise that culture change is extremely difficult and takes a long period of time. However, the challenge for us is to get away from just trying to capture bold statements and really deliver that environment that they all want to work in. What we have been doing here is, alongside refreshing our organisational values, we have been trying to establish the standards of behaviours that underpin all of that so that all members of staff and all members of staff who are managers know what standards of behaviours are required and accepted of them. If we go down the route of having an overall behaviour code or something similar like that, that is something that we can use with the induction of MSPs after elections. We can use it to support members when they are recruiting their staff, so it becomes a practical document, not just a bold statement, and that is how we see the culture and the environment changing over time. Thank you, convener. Thanks, convener. Can I follow up on that before I ask you something else, please? Does that mean that MSP staff, who are office managers, who have got a sort of managing people role, as well as MSPs, would be included in the specific training that would take place? We are looking at covering all categories of people who work in the building and contribute to our culture. Sometimes the idea of small teams can also be a factor that maybe stops people reporting things as well. Could I ask you about the posters that have been around the building? Obviously, if you think about things like change, you will see posters that say on change that we will not tolerate abuse of our staff and they are everywhere. The posters that are around the building, where exactly are they? Are they in public areas as well? Should they be in areas such as the committee room, for example, where the public is coming as well? Should those posters be more widely around the building? As far as I am aware, they are in some of the public areas, probably more so, not in the public areas, but there are some in that side of the building. There are all the lifts and all the public toilets, as well as the spaces that are not open to the public. Has it been helpful that you get feedback on that? I suppose that builds on what Susan Duffie was saying about drawing people's attention to what is and is not appropriate behaviour and making sure that there is a cultural change and an educational change. Are those posters having an impact? I can only talk anecdotally. I did have a visitor in here one day and I was taking them up in the lift and he noticed the poster and he said, I really like that poster, I love the fact that you have got a message on that that the victim is not to blame. He was very struck by it, so I do not know if anybody else has any feedback about the poster. There is a bit of feedback through the survey as well. If it is raising awareness, then it is doing a big part of its job, and it is getting the telephone number out there again, it is doing a big part of its job. Obviously, the posters were one of the first things that we did, so that is only the beginning of raising the awareness overall. I think that the posters are quite bold in the statement that they make, which is obviously sexual harassment has no place at the Parliament. Are you confident that the action plan is going to make that sentiment a reality? That is certainly our intention, because we talk a lot about this and zero tolerance. The thing that we need to do with all of this is to understand what that means in practice and to be very clear about what that means in practice. Everything that we do flows from that so that it is not just words on a poster that we take through with all of the actions that we take. Thanks. Jamie, did you want to end here? Yes, it was just a very, very quick one. Obviously, we have just been talking about the posters, but can I just confirm that there is information on the website too, so that somebody who has come in and visited the Parliament may be either seen or been involved in an incident. They can go to the website, and that is clearly available on the website. It is open to people who do not work here on the internet pages. It is, okay. Thank you. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. One of the huge challenges is maintaining the anonymity of one who wishes to make a complaint, and recent events have illustrated how challenging that can be. I would just like to hear any comments about what can be done to protect the anonymity of people who wish to come forward. Clearly, that is a huge issue, which can certainly have a negative impact and put in allowing people to make that decision to come forward. You are absolutely right. That is probably quite a big factor in people choosing not to report. For us, I suppose, it is around instilling that confidence in people. When we are looking at the processes that we are going to put in place, absolutely confidentiality is at the top of the list. To a certain extent, as it is now, but it is really about instilling that confidence in people that the whole process is tight, and I do not think that we can guarantee anonymity when we are dealing with formal complaints, but that is certainly something that we need to look at when we are drawing those processes up. That is one of the issues that we grapple with. Obviously, you have confidentiality, but then, as Vicky was saying, there is anonymity as well. It is how you balance all of that, because you have got to make sure that the process is fair to everyone as well. I know that this will certainly be something that we will be looking at going forward, because it is not easy. I think that we will be looking across the piece to see whether there are other systems that have some kind of system of anonymity and how we would take that forward. There is always a danger that it attends any high-profile case that media coverage can potentially compromise or be perceived to compromise the integrity of the process. How do you work to mitigate that risk? Again, it comes back to confidentiality for us, and I am not commenting on things that we will investigate issues on a confidential basis. As has been said before, we work in a unique environment where there is a media spotlight. Certainly, when we are ever dealing with issues like that, we deal with them on a confidential basis. Our dignity work policy, which covers the staff of the Parliament and contractors at work here, is very people-centred, and that is something that we take as extremely important in the process. We also note that the Westminster report, when it discusses the various reporting strands that can come out of complaints, says that those should be progressed with respect to the wishes of the complainant. That is something that we are taking very close cognisance of. All of our policies at the moment are built on that basis, but the refreshing process that we will be doing will be having that as one of its key priorities. The prospect of having an external independent figure who can investigate and report on sexual misconduct. In your views, what are the pros and cons of that? In particular, do you think that that would encourage people to report more or less? In terms of the first part of your question, the pros and cons, when the pros are probably easier to look at, it would take away any sort of suggestion that complaints were simply managed out of the system, that there was undue influence brought to bear by a particular party who had an interest in the outcome of a complaint. That might be one kind of pro that people will be looking for. In terms of cons, that would possibly create another layer of bureaucracy. We would possibly lose something in terms of the relations that we have in the Parliament and we will all work closely together. We know each other, we know each other's motivations, that kind of thing. In terms of reporting, I would only be guessing about whether I would say that an independent process would bring greater confidence and lead to greater reports, greater numbers of reports being lodged that I would not know until that was put in place. Moving on then, in terms of the actual survey, did the survey report or look at whether complainers were satisfied with the outcome and the resolution of their complaints? Are you aware of any specific dissatisfaction that people have noted with their experiences? Sorry, I have the survey tagged in various places. We would ask for reasons for people not reporting incidents. We also gave a free text box at the end, so we weren't specifically asking people if they were satisfied with the outcome of a process that had taken place, but some of the comments that came through would perhaps be because somebody had had an experience and it hadn't been a good experience. However, that is one of the things that we want to find out with the focus groups. Again, it's kind of delving deeper because there were a lot of questions that we wanted to try and ask for the survey, but we also wanted to make it relatively manageable. It's one of the things that we want to try and ask people from the focus groups, particularly those who feel that they might have gone through the process, what outcome did they want and what outcome did they get and would that have an impact on whether they would report or not in the future, so that we can try and get a bit more detail about that. I can just come in on the back of Kate's first question regarding an external investigator. It complements my previous question about anonymity or confidentiality, independence of process. This is about someone who makes a complaint having confidence in the system. I just wonder in terms of what role, while I appreciate that it's not within your remit and it's for Parliament, but what role, sanctions and confidence in what the consequences could be for someone who perpetrates an act of sexual misconduct. There isn't a clear path or journey necessarily of a clear sense of what the outcome could be. How important do you think addressing that point is to enabling and giving confidence to people to come forward and make a complaint? Again, it comes back to keeping the complainant at the centre of the process. If your question was about setting out a range of sanctions in advance, I'm not sure that that would be entirely compatible with keeping the person's wishes paramount through the complaint process. We would also need to be careful that this element of independence that we're talking about would be very much at the investigation stage and that reports would still have to come into the appropriate body determined by the employment relationship. Those different bodies would have different policies and procedures in place, some of which may include sanctions and some of which may not. We have noted that Westminster, the suggestion is that the commissioner there has given a new range of lower-level sanctions that she can impose, which include things such as requesting an apology from the person who perpetrated the behaviour or requiring that person to go on training before the complaint would come back in for more serious issues to be dealt with, again internally by the standards committee down there and ultimately by the chamber of Westminster. Do you think that a scenario where an MSP can admit to sexual misconduct or sexual harassment and can continue to work in the Scottish Parliament building? Do you think that that will hinder people coming forward to make a complaint? I think that there's every chance that that would be the case. I think that you're asking us to make a value judgment here, which is probably not appropriate for us to make, but that would be a danger that we would be taking into account when we are looking at policies and when we are speaking to people about what those policies should provide. Not to make a value judgment, but would that constitute good policy or good practice in any other organisation, in your opinion? I think that, as we said, there's a lot of different employment relationships within here in terms of our staff. We have got a clear policy, we've got a policy, we've got sanctions and the ultimate sanction can be dismissed from this. Other categories of people who work here are not in that same situation. Do you think that that inconsistency is problematic? I think that when we came here that the first time, we said that there were a number of complexities around the different reporting mechanisms, but that there were reasons for some of those complexities because there is a different relationship. It's like, who is the employer? Because ultimately in terms of sanctions, who is the employer? Who is in the position to be able to put sanctions on someone? I simply ask because I appreciate that you have to operate within a restrictive framework. Ultimately, the powers and provisions that this committee holds in terms of making recommendations, and ultimately the Parliament has decided that. To follow up on that a little bit, clearly not every complaint, not even every upheld complaint would result in dismissal. That's a very serious step to take, but I would hope that you can at least tell us that the focus groups that you're going to have will discuss with people and try to understand what expectations people would have of whether MSPs in principle should be capable of being held to the same standard as members of SPCB staff in those very serious circumstances. Do you intend to have a discussion within those focus groups about whether that option should exist and, if so, how it would be exercised in order to minimise the additional stress that would come from a high profile or even politicised decision making process? Within the focus groups, what we were talking about earlier on is that there is one issue about the standard that we will all be held to. Obviously, what you are then talking about are the different types of sanctions on different people. We haven't specifically thought about including that in the focus groups. One of the things that we are very conscious of is the work that we are doing with the joint working group, which is obviously the committee's inquiry and any findings that you might have, particularly in relation to the code of conduct. We want to be able to take account of that in any of the work that we are doing, so that everything basically gels together. That single standard that you mentioned has to be the aim. If we are serious about looking at that from the point of view of the person who is on the receiving end of inappropriate behaviour and the impact on those individuals, the impact is the same regardless of who the perpetrator is. Going back to the discussion that we had earlier on about having that behaviour code for the parliamentary community in the way that Westminster seems to be going, that gives us that single focus that applies to everyone equally regardless of whether you are an elected member, whether you are a visitor, whether you are a member of staff. That is helpful. I was just trying to ask the question in a way that keeps it very general and does not make it difficult to answer. If what you are aiming for is something that ends the situation where MSPs have a unique level of protection from consequences, the next step is to discuss how that can be reached. The difference comes in at the stage of the imposition of sanctions. That has to be a different process, but we recognise that. Folling on from that, we have touched on the idea of a member who has admitted misconduct and is still allowed to be in the premises. What is the Parliament doing in measures to protect the victim and also to monitor any further misconduct under that circumstance? That is a live situation. In a situation like that, we would use our usual informal channels. We do not necessarily need to have a process that is applied here. As I mentioned earlier, we work closely together with members, we know how members work, we have good relations, we seek to work with business managers in particular parties. Those are the channels that we would use to monitor and manage a situation like that. We are also trying to protect the victims. They are the focus. You have mentioned that a number of times already. They have to continue to be the focus. In the survey, the percentage of the perpetrators that were members of Parliament is around 45 per cent. Do you know how those members are? Have they been approached? Has action been taken at all following on from that? Or did the anonymity include a sort of more vague reporting of it? We do not know who those people are. In terms of the survey, we were asking people for their experiences, but it was not going to be a way of anybody naming anybody. One of the things in terms of the percentages is that we do not know whether that is a lot of different people or whether it is the same person. It is hard to tell from that. We did not break it down further than that. I thank the panel for coming along and giving us evidence this morning. I am sure that we will find that very helpful. We will now move into private sessions previously.