 Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2022 of the local government housing and planning committee. Annie Wells is joining us remotely today and Mark Griffin will be with us shortly. May I remind members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are on silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting. The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take items four, five, six, seven and eight in private are members agreed we're all agreed thank you now we turn to agenda item two which is to take evidence on the planning data parts of the UK leveling up and regeneration bills legislative consent memorandum from Tom Arthur who's the minister for public finance planning and community wealth and mr Arthur is accompanied today by Scottish government officials Cara Davidson who is the head of environment and energy and Liz Pringle who's the head of digital planning services and I welcome mr Arthur to the meeting before I open the session to questions from members I'd like to invite you to make a short opening statement well good morning to the committee and thank you to you convener for the invitation and opportunity to address the committee on the UK leveling up and regeneration bill we are talking this morning specifically about the planning data provisions in chapter one of part three and I am conscious that the committee has recently heard evidence from key stakeholders before turning to part three in detail I want to reiterate the Scottish government's fundamental concerns about this bill as you will know we have recommended that the Scottish Parliament does not provide legislative consent for this bill as currently drafted given its absolute threat to a wide range of devolved responsibilities and failure to respect this parliament and the Scottish government's roles in the legislating for devolved powers and we remain concerned that the Westminster government will ignore our collective role and simply legislate without our consent turning to part three I am not surprised that the evidence that you have heard today has pointed to a lack of information on how planning data provisions in the UK bill will operate in practice I'd like to set on record my frustration that we received little advanced sight of the draft bill before its introduction this lack of meaningful prior engagement from the UK government is sadly all too typical of their current approach to legislation and it contrasts with our own work in Scotland on the digital planning strategy and transformation programme and on our collaborative approach to planning reform as a whole so whilst I recognise and support the need for planning data standards in principle the lack of detail on how these provisions will be implemented leave unanswered questions with so many unknowns it is also potential for conflict with the work already been undertaken in Scotland it's part of our digital planning transformation programme a 35 million pound capital investment initiative already underway this is an ambitious programme led by the Scottish government working in partnership across the public sector it will put data and new digital technologies at the heart of Scotland's planning system helping achieve wider planning reform aims to deliver an opened streamlined and inclusive planning system fit for the future our work in this programme is making real progress with the first new digital services expected to be rolled out next year we are building these new digital services and products upon solid data and technical foundations working in collaboration with our partners you heard that last week's evidence session the strong support we have from stakeholders for the direction and the approach we are taking one of collaboration across the sector rather than mandating away forward in scotland we are taking a comprehensive approach to improving planning data our data strategy will set out a roadmap to provide easy access to high quality data for use across planning and play space working therefore have real concerns about the UK government's intention to legislate in areas of devolved and executively devolved competence without any real knowledge of what we are doing in scotland nor any interest in accommodating that in the bill we could find ourselves in the unhelpful situation of having Scottish planning authorities subject to conflicting measures one imposed on them through a UK bill the other agreed through mutual collaboration to improve our planning system in line with our own domestic legislation and priorities part three has currently drafted provides one of many reasons why the Scottish government cannot recommend that the Scottish parliament gives consent to these provisions as we stand thank you can you know thanks very much for for that statement and yes it was good to hear last week about the the Scottish digital transformation project and it's also good to hear from yourself right now that it's going to be rolled out next year so i'm going to open up the session to questions and i'm going to get started with first question which is what if any engagement did you or the Scottish government planning officials have with the UK government on the issue of planning data prior to the introduction of the levelling up and regeneration bill in the UK parliament and you've indicated there had been a lack of consultation or collaboration in a way but but i'm also to kind of interested in you know was there ever any work done even before this bill was even considered well as i said that there obviously has been dialogue between relevant officials and both governments on the bill provisions however as with other aspects of the bill there remains a lack of data as to how planning data provisions will be implemented the reality is that the clauses as introduced give unlimited scope for UK ministers to regulate any areas of devolved and executably devolved competence for Scotland and its crucial point is its the requirement is only for consultation not consent not agreement only consultation and i think we've seen over recent years what that means in practice from the UK government given how willing they are have been to ride roughshod over the steel convention so the reality is that this this this pose a threat there hasn't been the the detail consultation there's lack of clarity on the details and i think in terms of moving forward a very minimum and i say this is just a starting point we have to move from a position of consultation to one of consent and one that does not impact upon the competencies and ministers and indeed of this parliament thanks for that i'm not going to bring in miles briggs with a couple of questions thank you thank you convener good morning minister good morning to your officials as well i wanted to ask we've heard from the evidence which we've been taking on this in the limited time we've had to speak to stakeholders that planning stakeholders here in scotland have told the committee they're unclear around the term planning data what do you think planning data is and do you think this demonstrates the fact that there's gaps in data in our planning system in scotland well the first point i'm making i'll maybe ask list to come in this in a moment is within our strategy digital strategy for planning one of the key missions is data and i think we would all recognise the importance of data more widely i know the audit scotland has got you know really sorry this morning on the importance of data and policy design so that's something we would we would recognise with regards to what the build is in terms of the definition um what the means in practice is set out at clause 75 to um and it was said planning data is said to include any information provided to or processed by a planning authority for the purposes of the function under irrelevant planning enactment irrelevant planning enactment would include any enactment made by the secretary of state under part five of the bill which applies uk wide and contains provisions on environmental outcome regulations now there's also a lack of information on how provisions on the urs would operate and that combined with a lack of detail and implementation and practice for planning data provisions means that it is unclear what the outweider implications would be for the handling of planning data in scotland and that speaks to the point i'm making just about the uncertainty in vagueness that comes with this but i think in terms of broadly what we're doing around planning data it's important to maybe give some examples i'll ask list if you want to come in thank you minister and yes i would agree i think that there is a lack of detail around the definition of planning data we have heard as we've been developing the digital strategy about the the vast amount of data that could be used within the planning system and the impact of not having that in a high quality well managed fashion and the impact for our planning authority stakeholders in terms of the amount of time and effort that's taken to for example find and access data for preparing local development plans and you know that's one one single area where the the kind of lack of consistency and data quality impacts the planning system and the work that we are doing is trying to look across the planning system at the the the needs of planning data what they are and how we make sure that we we reach a sustainable model for managing that data in a comprehensive way going forward that's helpful thank you and i think we heard last week i can't remember who gave us this evidence but with regards to there being a one it platform which this would be hosted on so i think that maybe presents an opportunity that that data can be therefore shared and accessed across UK and Scottish Government and all local authorities being able to to share that i wanted to ask though looking towards what this can potentially provide benefits around would you agree that planning data is something that would benefit from processing at a GB wide level that that data could be compatible i think what's important to recognise is as the approach that we are taking in scotland is one of genuine collaboration which i think is is vital if we want to get the most out of planning and fully realise planning's potential to deliver across so many areas so the the risk in the concern is that there's conflict here planning has always been effectively a devolved competence in over 75 years of a town and country planning acts memory serves me right but has always been a distinct scotish planning act i think the one time we're trying to go and combine them in the 1950s it became a bit of a mess and i had to separate them again so that's always been the nation of planning it is a devolved competence and it is for this parliament to take an approach now if the UK government wants to engage constructively and recognise the competence of this parliament and not seek to act in a way that can legislate without the agreement of this parliament of course very happy to engage and of course recognise the the value of having a consistency of approach across scotland which is something we are working towards through our broader work on digital transformation within planning but i think the key issue here is this cannot be something that is mandated from a UK government that is somewhat distant from the reality of the work we're doing in planning in scotland we have to have the space to continue what we're doing which is to develop an approach in collaboration with planning authorities and other partners okay thanks for that thanks community thanks miles and i'm not going to bring in willy coffee thanks very much good morning minister i mean this is a potential dog's breakfast isn't it the scotish government's already embarked on its digital strategy i've given us an indication of progress so far my own experience of east asher councils digital planning system it's really good it's really robust members of the public can access it they can see decision processes you can see documents maps drawings everything it's really well advanced and i hope that our system will take that further but my question to you minister is if the UK is legislating on this is it ultimately possible that our authorities could be acting illegally doing what they're doing i can't comment on that specifically but i did touch in my opening remarks in the risk of confusion if we have a process where we're developing an approach in collaboration with planning authorities in scotland and then we have the UK government mandating something UK wide that is as you described it you know a recipe for a dog's breakfast but you know in one sense at the very least it can create confusion and it's not an efficient way to go about doing things and i say that the reality is the one of the benefits that devolution confers is that and we all know this from our kind of experiences constituency in regional representatives is that we can be far more responsive and attuned to the particular circumstances of the places and localities we represent and so with government and how we'd sort of design and evolve public services and within planning we have a collaborative approach built on you know deep and sustained engagement that is what has informed a whole range of work that we're taking forward and planning reform and it equally informs that we're taking forward our approach around the digital i don't know lids if you maybe want to talk about some of this sort of partnership working that takes place and how we engage and developing approach to digital planning yes minister thanks well the digital strategy itself was a collaborative strategy was spent a significant amount of time working with our stakeholders to agree the priorities that went into that strategy so we knew that we had the support as the strategy was published and subsequently as the the transformation programme is being delivered it's very much a partnership between ourselves and public sector colleagues where through the working groups and the projects that are being delivered we're working in collaboration with all of the stakeholders to to make sure that what's being delivered fits the needs of each of our stakeholder groups and we're not developing things that are that are contrary to it to the needs so i would just highlight that approach that let's just very eloquently articulated with having a provision bounced on us and a bill from the UK government it's it's the approach that the UK government has taken is not consistent with my collaborative spirit it is ignoring the reality of devolution and it ultimately has the potential to at the very least cause confusion but ultimately to significantly undermine and frustrate our ambitions or shared ambitions that we're working towards on a collaborative basis has the UK even sought to find out what the Scottish government is doing in this area the digital strategy for example so that they can it can help them shape whatever it is they're planning to do is is there been any engagement to that degree at least so they understand what we're doing we're certainly not being directly the minister delivered me you might be asked Elizabeth what engagement has been with UK counterparts at official level we do have dialogue with our counterparts on the broader digital programmes that are taking place but as we've said previously not on the detail of the planning data provisions okay thank you my other question was really about the issue you mentioned again minister this is not a consent process this is just a consultative process isn't it it's not even asking the parliament this parliament for consent to this proposal what are your your views on that principle of consent not being sought it's well the Scottish government's position is very clear in this we're completely opposed to it and the reality is from the UK government even the word consent took on a perverse meaning in the context of legislation pertaining to Brexit if you remember around consent decisions and it's a definition that was applied to that the reality is that we are clear devolved competencies and in indeed the the relevant sections of the bill I think from memory section 80 recognise that the reality is that you know ministers are happy to engage with the UK government on any issues and discuss areas of shared interest and there's other forums in which you know I engage with ministerial counterparts and a range of different issues for example through the through the British Irish Council I was took part in a discussions on spatial planning I've had discussions on areas of social enterprise and such not such like and that is productive collaborative engagement where we can share experiences based upon mutual respect what we have there is the UK government seeking through legislation to effectively undermine devolution and go against the spirit of it and the reality is we are now 25 years on from the referendum established this parliament and as the Scottish social attitudes survey data published recently shows that the clear majority of people in Scotland we trust this institution we trust the institution of Scottish government they want this institution to be having the lion's share of decision making that impacts upon their daily life there is no popular support there is no mandate you know politically otherwise to see these powers removed they're undermined from the Scottish parliament it's what the UK government in my opinion government have to do if they're going to be you know talking about having a aspect agenda or such like then that that needs to be shown in action and not just words and the reality is they are clear areas in the leveling up and regeneration bill which fall within devolve competence and UK ministers should not be seeking to you know grant them self-power to start legislating in devolve competence devolve the areas without the express agreement of this parliament which they do not have so this process that we're in at the moment doesn't even get to the dizzy heights of a consent decision no it doesn't it's consultation and and consultation can exist across a broad spectrum from something that is very deep and meaningful to something that is a superficial tick box exercise and the reality is that given that the lack of consultation in advance of this bill the lack of detail that does not bode well for how you know UK ministers would intend to consult going forward if this bill becomes an act as it's currently drafted okay thank you for that minister other members of questions i'm sure thanks really yes i'm going to bring in paul mchillan thanks thank you thank you minister last week i think what was very noticeable was from stakeholders was they weren't sure what the bill was about either and that came through but one of the things that we got in the evidence coming through last week was in regards to the UK minister apparently he's wrote into the scottish parliament's delegate powers and law reform committee in the 24th of october indicating constructive discussions had taken place with scottish government officials and also mentioned about bringing in for also committed to bringing forward amendments to the bill to ensure it reflects what has been agreed with the scottish government from obviously what you're saying just now that doesn't seem to be the case i don't know if you want to elaborate on that or touch on that at all it just doesn't seem to be coming through in what we've picked up i'll ask her to come in here yeah absolutely i mean we certainly at official level have ongoing dialogue with UK government officials and certainly we have heard both at official level and from UK ministers that there is a commitment to amending the devolution clauses that you see on the face of the bill at the moment however so far we have not had any proposals on what replacement clauses would look like and we have not had a site of any drafting which is obviously a concern and certainly the timetable for the bill remains a little bit of an unknown and it continues to make its way through parliament as you know so i mean i have to say it i'm not sure the concerns i think that well the coffee i'd mentioned didn't you know we've got a bill that's passing through that stakeholders don't know about and scottish government doesn't seem to know about amendments either minister i don't know if you want to say anything else and i think evidence we're hearing so far for me you know says enough in terms of this it's a bill that's passing through without any proper consultation of the government all with stakeholders and we've already i think you've already indicated about what scottish government's doing in terms of planning planning about data and digital planning yeah it's just that our whole approach towards planning and indeed regeneration and community wealth building is about collaboration about engagement it's recognising that to you know achieve the outcomes that we want to see no one body no one agency can do all alone need to work together and that's very important when designing policy the UK government's approach doesn't seem to be like that i mean the levelling up agenda seems more like a soundbite that's now chasing you know trying to invent a policy programme to justify itself um and as i say you know if there is a genuine desire from the UK government to engage seriously on these issues in respect of the competencies of this parliament and scottish ministers of course happy to engage as a responsible thing to do but i think it has been narrated this morning and as you will have inferred from the contributions from stakeholders last week that has not been the approach that the UK government has undertaken okay thanks thanks paul i just wanted to ask a little bit more on that so carry you mentioned the these amendments that would come and that we're in a bit of a mystery about what they what they will be and when they will come but from our perspective i'd be interested to hear what role the Scottish parliament would have in scrutinising any of the outputs of the discussions that you've been having yeah i mean i mean i think it's fair to say that discussions at official level at the moment have not brought forward any more information other than what we have on on the face of the bill essentially and you know it's only possible for us to comment at the moment on on what is in the bill as it is before the UK parliament as things stand um at the process itself remains unknown and the timetable for you know further meaningful proposals coming forward is also an unknown you'll be aware that mr mathson wrote on the 14th of october to the UK government and we await a response to that letter okay thanks very much and now mark griffin final question thank you can be now apologies for a reliable late convener minister and if you've covered this in your opening statement apologies as well the committee understands that the revised draft of mpf4 is due to be laid shortly and i just wondered if there'd been any analysis of any impact this UK legislation has on that national plan framework 4 if that would have any impact on timescale for approving there's nothing at this stage as opposed i'd have to go back to the point about the degree of uncertainty which makes it difficult to come to a rounded judgment at this stage i don't think there would be any direct impact on mpf4 and certainly not in the timescales for parliament to consider looking beyond that in terms of implementation and delivery data is of course and we're discussing an exceptional important part of the planning process so any impacts upon data could have an indirect impact upon delivery in mpf4 but i don't want to indulge too much in speculation because ultimately we don't have the clarity from the from the UK government to come to as i say a fully informed view on that i don't know if there's anything you'd want to and similarly then but i guess we're just asking to speculate again whether that has any impact then on local authorities local development plans that follow follow on from mpf4 well i think that the point touched on earlier the risk that we have is through our work on digital and planning is we're taking this collaborative approach working together if we have a situation for the UK government is is mandating something else then clearly that creates the possibility or the likelihood even of conflict and confusion which characterises much of the that as opposed to whole levelling up agenda because it is trespassing into devolved competencies so i think that yes there is a potential risk but in terms of being able to properly quantify what that risk actually is until such times as we have clarity around a what the UK government's intentions are around planning data and be what any potential amendments might be with regard to how it would impact upon scotland at this stage it is just simply too early to tell okay thanks minister thanks mark and that concludes our question so thanks so much for giving evidence today along with your officials and we're now going to briefly suspend the meeting to allow for a change of witnesses the third item on our agenda today is to take evidence on understanding barriers to local elected office and we have two panels of witnesses joining us and are joined remotely for our first session by jessie duncan who's the development officer from engender welcome and stevens who's the chief executive of elect her and talat yakub who is the consultant consultant and the co-founder of women 50 50 and i welcome you warmly to our meeting and we will direct questions to specific witnesses where possible but if any of you wish to make a contribution please type r in the chat function and the clerks will let me know and i'll now open the session by asking a few questions myself so i'd like to begin by taking a broader look over the last 10 years and i'm going to direct this initially to hannah given the effort and will evident over the past 10 years do you have a sense of why there's such a slow pace of improvement in the number of female councillors in scotland action from all the different those that have the power to make fundamental change in this area there are so many challenges that women face in getting involved and from the very very early stages of their political journey right through to getting more engaged and making a choice to stand for elected office there's barriers every single stage of that pipeline and then as we've seen more recently once women are elected we do not have the conditions in which they can thrive so therefore we're starting to understand that there's a retention issue at the other end of that pipeline so we need to be putting in mechanisms at every single stage of that and that comes down to councils authorities political parties and the government all have a role to play in shifting the culture and creating the conditions where women can thrive in this role thank you and would anyone else like to come in on that do you want to have to just want to give that space I think the key thing that we have tried to get across with this campaign that we've launched recently they're making it happen for 2027 campaign that our few organisations have come together to try and put this issue of the kind of perennial low levels of women in local government in the spotlight because yeah that this is an issue that just is kind of like we're having deja vu after every local election and the rate of increase for women in local government is just is climbing so slowly it's a combination of factors it's a really kind of complex and interlinked issue and there's structural changes that need to be made there's cultural changes that need to be made and really kind of concrete things that there's been kind of little movement on things like the very low level of pay comparative to the increasing pressures and duties that are involved in the role issues like the increasing visibility of women councillors in the role and kind of concerns around safeguarding and concerns around things like abuse and inadequate processes to safeguard against that inadequate complaints procedures both within parties within councils within kind of structures themselves I think that there's like a kind of the consistently low level of women within councils as well means that the system doesn't have the impetus to change or it hasn't had the impetus to change so it kind of becomes like a cyclical problem so yeah it's really important to kind of view the issue holistically in the round and not wait for women to enter these spaces to bring about that change but to create the conditions that are going to enable them to enter and to thrive like Hannah was saying yeah and I'm sure we'll get into some of those details some of those issues in a bit more detail thanks Jessie and to that you want to come in as well yes thank you good morning to endorse what has been said by Hannah and Jessie already it's my surprise that we'll agree on on those points but there's a few things women for two visits in that time to advocate for candidate quotas is that we are still in your audio is intermittent so if you just pause for a moment and what do we need to do about that okay so we're going to look at turning your camera off and just having you audio just to make sure we hear everything you say okay would you like to start again no problem sorry about that no technology is not you hopefully that's working okay just to at women 55 and it's pursuing candidate quotas and the reason for this is because what we find is a real lack of accountability there's perhaps some political will but what we see is a scramble for numbers to show diversity of candidates a matter of mere months before an election takes place rather than the long term investment and development and working with communities that politics should be focused on there isn't the accountability mechanisms whether that is with political parties within council structures and democratic measures within the system or within political parties so what we see is a scramble for numbers and diverse candidates so the focus is on numbers and the focus is on reputational damage if there isn't diverse candidates but not the culture that actually allows candidates to thrive and want to participate in politics the second that we haven't seen enough on is those who are from the most marginalised community so the intersecting inequalities of sexism and racism of ableism of classism we don't have enough efforts on understanding that those who experience multiple discriminations are not participating in politics and until we do that we will not see a fair representation of our diverse communities within Scotland's local councils thanks for that and just picking up on that bit about representation do you think that young women young people in general face further barriers to standing for office yes i do and i think part of the reason for that is because our politics is our politics and our local government certainly is not working at the community level so outreach participation in politics participation in local democracy that would encourage young people to see candidacy to see local government as something that they may want to aspire to may want to run for requires outreach engagement and community participation that is beyond simply elections what we need is politics that is closer to people closer to communities where people feel they have a stake in decision making the more we have of that the more marginalised communities and yes indeed young people and young women will feel like council is something that is relevant to them thanks very much for that i'm just going to move on to another question which is which is about the future and jesse i'm going to direct this to you initially but everybody is welcome to to contribute what would you like to see happen over the next few years obviously we're taking evidence on this at the moment and trying to you know address the issue but what would you like to see happening in the next few years to ensure that we aren't having the same conversation in the lead-up to 2027 yeah so i mean there's a number of different actors and i think yeah look the most important thing is to look at this kind of methodically and look at the different actors and kind of break this down into into specific actions and focused at specific actors because within the system there are a number of kind of different gatekeepers and different structures that control who ends up having access to local councils into elected office and you know we've got political parties who have a huge role in candidate selection being one of the kind of major ways that they control as organisations who ends up having the opportunity to even get onto the ballot to be elected. There's obviously a huge role as well for councils themselves and how they can improve their structures processes and create an environment that supports more diverse range of people to make it into those spaces. Of course there's kind of a role as well at kind of government parliamentary level. I think going back down to looking at what parties can be doing specifically, the selection has got to be kind of number one and I think that there's a lot more research that definitely needs to happen to understand exactly where the successes are because there's a lot of different approaches to selection that different political parties use to try and or ostensibly with the with the goal of improving the number of women councillors that get elected. However this is applied pretty inconsistently at the moment there's no legal like Talat mentioned quotas there. Obviously our preference would be for quotas to be introduced at a national level and for parties to have to use those however at the moment that that isn't possible. We would encourage political parties to enshrine voluntary quotas or to adopt mechanisms within their election bylaws within the way that they select candidates to ensure that they hold themselves to account and to actually have that codified in their own operating documents to hold themselves to account on the number of candidates and the number of women candidates and diverse candidates that they actually put forward for election. So I think that that would have to be number one. There's differing progress in different parts of the country on this but right now that's the biggest one because we see I think you see pockets of progress happening where selection procedures may have been applied applied well but then in other election to election this is not consistent and then progress is able to kind of backslide. I think also parties need to be really vocal about their interests and support for the welfare of all councillors but particularly women councillors and kind of be really vocal about their support for improved parental leave for example. Right now we know that councillors don't have guaranteed access to parental leave which is going to be a huge deterrent for many people particularly many women. The salary is obviously a huge issue as well so I think just parties taking this seriously and thinking actually we need to be vocal about our support for the welfare of those people that we're putting forward into into this position. There's certainly work as well that councils need to be doing around thinking about the issue of parental leave. I think that in the previous session COSLA produced their voluntary guidance on parental leave policy and we know that this is not being taken up consistently across council areas. We would want to see all councils across Scotland have some provision in place for things like parental leave. Councils need to be taking action on working practice with working practice with gendered impacts, thinking about the hours of business, the duties that are contingent on the role and making sure that council businesses are taking place at times of day, various times of day perhaps or times of day that suit schedules of different people with different lives, different responsibilities, caring responsibilities or perhaps family responsibilities which disproportionately impact women and ensuring that that's taken into account when designing, when meetings are held, when business takes place. There's all kinds of things and we're going to go into some detail about this in the materials that were shared before this session. One thing that we are really pleased to see is that the barriers to elected office group at COSLA is going to continue. That has been a great focal point for a lot of women councillors that we've spoken to, have spoken highly of this group and of the value of having a focal point for issues that affect women councillors. We're really pleased to see that that is going to be continuing hopefully in the next session. The number one issue just to finally say has got to be remuneration and pay and that really has to increase if we hope to see more women councillors being able to put themselves forward and make that a more viable option for more people from across the community. Thank you for that very thorough response, Jessie. I really appreciate your work, the work of Elect Her and Women 5050. I got to participate in a really wonderful event last week with a couple of MSP colleagues around raising confidence and inspiring women to step forward, certainly to consider the Parliament. I'm going to move on, rather than bringing in Hannah and Jessie, because we've got a range of questions that, in a way, you've started to touch on. I'm going to bring in Annie Wells with another question. She's joining us online and hopefully she's there. Hi, good morning panel. Thank you very much for coming along. I think I want to see more women in politics. I certainly have campaigned on it for the last seven years, and I want to make sure that all parties are making the effort to bring more women into front-line politics. I'd like to just go to Jessie if I can. In gender research showed significant variation in the rates of women candidates across Scotland. I know that you sort of touched on that a little bit, but I was wondering if you could give us what the reasons are for such variation? For example, 16 per cent in the Western Isles, 22 per cent in South Ayrshire, and 44 per cent in the East Lodian. I didn't know if you could give us a bit of background into what the research showed on that. Jessie? Hello. We can hear you. Great. Is that the rates of retention that you were looking at? Of candidates across Scotland? Yeah. I think that it's a really interesting question and something that definitely warrants further investigation, because, like you mentioned, there are areas where things are working well, and there are pockets of success. Indeed, some of that has translated in our initial analysis into the final numbers of women councillors across the country. There are one or two council areas that are forging ahead in terms of women's representation, and then there are others that are lagging behind. Anecdotally, some of that is cultural and some of that is a cyclical thing. Areas that have historically had especially low representation of women is back to the issue of not having the impetus to change because of the low numbers of women. It would be interesting with further investigation to know if those are the areas that, for example, have been slower to uptake policies such as the voluntary parental leave policy and to adopt that to be proactive in showing that this is a space that women are welcoming and that is taking into account their interests. I think that there is going to be a huge amount of this down to party politics as well and internal party politics across the country, which is something that we do need more information to be able to understand. I think that just a note quickly on the data. Obviously, this is our own initial analysis, and it is based on assumptions, and it is definitely imperfect, and it is not the ideal way to be collecting data. It is not necessarily 100% accurate, but it is as best as we have at the moment. There would be dynamics, and it would be interesting to do more analysis at a party level to understand where, if a particular party is doing particularly well on women's representation, does that map on to the geographic spread as well? Is that something that we need to dig into further? What we know is that there are commonalities across the country. A lot of the issues, just because one area is doing well, is that there is nowhere that is absolutely getting this right. A lot of the measures that we have recommended will see improvements being made in many council areas, but more digging in with specific parties would be interesting. Thanks for that response. It is good to hear what you are doing to try to gather what data we can get, and, hopefully, Dan The Lion will be able to get better data. I am now going to bring in Marie McNair with a couple of questions. Good morning, panel. As a former councillor, I understand many reasons why women stand down. Sometimes the average length of the council meeting could be seven hours. I remember when I first stood as a councillor back in 2003 that council meetings were still going on until one o'clock in the morning. It is hardly a family-friendly environment, and that is one of the reasons why women are standing down. What other evidence can be found that, only after one or two terms, women are deciding to stand down? Can you explain that? I will pop that to Hannah. That is okay. Sure. There has not been research. We saw in May this year anecdotally between our organisations. We worked closely alongside each other and we started to see that women in our community who were already elected were saying informally, anecdotally, I am not going to stand again. I am not going to stand again. As there is a response to that, a research working within gender did interview eight email councillors who were standing down. That is the only documentation that we have of the narrative around that. There are real challenges that they are facing. A massive amount of it is the renumeration. We are going to keep saying that. People are not paid enough money to do this incredible job. I hope that, in the second panel, you will be able to explore that further. A toxic culture within local government is something that came up time and time again. It is still a very masculine, archaic, patriarchal, misogynistic culture across the council, even within party groups. It is just an unpleasant space to be in. It does not have to be like that, but for the women that we have spoken to anecdotally and that participated in the qualitative research, those were some of the key issues that were coming forward about why they did not want to put themselves through it for another term. It is such a shame, because we are putting this energy into encouraging women on this pipeline and they are burnt and so do not want to continue. There is such a lot to learn when you become a councillor that many of them say that they had only just really got their feet under the table in terms of how to do the job well and how they wanted to do the job. That was a time to step down. Therefore, we have to do all the work to encourage another generation, but what we need to be doing is creating the conditions where women can thrive, while also creating a pipeline. At the moment, we are creating a pipeline of women and encouraging them into it. They are giving it one term and then stepping down because of culture and finances primarily. As you mentioned, there is incompatibility with caring responsibilities. There is so much more that can be done to improve the conditions once they are in there. There are a lot of recommendations in the written materials that we submitted in advance of this session. That is one of the reasons why I chose to stay and change the culture within councils. I will pop that on to Talu, if you would like to expand further. Certainly, yes, I can do. I am hoping that you can still hear me. However, in terms of women's 50s and 50s existence, it is anecdotal. At the head of the two council elections that we have existed, our campaign has existed. We have messages, emails and first-hand experiences that are written up and sent to us. It is a combination of a lack of compatibility when we have caring responsibilities. Although we have a disproportionate level of care expected by women and we do not have that equality within home, it becomes incompatible to be at council meetings from 6 p.m. until 10 p.m., which is still very normal within the council setting. The second is, of course, maternity and paternity leave now. What is interesting is that COSLA has created guidance. We have women councillors who are taking on the work of advocating for better cultures, yet it is not a standard, it is not a requirement. We should be looking at our politics, particularly our local democracy, as leading by example on those areas when it comes to fairness and access. It is still quite extraordinary to me that maternity and paternity leave is not standard and is of a high quality. The third is, as Hanna has mentioned, toxic cultures. Even if you make your way through politics, through an election and then get to being a councillor, what we are seeing is a revolving door, a disproportionate number of women who only stand for one term and then leave because they have been put off. That will only serve to create a negative image of it and prevent women from wanting to come through and be councillors themselves. What I have seen too often and having conversations across councils when we are presenting about what women 50-50 believes need to happen is a real denial of the existence of the issue. We are still working and focusing on the deficit model of the skills that women do not have. What women do not know and our focus is on what women need to learn or change rather than what the culture and the system needs to change. Although I absolutely agree that the work of elect her does a lot of work on that pipeline, that is only one half of it. For that to be successful, you also need the self-reflection and action of cultures and systems in councils and to stop the abdicating of responsibility on the deficit of potential candidates of our diverse communities participating in or not having the skills or confidence. That is part of the issue, but what creates a lack of confidence is the culture. We need more activity in accepting the reality of inequalities in toxic cultures, sexism and discrimination racism that might be happening within councils. We have the anecdotal evidence and wider of that. We need a reality check of what councils can do and how the system needs to change, not simply the women or the marginalised communities. I will move on to my next question. I know again from experience how the role of councillor has changed. I can say that for the past 19 years. I know how councillors deserve a pay rise. There have been many changes. Can you expand on these for the committee's benefit, on how the role has changed? Given the pressures on Scottish Government and local government funding, how should pay rises be funded? I will pop that to Hannah again, if that is okay. I do not think that I am the best person to respond to this. I think that the councillor has done a huge amount of exploration and research around the renumeration, so I would rather step back from that question and let them as the experts respond to that. Talu, I hope that that is your name. I am sorry. Do you want to, maybe, if you can answer that? If not, we can wait to the next session. Talu, thank you. I think that COSLA is best placed, but in the question of how it has changed, I also got to realise that there is more that has been devolved down to local governments. There is more work that is done. Although there are further powers given to Scotland, that also means more that is happening in local government. There is also the reality that politics in participating as an elected officer, elected official, particularly with social media, means that it is not a part-time role. The expectation is to be available all the time, so renumeration needs to also respect that. Where the funding comes from, COSLA can explain well. I think that our local government needs to be funded to be able to enable that, but we cannot expect candidates to put themselves forward whilst actually being in financial deficit, losing money to be able to do such critical jobs and make decisions on behalf of their communities, on behalf of their constituencies. The role has changed, the role has become more demanding, there is more that is expected of local councils, and the availability and visibility is expected much more than it was 10, 15 years ago or beyond. Looking at that, there also needs to be a better reflection when it comes to renumeration, to understand just how involved and just how high the expectation is of participation and availability of councils. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mary. I am now going to bring in Mark Griffin with some questions. I agree with the points that have been made so far about how important renumeration is to improve diversity. I agree fully with that point, but I wonder if there is any evidence out there that we would be able to use to support that. I am thinking particularly of international evidence. Is there any international evidence out there on renumeration levels for councillors, which is set at a higher level than it is here in Scotland, has led to increased diversity of candidates and councillors themselves? I do not know perhaps. Come to Hannah Stevens first. I am not that I am aware of, again, because I might be able to talk to you about that in light of their own research and the international context of that, but I am not aware of that. But what I am aware of is the hundreds and hundreds of conversations that we have with women, they come to us to learn what does it mean. I am vaguely interested in standing for local government. What does that mean as we run workshops, webinars, conversations to talk about it? We demystify the process and we need to do more to encourage women to stand and better information about the work and the impact of being a councillor, but so many of them then we tell them the stories, they listen to councillors in similar sessions that was mentioned earlier, and they are shocked to learn that it is not a structured job with an agreed time commitment and appropriate remuneration. That is a surprise to people who are outside of the system and interested in peering inside. When they hear about the amounts that they would be remunerated and hear about the expectations of the role, we are honest. We speak authentically. We want to encourage women to do it. We are optimistic, but we are honest about the challenges that are faced. Lots and lots of women go, oh, that was interesting, but not for me. I couldn't possibly do that alongside my day job. I do not know about the international context. I do not know about a wider base of research, but I do know that I hear a lot of women go, oh, that is a shame, not for me though, thanks very much. They carry on with their lives and they contribute to their communities in other ways. We are missing out on some fantastic talent because the structure is not possible to run a family or pay a mortgage on that amount of money. The hours required are too much really in order to balance that alongside alternative forms of employment. There is not a Scotland-specific data that has been carried out on this, but I know that there has been a review of council remuneration and local government participation review that was done in Wales. I am quite sure that that includes international examples from Germany, New Zealand and also Republic of Ireland, where councillors are paid the same and are aligned to senior public servants, those in the public service. I understand that in New Zealand it is based on council remuneration is based on the size of the council, the population size and how much is expected of that council. I am not saying that either of those are necessarily the right way forward, it is dependent on the funding that is available, but I am happy to share with the clerk of the committee the research that was conducted by the Welsh Government. That would be really welcome, thanks to that. If I can move on to another point, and I wanted to talk about legal disqualification for standing for council. Just now, there is a legal disqualification for standing as a candidate for a council if you happen to be employed by that local authority. Given that we know that the proportion of employees in local authorities is predominantly female, is that a bigger barrier to have female candidates for council, particularly when they would have such good knowledge of the workings of that organisation and bring so much to an elected role? Come to Jesse first, if that is okay. That is an excellent point. I agree that the size of an employer that a local council is just numerically is a huge number of people, a huge number of women, who tend to be disproportionately employed in the social care sector and education. Obviously, there are huge areas or huge local government employers who would have excellent insight knowledge, who would have excellent experience and a lot to contribute probably to many discussions around service delivery. I agree that that would definitely be something to look at, something to review and hopefully positively change. You would like to come in on this as well? Yes. Earlier this year, the three different islands community, local authorities approached us about running some workshops for women within their communities in advance of the May elections this year. At the end of 2021 and early 2022, we ran three online workshops. The Western Isles itself pre-May had not a single female councillor on it. It was the only authority, I believe, in Britain that that was the case. We delivered a workshop with them, and that was a huge issue that, particularly in the Western Isles, as an example, that a large number of people employed on the island are therefore employed in local services, and so therefore were unable to stand for elected office. In those communities where there is a large employer, the council itself is a large employer, it is a huge barrier particularly. Again, we get back to the case where people would need to resign their jobs and the security of their salary in order to take the risk of being elected to then receive a lower enumeration. For a lot of people in those particular conversations in that one geographical area, that was a fundamental barrier that came out very, very loudly. I think that I participated in that session as well, which was very useful, but it is concerning that people can't then come forward. I would now like to move on with questions from Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. Thanks for joining us this morning. I wanted to talk about more in more detail with regards to culture within councils, and specifically to look to the last five or six months when we have had new councillors in place. I just wondered if you had any learning that you could tell the committee with regards to any training that has been provided and where councils make their newly elected members feel welcome and part of that organisation. Obviously, we have councils in Scotland of very different sizes of elected members, so I just wondered if there is any evidence you have of that sort of introductory phase for new councillors as well. Anybody in particular, if you want to? I can start with Hannah then. We've only had a few small conversations, but just last month we ran an online gathering for women who had been exactly this, who were elected in May and who were new to the jobs. They've been in role for four months, and it's really hit and miss. I think there's no consistency around all of my information anecdotally based on conversations, so again, I think that Cozzler would be a better place to give you a more structured answer. But anecdotally, women were saying that it was very hit and miss around the support and the welcoming that they'd had in councils. There's such a huge amount of information to take on board, and often those women who were given training and were welcomed and supported by individuals within the older cohort of councillors felt eased and transitioned into the role very well, whereas there were many others who just found themselves standing there not knowing what questions to ask, but being in a position where they have to ask the questions, so again, finding it quite an overwhelming experience, and already four months in, I'll be honest, a real feeling of tiredness and exhaustion already that it had been a very difficult journey in terms of getting your feet under the table, as it were, and understanding what the role is and how to navigate the responsibilities and the work in the community. I think that there's a real opportunity for peer support, which is why we gathered that, but there's a real opportunity to bring women together to share those experiences, and again, I think that that would be something that could be really helpful in creating that space for women to thrive, having people to turn to is a safe space where you can ask questions, but really, the training needs to be much more structured in place, that there is an orientation process that is put there to make them feel secure and welcomed, and that they have the ability to achieve in the role. Thank you for that. Does anyone else want to come in? Yeah, I think that training is obviously a huge thing. I think that it's, like Hannah was giving some insight there about training needs of women councillors that are coming in, and that's certainly a really big part of it. I think that all councillors need a lot more training on issues of sexism, discrimination, how to conduct yourself within the chamber, and how to avoid perpetuating some of the toxic culture and dial-of-debate and general, overall toxic atmosphere that many women have talked about experiencing within the chamber. We need to talk about training for all councillors when we talk about training. Obviously, councillors receive such a huge amount of information when they start, as Hannah was saying. One thing that has been mentioned in a couple of conversations that I have had is about the councillor code of conduct, and that, while it exists, it is not really adequate in addressing some of the specific situations that enable a very combative and aggressive environment to thrive within the chamber, which is often quoted by women councillors that we speak to as motivating factors in their decision to stand down or not run or stand for fewer terms. Interestingly, and that is anecdotal as well, some of the councillors that we have spoken to are aware of this and think that there needs to be more of a code of conduct that is very specific to council business. The current code of conduct mentions that it is very broad brush and talks about the need for respect to behave with respect, talks about standards and very little specific information about how to conduct yourself in a debate, for example, language that should not be permitted. It is more specific in the way that councillors relate to each other and tries to address and dismantle some of the attitudes and some of the cultural issues that we have talked about that should be looked at. Again, that should not be done on a patchy basis. That should be applied across the country. All councils should be looking to adopt something that supports and enables all of their councillors to better do their jobs. Thank you for that. I think that there is learning from the Scottish Parliament—well, the Presiding Officer might not agree with me in terms of the chamber, but there is probably learning from our code of conduct, which maybe also needs to be applied to those in the elected office as well. There was a concerning story that, after the last election, Adam Breven News was in with regard to a newly elected disabled member of Edinburgh City Council, and no assessment for her needs being taken into account whatsoever. I hope that the elected members coming to this Parliament feel that that assessment does take place of any additional needs that we might have. However, I just wondered if that is also something that you have had feedback from newly elected members on as well. Anybody tell that? I would like to come in on that. Yes, thank you. The issue of intersecting inequalities becomes really important. When we are pursuing councils that work for women and if we do not think about the intersecting inequalities of, for example, mobility issues, disability, race, English and the second language, all those issues, what is likely to happen is that we create access to politics for those who are likely to have some form of access, some form of political power and engagement. It is not those who are furthest away from access to opportunity, power and wealth, which is why it is so critical to think about it as a whole. We need to think about the experiences of sexism, but we also need to think about how that intersects with marginalisation as a consequence of disability and mobility issues, as a consequence of racism. One of the things that I have been told numerous times is the experience of intersecting experiences of racism and sexism and ableism and sexism happening within councils. It needs to be taken really seriously, because if we do not think about multiple marginalisations, like I said, we are likely to benefit the lowest-hanging fruit rather than those who are furthest away from access to political participation. Many of our councils are operating in inaccessible ways, both inaccessible when we are talking about neurodiversity, inaccessible when it comes to modernisation and use of technology and inaccessible in terms of the physical locations and old buildings that have not been made accessible, physically accessible. All of that needs to be thought about if we are going to tackle the democratic deficit that we have and we are going to create councils that are reflective of the communities that they are meant to represent. Before you go on, I am going to bring Pauline on a supplementary on that. The access to elected office fund has made an impact on the number of councils with disabilities. I wonder just what more can be done to ensure more people with disabilities feel that they can put themselves forward for election. I do not know if anybody wants to come in on that one. Just really in the back of what Miles was saying, they are on a much broader aspect. I think that we have heard that issue before in the committee, so I do not know if anybody wants to pick up on that one or add anything to it all. Do you know about the access to elected office fund and whether that is having an impact? Yes. Inclusions Scotland and Glasgow's disability alliance have both done work about particularly local government participation. Inclusions Scotland being the strategic partner when it comes to the access to politics fund. I think that engaging with them as the national experts on that would be particularly beneficial. What we have at women's 50s is women talking to us about the intersection of disability discrimination and sexism and the experience of marginalisation and essentially being left to figure that out on your own. We were talking about training and induction and inclusiveness at the beginning of having that council participation. Again, that needs to be about beyond looking at people and sign those if they are women, if they are disabled, it is about all of those things and particularly how other people respond to access needs and ensure that it is not an afterthought that part of the infrastructure and the expectation of how council activities will take part. In fact, I believe that there should not be allowed to be council activities that are about public participation and wider participation that is done in an inaccessible way. I think that you want to come in on that as well. Tal, let's covered it. Oh, okay. Super. Thanks, Miles. Do you have any more? Just finally, convener, my final question was with regards to the fact that the vast majority of councillors in Scotland represent a political party and come through that political party network. I just wondered in your view what more you think can be done. My own party, for example, established women to win. I think that's provided that peer support network, which was missing. So I just wondered is there learning from other political parties which could help as well to try to turn the situation around? Hannah, will I bring you in first? I think really that the political parties have a huge role to play here and it's almost unfortunate in some sense that they do because there's so much opportunity when the political parties aren't involved, as you see in some of the island communities where it's predominantly independent standing, then it becomes about community engagement and encouraging people who are active in the community to step forward and consider these roles. But the political parties, as you say, are involved in a majority of local authorities, so therefore it's an additional level of gatekeeping. So even in response to your question a moment ago regarding disabled people's access, actually the journey to standing as a councillor is coming through the political parties, so you have to first of all, before you can even consider it, have to be welcomed by the political party. Let's talk about disabled people in that sense, that therefore their party meetings have to be in accessible venues and so we saw during the pandemic the rise in online meetings, there was a huge increase in disabled people's participation in political activity. It was a really, really positive thing, but unfortunately there has been quite a rush to return to in-person meetings, which again means that disabled people find it harder to participate. So I think that the political parties have so much to do. Lots of parties have different mechanisms to selecting candidates, not all of them do, but some, but I think that we need to go earlier into the process. Is the party meeting a welcoming place to people with intersecting identities? Are people of colour, are women of colour feeling welcome to go to that party meeting on a Tuesday evening to get involved in the party? For so many of the parties you have to have membership for 12 months before you can be considered to be a candidate. So there's a really long run-up and you have to have real access to information. Again, I think that the political parties don't provide transparent information about the selection mechanisms, so again it's another space where it feels like it's this slightly toxic culture, it's this behind closed doors, and you have to get in with the right people to find the right information so that you can understand what the journey ahead is. I think that there's so much to be said and so much to be done for parties, and I will say from our perspective that different parties are trying different mechanisms, but none of them have got it right. Thanks for that and I believe that Tala, and then Jesse, who would like to come in on this as well. Yes, thank you. So there's a few things within this and I'll come back to my point about the deficit model. I do believe that there is a place for training for potential women candidates for marginalised communities. Miles Briggs has been pointed out there that Conservative parties participate in. Most parties have some kind of network, but it can't be the only mechanism that exists because our evidence shows us again and again that the focus is on women scaling up and not the culture and the system transforming, changing and tackling its inherent inequalities that are in the fabric of the system. All that happens is that women take on the work of tackling the sexism and discrimination that they face themselves. Whilst there is a place for that, we cannot—and I think that it would be really wrong for us—to focus on women and on scaling up only and not looking at the system. Political parties use all-women shortlists. Obviously, women 50-50 advocates for candidate quotas because what we see is that when there are quotas, there is infrastructure and system change within political parties. There becomes an impetus to do something about the lack of candidates from diverse backgrounds, marginalised backgrounds and women particularly coming forward. There is the creation of some form of accountability and some infrastructure and system change. It is important that I say that, while there are lots of myths about quotas, promote those with merit. Whenever we have seen quotas be implemented, we see that the average level of merit increases. We see the promotion of merit to be more likely because we do not exist in our political space within the meritocracy. There is a range of things that need to happen by political parties, but one part of that is the network, the training for women, but it is the culture change, accountability, reporting mechanisms and, in our view, quotas mechanisms that need to be taken forward for it to be systemic change. Thank you very much. Jessie, you want to come in too? Yes, just quickly, I completely agree with what has been said by Botana and Tala so far. On the note of looking at what parties do to change their structures and change their culture from within and not putting that impetus on women or on those that are experiencing the discrimination under representation, we, along with Elector, with 50-50, with Inclusion Scotland, Senvo, Ameth, Stromwell Scotland and organisations from across the equality sector have produced the equal representation and politics toolkit. As a solution, that is an online tool, and it is an off the shelf set of self-assessment resources that cover a spectrum of party life, things around selection processes, how to hold inclusive meetings around cultural issues, handling complaints, bullying, harassment—all different types of issues that might come up typically in party life. It is available online, and it is a very quick self-assessment tool. We are encouraging and we offer training on the toolkit and how to get the most out of it. As with all of us, it needs to be used consistently. We know that it is working well where it is being used at the moment, but it is encouraging people in the grass-roots parties who control who decides to come along to a meeting and then who decides to come back crucially, because it is getting involved but it is also staying involved. That is often the challenge, but it is right from the ground up going how do we change, how do we accommodate and show that we are serious about improving representation of women and of others who are underrepresented. Also, parties have a duty of care to their members, and that is again various hugely party-to-party local party to local party. I think that councillors and council candidates—this is something that we have heard from those that we have spoken to—often feel themselves falling through the gaps of various different support or welfare processes. There are technically not the employees of their party, but there is a duty of care there or there should be to enable them to support them and to improve the conditions that they have to work within their parties, as with any kind of workplace. I think that parties really need to take this issue seriously and there is an off-the-shelf solution that can help with this, but we would encourage them to adopt it and to formally require, through whatever party mechanisms, their members, their local branches, etc., to use it and to make the most out of it as a starting point, but it does need to happen in tandem with all those other mechanisms as well, because, as with anything, one of those methods will only get us so far. Thank you, Jesse, for your response, and thank you, Maaz, for the questions. I am now going to move to questions from Willie Coffey. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to everyone on the panel. I just wanted to stick with the theme of support for our elected members, councillors, who are currently in office. Maybe to ask each of you for one or two suggestions about how we can improve this. I think that you have all mentioned training and the opportunities for training for new councillors, particularly beneficial when you are in the post, but what else can you see by way of support that might be needed? I am thinking back to our experience during Covid, when one of the few good things that came out of Covid was the whole digital hybrid model becoming available to elected members. I saw the benefit of that in the Scottish Parliament, but I also know that it was a huge benefit to elected councillors across Scotland in giving them a greater ability to participate in the business of the council, which respected family issues as well, which was a great boost to many councillors. I wonder if I could invite each of you to offer us a suggestion or a true about what the better support mechanisms might be going forward. I might as well start with Tala, if that is okay. Yes, of course. I saw the modernisation during Covid, as you said. It was one of the few good things to come out of that period. A lot of women talked to us about the fact that that made it more accessible. I absolutely believe that modernisation access to technology to prevent the kind of presenteeism in council chambers and to make it more accessible would be one. The second is the expectation of councillors to be participating in meetings late into the evening. The expectation of the level of work, whilst it continues to be seen as part-time, needs to be reviewed. Renumeration needs to be reviewed to be in line with the level of work that is required. The final thing that I would say is that there needs to be more robust, more transparent reporting mechanisms that everybody is made aware of that creates a sense of safety and security for women in marginalised communities when they participate to be able to report issues related to sexism, discrimination, any kind of bigotry inequality, where it is transparent, open, robustly investigated and then action taken forward. When we have those kinds of reporting mechanisms and that transparency within local government, it gives people a feeling of safety and trust and it also prevents those issues from occurring because people see that there would be consequences to this kind of behaviour. Modernisation and technology absolutely are a review of timings and the expectation of the level of work if it is to remain part-time linked to that is to renumeration and finally better reporting, transparency and accountability models. I think that that is really very well there. It is one additional piece that often in local authorities there is a department called members support but we have heard time and time again how that is just not enough support and the difference between MSPs and MPs when elected with that comes a budget to enable you to hire staff, support you in case work and parliamentary preparation and just the dearth of that type of support, administrative support, that members support within local authorities aren't able to support members in the way that they would truly like to. So a little bit more administrative support in really allowing them to achieve their roles is another factor that I think could be considered. Thanks, Hannah. I think that everything does go back to remuneration and the need to recognise that that is the biggest form of support is councillors being able to know that they are being fairly compensated for their work and the remote working again, that is something that I am speaking to councillors. This is something again that is a patchy application nationwide, councillors in some areas are saying that there is a real push to return to trying to phase out remote working, which is obviously hugely concerning because I think that we know that the experience of Covid has shown us that having a hybrid model is the ideal way to ensure that people have different options to participate and that's crucial. It's crucial that it's retained and it's understood to be best practice and that goes particularly for rural areas as well where commuting distances are huge. Not exclusively, but we know that there are some rural areas that have particularly low levels of women's representation from the initial numbers that we've looked at. Whatever can be done to help women to be able to participate in those areas in particular needs to be taken really seriously. I think that absolutely there needs to be something around an impartial complaints procedure as well. The report is referenced in the resources that we published in one of the reports that, in England and Wales, Fawcets Society did, that was one of their major recommendations on a huge piece of work that they did as one of the main mechanisms that they recommended to improving women's representation long-term is improving how complaints and instances of discrimination are handled sensitively and completely impartially. I think that the issues around improving the code of conduct or perhaps looking to a new kind of code of conduct or terms of reference for debate and activity that actually happens within the chamber is something that needs to be looked at. There was as well an example that I don't know if other councils might want to look at it but three women councillors who were stepping down at the end of the last session put together a model policy. That was in Glasgow and published it and put it forward as a motion within councils outlining what they felt needs to happen in order to address the issues that had motivated them not to run again. There are lots of complaints, which is a big part of that. There are also other things around debate within the chamber within hours of work. That is something that maybe individual councils can look at in the short term but in an ideal world we would obviously want something that can be applied consistently so that there isn't so much variation in the experiences of women across the country. I think that that is everything. That is great. Thank you to three of you for those contributions. That is very important to make those points. My only other question is really about numbers, just to ask if we have data available that shows us the number of female councillors from ethnic backgrounds in Scotland and in Scotland's councils. If you have that information and data, would you be able to share it with the committee, please, if you have it? I don't have that data, unfortunately. We are awaiting the publication of the results of the candidate diversity survey that was run for the first time. I understand that it will be published soon, and that will help to improve the picture that we already have. One of the greatest challenges at the moment is that all the data that we have on the number of women councillors is gathered by organisations like ourselves. We do not have the information available publicly to be able to carry out an intersectional analysis, so we do not have any data—certainly not any data—that would be accurate on that. I do not know if any of the other panellists have anything. I think that your audio has gone. I think that maybe we will have to move on for an hour, hopefully. We were doing so well. Oh, now we have your picture. That's nice to see you. I'm not sure if you can hear me now. Oh, yes, great. Go on. Apologies, I'm not sure what's happening. In terms of numbers, women 50-50 does its own check-through of who is elected. We're a voluntary organisation, we're running volunteers, and we do this as much as we can. You can imagine that there's over 1,200 councillors that are elected, and we're trying to get the numbers we have. The issue is that we do not have the data where people identify themselves, where they identify their own ethnicity, nationality or sexuality, where they provide that data. If we are to do that accurately, sensitively and robustly, it is up to councils to publish that data, to invest in finding that data or for COSLA and others to get that data and publish it. We do not have the intersecting data to tell us about ethnic minorities, but anecdotally we know that there is not a fair representation of ethnic minorities in our councils. We know that there has never been a relative population sample over the years of ethnic minorities, so we would expect to see between 6 and 10 per cent of councillors from ethnic minorities. We haven't seen that. What we do know is that 35 per cent of councillors that were elected in 2022 were women, and that it is an increase of 6 per cent from 2017, but 85 multi-member wards remain as all male councillors, compared with only 12 multi-member wards, where it is holding. We can see that data that we have, and that is about ethnicity and sexuality. We do not think that it is appropriate for us to determine that and to look at pictures or names online to be able to tell us that information that should be coming from the councils directly. I think that the committee will probably want to pursue that. Thank you very much. Thanks, Willie. Paul, you have a question on data. Do you want to come in on a supplement? Yes, I think that it has been touched on, I don't know if anybody else wants to add anything in there. Historically, previous surveys of candidates and councillors have had low return rates, and I think that you have all touched on your own interaction with candidates and councillors. Is there anything else that you think more could be done to ensure a higher rate and more representative rate of return on those kind of surveys? Jessi, you will probably kick off for yourself if anybody else wants to come in. Yes, absolutely. I think that it will be interesting to see what the return rate is. Historically, it has been fairly low. Our preference would be for a mandatory system for gathering this data. It has obviously been done sensitively and with plenty of design in a way that it is not demanding the status of anyone, but that a survey itself is a mandatory part of nomination forms. It is certainly time to get creative in thinking about how responses could be maximised. I think that it is a longer-term comm strategy to encourage parties or to really encourage parties to encourage their candidates. Again, I anecdotally, when the survey was being rolled out earlier this year, I think that in some areas it would be really interesting to see if there is a geographical breakdown, if there is a party breakdown to see where that messaging was getting out to candidates on the ground and where they were seeing the value of providing this information and completing the survey. It is how it is pitched that it has been able to demonstrate that providing this data enables everything to work a lot better, to be able to understand where the gaps are in terms of representation, to understand where work needs to be undertaken at all levels to improve that next time round and to be able to show that value to people. Something that continuing to work with parties is obviously really, really important. I wonder if there is an option to work with them around their internal mechanisms and on candidate agreements or documentation like this, when people are standing for election, that they are made aware and make some kind of agreement perhaps to complete the survey. That is something that needs to be looked at a bit more, but that is why, with all the work that we have done in looking at this area and in this campaign, this is a five-year challenge now, or coming on to a four-year challenge. If the surface to be run again and we want a higher response right next time, the work needs to happen now to lay that groundwork, to make people aware of it and to make parties aware of it, that does leave a challenge for independent candidates on how to be captured in that data, because you cannot go through the parties and use those structures. If there is anything that can be done working directly with councils in areas that have high proportions of independent candidates to help to get that message out on the ground, but the key thing is that these conversations begin now and are continued for the next four years and are not coming last minute, until I have the maximum time to get everyone aware of it and prepared for it. Thank you so much for joining us this morning to give us very thorough responses. I have pages and notes on things that we can follow up on. I will now suspend the meeting for five minutes to allow for a change of witnesses. We are now joined virtually by our second panel of witnesses to continue our evidence taking on understanding barriers to local elected office. I welcome to the meeting councillor Shona Morrison, who is the president of COSLA. I want to especially welcome you because I think that this is the first time that you have joined the committee in your new role, so a big warm welcome to you today. Councillor Morrison is joined today by Alexis Campbell, who is the policy and participation officer of the qualities at COSLA as well. Before I open up the session to questions from members, I would like to invite Councillor Morrison to make a short opening statement. Good morning, everybody, and yes, quite rightly, my first time giving evidence, so another part of this diverse and wide-ranging role of a councillor. I like to thank the committee members for the invitation to give an evidence this morning and contributing to the committee's on-going work and barriers to local elected office. This is an area of work that has been a key priority for COSLA for a number of years, and I'd like to acknowledge the hard work of my predecessor, councillor, Alison Everson, in driving this forward in her role as the previous COSLA president. It is clear that there is still much to be done to move barriers to sections of our community that are currently underrepresented in the Scottish local elected office. We cannot consider local democracy to be representative until our councillors truly reflect the diversity of the communities that they serve. The voices of lived experience from across our communities are needed at the decision-making tables at all levels of the political systems, and local government is no exception. I particularly welcome the opportunity to speak about financial rights to elected office as a result of the current rate of councillor renumeration, as many potential candidates are priced out by the low rate of pay that a local elected member currently receives. For individuals who do decide to stand and are ultimately elected, the financial pressures that result from the rate of renumeration lead to many councillors having to balance their responsibilities as an elected member with a second-page job, and in many cases carrying responsibilities. That has a significant impact on female members in particular. We heard many examples of women councillors deciding not to seek re-election this year simply because we could not afford to remain a councillor. Things must change to ensure that financial and indeed all other barriers to elected office are removed. I welcome the committee's continued focus on the issue, and I am very happy to be here this morning to answer questions. We have already touched a little bit on some of what we are going to cover, but it is good that we have the opportunity to get into a bit more detail. I would like to begin by focusing on the slow progress towards increased gender representation among councillors. Given the steps taken by various organisations over the past 10 years, I wonder if you have a sense that you have pointed out that renumeration is one, for example, but are there other things that might be the barriers that contribute to the slow pace of improvement in the number of female councillors in Scotland? Thank you, convener. Yes, thank you. I really appreciate listening into the last representatives who were here from in June during Women's 50-50 and their contributions. I think that possibly we would cover the same issues in regards to barriers for women, so absolutely renumeration being right at the top of certain surveys that we have responded from local authorities as being a major barrier to elected office. I think that women also experience in particular real struggle trying to balance the working day as a councillor in my previous role in my own authority. As a senior councillor, my day began the early hours of the morning and often finished very late at night having to balance several roles, several chairs and other responsibilities within the council's strategic boards, as well as the time spent within our communities, which is obviously where we need to be seen and to be listening so that we are accurately representing those who are elected as into office. I think that the pressure of workload is significant, certainly having spoken to later colleagues who chose not to stand again in the election earlier this year. Part of the contributing factor was that balancing, especially for women councillors, of childcare and responsibilities. Many councils should still be aware that we have a lot of experience at the table who have been in the position of being local councillors in the past will know that many councils still meet in the evenings. Although that may work for many people, it certainly does not for others. I think that there is absolutely a factor that deters women and other marginalised groups from standing for office. I would also suggest that there are significant cultural issues within councils. I think that colleagues absolutely need to create representations in the last hour about what some of those difficulties are and, again, around those kind of systems in place to support, specifically women, in those roles who perhaps are faced with very difficult, fairly toxic working environments. Again, anecdotally, my experience from colleagues has been that it has been another significant contributing factor to decisions not to stand again for re-election. I am afraid that you were able to listen in on our previous evidence session and you will have heard me asking for thoughts about the representation of young women in local authorities. I wonder if you have anything more to say about that in terms of the challenges that they may face even further in being elected? I support that. That is an area that, within my own authority, we have absolutely identified as being an issue. That is an ability to encourage younger people to engage in local politics. We have certainly advocated the presence in our council of representatives from local high schools and many of our primary schools to encourage elected members to go in to speak to the children about local democracy and why local democracy matters. That is something that I have participated in myself and I am really welcomed. The earlier we can get that message across to our young people about the importance of young women standing for office, the better. That is great. I think that, going back to what I have highlighted already, it is difficult for anecdotal stories not to become part of elected members' stories about their inexperience and that influences decisions that young people make about standing for office. I reflect back on that toxicity in many of our councils that women specifically face in their day-to-day work. I have just been inspired by needing to interact more with high schools, and maybe there is something that we can do about that. I will look into the future. It is the same question that I asked in the previous session. What are COSLA doing to ensure that we are not having the same conversation in 2027? I was reflecting back just in the break there about the last comments. I am not sure that it was Jesse that made them, but this needs to be on-going. We cannot wait until we are at the precipice of another election before we become reactive. I am delighted that it has been a very busy first few months in this role, but I am delighted to confirm that our special interest group barriers to elected office has been reconvened. We will have a paper going to our council leaders next month to get their agreement to reconvene. I think that that will bring a different conversation. We are now in a bit of a different landscape and a lot of new members are interested to see what that group is going to look like and what the priorities are going to be considering when we are in a very different landscape and facing massive challenges within local authority. Of course, that narrative is something that we are living and breathing every day. I think that potentially we will have a bigger challenge in the next round of local elections for councils to attract candidates because it is an incredibly challenging role to fulfil. I think that, with the pressures on people's own finances, those factors that have covered the remuneration, the pressure of Irish workload, etc., will be very difficult for most people to make that decision about whether they are willing to commit to as they face all the pressures on their own every day lives. Thank you for that response. I am really heartened to hear that the Barriers to Elected Office Committee has reconvened and looked forward to hearing what they come up with. I am now going to move on to questions from Mark Griffin. Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to touch on the issue of female councillors voluntarily standing down after one or perhaps two terms. Just to ask whether you or because I have any information, any data on this nationally, I mean on my own local authority area at the last election, five female councillors voluntarily stood down and two of them were elected by elections, so they did not even have a full five-year term. That is a huge number for just one local authority area, so I wonder if you have any data on the position nationally. Thank you for the question. I will maybe refer to Alexis in a moment to see if she can update an accurate data. Coming back into councils and local government at this time, we have seen an increase of 29 per cent to 35 per cent, so there has been an increase in women coming into councils, but, similar to yourself, I have experienced colleagues who had a massive amount of experience and talent to offer to the role to make that decision not to return in elections earlier this year, which is hugely disappointing. I think that one of our last speakers spoke about the breadth of the role and how often you just come to that five-year term that you just begin to feel it, your understanding, completely what is expected in the roles of councillors starting to really get into your stride. It is really disappointing that the women who have previously stood for council, and I am sure that they have been incredibly successful in their roles, have made that decision not to stand, but, again, I would just reiterate those pressures that people are facing, so the rumination that is reflecting in the current crisis that has affected everybody's life, the work loads when it comes to balancing childcare and the hours and, again, culture issues, I suppose, all of that just creates the perfect storm for certain women to make that decision not to stand for local authority elections. Okay, so I was just going to check with Elyksus to see if she has any more data. Yeah, please. Thank you, Councillor Morrison, and good morning, committee. I'd just like to really reiterate what Councillor Morrison has said around the financial pressures, particularly faced by female councillors and the impact that has on their decision not to seek re-election. It's something that came out very strongly from our survey of councillors that we undertook last year around workload, where, in an open text question asking for councillors' views about financial barriers, it was an overwhelming response from female councillors saying that the pressure of the low pay that councillors currently receive and the pressures of having to balance a second job with childcare have led to them deciding not to re-stand the situation that was undertaken before the 2022 elections. All but one of the comments were either from women stating that they are not standing for re-election because of remuneration, with one being from a male councillor talking about a female councillor, a female colleague of hers who'd already stood down before the election citing financial pressures as the reason for not being able to continue in the role. Touch briefly earlier, Councillor Morrison, on the way that the role of a councillor has changed in the range of responsibilities and the burdens that has changed over the past 15 years. I wonder if you're able to expand on that and reflect on that. Given that context, whether it's even remotely sustainable for councillors to continue on the current levels of pay they are, given the changes to the role over the past 15 years? It's a massive challenge. I think that our evidence documents the fact that many councillors currently hold two jobs because the remuneration isn't adequate to meet the current standard of living. On my last term, I balanced two jobs with great difficulty, but that's out of necessity. The role itself, within an administration of a local authority and again, there will be lots of experience around the table, is incredibly demanding and continues to be incredibly demanding over the period of the intensity of the pandemic. The reactive practice that was needed was just to ensure that services were continuing to deliver as they should have been for our communities now. Incredibly fastly-paced way of working was hugely demanding for local elected members as well, but often we're finding senior members of councils are doing 50 hours plus. That time is spent, as I said previously, between strategic responsibilities and balancing our work with communities, which is where we need to be seen and be visible, so that we can ensure that we're representing our communities as best as we can. Often that is really challenging. Those late hours, finding childcare and balancing all the responsibilities that you have at home with ensuring that your community is represented as best as it can be is extremely demanding. There is no site to those responsibilities that are diminishing in any way, and that just feels like it's in a very tense time. The workload of local councillors will only increase as we go forward. I don't feel that the rumination is adequate at the moment. We really should be focused on allowing councillors to focus on being a local elected member in his own right and not having to be in a situation where a second job is required. We've talked about cultural barriers and financial barriers, and I just wanted to touch on legal barriers. We know that there's a disqualification for those who work for a local authority to stand for election. There are disqualifications around bankruptcy and other things. I'm just wondering whether those disqualifications are appropriate at all, given the context that we live in of the cost of living crisis and interest rates shooting through the roof, potentially councillors becoming bankrupt. Because of the levels of remuneration, why should that be a disqualification for someone who has that lived experience to become a counciller? Why should someone who has the experience of working in a social care setting be disqualified from becoming a counciller where someone who provides it in the independent sector and is contracted by a council can stand for council? We see, particularly in the central belt, councillors working for local authorities that are perhaps right next door, but it's much more difficult to do in Ireland or in more rural communities, so just your views on some of the legal disqualifications that there are on standing for a counciller and whether you think they are appropriate, given I think that the legislation was set out in the 1970s. I suppose that I would comment on the inclusion or the ability of local authority staff to stand for local action. That would be fairly disappointing, especially considering the likes of money. We are a major employer in the authority, as well as having a heavily rated female percentage within our employees, so it is disappointing that you would be unable to attract people or people who are unable to stand for local election if they are employees of the council, because, like you said, that lived experience is absolutely vital when it comes to fulfilling the role as an elective member and representing our communities. Yes, that is disappointing. We also face a challenge where we are asking people who perhaps hold a job within a local authority whether they would like to stand for an election and those are people who potentially will have to give up their job for perhaps a lower pay. It is a huge commitment and a huge leap for people to make. People still do it, but it is a huge risk, because there is no assurance that they will be elected into office. That poses significant challenges. I will touch on my question. The culture and working environment of local councils has cited the reason why some female councillors decided to stand down. Having experienced sexual harassment myself as a young female councillor and receiving no help when I called out my male group leader, I get why some women feel unsupported in that misogynistic environment and it could be a reason why they chose to stand down. What more can the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government do to improve that situation? I am sorry to hear about your experiences. That reflects my experience of getting anecdotes later on to my colleagues and what they have gone through within the council. Incredibly challenging situations. Unfortunately, it is not a reporting mechanism that is particularly helpful in any way for the majority of the experience. I think that ensuring that when women are in the elected office and they are experiencing any sort of behaviour, as you have described, there is a safe reporting mechanism in place that they can gain assurance and safety through. We have a system where, more often than not, the reporting mechanism that is often referred to by colleagues is standards commission, albeit if there is an extremely important function. Often, the nuances of certain admissions to the standards commission are perhaps not particularly captured by the correct layout that they can respond to. You often find that women councillors are just life in a position where they feel unrepresented and feel extremely vulnerable. There is a lot of work to be done to learn from one another and to make sure that, when women expand mentally, we should be able to provide a safe work environment for local councillors. Staying on the sort of safe aspect causes the submission to highlight efforts that have been made to improve the safety of councillors. What evidence is there that there is a particular concern for female councillors and what more can be done to ensure that councillors feel safe in their duties? I do not know if Lexis wants to answer that one or even yourself. I can start off. We have certainly done, having, you know, there has been several cases recently where councillors have had quite horrific attacks and threats against them. There has been work done with Police Scotland, certainly with the new cohort of councillors that came in May. Sessions have been banned online with Police Scotland just around safety for specifically lone working. That is something that I come into the role of having increasingly been a mental health nurse very aware of. I am just ensuring that colleagues were in left and very vulnerable positions, but often it was supporting one another rather than those real formal mechanisms being in place. I think that we are certainly making good progress with ensuring that that is an area where local authorities are having to absolutely laser focus on. Feedback from colleagues who have taken part in the online sessions has been really welcomed. I will pass over to Lexis. I would point to the work that we have done with the other local government associations across the UK—local government associations for England, Wales and Northern Ireland—under the umbrella of civility and public life, which was started in 2020 with a joint statement from our then president, Councillor Everson, along with her equivalence in the three other nations. Through that work, it has been very clear that it is female councillors that experience online abuse and harassment in particular. As part of the work with the previous Barriers to Elected Office Special Interest group, we developed resources around digital citizenship infographics for councillors to use on their social media to set rules of engagement and advice about how to report incidents and how to address those incidents. Just to pick up on what Councillor Morrison has said about the physical safety aspect, we have a very good working relationship with Police Scotland, which developed in terms of councillor safety following the tragic murder of Sir David Ames MP in October 2021. That has been an on-going relationship in which Police Scotland has really tried to understand the nuances of the councillor role and the fact that, as Councillor Morrison has said, it is a working role. Particularly female councillors may feel vulnerable having surgeries late at night without staff in the way that an MSP or an MP would have at their surgery. The feedback that we have had from elective members following the latest round of safety briefings from Police Scotland has been incredibly positive. Councillors have been provided with their local area commands and divisional contacts in each area. Each briefing was delivered aimed at specific areas of Scotland so that relevant divisional police staff could be there to make sure that those relationships with local police staff are developed to continue that work. I just wanted to come back and ask a question. It is connected to culture and may be a simpler one to answer. When you talk about the long hours that people have to work and the lack of balance for the remuneration, but maybe something could be done to change the long working hours, so who has the power to change the working hours in a council for the councillors? It depends on the role that you fulfil within a council. In opposition, although you still have the same amount of committees and so on, the demands in your time are slightly less as a councillor in administration. Along with committees, you have regular meeting with officers and so on, so that is absolutely part and parcel of the role. The community meetings are again vital that, as much as possible, you are able to attend. It is those long hours, and I am sure that we have experienced at the tables of council meetings. Council meetings can go on quite a long time, so often it is the responsibility of the chair to ensure that councillors are being concise in their questions and discussions. That sometimes does not happen. There is a responsibility to speak to each other as colleagues. It is incredibly important to make people aware. We have also had colleagues who have physical issues with attending long meetings, so that ability to use digital technology has been welcomed within everyone's authority. I hear that from colleagues as well, so that time away from the desk, stretching your legs and being able to eat something to get a drink makes a huge difference. There is a responsibility on individual councils to ensure that the business—certainly that is something that my own council is looking at at the moment that is carried out in a way that we are making sure that all our businesses are appropriately carried out, but that it is done so now in a way that recognises the pressure on people's times. There are challenges there that we can all learn nationally from one another as to how we ensure that businesses are conducted in a way that recognises the pressure on individuals' workloads. I will bring in Willie Coffey with a couple of questions. I want to continue with the same theme that I asked the previous panel. I do not know whether you were tuned into that. It was really about support mechanisms that might be in place to assist the elected members, particularly female elected members, to participate and do their job well and hopefully stay within the councils. A couple of suggestions were more support on admin and casework. As you know, MSPs and MPs have a budget to allow us to do that, but in my memory it is very limited to allow elected councillors to have that same level of support to conduct casework. The hybrid working model is one that we are all aware of and is really beneficial to all elected members and the parliaments and the local councils. I just wanted to get a few thoughts from yourself, Councillor Morrison, about what support mechanisms might look like and whether COSLA is intending to pursue those over the current term that you are in. Thanks for the question. I will just touch on the hybrid stuff first. Whilst we really welcome the ability to hold hybrid meetings and falling on and sharing the pandemic when that became just a normal way of working, what I am now finding and colleagues are finding is that as we become more relaxed about going back into adenas where you are in close contact with others, there is a slight push from local authorities to perhaps have an expectation that people are there in person rather than online, which is posing quite a few difficulties that she can imagine. We have several disabled members within our council who really feel that their experience is limited because of that. They are attending online meetings digitally for them, but they are being faced with a chamber full of their colleagues, missing a lot of that. Those are new members, so I am missing a lot of that. I suppose that it is just soft exposure to colleagues where we build those important relationships. Whilst I absolutely, from myself, have to travel three and a half hours to get to Edinburgh, hugely appreciate the benefits of online meetings. I think that COSLA is a way of ensuring that there is equity for councillors in amongst that and that nobody feels a disadvantage because that would be hugely, hugely frustrating. I know that a lot of our, certainly my own, councillor members that have been elected in May, disabled members again benefited from the funding for a managed elected office. Obviously, that has since kind of left a little bit of a vacuum, so that I really emphasise now on member support. That is often, through no fault of anybody's, is just sort of lack of exposure. I am aware that some very good work has been done in the Scottish Government, so I am really keen that local authorities learn from that practice. With regard to those culture and workload issues, I absolutely agree, having worked myself from an MSP, that the huge benefit to have, you know, that ability to draw on all of your staff and all the expertise that they bring in and can offer to support. So, absolutely, you are constantly juggling multiple responsibilities both locally and nationally. So, yes, absolutely agree that that would be a focus going forward with the reconvening, the special interest group for the barriers to elected office, that would be looking at how we support our councillors and local authorities to manage that case work and other responsibilities. Thanks for that. Have you had any time to consider whether all of Scotland's authorities are still embracing the digital hybrid model quite well or have some retreated back to more towards in-person? I am going to retreat back into our comfy silos. I am not entirely sure that I do not have that data to hand, but that is certainly questions that we can ask and we can pull out some data there. But I do not experience this from COSLA, from COSLA meetings. We have done one hybrid meeting so far, the rest have been online, and we probably found about 30 per cent of leaders attended in person and the rest were online. So there is still that nice balance, but it is just very aware and again that is something that we will be focused on in the reconvened special interest group about ensuring that nobody feels at a disadvantage that there is equity for all members. Another question that I had that you might have heard in the previous panel again, we were interested in the numbers of female councillors in particular from ethnic minority backgrounds and the previous panel were not able to provide any hard and fast statistics or data about that councillor Morrison. Is that something that COSLA might take up and be able to report a breakdown of female councillors from ethnic backgrounds and so on to inform the work that the committee is doing? I know that incredibly important. I would make the same references as the past speakers to the Scottish Government elections team and the survey that they have collated and will be published shortly. That will be welcomed by COSLA as providing excellent data with regard to the elections and the shifts in our demographics of our ELLAT to members. Many thanks for that. I just wanted to pick up on the support aspect. Shona, have you got any thoughts about whether the Scottish Government has a role in helping or encouraging councils to provide more support? I am aware of that, but I might defer to Alexis in a moment if that is all right. I would say that we meet regularly monthly with Mr McPherson in his role as Minister for Social Security and Local Government. That is a space that we are able to have those conversations. I assume that that will also inform part of their discussion in the Scottish Local Authorities Rumoration Committee that is due to take place at the moment. They are just trying to or they have advertised to populate the committee and hoping for their report to be published by August 2023. COSLA is sitting within that committee and the population of the committee. I assume that that would be an area that we would be asking them to pursue. I want to ask a couple of questions about barriers for disabled members seeking office and what happens when they gain elected office. I am sure that you are both aware of the high-profile case here in Edinburgh of a newly elected disabled member who highlighted the lack of support accessibility. To be quite honest, basic workplace health and safety advice was given. I was just wondering what conversations have taken place within COSLA to make sure that that changes the fact that the situation arose in the first place. I do not think that it is acceptable. Following on my question with regard to the Access to Elected Office fund, what positive impact do you think that has made? Thank you. I will ask Alexis to pick up on a couple of points. Having spoke to a few of our newly elected councillors who have benefited from the fund, I think that it was a huge benefit to be able to have that support there. It allowed them during campaigns and what have you to feel incredibly supported. Unfortunately, as I have highlighted, we have now found that cliff edge from having that support in place to now being a newly elected member has certainly had conversations with colleagues. It is about the lack of awareness—sorry, that is probably not the right word—of the lack of member services that have not had time to adapt and space. I hope that we can reflect that good practice within COSLA. I will defer to Alexis to see whether she has anything else to add. I would like to pick up on the first question about the lack of support for a newly elected disabled member. It is something that concerns around support and the knowledge and experience in member services departments in councils to support disabled elected members. It was something that was raised as part of the work of the previous Barriers to Elected Office, especially the interest group. One of the pieces of work that I undertook after the group expanded at the end of the previous session was speaking to member services departments in councils across Scotland. A clear message came out from my conversations about the skills around understanding how to assess the needs of an individual in terms of what somebody might need to help them to access their role and be fully included in their role. It is not necessarily there within those teams in the way that it is very much embedded in a local authorities HR department because of the responsibilities of making reasonable adjustments for employees. From COSLA's point of view, although councillor does not have employee status, they need to be able to do their job and be supported to access what they need to do their job from the first day of being elected. There is definitely work that can be done and something that councillor Morris and I can discuss in terms of future work for the newly reconvened special interest group around what advice and support is given to local authorities to ensure that member services departments have the skills and experience and can draw on knowledge from their human resources departments to make sure that they understand how to make reasonable adjustments where to access sources of support because the burden sometimes falls on an elected member to know what they need in order to do the job of a councillor. However, if you have not been a councillor before, you will be relying on council staff to assess your needs and to suggest the adjustments that might need to be made to your equipment or those access issues. One other thing that I would like to point out is the conversation that I had over the summer with staff at the Scottish Parliament about their experience of making sure that the Parliament is an accessible and inclusive place for their disabled elected members. As councillor Morris and his authority said, there is a lot of learning that local authorities can take and that has a role in that and taking that to local authorities from the Parliament to make sure that accessibility is not just something that is fully experienced by elected members in a particular sphere of our political system. Thank you for that. That is very helpful. Like you say here in Parliament, we have a framework that is available. I imagine that local authorities were following that as well, so I am disappointed that that has not been the case. Just finally, I wanted to ask about the very issue that you touched on in relation to member support groups. Do you see a difference in the sizes of councils and councillors that are being supported within councils and what services are being provided? Is that something that, with each council, setting different rules and different rates, having different systems in place to support their elected members needs to be more of a national standard provided so that people can expect? I know from my own Conservative colleagues who have joined different councils just how surprised they have been at the lack of sectorial support in some areas, whereas in other councils they have been very pleased with that. I wondered whether that was something that you would also like to see and something that needs to be pursued? There is always a need for ensuring that we have a really co-ordinated approach to what we can offer in members' studies in Scotland, so absolutely. I suggest that that inconvenient and special interest group will absolutely focus on where we are seeing extremely good practice, what we can learn from colleagues, whether that is local authority or a Scottish Government, and replicate the same, so that we have that standard so that we can give people assurance that whether they are in a council in Shetland or in Murray or Aberdeen City or in Edinburgh, they should have the same experience and the same access as other colleagues do. Thank you so much for that. We have come to the end of our questions, it has been very helpful. I really appreciate you joining us this morning, Councillor Morrison and Alexis. Your evidence has been very useful. I look forward to other times when you will join us, but as we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the remaining items on our agenda in private, I now close the public part of the meeting.