 Sub-Committee on Policing in 2017. No apologies for today's meeting have been received. Agenda item 1 today is Governance of the SPA. It's an evidence session and can I welcome Andrew Flanagan, the chair and John Foley, chief executive of the Scottish Police Authority to the meeting. I am going to invite Mr Flanagan to make a very brief opening statement. Thank you very much, convener. I recognise that opening remarks are an exception, so I'd like to thank you for the courtesy. I would have preferred today that we were discussing matters of direction, sustainability and transformation in policing, and the fact that we are not is in the large part down to myself. In particular, my approach to two letters, one that I sent and one that I did not. I deal first with my treatment of Moiali. I greatly regret the timing, tone and content of my initial letter to her. It was a misjudgment to send that letter, rather than open up a conversation and I bitterly regret that I was subsequently unable to allay her concerns so that she could continue as a board colleague. She was right in raising the substantive concerns that she had about transparency and perception, and she did so in a manner that was entirely consistent with her role as a public board member. I was wrong and it was important that, to do it, I set the public record straight on that. I've now written to her and offered my full and unreserved apology. Second, let me turn to the letter that I did not send, namely the one from HMICS, with his views on certain aspects of governance around committees and advanced papers. Having contacted the chief inspector to identify his concerns, I felt when I received his letter that it captured views that were already expressed rather than injecting views that were new and those views had already been discussed openly with board members. I recognise that HMICS and Audit Scotland are not simply stakeholders. I have now put in place an automatic process that every formal communication that is sent to me by them will be circulated to all board members unless otherwise stipulated by the sender. I have also instituted a review to ensure that there are no other such issues with any other letters that have not been circulated. I have therefore decided, as part of this, that I am keen to address any perception that the chair could be viewed as a gatekeeper on advice to the board or that a board member might feel constrained in raising any issue of concern directly with the chair. I have therefore decided that it would be useful, as envisaged in the legislation, that the SPA board looked to appoint a deputy chair of the SPA at its next meeting and we have initiated a process to identify nominees. An important consideration in that will be to have a gender balance across those two chairing roles. Thirdly, the underlying issue of public and private meetings. We sought to improve communications between Police Scotland and the authority by having more discussions in private but counterbalancing that by moving all decisions to the board meetings in public. In recent months there have been significant improvements in the information supported to us, it is better presented and relationships have continued to improve and mature. I believe that next week we can agree to adapt our approach. The board and its committees will meet in public while retaining the need to hold some items in private where necessary. Papers will be published well in advance of meetings and to everyone. As a new step, the public will get opportunities to contribute comments and questions for use in the public meetings, offering participation in SPA oversight, not just observation. Finally, we will consider any further recommendations on improving openness that come from the HMICS inspection due at the end of June. Finally, I have been considering my own position as chair. I have revicted very seriously on the views that are expressed by parliamentarians and other stakeholders. In reflecting on the last two years, I believe that there is more that I have got right than I have got wrong on strategy, on financial clarity and control, on refreshed leadership for policing and on many other aspects. I acknowledge my recent mistakes and you have rightly taken me to task for them. I hope to be judged also on the significant progress achieved and the leadership potential that I can still offer. Policing is in a much better position than it was, but there is still a huge amount to do. I believe that now is not the time for yet another change of leadership in what will be a pivotal and challenging next three years for policing in Scotland. I have discussed this with my board and I have their unanimous support. I hope that I can develop a broader consensus in the coming months. Thank you, Mr Flanagan. We will now move to questions and then I refer members to paper 1, which is the note by the clock, and paper 2, which is a private paper. Can I just start, Mr Flanagan, by saying that I do appreciate your long overdue apology to Moe Alley to this Parliament and to members of the SPE board? At your recent appearance at the Public Audit Committee, when I asked whether you had apologised for your appalling and I make no apology for using the word appalling treatment of Moe Alley, you said and I quote, In my subsequent letter to Moe Alley, I expressed regret about the timing of my letter, which was caught up in the Christmas festive period. However, I have no regrets about making the challenge that I put to her and that is a direct quote from you, from your appearance at the Audit Committee. So what has changed between that time and now? It was your judgment at that time that your actions were justified and you had nothing to apologise to Moe Alley for. I think that we had a difference of opinion, I think that I was robust in terms of trying to defend my position, but the Public Audit and Post Legislative Scrutiny Committee have written to the cabinet secretary, they have set out their views. I have to accept those views, I have to accept that I was wrong, and therefore in my upbringing and both in a human level and also in a professional level and as a grown-up, I think that it is the appropriate thing to do to apologise and fully and I have done that. But there is a difference, Mr Flanagan, between accepting that you have done something wrong and believing that you have done something wrong. That is a fair challenge and I think that I do reflect on that very much and I have looked back on the letters and I have looked back on what has happened and I have a deep and sincere regret about how things unfolded and I am very sorry for it. In your opening statement, you said that you had the unanimous support of your board. For the record, have any board members called on you to consider your position? No, they haven't. You also accept that you have made a number of mistakes recently. Can you explain to the committee how you intend to make sure that those mistakes will not be repeated in the future? Do you accept that the SPA has suffered reputational damage that it may not recover from? I think that we can recover from it. I think that there has been some damage there. I think that my apology to Moe is a start of that process. It is not the end of the process. It is not drawing a line under it. I think that the only thing about reputation that I have been referred to as bullying is not an accusation that I do accept. I have written a poorly worded letter in haste and I regret that deeply, but I do not think that it amounts to bullying. I have had a very high-profile career at over 40 years. If I was a bully, that would have come to the fore long before now and I would reject that. However, I think that it is important for the public record that I said it straight and I have done that. On the HMICS letter, I have instituted a new procedure where letters will be automatically circulated to the board and I have initiated, as I touched on in my review, a thorough review going back to when I started with the SPA to see whether there are any other instances that letters should have been copied and haven't. The on-going, as we move forward, as I said in my opening statement, these things will be done automatically without me being seen as a gatekeeper. I think that the important one of the things in my statement is the idea of creating the deputy chair. I think that that is important. I look back on this genuinely and I think to myself if I had a deputy chair that I could have discussed the matters with and reflected on what I thought was the issue, then that letter might not have been sent. It's also the case that a deputy chair I think can provide a sounding board to me and I think that that's an important factor in this. As you see in other organisations, it's a conduit for other members if they are unhappy with me or anything that they have concerns about, they can address them to the deputy chair. I'd hope that they would address them directly with me but having a deputy chair I think is important. In the things that I've got wrong, I think that we can rectify them. I think that in openness and transparency, I've talked already about changing the committees in private back again to public committees as they were previously. I've also talked about earlier publication of the papers and to all everyone, the public included, not just to key stakeholders. I think that in terms of those things, I have rectified them and going forward we should hopefully be able to restore any reputational issues that we have. However, as I said in my opening statement, I think that when you look at where policing is today compared to where it was 18 months or so ago when I joined, I think that there have been significant improvements. Just for completeness, before I bring in other members of the committee, when did you write your letter to Moe Alley to apologise? I wrote it Tuesday or so. Tuesday of this week, two days ago? Yes. Okay, so she won't have responded yet. She may not even have got the letter. Well, in anticipation because of the problems of delays this morning, I also asked this morning that it would be emailed to her as well, so it's in the post, but it's been emailed to her to make sure that she has it. So your appearance at committee today and your letter of poly to Moe Alley are those two things connected? No, I think that what's connected is the PAPL's report or letter to the cabinet secretary that was issued last Friday and that made me reflect on where we were. I have put my version of events to them. They've listened to Moe Alley's version of events. They've found that their conclusion is that they believe that she was right, and I have to accept that, and therefore it was a natural consequence that I should apologise in writing to Moe. Thank you, convener. I too, Mr Flanagan, have had up to December 2010 a 40-year career, 41 years that would be at that stage. I was then transport minister and, like you, I would claim that there was more right in what I had done as a transport minister over nearly four years than wrong, but ultimately I made one mistake and there was no one whose door it could be laid at but mine. That was clear. I took the view at that time and the First Minister accepted my view that it wasn't necessarily about the individual but about the danger of that mistake, contaminating the future debate around the portfolio that I held as minister. Is there not a similar danger, notwithstanding your many qualities and your contrition in relation to the mistakes that you have made, that the mistakes that you have made on your current position carry with it the very significant danger of contaminating and lying over the future work of the board? In the light of that, do you think that you should give further consideration to the appropriate arrangements in the board? I have considered this very deeply. It is an uncomfortable place to be in terms of the public calls for resignation. I have tried to look very carefully and objectively as I can as to the situation that we find ourselves in and where we are in this trajectory of trying to put Police Scotland and the SPA on a sounder footing. I did it quite methodically in terms of looking at where policing was in 2015 and where it is now. If I may, I would like to go through some of those things. Do forgive me, Mr Flanagan. I am not in any sense seeking to undermine the achievements in office and the substantial progress that is being made in implementing Police Scotland. I respect all of that. My fundamental point is quite a different one. It is not about your past or future capabilities. I am going to accept what has been said on that. It is a very simple matter of that sometimes when a mistake is made, you can only remove that mistake from the future conduct of the area for which one is responsible by removing oneself and enabling a new holder of the office to take over with a clean sheet, not necessarily changing what is done beyond what is proposed, not necessarily doing anything different from what is proposed, but simply by removing the person who carried the responsibility for the mistakes that have been made, which you have properly acknowledged and which I welcome your acknowledgement of. The biggest of people will always put the interests of the organisation of which they are part above their personal considerations should they be part of the decision making. I simply invite you to take that same position that I took in 2010. I have considered that carefully. Placing is in a much better position than it was. We are at a pivotal moment. We are about to sign off on a strategy for policing, the first that it will have had in its four years of existence. I think that we have already had a change of leadership both in Police Scotland and in the SPA and it would be more damaging to the organisation and the future of policing to create a further hiatus by my dispatcher. Stewart Stevenson set out the position very fairly and I too welcome the contrition in your opening remarks with Mr Flanagan. However, it would be interesting to know that with your reference to the unanimous support of the board, was the question put to them, do you endorse my decision on the balance of all the issues that you have had to weigh up to stay on one that you support? Or was the question put to them, do you believe that my position remains tenable and do you want me to stay? Those two questions are very different, particularly in light of, I think, some of the concerns that have been expressed about the way in which the board is operated today. I haven't put it in either of those terms. I have said that I have discussed with them the issue of the cause for my resignation and whether or not they would be happy to continue with me as their chair. They do believe that, on the balance of those things, they accept that I have got things wrong. They would prefer that that hadn't happened. They are happy with the changes that I have proposed and I am hopefully going to implement next week. In that context, they are happy with me to continue as their chair. During those discussions, I think that one of the concerns was the extent to which other board members weren't necessarily speaking up or whether they felt comfortable speaking up or whether they were in agreement with the approach that you were taking. During those discussions, did it emerge that there was a greater level of disquiet about what had happened and the way in which you had handled it, albeit that they come to the same conclusion as you appear to have come to in relation to your own personal position? Is that something that emerged from those discussions? We obviously have discussed previously with the Pavel's letter coming out, the events of last December and how that has unfolded. In terms of support for the changes that were being made in terms of the private committees and the publication of letters as part of a wider series of changes in terms of governance, they were all content to endorse that. They are still supportive of that but are willing to, in light of where we are now, move back to the previous arrangements. Therefore, they are content with the actual substance of the process. They have said to me that you were a bit hasty and you were a bit heavy handed in the letter that you wrote to Moin. I would expect them to say that to me, frankly, and some of them have. I think that one of the things that has been a challenge in this one is that, in some way, I have been characterised as a very dominant force on that board and that the members themselves are not as forthright as they might be. I do not see that as a characterisation of the board. There are some very strong individuals on the board. When you look at their backgrounds and their experience and what they have done, they have operated in a number of roles in public life, at very serious and senior levels, and they are not shy about coming forward when they think something is wrong. Although it did appear in the case relating to the Moray Alley's treatment that they were reticent for whatever reason, you yourself have, in explaining the rationale for the establishment of a new deputy chair post, suggested that it gives an option as to who board members might wish to approach about a given issue. That seems to suggest that there was a reticence notwithstanding what you have said about the characters of those on the board. I think that that is about the handling, not about the issues of the governance changes themselves or the board meeting back in December when that happened. I think that they understood that. Many of them were as surprised as I was when Moray dissented at the meeting, because that had not been our understanding going into it. What they have reticence about is how I handled it afterwards in terms of, as I said, being too hasty and overly heavily handed. John, do you have a supplementary on that? I follow up on the issue that Mr Stevenson raised. It is a question about judgment, because the Public Audit and Post-Legis of the Scrutiny Committee heard from Moiali. If I read an extract, Andrew Flanagan told the committee that dissent is okay, but his letter to me talked about how sharing public disagreement was a resigning matter. Can you express how, if that is accurate, why you would consider that a resignation matter, but something much more profound than that has brought questions as to the effectiveness of the organisation that you chair is not a resignation matter? Firstly, I think that dissenting in public in that way is a very serious issue that you need to, as a board member, consider very carefully before you do it. In fact— Is it a resignation issue? I actually did not ask her to resign. I have clarified my remarks in my second letter to her, which was sent to her earlier in the new year. In many cases, when people have disagreed with a board, they will come to that conclusion themselves. That is what I said in my first letter. It is a matter for Moiali herself, not a matter for me as the chair, because dissenting in public is an absolutely entirely fundamental right of a board member. You did not suggest that it was a resignation issue? No. I said that it is a matter for her. If the issue is so big that she cannot live with the decision that the board is making, then it becomes a matter for you as an individual board member whether or not you wish to continue and support that decision or whether or not you consider it a resigning issue. That is what I said in my original letter to her. Therefore, is it your position that your hasty and overly heavy-handed, or whatever the phrase you used, position is not one that would cause you to reflect? Before Moiali decided to resign, I sent a second letter to her, in which I explained more carefully and thoroughly the position. I explained that dissenting in public was not an issue that I felt was a resigning matter. In fact, it is a right of every board member, as I have said already. I think that the fundamental issue at the board meeting was that her decision to dissent was a surprise to me. That was what the main frustration was. As a chair of a large organisation, you tried to manage these things, that there is an open dialogue, an open communication between board members, so that kind of a surprise would not arise. Is that a failure newt part that you found it a surprise? One has to reflect on both parties on how that happens. In a dialogue with members and other members present, you would have expected to understand that. As I said, it is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Therefore, you would expect everybody around the table to understand that that was what your position was. What do you think would constitute a resignation issue for you, Mr Flanagan? I do not know, but it would be speculative. Many people have had to resign over issues in terms of major fault in computer programmes, for example, or major issues around whether or not they have taken gifts or things like that. That would be an issue. Is a senior important public figure judgment all important? I think that judgment is important. We make judgments all the time. If every time you get something wrong, you have to resign, the ultimate thing is that, A, you will not learn from that, you will not get the benefit of those things to reflect on, you will not be a better individual and a better leader in those circumstances. If the performance standard is that you cannot make any mistake of judgment, that is a very high standard for us all to aspire to. I would agree with you, but you would also acknowledge that there must come a tipping point if the individual becomes the story and therefore a distraction from the core function, the important public function of scrutinising a vital public service. Yes, but as I said earlier in my opening statement, you have to take this in the round of what I have achieved and where I have made this mistake. I have further questions, but I presume that you will want to bring another member. Just before I bring Ronan, one of the tasks that was given to you was to improve the governance, the openness, and the accountability of the SPA. Is that correct? That is right. I was asked when I was appointed to conduct the governance review itself. To improve openness and accountability. It would seem to me—I am sure that if you do not think that I am correct, you can correct me—that one way to improve openness and accountability would be to hold meetings in public and to allow dissent. If you are promoting a situation in which you have healthy discussion and disagreement, what is wrong with dissenting in public? I genuinely do not understand why you have an issue with someone dissenting in public at a meeting when one of your tasks was to improve the openness and accountability of the board that you chair. First, let me say that the governance review itself had some 30 recommendations in it, 28 of which were uncontroversial, and I have substantially improved both the local engagement, which was the primary driver of the governance review in the first place, and I also meant that we were able to increase the scheduled number of board meetings that we would have in public. Those board meetings are live-streamed, and as I said, we have increased the numbers of them. The challenge for me in terms of the committees was that the committees themselves were getting bogged down in extraneous detail. There was an inadequate flow of information from Police Scotland to the committees. There was reticence to provide more simpler papers and also to be clearer about the issues, and to let the committees get involved in thinking at an earlier stage, rather than just when a final decision had been made by Police Scotland. The concept of taking the meetings in private was essentially to create a little more safe space, as it were, for the discussions between the authority and Police Scotland. However, as a consequence of that, I was unhappy that the committees themselves should then have the power to make decisions, because that would have been wrong if those decisions had been made in private. Another recommendation in the governance review is that all decision-making powers of the committees were removed and placed into the public board meetings. All decisions are now made in public. As I said, I have no issue with anyone dissenting, and I made that clear in my second letter to Moe Alley. Your letter dated 19 December to Moe Alley says, on a professional level in my experience, that individual board members who wish to share public disagreement would normally consider resigning due to their view of the seriousness of the issue. That is consistent with on-board. On-board says that it is at some point that you have to consider that issue. If your disagreement was so substantial and that that is the step that you want to take, it is perfectly within your rights to do so, but you need to consider whether or not you can live with that decision on an on-going basis. Mr Flanagan, your opening statement represents a complete turnaround of the ethos of your stewardship as chair of the SPA. How do you expect the public to have confidence that you will carry out everything that you said you will, and why has it taken 18 months for you to have this sort of conversion in the way that you are going to operate? I am not sure that it is a conversion on my part. As I was asked to do the governance review, I put that out into the public in March 2016. I set out clearly what the recommendations were. Because of the election at that time, it was some weeks before the Scottish Government came back and said that the recommendations had been accepted, and then we set about implementing them. During that period, what happened was that there was a significant change in the relationship between the SPA and Police Scotland. It became much more open. It was, I would say, a proper relationship. It is robust when it needs to be robust, but it was developing. The information flows were improving all the time. When I look at it now, the necessity or the idea of having the committees in private is no longer necessary. That is the view, and I think that we can move on from that. I do not think that in that sense there is a change. We are in a situation that has been moving forward. There is much improved dialogue between ourselves and Police Scotland, and we can move on from that and move back to what was there previously. What worries me is that your natural instinct was not to be transparent, to hold things in private and to carry out in that manner until it reached a tipping point. That is why I think that the public might be worried. If you take that issue in isolation about the private committees, you could take that view. I think that it would sit inconsistently with the idea of having more public meetings, to having papers that are simpler, clearer, consider the options and people can understand them more easily. All decision making is removed from the committees and made by the full board in public session, livestreamed on the internet. I am not sure that I accept the characterisation of that in isolation that it says that I like to do things in secret. I do not. I am quite happy and content to do things in a public setting. Rona Mackay's line of questioning there. I accept what you are saying in terms of your default position. However, what you alluded to there was the difficult relationship between Police Scotland and an SP at the time and perhaps providing a safe space for discussion to take place. I think that all of us would accept that there will be certain discussions that will need to happen in private. However, I think that any suggestion, notwithstanding the improved relationship that may be there, that Police Scotland is out of the woods yet in terms of the difficult decisions that lie ahead, that the concern would be that there will be a reversal back-end to holding more of those discussions in private going forward whenever they are difficult. In areas of dissension, you almost need to have more visibility at points where it is not clear cut what the right approach ought to be. That dissension is needed more at a point where there may be those tensions. That would be my concern from what you have just said. I think that there are always concerns and there are always issues around when is the appropriate time to make things public. I tend to see it in a spectrum that it is not what one should assume that it is always going to be public at some point. The question is, along that spectrum, when is the right time to put it out into the public domain? The concern that I had when I started was that the SPA was finding out about things at the 11th hour, the very last minute, that had already in effect been decided within Police Scotland. In terms of our role of governance, we needed to be engaged at an earlier stage, to be more proactive in the early thinking of that so that we were not really presented with a fate accompli. This was an attempt to try to create an environment in which Police Scotland would feel more comfortable about sharing information at an earlier stage. It was not about those decisions since then being decided then, and as evidenced by the fact that the committees have no decision making powers, it was then about how to follow that process up to the point that it then does come into the public board meeting and that people can hear how the thinking has been done and what have been the options that we have, and what is the correct decision that we need to make at that time? In the sense that the trigger should not be the difficulty of the decision or the extent to which there may be dissent and disagreement within the committee or indeed within the board, that would not strike me as a terribly sensible principle, because all that is going to happen is at some point down the line when further difficult decisions are going to be taken, but there is a reversal back to a situation in which we have all agreed that it was not helpful or healthy. I think that that relies on the people on both sides to make sure that that does not happen, and I think that we have developed a strong and robust relationship, and we have built the trust and confidence and respect of Police Scotland that they can work effectively with us. I think that we are in a much, much better place now than we were when those recommendations were written. If I can sum up your opening statement and thank you for an advance copy of it, Mr Flanagan, then it is fair to say that there is contrition about two letters, the initial letter that you wrote to Moya Alley and how you dealt with the letter to you from Mr Derek Penman. There are various things in your letter that I presume you have written to try to give the committee some comfort that you are now on top of this, or to explain that there were very good reasons for what you did. Is that the case? Not really. On the letter from Derek, sorry, Mr Penman, I already had said to the Public Audit Committee that I, in hindsight, wish that that letter had been circulated to the board. So no, I have no attempt here to try to defend that sort of position. I think that I have accepted the conclusions of— I am puzzled. Are you contrite that you did not send a letter and circulate to the board or not? Yes, I am. That is what I said in my initial letter. I am sorry that that did not happen. I looked at the letter, I thought that the issues that he had raised had already been discussed. If I go back to the sequence of events, we would have had a member's meeting at which a number of— Can I stop you there perhaps? I read that very carefully too. This is the HMI inspector of constabulary. I am rather puzzled and somewhat alarmed that you then go on to state that I recognise—it is like a light bulb moment—that the HMICS and Audit Scotland are not simply stakeholders. Mr Flanagan, you are the chair of the SPA and it has taken you 18 months to realise? No, I do realise that. I realise that from the outset. I am not trying to say that it is a certain moment of recognition, but it is to say that perhaps in terms of that letter coming in, it should have been circulated as a matter of course. It was not, and I have now instituted a procedure to ensure that that is the case. I think that that is the difficulty that we have. It was from HMI inspector of constabulary. Any reasonable person would have expected that to be shared with the board. Can I move on to another aspect of that letter? It would be good to receive some clarification if Mr Foley, who has been sitting very quietly there but who features quite considerably in a lot of the events that happened, did he or did he not receive that letter and see that letter from Mr Penman? Yes, Mrs Mitchell. I gave evidence to the committee a few weeks ago, and in that evidence I said that I did not recall seeing a letter at the time that it was issued. I advised the committee that I might have seen a copy of it, and it might have been sent to me via email, but I did not recall it. I also said that I did not see an original letter that was presented on the day, which was addressed to Andrew Flanagan, and that was my position. Subsequent to that meeting, there was a second meeting of the committee in which it was suggested that it had been indeed sent to me. I checked my email inbox to verify that, and it was indeed sent to me. I did not see it at that point in time, as far as I recall. I was actually out of the country when it was sent. I cannot access emails when I am out of the country because we are not allowed to take our police devices abroad for security reasons. I also have a process in my office where letters such as these are taken out of the email folder and put into an electronic file—it is just called the mail file—and I have been able to establish that that was not done. That was, in my view, down to human error, a staff error. I do not criticise my staff for human errors, which is my responsibility completely. Subsequent to that, I also checked my diary on my return from being abroad, so that was me checking it last week. I had a very full week that week in relation to meetings and so on, and I would have had little time to deal with administrative matters, so that is what happened. It is an unusual circumstance, and it is the first time that I can recall a letter such as that not finding its way into the mail file. We can almost email Mr Follie, but Mr Flanagan, was that letter never discussed with you, chief executive? Yes. If I go back to the series of events, on 5 December we had a members meeting at which a number of the members themselves had spoken with Mr Penman and had understood that he had concerns about the governance changes. We discussed those fully at that meeting, and one of the members, George Graham, who is a former chief inspector, said that he would have a further conversation with Mr Penman. Can I maybe stop you there? I am more interested in your relationship, because we are looking at the Governments of SBA, and right now it is not looking too hot. Have you discussed or did you take the opportunity to discuss it with Mr Follie individually? He is the chief executive. You have already said that it might help if you are the deputy chair. We could even have gender balance, and you would have had someone to talk to about this. If I put it to you, my ally would have made an excellent chair, because she seems to have picked up everything that was fundamentally wrong. I do not altogether have confidence that her concerns would have been greeted from your initial letter and your reaction to her with the kind of panacea that you think is now going to sort the arrangements that you have put in place. In other words, your initial reaction would have been just as volatile to your deputy chair had it been my ally voicing what now everyone recognises as legitimate and the concerns that we would want are conscientious board member to raise. If we can go back to your first question, Mr Follie was fully aware of it and did I discuss it? The letter, as I was explaining, we had the meeting and the discussion at the member's meeting on 5 December. Mr Follie was present at that meeting, if I recall correctly. George Graham suggested that he would talk to Derek Penman by Friday 9. I had not received any communication from Mr Penman, and I sent him an email that afternoon saying, I understand you have concerns, these have been raised with a number of members. Could we meet to discuss that? I received by return the letter that you have seen a copy of. However, that was late on Friday and in the first few days of the following week, I was not working on SPA business, I have other organisations that I work for as well. The first time I was back in the office was the day of the board meeting. In terms of the pre-discussion that I had with the board, I raised the issue of Derek's letter. My view was, as he asked in the letter, that I informed the board members of its contents, I did that. They were consistent with the concerns that had been raised with them previously. In the event, it did not get copied because we were then into the board meeting itself. So, it never occurred to either of you to formally issue it to the board at that point, despite it coming from HMIS, the SCS, who you are accountable to, who has an oversight from you and who you say you fully realise that that is the role right from the moment you were appointed? As I said, the letter was discussed in some detail and the contents of it were consistent with conversations that individual members had had with Mr Penman previously, so it was discussed. The letter asked me to make sure that the board was informed of his views and I complied with that. They were informed of his views. Moe Alley has also made it quite clear that her views were well known. It was well known in the board. I think that it is quite reasonable to say that she really left with no choice when she was met with such intransionants from yourself to go public because her views were well known and they weren't being looked at. Her views also included the CE, chief executive, ignoring government guidance and stakeholders' concern. Have you addressed that? I am not clear about the reference to the chief executive, but in terms of Moe's— I will give you exactly where it was when Miss Alley was giving evidence. I will summarise the position of view points. The decision on private committees at the last minute and the last publication of papers, another issue, was contrary to statute and against the spirit of public service and accountability. The board and the chief executive ignored government guidance and stakeholders' concern. The chair was wrong to try and suppress information and debate and in punishing me for taking a principled stance in public that was consistent with my well-known private view. How have you addressed the chief executive, the challenge about the chief executive, ignoring government guidance and stakeholders' concern? How have you addressed it? I haven't addressed it today, but I'd like Mr Foley to speak for himself. Thank you, Andrew. I was made well aware of Moe's views and I have said publicly at the Papal Committee and another public forum that we had a reference group for the governance review, and Moe and others were part of that reference group. I absolutely state again categorically that Moe consistently made her concerns known over the course of that period and she continued to do so as a board member in discussions. Some of that is clear in some of the information that I sent over to the Public Audit Committee last week. Moe's views were well known. She made them known to me up until the point of resignation as well. It was me that Moe came to speak to the day before she resigned to advise me that that was the course that she was taking because I had offered to assist her in any way that I could with her concerns at that point in time. What did you think you could do? It was quite clear what were concerns on where those issues should not have been discussed in private. To answer your point of what I think she could do, at that point in time, Moe had came to see me privately and had spoken on the telephone about the letters that she had in front of her. I, in an effort to resolve the situation for Moe, suggested that she seek a meeting with the chair to see if the differences could be smoothed over and a compromised position could be reached. I said that, if she still felt dissatisfied after that process, she should come back to me and I would look to effectively mediate in trying to form a resolution. It seems to me, Mr Foy, that you are saying that we have a slightly different opinion here, two members are not agreeing. You are totally ignoring the very serious substance of her concerns and where she kept voicing it that these meetings should not be held in private. You should be transparent and accountable. In your letter, you have now said that you were always in the back food, so those private meetings were an opportunity to get out there and have these frank discussions, but anyone who has looked at the issues that have come up during the short life of Police Scotland will know that the vast majority of them have come from the SPF and you totally ignored and banned them totally from these meetings. You would have no consultation with them or the unions, the very people who were in their position to alert you to the kind of things that the SPA had been continually on the back food with. There is frequent engagement with the SPF and, in fact, within the committee structure that was set up, it was not that people could not come and give evidence in the way that we are doing today and that the SPF and other staff associations and unions would be able to come to those meetings and, in fact, some of that has happened, so there is always a route for that engagement to take place. Were you aware that they were unhappy that they hadn't been sufficiently consulted? Yes, because there are on-going discussions with all of the stakeholders in the organisation. The view was, let's try this, let's keep it under constant review. When we agreed the changes to governance, we said that we would do it for six months and then we would review it and we would take into account the views of stakeholders as well as the evidence that had happened. Do you recognise a lot of the issues that have come from the SPA? Therefore, your argument that we were having meetings with Police Scotland to try and get up to speed, Police Scotland, then really are fundamentally flawed? Do you recognise that? I don't agree with the characterisation that it's fundamentally flawed. I think that there are a number of avenues that existed for dialogue with all the stakeholders and the SPF. I have met them on several occasions and there were regular meetings that were set up and, as I said, they could participate in the committee meetings and have done so since December. You may have confidence in what you have done so far, Mr Folly and Mr Flanagan. You haven't filled me with confidence today. Just before I bring in Ben, Mr Folly, I wanted to come back to the issue of Mr Penman's letter. On 20 April, you appeared at the Audit Committee and you were asked several times if you had seen the letter and you said that you may have seen it but you don't recall it. You were then asked a question around—it's a very important letter that you either saw or you didn't before the board meeting. Your response to that question was, I am telling you that I do not recall seeing it. I recall having conversations with Mr Penman around that time and him expressing his views to me clearly. Having seen the letter and read it in recent days, I find it as an accord with the conversations that I had at the time in which Mr Penman expressed his views. Clearly, you had discussions with Mr Penman, the chief inspector, who raised his concerns with you. I presume that that was immediately prior to a board meeting or the week before the board meeting. It was over a longer period, convener. Mr Penman and I are in regular contact and I knew that that was Mr Penman's view for a while. He expressed his quite grave concerns with you. Did you, after those conversations with Mr Penman, think that it was incumbent upon you to share Mr Penman's views with Mr Flanagan? Yes, I did, and other board members. So you shared the views? Yes, absolutely. Given that you have had a series of conversations with the inspector, who has expressed serious concerns about the board and he follows it up with a letter and you don't really recall seeing it, is that not something that you would watch? I think that, convener, my explanation earlier perhaps satisfies that. No, actually, Mr Foley, it doesn't. Well, I did give you an explanation, convener, and it is an honest explanation. I don't recall seeing the letter at the time and, given the reasons why, I believe that I absolutely didn't see the letter at the time. I was aware of Derek's views and I had passed them on. So the inspector raises very, very serious and grave concerns. Did he at any point say to you, I'll follow this up in a letter? I don't recall discussing a letter with Mr Penman, but I do know that Mr Penman was having conversations with other members of the board as well, so it's not that his views weren't known. He rightly made his views known to me and to others. Okay, Ben. Thank you, convener. Mr Flanagan, based on your opening statement, I have a number of queries. Like others, I have expressed that I welcome the new presumption to meeting public and that papers will be published in advance and that you indeed are initiating steps for public participation. However, like others, I have expressed that I have a degree of skepticism given what has happened previously. In light of that, in order to ensure that the board and its committees will indeed be in public and that the ability, not the need, but the ability to hold some items in private can happen but is not by any means the norm, which it has been in the past, can you detail any procedural changes that you will be undertaking in order to make sure that there are proper checks and balances, for example that decisions to meet in private will be made in public? Yes, I'm happy to make that specific request. I'm happy to do that. I think that we have got changes to processes going on. There is a much greater degree of examination about any request to have an item on an agenda that is being requested for a private discussion rather than a public one. I am very resistant to things going into closed meetings. In fact, the size of closed meetings, the time, the length of them has reduced considerably over the past 12 months because I'm insisting on fewer and fewer items being in that. To give you an example, we had a request for the sale of a property in Edinburgh, in Chamber Street, that when bids were solicited there was a condition of confidentiality and the request came through to make that decision in private session. I refused to do so because ultimately any sale of a property becomes a matter of public record on the land registry, and therefore I insisted that they go back and get a release of the confidentiality agreement and that the decision was then put through to a public board meeting. That is one example of where procedures have changed and we are pushing more and more into open public meetings. You have given an assurance today that, in the words of Mawali, respectful open debate around whether items can be held in private will be encouraged going forward. Yes, I can give that undertaking. I think that that happened in the past. We are on a journey here and we are making sure that as much as possible can be discussed and debated in public as possible. It is specifically on that point because I am a bit confused, Mr Flanagan, and I wonder if you could perhaps clarify. Was it under your leadership of the board that meetings were held in private? Who took the decision that the meetings would be held in private? The only change that took place under my leadership was the proposal in terms of the committee meetings, which, in the governance review, I liken to working groups rather than committees. That recommendation to go to that was made public in my governance review in March last year. That was out in the public domain. That was the proposal and that was subsequently accepted by the Scottish Government. We only moved to do that in December of last year. There have been very few meetings that have happened under the new arrangements compared to the old arrangements. Everything else, other than the move that I was explaining to Mr McPherson, of trying to shift as much as possible into the public meetings, has been an on-going process since I started. It was under your leadership that meetings were moved into private. You are now saying that you do not think that they should be held in private. That is why I am confused. As I said in my earlier comments, the governance review was written in March last year. We have now moved to a situation that is a much better one with the relationship with Police Scotland. I do not think that it is now necessary for that to happen. Can you give a commitment today that every single meeting of the board, unless it is absolutely necessary, if something of a particularly sensitive nature is discussed, that every single meeting will be held in public? Yes. That is what we have been striving to do. You are giving that commitment today? Yes. As I have explained in response to Mr McPherson's questions, we have been on a process of pushing more and more into the public meetings. We are going to discuss next week's board meeting in public that the committee meetings should move to public, as they were before. As I said in my opening statement, there would be an opportunity not just for public observation of these meetings, but for participation through putting questions to us that they would like to see us ask in those meetings. Board members will be able to publicly dissent at board meetings without giving prior notice? I think that if something happens in the course of the meeting, that is of course that. They are right. Is they right anyway? I have to accept that. That is specified on more. My experience is that it does happen from time to time. I think that any board member needs to do—he is the chair and I have this responsibility as well— is to work as hard as we can to try to come to some consensus about any decision. If we cannot reach that consensus and somebody has to dissent in public, that is perfectly okay. Through that consensus approach, we should be able to understand that, if a member wants to dissent in public, they are likely to do it. Then I would be in a situation that I was prepared for when the board meeting took place. Surely dissension is part of healthy discussion. Welcome in your opening statement was your assurance that you will consider any further recommendations on improving openness that comes from the HMICS inspection at the end of June. Do you have any indication in terms of timescales as to when you will receive those recommendations? By understanding from the terms of reference that Mr Penman published, he is proposing to issue his report on 22 June. Normally, we get a copy of his report a week or two beforehand just for factual accuracy checks. Mindful of parliamentary recess beginning in July, would you take an undertaking today to write to this committee at the earliest possible opportunity on receiving those recommendations to provide your response to them in order that this committee can consider them before the summer recess? I can make that commitment. My previous experience was not in policing and I am not used to until the past 18 months how chief inspectors operate. One of the things that is different about it compared to, say, audit reports is that normally audit reports are able to put your management response into the audit report, and it is all published together. In inspectors work in Stabulary, it seems to be a more sequential process that they publish their recommendations and then we respond to them. However, I note the point about the dates and the parliamentary recess and the fact that we will have had a copy in advance to check for factual accuracy, then I would undertake to try and as close to that date as possible to put our response to the recommendations that he has made. I am grateful for that in advance. Lastly, convener, you raised the point in your opening statement about appointing a vice chair, and that is welcome in that the issues of gender balance could be considered within that. More holistically, in terms of the matter of gender balance, do you think that there is more work that needs to be done in order to achieve a greater gender balance than the organisation? I think that that is true of the SPA board and I think that it is true of policing in general. In many public boards there is an on-going challenge in terms of achieving that balance that you are talking about. I would make the point for the record that I do not appoint board members to the SPA board. That is a matter for the cabinet secretary. I participate in the process, but I do not chair the panel that does that. Although I have some influence in terms of that, I do not have sufficient influence to affect that in any way. The important thing to recognise is that we have, as a board, moved to a more of a skills and experience basis for selecting board members. That is about the scale and complexity of the size of the organisation that we need people who have operated in those kinds of organisations before. I think that the recent appointments that we have had reflect that in terms of the skills, the background and the experience that the new board members have. We have shifted that to what we now have of the 10 members. Seven are appointed within the past two years on that basis. We are looking at ways in which we can expand our reach. The last time around we used a number of networks, both in terms of diversity and ethnicity, to try to reach out to that. However, we are fishing in a pool that is relatively limited because of the scale of the organisation and is one where people of whether it is a gender issue or whether it is an ethnicity gender are very, very in demand, if I can put it that way, and are very selective about which boards they will go on. I have a series of questions, but there was a very interesting point that came up, Mr Fannigan. It was in relation to the discussion when Ms Mitchell was asking you about Mr Penman's letter and the flurry of activity around that time, when you said that you returned to work on the day of the board meeting. I understand that you have other duties. Is there no pre-meeting? Only on the morning of it, and it is quite short. It is really just to update the board on anything that has happened since the issuance of the papers, and that is why Mr Penman's letter was on the list for us to discuss, and also to try and organise so that we will run the meeting and that we are not getting duplication of questions and things like that. There was a previous report from Mr Penman that was critical of the length of the board meetings themselves, and we try to manage the timings a little bit more effectively than used to happen. I have no issue with the concept of pre-meetings. I am trying to understand if it is an efficient overall operation if you return to work on the day of a board meeting at the time when there is all that flurry of activity around the HMIs report? I think that it is. The actual papers are worked on the previous week, so I am aware of what is in the papers. I have found no particular issue with that today in terms of having other activities the day or two before an SPA board meeting. Can I ask some questions about a couple of issues that please? That is about openness and transparency and relationships. Some of my colleagues have raised the issue because, as parliamentarians, we are very keen that this building is seen as a public building and that the public has access to the deliberations that take place here. There is very little that takes place in private discussion. Can I ask about your relationship, for instance, with the COSLA scrutiny board? The concerns that are expressed in the public domain today are about the late submission of papers, about the extent of papers, because that is often a tactic used to frustrate open and transparent discussion and deliberations. Can you comment on that, please? This is one of the topics that we will go to the board next week. I noted the comments in the press this morning. We have had discussions on going discussions with COSLA and the individual local authority scrutiny committees, so there is quite a lot of dialogue in that regard. COSLA has suggested the seven days because it is consistent with the way that local authorities operate. Our own view is that we would like members to at least have received the papers before they go to COSLA, and we are dependent on getting the papers from Police Scotland, so we are not entirely in control of that timing and we are trying to improve on that. What I would not want to do is get papers issued too far in advance from the meeting so that things change in between the paper coming out and it then being considered at the board meeting. You are working with relatively compressed timetables. We had started to issue the papers for the last couple of meetings 48 hours in advance. Generally speaking, the feedback that we got was that people were content, but that if we can do better, we should do better, and I think that that is what we will look to do. I do not mind to give out further information on that, Mr Finnie. I attended the COSLA scrutiny convener's committee earlier in the year—I think that it was January or February—and it is fair to say that I got out of time over the private meeting situation. I then made a point of meeting with the chair, then chair of the COSLA's scrutiny convener's committee, and we discussed the idea. Local elections, of course, were coming up, so people will change on the committee. However, the idea was that we would go further and look to the future in taking the work plan, so regularly meeting between myself and the chair of some of the conveners, looking at what was coming forward in the year, giving the COSLA scrutiny convener's an opportunity to then perhaps inform shape what papers might look like as we move forward, and we saw that as a positive thing, regardless of the private closed session type situation, which will be reversed. However, I thought that that was a good thing to do. That sounds very good and very reassuring. Back to you, Mr Flanagan. If I can talk about the openness and transparency, you know, for instance, that papers are published for this meeting, and you will be cited on the papers for this meeting, including the letter from the acting convener of the public audit to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Are you able to comment on your relationship with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice as a relative of that letter? I have not met formally with the cabinet secretary since the letter was published on Friday. I have had a telephone conversation with him, which we were talking about other matters related to this. He noted the letter and the fact that he would have to respond to it in public, and I accept that. However, we have not gone into the detail of the letter as yet. Can I remind members and our witnesses that we are rapidly running out of time, so if you could keep your questions and your answers as short as possible, I would appreciate that. Yes, indeed. It is a very strongly worded letter that is extremely critical of your self and practice as it is seen. I think that there is a very interesting paragraph that is headed up—collective responsibility. The committee is part of a process in which you are a significant part—Cosla and the local scrutiny committees. Can you really believe, if your board members see this letter, that they have confidence in you? My board members have seen that letter and the conversations that I related back to you earlier about their support for me were had after they had seen that letter. How was that letter circulated then? In fact, it was specifically said on the letter. It was specifically requested that it was circulated, so that was actioned immediately when we received it. As Mr Foley has touched on, there is a standard procedure that, in the case of Mr Penman's letter, broke down, but normally letters of that kind would be circulated to board members as a matter of course. Does the authority have a grievance procedure for dealing with complaints against officials or indeed yourself? Not a formal one, and that is one of the reasons that I think that the role of a deputy chair would be quite important. What about the view that the suggestion by yourself at this stage that the deputy chair and your comments about gender might be viewed as quite patronising in a belated response? No, I do not think that it is. I think that there is a recommendation that all public bodies have 50-50 gender women by 2020. Really, I was only acknowledging that that is a good thing to do, and I think that it is not patronising in the sense that if there was a chair who was female, then I think that it would be a good idea that the deputy chair was male, and to try and get that 50-50 split, not just as a board in total, but in the chairing roles. Given your acknowledged treatment of Ms Alley, do you think that that will have a negative impact on the potential to recruit females to the board? Well, there are a number of ladies already on the board. Two of them are chairs of committees. I am talking about recruiting new members. Yes, and we have a new member who is female who has been involved in these discussions and does not think that that would have had any impact on her application. Do you think that it could potentially? No, I do not. And you do not think that that any way presents as complacent, notwithstanding your changed position and your updated—you do not think that you are complacent about this issue at all? I do not think that I am complacent. I think that the public appointments process is very thorough, very robust, and it makes you work very hard on those issues. The last time round, we used, as I said, a number of networks to try to reach out to people, and that was effective. We had a number of female candidates for the previous round of applications. I conclude with one comment, and this is a direct lift from the letter. In particular, we consider that the chair of the SPA board, Mr Andrew Flanig, would appear to have behaved inappropriately on occasion and, in a manner not in keeping with the relevant Scottish Government guidelines. We consider this to be unacceptable, particularly in relation to a public body that performs such a vital role. Do you agree with that? I think that on occasion it has to relate to the matters that we have been discussing today. The letter goes on to say that it should be taken up as a matter of my annual review, and I expect that to be done by the cabinet secretary in due course. Liam, I know that you have to supplement it, but I will bring Margaret and Cushus a substantive question, and I will come back to you at the end. It was about the frequency of the board meetings. Mr Flanig and I have been, I think, some criticism of them being on the eight held in the year. Is there a move to have more board meetings? We moved it from six to eight. In the early years, that is a minimum number. We would have to have as many as are necessary for the business that is coming through in the first year or two. I think that there were more than eight. Do you have a proposal to move it to 10 or even monthly board meetings? I would be prepared to consider that. We are going to go through a further review of governance. We have asked David Hume to take that on through the summer, so that it is a fresh look compared to my own governance review. We will also have the recommendations from HMI in terms of their current work. Do you recognise the concerns that are expressed over the more late being eight? As considerable time can elapse between meetings? That is an issue. As I said, if business is required for business purposes, we would institute more. I think that eight, based on looking at other public bodies in Scotland, eight is already quite a lot, but you are right about the spacing of it. I think that we need to think about that. As I said, eight is the standing minimum that is required, which is an increase from six previously. If we need 10 or 12, we would have— I merely put it to you that you wanted to be on top of that and not on the back foot, perhaps having more board meetings more regularly might allow you to do that. I think that that is a good suggestion. I would certainly take that up with David Hume, who is going to conduct this review. Can I just ask you finally about the comments made by Brian Barber who went public as soon as Moya Alley did and shared his concerns about how SPA had operated, in particular, with the appointment of SPA members. He thought that they should be done by the Parliament. I must admit that SPA should report and be accountable directly to the Parliament, not just through this committee but directly to the Parliament. I must admit that I am concerned that seven out of your new members have been there two years, but only one was prepared to speak out about the governance. Could you comment on his suggestion? Firstly, I should just say that I have never worked with Mr Barber— I understand that, but his suggestion. So I do not know what happened before. I understand that, too, but his suggestion. I read the comments that he had made, both to the press and to the committee. I did not recognise what he was saying in terms of interference from the Government or the like, and it certainly has not happened in my time there. In terms of appointments to the board, I think that we follow the normal public appointments process. If it is deemed by the Parliament that you want more say in that, then that is a matter. I think that the main point was that at present it is the public appointment process, and then the Cabinet Secretary makes the final decision. If there is a situation where the Government is seen to be interfering or a board member feels that, and their appointment is in the gift of the Cabinet Secretary, then there could be a perception of conflict. Perhaps, to be more open and transparent and to avoid any perception of that, if Parliament had the final say, perhaps that would help. I have to say that that is a matter for Parliament, rather than for me as a G.I. I have no concerns about it happening, whether that is a formal part of the process or whether it is some sort of prescrutiny through the committee's structure. There are other models that work in other Parliaments, and those could be considered. Mr Flanagan, earlier in your statement, you expressed a full and unreserved personal apology to Moe Alley. I think that I have also expressed regret and contrition about other events at the back end of last year. In the press report in the Herald that John Finnie referred to earlier about the meeting with the COSLA scrutiny board, somebody who was at the meeting is quoted as saying, ultimately, in the telling comment, he, Mr Foley, implied papers were not issued any earlier because of concern about leaks to the media. You can imagine the reaction of disbelief in the room. Would it be appropriate, Mr Foley, for you to apologise to the COSLA scrutiny board or have you already issued such an apology? My participation in the meeting was welcome even if the conversation was difficult. The comment that you referred to, Mr MacArthur, was set in a wider context. The wider context was me telling our advisers, the COSLA scrutiny conveners, that one of the reasons—and it was only a reason—for papers not being issued seven days in advance was that, in the past, that had proven difficult. So, when papers were late, there was a perception that things were being held back, and that's not a good position to be in. And also that it had resulted in a lot of the authorities' business being played out in the media before the members had a chance to discuss matters. So, it wasn't so much leaks. It was in the context of the seven-day publishing. I think that we should publish earlier than we currently are at the moment. I know that Mr Flanagan thinks likewise, but it would be a challenge to do seven days. I will be going along to COSLA, as I mentioned earlier, on a regular basis, because I think that it's important to strike up the dialogue, and we will take fully on board the COSLA convener's views, which is why I said that I spoke to the chair of the committee and I offered up that we should meet regularly, looking at the forward work plan, so that the conveners themselves have got an opportunity to influence and have dialogue well in advance, even if papers are being produced. I think that that's a good way forward. That was very well received. As there are no further questions from the members, I thank Mr Flanagan and Mr Foley for coming along today to give us their evidence. The next sub-committee meeting will be on Thursday 1 June, when we had intended to hold an evidence session on Durham Constabulary's counter-corruption report. However, Police Scotland has informed the sub-committee that the report will not be in the public domain prior to that date, and we will now hold an evidence session on either I6 or Audit. I now close the ninth meeting of the justice sub-committee on policing in 2017. Thank you.