 N 살��세요, summoned members, to the 12th meeting in 2015, and the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, as usual, remind everyone present to switch off mobile phones as they can affect the broadcasting system. Agenda item 1 is a Declaration of Interests. Before I get there, we have a new member because of course Margaret MacDuggaard, our deputy governor, has moved on to pass it is new. Hyellirtingan i ausson o brykmull. R丈夫 marriage fee to the committee and I invite you to declare any relevant interests. R MEI has no relevant interests to declare and for that I refer committee to my entry in the member's register of interests. Gerda'r sgiliau. Item two is the selection of a deputy convener. Parliament has agreed that only members of the Scottish Labour Party are eligible for nomination as deputy convener of standards, procedures and public appointments committee. That being the case, can I invite nominations for the position of deputy convener? The nomination has been made. There is no need for a seconder. I take it, you accept nomination. In that case, I ask the committee to agree that Mary Phee be chosen as the Deputy Minister of Standards, Procedures and Public Appointment Committee. Are we all agreed? Yes. I congratulate you on joining us here. I look forward to delegating a significant amount of work to you in due course. Agenda item 3, next item of business is for the committee to agree to take agenda items 8, 9 and 10 in private. Agenda item 8 is the response to the committee from the Scottish Government on correspondence on the lobbying bill. Item 9 is for the committee to consider the evidence heard this meeting on its inquiry into committee reform. And agenda item 10 is for the committee to consider a paper on consolidation bills. Do members agree to take these items in private? Yes. Thank you very much. Agenda item 4 is for the committee to decide whether consideration of its evidence heard on its inquiry into committee reform should be taken in private this meeting and future meetings. Do members agree to take this item in private today and in future? It would be helpful if you said yes, thank you, or no, if that is your preference. Right. Agenda item 5 is for the committee to take evidence into its inquiry in committee reform. We have unfortunately received apologies from Morddo Fraser and from Ian Gray. Let me welcome to our conveners Kenneth Gibson and Christina McKelvey. And let me simply invite questions from committee members who are going to kick off. Right. In that case, let me just kick off with, since none of you indicated, let me just kick off with a very open question, perhaps starting with Christina. If, just to lay out perhaps if you think there are any particular things in relation to the operation of committees that you would wish to draw to our attention for our consideration and perhaps proposals for change. Yes, thank you very much, convener. Thank you for inviting me along to your committee to take part in your inquiry also. There's obviously a number of discussions we've had over the past few months about committees and how committees should function. I obviously chair the European and External Relations Committee, which meets on a Thursday morning and that would probably be my first issue would be the Thursday morning meeting and how it condensed you then have to make your committee meeting to meet the deadline for general questions. I suppose for me, if committees, in one of the threads that we've been discussing, if committees were able to meet while Parliament was sitting then that would take some of the pressure off the workload. The other issue is that I have committee members who sit on other committees that sit on Thursday mornings, so sometimes if we want to meet more often, we tend to stick to a two-weekly programme, then facilitating that can be quite difficult. Having flexibility to meet in afternoons would be helpful indeed. The general running of committee, I have three SNP members on my committee, two Labour members and a Conservative member. We are about to cover a piece of work that I think would be extremely interesting for our Liberal Democrat members and our Green members in the Parliament. Ensuring that some of that information gets to other political parties who would have an interest in that inquiry work is very important, but then again getting them along to committee might be difficult if they are already sitting on committees that morning. It's the same problem right through for the Thursday morning sitting. Committee flexibility is one of the things that I would be keen on scrutinising further. How that can be resourced as well, because I understand the challenges that would pose, but for me that is sort of my opening salvo. Before I go to Kenneth Gibson, let me just test one of the things that you said which is sitting when Parliament is sitting in committee. I wonder if you have any views as to whether there are particular parts of plenary business that might be more suitable for overlap with committees. Without advocating that, I suggest that one might think about overlapping with members' debates, because of course there is no decision from what Parliament makes as a result of that, and perhaps the implications might be that. I agree with you and I think that some of the restraints that we have as parliamentarians is that stage 3 would obviously be a no-go area. Stage 3, if you have got amendments going on at stage 3, then that is a no-go area. Obviously, when there is a debate without a decision is another one. Possibly if you are very lucky, you have not got a member on your committee that morning who has a question for general questions, but in some cases your committee could be stripped of maybe one or two or even three members. We all have questions that morning and you have to be wrapped up in a way in order to allow them to, in some cases, get prepared for that and just get into the chamber in time. I take your point. I myself have a question this morning. Patricia. I wanted to ask a follow-up to something, Christina. I wondered whether we are very alive and our committee meets on a Thursday morning too, so we are very alive to the issue of the Thursday morning session. I wonder whether an alternative solution would be to change the sitting pattern. We did not used to sit in the mornings or every afternoon rather in the way that we do now and I wonder whether reverting to not necessarily the same sitting pattern as we had before, but just a different sitting pattern might help to resolve that particular issue that a number of committees, unfortunately, have. I know that this is my second term here, so I had a term where we did not sit in the Tuesday afternoon and I had a committee on a Tuesday afternoon, which always seemed to be, I was able to prepare for that much better than maybe other ones. Generally, the European Committee starts at 8.45, so you are talking about early stats for people as if they were doing a bit of a pre-meat or whatever, but I agree with you. The best formulation for that, I think, there was lots of conversations, the time that we were changed over to a Tuesday sitting in the afternoon as well. I think that it is a difficult one to do. I see that maybe there is a proposal to try and maybe do committees on a Monday afternoon. That would be something I would be quite resistant about. I spend all of my Mondays and Fridays, no doubt, like yourself, covering constituency work from first thing in the morning to whatever community council or public meeting is on in the evening. That would be difficult if we had to sit in a Monday afternoon. Better people than I am would come up with a formulation of how we should sit. I think that the additional change to the sitting pattern has put pressure on committees, especially in Thursday mornings. Mary Fee. Thank you, convener. Patricia has asked part of my question, because it was about the sitting pattern in Parliament and the impact of the three afternoons, but you have answered that. The other question that I was going to pose, when you talk about the pressure on committees and the timing of committees, and I too used to convene a committee on a Thursday morning, so I absolutely know the pressures that you are under. Committees sitting at the same time as Parliament causes problems as well. What business is it okay not to be present for? Having meetings in the evenings, is that something that you think would gather favour? Is there a lot of events on in here at night that a lot of MSPs attend? Perhaps we should look at having committee meetings in the evenings. We are all on, and no doubt, like myself, we are all overextended on cross-party groups that we sit on. I tend to think that maybe there are too many cross-party groups, and maybe a bit of work on that is needed. I understand when people have got an issue that they want that to be the cross-party group. I understand that absolutely perfectly as well. There is a lot of competing cross-party groups, events or receptions. For me, I generally host something every other week. A big part of that is due to being the committee convener, because it will be a European event either in this place or around the corner of the European Parliament office or up at the university. A few times a month, I am doing events in the evenings that are linked to being the committee convener. I am not the best person to say that I have free time in the evening to be able to sit down and do a committee when I have some of that. It is just a normal process of being the convener of that specific committee that pauses that pressure. I was on a committee in the first session, who sat once through with PO's permission in the afternoon, and then we sat into the evening as well. We came in during summer recess to finish a report. That flexibility is there, but it is difficult to make sure that you can get everybody around the table. I have two further asks to contribute, but if I may, I am going to defer that, because I really want to bring in Ken, and I was not wanting to open it up without having her from Kenna. I would like to comment on some of the points that have been raised. Can I just say that the way that we should do this, I am perfectly happy for an interplay between the two conveners, if that helps us to understand? First of all, my position is quite clear. I was one of only two MSPs who did not vote for the Parliament to have plenary sessions on a Tuesday, because I actually think that we need to spend more time engaging with constituents. Therefore, I am automatically against any meetings on Monday or Friday, and I would be happy for the Parliament to go back to the way that it used to meet previously. I think that a lot of plenary sessions are unnecessary, and a lot of filling goes on in between bills. I am certainly totally against committees meeting at the same time as the Parliament, because I do not think that members should have to have the choice of going to a member's debate, which might be a very specific interest to them, let alone something of importance in the chamber. I am afraid that I am against that too, because one of the Parliament's great strengths—I went to two events last night—was its engagement with Civic Scotland. A lot of people are saying to me how different it is to engage with MSPs and ministers here, as opposed to MPs and ministers in Westminster, for example. That is something that we do not want to damage. Evening meetings would certainly damage that. It is a real difficult one, because there is a lot that we need to do and there are only limited amounts of time, but I would prefer it the way it was before with Parliament meeting on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. There is a wee bit more flexibility. That is my view on those particular issues. Do you have anything else that you want to say at this stage? One of the things that you first talked about was—where do we start? There is a vast amount that we can cover here. First of all, when committees are organised, there is a lot of responsibility on the convener to ensure that the committee runs effectively. That means things such as, for example, that members are turning at one time, not wandering off in the middle of sessions. I do not allow electronic devices, because it is a discurty to witnesses and other communities of different view. I think that what is important is that all members get full rein to ask questions and that we are possible decisions are made on a collegiate basis. On what actually happens in our committee, I think that there is an issue that we have in that we do not—because we have all the financial memorandum, etc., they can often be at buses. You know that you do not get one for a couple of months and then they will come at once. Time-tabling is always an issue. Of course, we are not always in command of our own timetable. For example, the new four-year spending will not come to November, so we are going to have a truncated budget process, unfortunately. What that means is that the way that the finance committee works now is that we do not have as much time and we have less time in the future because we are discussing not just how we spend money but how we raise money to do things, for example, which we have found very useful in the past, such as our inquiry into demography or preventative spend inquiry, both of which should have strong cross-party input and support. There is a concern that we are not able to flex our muscles, so to speak, and another thing that we want to look at is post-legislative scrutiny. Bills are passed and what happens in finance is often, as an example, that the Scottish Government will come along and say, this piece of legislation we think will cost £10 million a year and we will fund local government or whatever it is for £10 million, because they will then come along and say, well, we think that it is going to cost £40 million. Now, who is right and who is wrong? The only way we can see who is right and who is wrong in this Dutch auction is if we actually take evidence, obviously, of course, and occasionally we have sent, as you probably know, financial money when I was back when no being happy with them, but we really need to be able to have time to do post-legislative scrutiny, so we can see who is actually accurate here and why were they not accurate and what can we do differently in the future. That takes me on to something else, which is about, if we look at the departmental structure of government, it has changed quite markedly since 2007, and that ministers, at least in theory, are supposed to have a cross way of working and not just focus on their own specific agendas, but I am not convinced that scrutiny function on committees has necessarily changed to match that, and I think that there has to be more scrutiny, not just of what we are going to do in terms of the year ahead, in terms of spending, but what happened in terms of the outcomes, not just in terms of the area that I have spoken about already, but was there value for money? Was that the correct way to spend money? Could we have got a better result spending elsewhere? I think that there is a lot of that, so I think that the difficulty is always time pressure, resource pressure and prioritisation, and I think that in our committee our concern is that we have less flexibility because of the new devolved powers than we have had before and that does cause concern. Can I, before I come to both Cameron and Devon to signal the one to come in, just on the issue of time in particular for financial memoranda that your committee has to deal with? Do you think that Parliament has enough information available to it when it makes decisions about timetabling for bills? Is that timetabling that either creates or denies your committee perhaps adequate time to do what you are doing? Do you think that we have enough information when we make needs decisions? Yes, I think that we do in actual fact because, for example, in the last year, a couple of times I have said, I'm sorry, we don't have time to scout nice as effectively. You're just going to have to delay the process until six times as we can actually look at this and ministers have said, okay, fair enough, and they've been able to do that. What actually happens with financial memorandum is that we obviously put out a call for evidence and sometimes we'll get a lot of detailed evidence from a lot of different stakeholders and we're trying to take evidence from people, as other committees do, across a range of views. Sometimes, however, the responses are pretty anemic and I'll consult with other members on whether or not we should even take evidence because it may be just a complete waste of time because the money involved is minimal, sometimes only a few thousand pounds or there is no one who's either desperately for or desperate against what's being proposed. Whereas in other bills, we take very detailed evidence and what we try to do is as much of a spread as possible on that particular issue. Can I come in on a point that Kenneth has picked up on the point of financial memorandums and the issues that that can cause within the committee? I've got an added dimension and if we have an EU directive that is flagged up as a subsidiarity issue and one of the challenges is that Westminster are waiting very, very late in the day. They have about an eight or nine week period to respond to the EU on those matters. Recently, there was a directive that was about free movement of workers that had been delayed at Westminster. They then thought that there was a subsidiarity issue with it, came to the Scottish Government, came to me later that evening, so we then had to call a quick committee to consider that and there wasn't a subsidiarity issue, but we then had to report back and ensure that we were reporting back to the committee at Westminster and then, obviously, to the European Commission. You've got the added dimension in my committee that if something like that comes, we need to have the flexibility to meet an ad hoc basis that we managed to get all but one member around the table in order to deal with that very, very important and pressing issue. To ask a specific question to Kenneth Gibson, one of the things that we discussed last week was the issue of sub-committees. You'll know that there's the policing sub-committee. I have a number of concerns around how sub-committees would work, what the make-up of the sub-committees would be and how they would be seen to be doing the correct scrutiny and how they would be accountable to the committee. While I don't want to give the impression that I rank any committee of more importance than the other, given the specifics of your committee and the type of work in scrutiny that your committee on an on-going basis does and will continue to do, that will increase. I'm interested in your views on sub-committees and how they would work. Okay, I'm not keen on sub-committees much because we've got only seven members on the committee and I think that given the importance of budget scrutiny, I think that we want to have as big an input as possible from as many members as possible. Therefore, I'm not really that keen. We have had sub-committees when we went out on various visits to look for example in our employability enquiry at different areas. We sent groups of two members, always with more than one party in the group of two. We're going to the Basque Country later this year to look at their fiscal framework relative to Spain. What's holding up a date for that is that I want to ensure that the three members who will go will represent three different political parties. One of the other members is having difficulties with dates and we may have to change the dates. I think that if we are going to have sub-committees, it should only be as a last resort and if we do, there has to be good cross-party involvement in that. I'm very resistant on it generally in terms of the wider committee remit simply because the budget process is something that everybody at all levels wants to have an input into. Incidentally, in terms of finance committee, one of the things that we decided yesterday was that we were taking evidence on the Scottish rate of income tax. We've never done that before because of the new tax. That's going in four different evidence panels, so that's four panels that we would never have had to take before. Obviously, that squeezes our other business because we have to take evidence from everyone from civic Scotland to trade unions to business to informed members of the public. It's all about squeezing a quart and a pint pot and making things efficient. I have to say what the first thing that I did is that the finance convener was moving the committee from a Tuesday to Wednesday to ensure that it maximises the turnout of members because not all members can come on a Tuesday morning if they've got business in a constituency on a Monday night. Having a committee on a Wednesday, which not everyone can have, because there's not enough rooms apart from anything else, it certainly is an advantage. Let me play the two members who have previously. I thank you for Bairdence Cameron first. We discussed last week that maybe a Tuesday afternoon should be a member's debate day. I rather agree that there are too many debates that are not necessary, let's put it that way, repetitive debates on subjects that we don't really need to debate, just to fill in the time-finding debates. I think that if we couldn't make Tuesday afternoon a member's debate day just for members with committees able to meet in parallel on that case. Also, there was a suggestion to make FMQs to 2pm on a Thursday rather than this, so we are not constrained as we are here this morning to finish at 11.30. I wonder if that was a very sensible suggestion. I think that it's also more sensible to use the chamber time more effectively to focus on the stage 3s because I find that very baffling. I have to say that in terms of moving FMQs, that's an excellent idea. A lot of people who come to the Parliament come from far and wide and it's difficult for them to get here and get through the sausage machine at the front door early enough to be able to get into questions etc. I'm absolutely in my constituency, which isn't the furthest away, that's caused difficulties in the past. I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be a good idea because we have questions, put full-load questions on a Wednesday to a clock, and it seems to work quite well. I appreciate that. I don't think that we should worry about that. I'm of the same view as you, I don't think that that's necessarily what we should be. I'm also not convinced that I have to say about topical questions. I'm not convinced that that has been a particular success, to be honest. I think that if something was to be moved or even removed, I think that topical questions would be the first to go. I think that general questions is, I would like to see that extended beyond 20 minutes to 30 minutes. I'm sure that we would all like to see FMQs extended to give more people on the back benches more time to come in, so I think that that's an excellent idea, certainly, having it later in a Thursday. Can I just say to colleagues that, obviously, we are looking at committees, and, well, it touches on committees, but there's more flexibility. I'm not trying to shut down getting some things on the record on that. I'm just saying, let's try and be careful to remember that we're trying to help them. Well, if we just put it in, it's actually to give more time for the committees on Thursday, that's three of the hours. No, no, no. Cameron, I was quite content with your contribution. I'm merely just saying that we've got a big enough subject without trying to reform all the Parliament in this particular inquiry. I think, sorry, to be fair to Cameron, though, everything that's done impacts on the committees because it impacts on the flexibility that committees have when they can meet and for how long they can meet. Certainly, the suggestion that Cameron's made would free up a lot of time in a Thursday. It's not my intention to shut down coverage of more general issues, but let me bring Dave Thompson in. He's been waiting very patiently. No, I like him. I very unlike him, indeed. Oh, well, I thought I'd make an exception for today, convener. I agree with a lot that Cameron has said, and having a Thursday morning committee for quite a lot of time and being a convener of one, I'm very sympathetic to the issues around that. The moving of FMQs after lunchtime would certainly free up a lot of time for committees. If we think about where we're going with this, we're going to have to look at the number of committees and the remits, especially with some additional powers coming to the Parliament, and it may well mean that some of those powers will be allocated to some of those committees who would need to meet in a Thursday morning. By definition, they're going to need more time, so we need to create that time on a Thursday morning. The only way to do that is to move FMQs. I wouldn't agree with Kenneth Gibson on the topicals. I think that they have been useful, not every week, granted, but quite often there have been some really meaty subjects that have allowed a lot of MSPs to come in with supplementaries, and that was a major change because normally on portfolio questions and general questions, you get one supplementary question on topicals. The innovative thing is that a member can come back with at least two supplementaries, and other folk can come in with supplementaries as well, so I think that there's a value in that. I'm not convinced about general questions, to be honest, on the Thursday. You could have a session on the Monday running from 2 o'clock, which would be topicals slash general, so there could be preset general questions, but also space for topicals. Sorry, did I say Monday? Tuesday. I meant Tuesday. I saw the arrows flying from the eyes. There's no patience for you at all. On a Tuesday, so you could still have the ability to raise a very late topical question, but also have set general questions if you want them to continue. You would then have questions on a Tuesday, portfolios on a Wednesday and FMQs on a Thursday, and you could increase the time for each of those questioning sessions if you wished, and reduce the plenary time for debates to maybe run from round about 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock, with the proviso that any debate can run on into the evening anyway—and we've done that on numerous occasions, if it's necessary, to run on until 6 or 7 or even 8 o'clock. I think that by adjusting what we have just now, we can achieve the creation of a lot more space for committees, a more sensible time for plenary debates, and personally, I think that increasing the time for members to ask questions and to have more supplementary questions is a really good idea, because that is where members can really put the First Minister under pressure. I just think that that kind of broad approach would be very, very useful. Just a couple of observations of your number two, Patricia. Don't let's forget those emergency questions, although the rules around that might be worth revisiting. Actually, it's already possible, and it has happened. I've got multiple supplementaries, because I've caught the community, Presiding Officer Zion, and I've had a second supplementary. It does happen, but it's very exceptional—very, very exceptional. I think that it was about 10 years ago that that happened, so that's the case. It is an add-on to my expression earlier of a committee's meeting during the sitting time that we recently met via video conference with the Irish Parliament's European Committee, who the committee sat during their parliamentary sitting time, and they had to get up four or five times to go for a vote. I suppose that some of the legislation that was going through their parliamentary time lent itself to those interruptions, but that's maybe a pitfall if we are thinking about that, if there is an emergency question or emergency vote or a statement or something like that. I think that the big elephant in the room is, do we have enough members in this Parliament to facilitate the committees? That's not something that I'm going to take a position on, because it's a tough one to agree, but when you think about 129 members, take out the Presiding Officer, take out the ministers, take out, in some cases, conveners and spokespeople, you're left with a very, very small number of people. In referring back to Kenneth's point about subcommittees, I would be worried about the cross-party element of that as well, whether there would be enough members to facilitate that, and whether that function would work. The other side of that is that if you have lots of subcommittees, you're going to need lots of clerks and lots of support in the background to facilitate that as well, and that's something that we need to take into account. As far as Dave's idea is about questions, I might agree that I'm not sure about topicals, but I like how it's done. I like the idea of additional time to ask questions. I think that maybe if some of those questions were tailored a bit better or whatever, I don't know. I mean, I'm a person that rambles anyway, so I'm not the best person to give advice on that. If you're looking at sitting times for each afternoon, how do we formulate them to work better so that committees have got more flexibility? That seems to be the main crux of what we want to try and establish here. I'm conscious that we want to hear from our colleagues who are not on the committee, but I would make a couple of brief points and then ask a couple of questions if I may. One is that Dave was absolutely right to say that FMQs were changed because of the need to satisfy the timings of the press. It was also because general questions came immediately before, so it meant that it ran on even further. In a sense, FMQs actually give a focus to general questions and make general questions sometimes feel a bit more lively because you've got more people in the gallery, more of an atmosphere, more of a feel. I think that that's a good thing. I'd quite like to see that session extended, but if we are serious and the reason we got portfolio questions—because in the beginning we didn't have those—was because we wanted to be able to give a real focus on individual portfolios, I think that those questions, particularly, but probably general questions too, should be capable of having two or three supplementaries from the member asking the question and an additional question. I personally would be quite happy to see us doing more—I'm not keen on topical questions, I don't think that it's great—but I would be keen to see us having more questioning of ministers in the Government. I would have said that in the times when we were in Government too. We currently do it, and I think that that's a good thing, but I think that it's also about the balance because we're all very conscious that the public thinks that we don't do very much at all, and if they think that we're just asking questions and not actually debating meaty issues, then you could have a problem there too, but I think that there is a balance to be had. I definitely do, and I think that the question sessions are actually pretty important, but Kenneth Gibson was quite right, and we raised this last week too, to say that there are a lot of debates that feel like fillers that are really not necessary, and I think that Cameron had some trenchant words to say about that too last week. Dave's point about meeting into the evenings—I'm sorry, I'm not keen on that—I think that there's enough that goes on anyway. We do try to be family friendly, and as we rehearsed last week, that can only ever work for those of us that live in the central belt, but I almost every night am going back to my constituency to a meeting or to something else, and if I can do that, I think that that's a good thing. I don't want to be here into the evening sitting in plain a recession. I don't think that it's good and I don't think that it's helpful, and I think that you lose your focus after a while in the chamber. I just think that stage 3 is a prime example. Does anyone actually know what we're doing in stage 3? Only the people who've been directly concerned with the bill one way or another. However, I genuinely want to ask some questions of our colleagues, and one of them had been the idea that perhaps there should be more members of the Parliament that it's been raised with the committee, but, interestingly, nobody—and I include myself in this—wants to advocate it. I want to provoke your response, so I'm grateful. It is something that perhaps needs to be given some consideration, but the other interesting issue that was raised last week—and again, this is me playing devil's advocate—was the idea that we curtail the number of bills that can be taken in a parliamentary session. I don't know what you can curtail that to. I know that the average is around about 12 every year, but maybe it needs to be looked at, but I think that if you were to do that—and I'm slightly contradicting myself here—it would have to be a bit of a waiting, because we know that there are more bills than necessarily go to justice, for example, than to other committees, so you might have to look at how that broke down. I would genuinely be interested to hear colleagues' thoughts on those two things. Well, on bills, of course, the Presiding Officer has been somewhat exercised, with reasonable cause, that this session we've only one committee bill, and it's our bill on members' interests, which is a very narrow issue. Perhaps there's an issue there. The other thing that came out of what was said there, which I just put to colleagues, which is not really a committee, is that, given that the people who get to ask questions are by ballot, does that not prevent, inhibit, make it difficult for those who are informed on, for example, justice to be those who are asking questions at justice questions? Because the name has got to come out of that? I think that we all have an interest in justice, and I don't think that you can say that only those who have that interest should be able to ask questions or even have the majority of questions. However, I think that what does happen is that if you are a party with more backbenchers than other parties, then your opportunity to be called is probably decreased. I don't think that the random selection doesn't work. It should not mean that. Yes, but they're not weighted in any way, so it's just something else. I actually went 15 months without getting my name ever coming out of that. I have to say one of the things that I found very difficult. I was a spokesperson, and for 13 months I didn't get called to ask a question in the areas that I had responsibility for. You have to rely on someone else having something that you could possibly piggyback on if you've got a burning issue that you want to raise via an oral question. I don't know whether there needs to be some kind of mechanism for spokesperson's questioning government or something. I just thought that I would throw that in light of what was being said, but I think that, Ken, do you want to come back first? In terms of the number of members, I seem to remember a young radical by the name of Dave Thomson getting pillared in the press for suggesting an additional number of MSPs. He was the first one to put his head above the parapet and was metaphorically decapitated for it. I think that it's about how we do our jobs. I was thinking about if you look at the state of Israel, which is a population of 8 million people, they only have 120 members of the Knesset. They're all elected by a list system, and they don't have constituents. They just spend their time dealing with policy and legislation, regardless of what you think about that particular country. That's how it's structured now. We have a totally different system, and the issue that we have is that, certainly for myself, even though I'm convening a finance committee and all that, at least three quarters of my working week is dealing with constituency matters all day, Saturday, all day, Sunday, Monday, Friday and during the day when I'm knowing debates, because it's a third committee that I've been to in a row. I've had to defer from speaking in debates the last two afternoons because I've just had so much constituency work to do with it, and that's a real issue that we have. I think that the more accessible you are, the more people are likely to come to you than others. That's an issue. I was a list member in the First Parliament, and I always thought that the balance could be taken up by list members, perhaps doing more on the committee side than in First Pass to Post members, but that's another issue. In terms of bills, I'm not in favour of curtailment, simply because I think that the people who would lose out would be individual members. We've seen that Anne McTager has got a bill on organ transplantation, which I'm very supportive of, and it's taken a while to get through the sausage machine. I worry that members will not be able to get bills through. It takes an earthly to get through, as it is, a ridiculous amount of time. I think that they could be expedited. That's something that I certainly don't want to have any curtailment. In terms of topical questions, the reason I mentioned topical questions is about freeing up time for committees, which is what this discussion is about. A lot of people will not submit topical questions, as I hope to get an FMQ. I think that it would be better to have 45 minutes of FMQs and maybe five or six backbenchers asking questions. Last week, the Presiding Officer said that I will take more questions for members. I had a really important constituency issue, and I was not called. Only two people got called, Murdo on the backer, one of the other three questions. The first person was David Torrance, and he was only one on a constituency matter. Clearly, we are not getting enough time for constituency members. I know that the Presiding Officer is always trying to get the party leaders and the First Minister to hog it less, but that's no going to happen. What we need is an extension of time, and if we have to get rid of topical seven extra 15 minutes in FMQs, that would give us complete flexibility on a Tuesday for committees, and if we had them at two o'clock, it would give you the whole of Thursday morning as well. I think that that's the way forward in the plenary sessions on a Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Can I just clarify something? The Australians have a seven-minute time-out on questions. Finished or not, guillotine comes down after seven minutes. I'll just throw in that the Irish interrogate their First Minister every sitting day, but what I was going to say was that I wasn't suggesting curtailing members' bills, but I would like to give more resource to members' bills. I'm talking about curtailing members' bills, with the provision that there's something of an emergency nature. To debate at lunchtime and at authority as well. I think that I've got David next. Don't forget that, before we move to Tuesday afternoon plenary sessions, we met on a Thursday morning plenary session, so you can't just do away with Tuesday afternoon and keep your Thursday morning for committees, you'd have to fit in the plenaries either on Wednesday morning or Thursday morning. I actually think that having the opportunity to do plenaries with ministerial statements earlier in the week on a Tuesday and having big debates on a Tuesday is a really, really valuable thing, and I really don't want to lose that. I think that we can adjust the current system to give us more time for committees. I like the idea of having the Tuesday afternoon plenaries available for ministerial statements, but also to have the three members' debates that afternoon. These debates last about 40 minutes each. Can you make this relevant to committees, please? It's about making the time available. In your remarks, if you can link it together. Well, what it does is it allows you to have those debates on the afternoon on the Tuesday, and because there are no decisions, therefore committees could meet at the same time on a Tuesday afternoon, so you're actually allowing both things to happen at the same time. Members' debates by definition are promulgated by members, therefore, if members don't want to be involved in a Tuesday afternoon, they wouldn't submit members' debates, so it gives a lot more flexibility. You could also redefine the topicals to a more topical general. You could broaden out the definition to allow more questions on a Tuesday, including real topical questions. You could extend FMQs and move them, and that's giving you the space that you need. You're being naughty. Right, okay. Just save that at the end. I've got Mary and then Cameron. Can I ask both of you a very specific question about committees? That is around the way that committees plan what they do, plan their inquiries. I'd be interested if you think that committees are focused enough at the start of an inquiry on what they want the outcome to be, and if the correct amount of planning goes into that, so that committees aren't having evidence session after evidence session and getting the same type of evidence back, if they're focused enough, or should more be done at the very start to make committees sharper and more focused? We tend to have an away date in the summer before we come back to look at our work programme in some detail. What we have is certain dates that are effectively scheduled in where we know that we're going to get, for example, financial memoranda or indeed the budget process, etc. That gives us flexibility in our time, but what we are committed to doing in the finance committee is doing things efficiently, which is why, if we get a mountain of evidence, we tend to take it from the people who have very divergent views. If we're taking panels, we often have people with divergent views on the same panel so that we can get a wee bit of interaction and debate and discussion, but the important thing is to focus on exactly what we want the outcome of any given inquiry to be. That's absolutely right. The last thing that we want to do is to be drawn on through week after week. We don't have the time for that anyway, but if we did have the time on something that we don't believe will ultimately make much difference. It's always a balance between engaging stakeholders and ensuring that you don't overdo it. We do round-table discussions sometimes as well as straightforward witness statements in going out. That's very important. You cannot, as a committee, work on a week to week basis. Even with the best clerks, the clerks of finance are excellent. You have to have a long-term structure and you have to know what time you'll have available, because it may be that two months down the line, as happened last winter with the abolition of the community charge bill, the Government will just throw a wee hanger in there and then try and come up with something out of the blue. We just told them, I'm sorry, but there has to be time for public engagement and consultation on this, so a bill that was going to come forward before Christmas was put back into the new year. We have to have a flexibility, but you're right. We won't have work for the sake of it. Sometimes the finance committee will do a three-four-hour shift. Sometimes we won't do 90 minutes. We're not going to do work for the sake of doing it. Do you think that a lot of that comes down to the strength of the convener? I think that the convener obviously has a major role simply because, for example, when it looks at financial memorandum, I will look at all the evidence that has been submitted after I call the evidence, and I will decide whether we should take or not the evidence that we have received on mass to the lead committee. We will then take that to the committee itself to ask whether they agree with that, and they will also get copies of the submission. It's so far in the past one and a half years that the committee members have never disagreed with me on that, so when I've suggested we take evidence, they've always agreed, and when I've suggested we don't, they're not in the part of that, because the support that you get from the clerks in the session they make. Of course, the convener has a major role to play in all that. On your question, Mary, I think that one of the perverse things of having a very, very tight timetable is that we've become quite fleet of foot in the Europe committee. We have a rapid tour system because a lot of European issues feed into other committees as well, so we use some of that work. We use the ability to call for written evidence, putting those calls out as early as we possibly can, but we have very, very tight criterias to what the questions would be, and we do some pre-planning, but things just come in and you need to deal with them. One of the challenges for a Thursday morning is getting witnesses around the table for an 845 or an 855 or an 9AM start. Sometimes that's difficult to get actual witnesses here in Edinburgh and around the table, especially in some of the topics I'm dealing with. I'm usually having to sign off expenses to fly somebody in somewhere in Europe or whatever to come and do that bit of work, or we use a lot of video conferencing now. We're a bit more fleet of foot in how we use that and how it works. That can condition you to be a bit careful with it, but we had started an inquiry about connecting Scotland, which is a whole aspect of it, and I had to sit down with the clerks the other day and kick it on in the long grass because we now have an announcement on the repeal of the human rights act, which my committee in relation to the ECHRs will do that, because the Justice Committee had absolutely no space to do it. We need to scrutinise any repeal in any British Bill of Rights and the impact it has on just the function of this place in the Scotland Act that set it up, and the other thing is an EU referendum. We can't—my committee could not react to those things and do that scrutiny, so many other work that we were doing had to be pushed aside in quite important pieces of work, like on TTIP, on European structural funds and some of the challenges that were happening around about that. A lot of the work that we do and some of the stuff is actual direct letters to ministers or to organisations and get feedback to specific questions and then use that to formulate a report. The idea of getting enough people around the table and a decent enough frequency to create your report just isn't there for us, but I had to use other ways to do that. Just a wee second. Just to say to colleagues that it's 50 minutes in so far, I'm minded to let this run for another 25 minutes, which would take us to quarter two. However, if anyone has other obligations that require—and I'm getting a faint indication that might be the game—let's play flexible, but we do have to bring it to a conclusion at some point. I do have Cameron, I've got George, who's coming in and Ken wants to come in. Cameron, do you want to come in at this stage? Fine, thank you. I've come into the Parliament late and from a business background, and I've found it very different to get used to certain things like these repetitive debates, but notwithstanding that, I think that the committees are the most valuable part of Parliament. I actually find them very useful and very good, and that's where we really get into the meat of things rather than the debates, the more formal debates. I also don't think that the committees should meet at the same time as the chamber. Absolutely not. It's absolutely disastrous, because people will just choose, and the choice might be made from them by the convener or by their party whips, and that's not right. I think also—my other question is, which we haven't discussed, is that I think that the convener should be paid extra to recognise their role. I really think that's the vital thing. I think that topical questions—I think that it's very difficult to define what is topical. I've noticed some of the questions under topical questions are not really topical, and I think that that's a problem, so I haven't got a solution for that, but that's my opinion on it. Let me bring George in for the first time, sir. When we're talking about scrutiny of the subject matter that committees are dealing with, is it not the case in the limited time that I've been here? I've noticed that there is almost a group of professional witnesses that do the rounds and take up an awful lot of time in committee, and quite frankly, on a few occasions, I could write a submission for them and know what they're going to say, because it's always a bit of a pantomime almost when we're at committee dealing with them. Is it not a case that we should maybe look at how we deal with that? I can understand the problem, because when you try to do something different, the clerks have a difficulty in trying to get people to come to the Parliament to give evidence, but is there not a way that we could actually make that better and get something a wee bit more from that as well? On the topical questions, I agree with Kenneth that the idea is that if I've got anything happening, I'm going to go for an FMQ. There is no way that I'm going to use topical, because I don't see it as a vehicle that's going to get my constituency matter out there. FMQs aren't perfect if you're going to need to create a new democracy. Why would you take the most aggressive part of the Westminster system and stick it into your new democracy? It's a three-ring circus, but there must be a way that we can actually find it to make it work by making it longer and giving us an opportunity to possibly have some of the ideas that topicals have had where you've got a chance to come back and forward and get a bit of a discussion going instead of this constant kind of almost... The only difference between us and Westminster of FMQs is that we don't have the two sort lengths different between us, but it's almost the same kind of environment. But that's one of the things. I think that topicals haven't been successful. I think that it might have been an amendment of FMQs, giving us some more time to develop ideas that way as well, but my main issue with committees is the fact that we seem to have a group of professional witnesses that do the rounds, and I don't know what benefit that gives us in committee. I have a list of not-the-usual suspects, and if I run out of not-the-usual suspects, we go with the usual suspects. That was something that I decided to do at the outset when I became the convener of the committee, because I felt that it was the same people saying the same things around the table every other week, and we wanted to hear from different and emerging in some new voices and maybe some good discourse going on out there. I have a list, I'll set my clerks right, find me the not-the-usual suspects, and then we can work back from there. Mary Scott has a point on that. One of the things that we discussed last week was what Parliament can pay advisers to come to give evidence, and I think that's one of the things that limits the people that come. I absolutely agree that there is almost a list of suspects of people that come, but the big issue relating to that is what the Parliament pays. Should we look to actually paying more to get the best people to come to give evidence? Does the Welsh Parliament pay about the quarter maybe a third more than we do for their advisers? Last point, it's very important. Obviously, to be adviser to the finance committee is considered about in some places to be a prestigious appointment, but if the people who would be interested in that have other commitments, then the patents that are paid is not going to attract them. We've been really lucky, we've had some great advisers, and there's not one that I don't have the highest regard for, but that doesn't necessarily mean all of that. We'll be in that position in the future. I get a fairly narrow pool to look at. In terms of professional witnesses, I think that that's a really important issue that George has raised. When I took over the finance committee, it was the same old, same old, and whenever we'd budget scrutiny, so to speak, all we had was folk coming along saying that GEE is more money, and I'd say, so where should we take the money from? All that's not going to do with me or somebody else. We're not interested in that kind of situation. If people don't have any ideas as to how we can equalise the budget with regard to their portfolio, then their particular area of interest doesn't come any more, so we'd try to be a bit wider in terms of the net we cast. I have to say that we've not had any real difficulty in getting witnesses, and the witnesses are chosen not on who submits the evidence, but on the quality of the evidence. I think that what's very important, though, in a committee, is that the members of the committee actually trust the convener, and certainly I've tried to develop trust among members by, for example, I don't trunque what people can say or how long they get to speak for. I try to be as robust as is necessary in terms of our own ministers. The clerk was commenting yesterday that when senior civil servants now come to talk to financial memoranda whereas it was junior members beforehand, because I now know that if they don't know their stuff, they'll get turned over by the committee, because it's our duty to look at the public purse and ensure that money is spent wisely and to probe and ask questions. No clerks have said that scrutiny now is the most robust it's been since 1999, and I think that it's very important that all committees and all parties take the role of committees seriously, and that conveners take that particular role. We can have patsy conveners of any political colour who will basically not ask the difficult questions because they think that it may embarrass a colleague. As far as I'm concerned, I don't ask it. I would expect someone else to ask it, but we've got a duty to the Parliament and to the wider Scottish public, so I think that that's very, very important. One of the things that I've said to my members is that if you've got any issues or concerns or you want to know more about the process, please feel free to come to myself or speak to the clerks. It's not that they're not my clerks, they're the clerks to the committee. For example, if someone was a bit unsure about how one aspect of the committee business worked, they're quite free to go and visit. They don't have to tell me they're doing it, they can just go along any time they'd like to have a private meeting with the clerks to talk about things. I think that trust is very important in the running of the committee. That leads us into an important thing that we're maybe not giving as much time to as we might, and that is conveners in the round. The issue has been raised by Cameron and it's come up before as to where conveners should have some remuneration associated with it all. I put it to colleagues that one of the things that's been said is that conveners should be an alternative career structure for people who have developed their parliamentary careers, as distinct from ministerial role being the only one. Of course, we've already established the principle of paying for some positions when we pay for Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officer, so I'm not simply asking colleagues about pay, but should we have ways in which the conveners have greater status and how would we do that in David's signalling and desperation to come and comment on that? Thank you very much, convener. As someone who is standing down as an MSP next May, I've got no personal axe to grind in relation to this, and I've also been a convener of a committee. I think that the status of conveners does need to be increased. They've got a good status at the moment. I think that it should be an even higher status. The way to do that, partially, is to have a payment, not a large payment, but recognition that there is a lot of extra work in convening a committee. There's a lot of stuff that goes on outside the committee that you have to be involved in and you have responsibility for, but we also need to look at the related issue that was raised about how conveners are appointed and the election of conveners. I think that those two things together, we need to tease that out because if we're going to have Government properly held to account—and I think that that is really important, and I'm speaking that as a member of the governing party, but it applies to all Governments—you must have strong, independent-minded conveners, if at all possible, and it's something that we should focus quite a bit on in this inquiry. I will mention the remuneration. I think that conveners do more work and have more responsibility and more stress than other members of the Parliament. I think that you could say that I've got a vested interest, but I might not be a convener after the next election if I'm re-elected. I think that it's odd that, in local government, conveners are given remuneration, but they're not within the Scottish Parliament. I know that the issue was debated, I believe, some years ago in the Parliament, but I think that now people realise that they have additional work and responsibility. The fact that they're not able to spend as much time on other things, such as, for example, your constituencies and debates, is an issue, but in terms of the issue of how conveners would be appointed, I think that that's a matter that the conveners committee has wrestled with, to no avail, to be honest. I don't think that there's any consensus on that particular issue, so I think that that's one that we would have to continue to deliberate on and look to see whether we can get a system that people could really agree with on that. The Government, obviously, in the political parties, appoint spokespeople, they appoint their own conveners, etc. I don't really think that there's anything particularly wrong with that system. Providing the convener realises that, once he or she is in that position, their first responsibility is to the committee and, secondly, to the wider Parliament, certainly not to the Government. I suppose that it's interesting that in formal terms, of course, only the convener or the committee can remove the convener from office. Very briefly, I absolutely agree that I think that conveners should be given an additional payment, because conveners, not only do they have more of a workload, they have a huge responsibility, because I think that we should never forget that one of the finding principles of this Parliament was that the committees did the work. So conveners have a huge responsibility to drive forward the business of this Parliament, so I think that there should be a payment attached to that, and it would elevate the status. When I was a convener and a member of the convener's group, one of the things that the convener's group discussed, and it was done once, was that the convener's group should have the ability to call Government to them to take evidence, and that again elevates their status. I wonder if that is something that should be done more often, so that the convener's group can call Government ministers or the First Minister to give evidence to them? Yes, I'll just answer that point. The First Minister has agreed to come whenever the convener's committee asks her to. She's coming to give evidence later this year. In fact, the Prime Minister suggested in the last session that he would be willing to come also to give evidence to the committee, and I have been trying to get agreement on that for about a year now. However, when we could do that, and I have to say that the convener is not opposed to that, he's happy with that as well. However, one or two other conveners are not so keen. However, I certainly think that we met with First Minister Salmond two years ago for about an hour, and it was with First Minister Sturgeon an hour and a half last year. We are looking to perhaps make it more often than annually. What the First Minister has agreed to do is answer questions specifically on the programme for government, as it affects our individual committees. However, I'd see no reason why—in my understanding, as the First Minister sees no reason why—she can't answer questions on further issues or further points. It's just a matter for the convener's committee to ask her along, and she seems quite willing to do that. Should committees have a role in the appointment of ministers in that, before appointment, they have confirmation hearings, as other jurisdictions do? That's a pretty unanimous thumbs-round. Parliament and government have to be separate. That separation has to be jealously guarded, in my view. Parliament approves people as being suitable for ministerial appointment. Cabinet ministers have to go— Yes, there have been votes against them. I speak personally in 2007, but it was simply to allow the opposition parties to participate in the debate, which was the real reason rather than opposing any individual. To the same extent, cabinet secretaries have to go to the court session and be approved by whoever—technically the queen, I think. That doesn't mean to say that— The leader and junior ministers, the queen approves, but not via the court session. The queen approves so that they don't have to go to the court session. However, it used to be irregular currents that the First Minister went to the convener's group. I think that it was twice a year that it used to happen, and that should happen. I am not sure that it should be extended to other ministers, cabinet secretaries or ministers, because I am not sure what the purpose would be. Surely it is the committees that they should be accountable to. My view is that it is the committees that ministers are accountable to. Absolutely. I do not really think that the convener's committee wants to or should take evidence from anyone other than the First Minister herself. Okay, we are on the last 10 minutes now. George, did you catch my eye? No, you didn't, right? Okay, well, that's fine now. It's not compulsory. I just thought I saw—right, let me just have a look. Is there anything in particular in our little list that we haven't touched on at all? Yes, I suppose that the thing that we haven't made direct reference to, although there has been indirect reference to, is that our two colleagues who have come to join us today have a view about our ability or any reforms that might be necessary when this Parliament gets extra powers. I am leaving aside the issue of the number of MSPs. Christina? I think that, obviously, Kenny has already mentioned about some of the additional work that he will have in respect to that. I think that other committee conveners will be feeling the same. I do think that there is a bit of room for doing some joint work with some of the Westminster committees based on the transfer of some of those powers, that sort of a transition period. There should maybe be a bit of work there that could be done. When it comes down to if we need more committees, we are back to square one. Where do we find the time for it? I think that that is a debate that needs to be on-going. A good way to ensure that there are more people available at seven committees would to have fewer ministers have increased from 16 to 23, but I cannot say how that is going to change if the amount of responsibilities that the Parliament has is going to increase. I think that it is a difficult one to answer, convener, because we need to see where the dust is going to finally settle on the package that comes to us. We need to see what we can feed into our existing committee system. However, there may have to be a change in the committee remits to be able to address some of those issues. I think that what is going to happen is that the balance might change considerably on some committees relative to the workload of others. I cannot see that, for example, justice, which is quite a busy committee, but I cannot see that it will be affected that much. Finance would be affected that much. I have to say that what is important in committees is that we have a small team that works well together. We have got seven in our committee. I certainly would not like to see the number of members on the committee's increase. We have to have a party balance, so there is always a balance to be struck. However, I note one time that the Presiding Officer was suggesting super committees. I can imagine that they would meet ODI, and everybody would feel that they would have to put their oren in. I am not convinced that that would be efficient. In the first Parliament, we had 11 and 13 member committees, and I do not think that it worked as well as the smaller ones where members develop a level of expertise. I wonder whether the panellists have a general view on the number of members on committees, because if you have seven on a committee, that is nice and tight, and it gives you more or less the balance politically, according to De Haunt and so on. However, some would come up to 15 members on committees. Would it be helpful if those committees that have nine, 10 or 11 members come down to seven? That would then free up the time of MSPs who are on those committees to do other things. Would that be helpful if we squeezed it down to the lower end? I would have thought that, yes, but it is hard for me to comment on how another committee actually works. I know that some committees, when I was in education for four years, had seven members, and I understand that it is getting more than that now. I am not really sure why, but I think that I can only speak from my point of view that seven is an ideal number. There is one small issue that is perhaps worth just telling you about. Today's meeting illustrates that Gil Paterson is not with us because he is the convener of the SNP group, and he is undertaking some activities that are in relation to that role, and that is not a permitted activity. It would allow his substitute to come here and fill that gap. However, it is a perfectly proper thing that he is doing. Is there a case for looking again at the rules for substitution? It is not a big deal, but I just— I think that the substitution on committees tied to one individual is difficult, because it is a named person, whereas I might think that just the party should be—your substitution should be just come from your party ranks. I could see disagreement. I know that. It used to be like that, convener, and it did not work very well because you had random people showing up, but at least this way, you know who it is going to be, and there is maybe a bit of consistency. It helps the clerks hugely in the terms of progressing things. How can they possibly—I am substituting welfare reform, and I have been six or seven times over the last couple of years. It means that you have a responsibility to keep an eye on what is happening specifically in that committee. If I was just a free next week, no. I do not think that there would be any great enthusiasm, willingness to participate, and I do not think that it would add anything to the deliberations of the committee. One would hope that the name substitute could attend, and most occasions in the other cases would not be able to attend, because I have already got a long-standing committee—sorry, constituency engagements or whatever—and I have been told that we are only a few days notice. Last week, I was told last Thursday that I asked if I could substitute, and luckily, I was okay to do so. I think that a named substitute is definitely infinitely better than just some random individual. The circumstances under which substitution may take place, is that—shall we just leave that as it is? It is, and I think that it is perfectly— It is just on my list of things to pose. I am not proposing anything. I think that the problem with substitutions is that sometimes they do not have a knowledge of what has gone on before. They have a lot of papers to read and everything before that to catch up, and that is the problem when they come. I have to say that, ironically, although I remember in the 2007-11 Parliament, there was a political party that is not represented here today, and they had someone on the committee that I think struggled a wee bit, and whenever there was something really difficult and complex, the substitute might not have actually appeared and was much more able to actually deal with issues than the person who was meant to be serving on the committee. But I think that it should really be up to the parties to decide who their substitute is and what circumstances they fill in for them. Right. Let me just finally see if there are any remaining issues that Cameron is signalling. Sorry, the issue that I wanted to raise is stage 3. I mean, as I said just coming to the point, I find that stage 3, there is not enough time. I do not find it very—I know that we discussed this before, that we have the debate after the voting. I mean, people just feel like snorff or dyke during the debate, and I do not find that very—I know that it has been debated. I do not find it very relevant, and I cannot follow it. That is a real issue for me as a person who has just come into the Parliament. Do you know that I keep a grin with you, Cameron? You have spent a lot of sense. I have to say that I think that stage 3 debate is utterly pointless. I think all the—you know, it is almost like all the excitement and the vim with regard to a particular bill that has been building up, especially for the members who have a direct role in it. It is building up and building up, and then suddenly, after all, you might have been there for hours, you have got this anti-climax debate of a debate, which you are absolutely right—nobody, other than the members and the minister who have a direct input in the bill, really take a great interest in it. To me, it seems bizarre. I think that after all the amendments, et cetera, you probably want a summon up to be able to thank the clerks and all those committee members who have participated and stakeholders in producing the bill. However, to have a debate on it, after, effectively, it has been agreed to me—I have never understood the logic of that, and I would certainly remove that. Can we have a quick comment to follow up on that? I have a lot of sympathy for that, and what you do find sometimes during the stage 3 itself—this has happened to me in relation to an amendment—I have been told that you have got one minute to propose your amendment because we are short of time. And yet, the debate time after takes up an hour or so. If that hour was used as part of the stage 3, I would not have been restricted to one minute to make a case for an amendment. I would have got a reasonable time for it. Sorry, and people who are not on the committee have been directly involved with the great opportunity to come in and add their comments. By that stage 3 debate convener, you used to it on the behalf of now, and we seem to have gradually drifted. People complained that it was too short. Just going to say on stage 3, of course, when it's the stage 3 amendment session, we are actually sitting as a committee, so that's properly within our remit that the debate's another matter. Although, actually, the rules do not require us to have a debate. No, they don't. They do require us to make a stage 3 decision, but they don't require us to have a debate. I'm 10 seconds away from my deadline. Christina has clearly got something else that she wants to do. Can I thank Christina and Kenny for coming and stimulating us to think about some other things? That's been very, very helpful indeed. Feel free if you have afterthoughts that you think would be of value to us to either approach me personally, come and see the clerks or write or email. We'd be very happy to hear from you, because we've all got staking getting this right. Thank you very much indeed. Right colleagues, gender item 6 and for the purposes of this, David, you are now the other side of the desk, is to take evidence from Dave Thompson on a proposed cost party group on consumer affairs. David, do you want to make some opening remarks to the committee? Yes, convener, thank you very much indeed. I welcome this opportunity to put the case for the establishment of a cross-party group on consumer affairs and in doing so, I'm very conscious of discussions in this committee in the past and more generally about the number of cross-party groups. So that is something that was very much at the front of my mind when discussions started about the possibility of this particular group. The reason for establishing the group fairly late in the parliamentary session is that there are a number of changes in the pipeline in relation to consumer protection, trading standards and so on. A number of new powers over advice and advocacy and so on are being transferred if the process in Westminster concludes in the way I think it might be transferred to this Parliament. So there's going to be a greater remit in relation to these matters. The Parliament is already responsible for the structure of enforcement, for instance, which is currently done by local authorities, so COSLA have a big input into this, as do the Scottish Government. And there are two reports due to come out in a couple of months' time in relation to consumer affairs. It's also a very important subject that impacts very much on individuals across the country. Not just in relation to consumer rights, but in relation to consumer credit and deprivation and various other issues like that. So it was felt, and Citizens Advice Scotland, who you will see going to do the secretariat's job for us, were keen to develop a forum that would deal with a wide range of consumer affairs issues. And I thought it was the right time to do that. I should just make it clear that I do have an interest in this, which is registered. I'm a vice president of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute in the UK, and I spent my working career as a trading standards officer for 34 years. So it is something that I've got a particular interest in. You'll see from the list of organisations there that there's very wide interest in the cross-party group, and I would ask members to agree to its establishment. I note, of course, that Cameron MacAnon is also the proposed deputy convener of this. That does not inhibit his participating in the questioning of the proposed convener, but it's probably something that we should note. Now, colleagues, have we any issues that we wish to raise? Patricia? George? Mary? Can I just ask you, Dave, did you consider any other way to raise the profile of the issues other than establishing a cross-party group? Yeah, I've sponsored a number of events in the Parliament with the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and Citizens Advice Scotland do that and various other organisations, but it doesn't really give you the opportunity to focus in the way that you can do on a cross-party group, which we'll meet about four times a year, but you can follow things through in a way that individual events, you can't really do that, and to set up something which is ad hoc outwith the rules of the Parliament, I didn't think was right. I think that these things should come within the control of Parliament, so that's why... Given how late we are in the parliamentary time, how many meetings would you propose to have before session ends? Well, we have a meeting arranged in a couple of weeks' time, another one before Christmas and there'll be another one early next year. It's also, I think, advantageous to have a group establishment established, and I know that we're going to be considering re-registration of groups and how that is done. I think that it would be advantageous to have the group established. I think that Citizens Advice Scotland maybe saw me as a good vehicle to help to promote this, given my own background. So that's why I agreed that they asked to see me and made the case to me, and I agreed that I thought it should happen, even at this late stage. Right, I see no other... Oh, put your hat back, I beg your pardon. I just wondered whether, given that we don't actually have the powers that you're talking about at the moment, whether it wouldn't have been better to wait till the next session, to be able to focus more clearly on what additional powers we might have rather than the ones that we expect we might have, or have suspicions we might make, whether it wouldn't have been, you know, just in terms of timescale, more logical to do it that way round. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a fair point, but there have been quite a lot of changes in recent times, and there's a lot of concern over the lack of ability of trading standards departments and councils to be able to do their jobs. It's a very small profession, just a few hundred people, and they're spread out amongst 32 local authorities at the moment. Some local authorities have one officer, and if you look at the range of legislation that they deal with, for instance, it's pretty massive. Now, we already have the power to look at how the enforcement is structured and so on, but the UK Government changed the whole system about a year ago, and a year and a half ago, maybe, the Scottish Consumer Council, which was an excellent body that had built up expertise for 30 years, was abolished. I think that was a really detrimental step, and all these changes are coming in, and I think that to have a forum like this will be very, very helpful, and I think that it would be best to do it now, rather than leave it till this time next year, for instance. Speaking as a proposed advice convener, I think that it would allow Labour to flesh out certain issues and discard irrelevant ones, and that's why I think it would be a good idea to have two or three meetings now, so that when the next session starts, people realise that we can focus on the actual issues that are vital. I just wanted to come back in. When you said that the changes were made 18 months ago, and there's been a number of changes in the recent history, why now is it because we're about to almost end a session and you want to establish this before the next session starts, and if there have been changes over the last 18 months, why have you waited to now to propose setting this up? One of the reasons that I didn't decide to promulgate this off my own bat was that I was very conscious of the number of cross-party groups, but when Citizen Advice Scotland approached me earlier this year with a request and sat down with me and made the case, I listened and I thought, yeah, it probably does need to be done. It's an area that has a huge impact on individuals and businesses across Scotland, so it's very important. There's a wide range of consumer issues that need to be discussed and dealt with. A cross-party group will only be able to focus in on certain aspects, and I think that Cameron is right that the group needs to focus in on the really important aspects. We've got six or seven months before the Parliament finishes, dissolves, and I think that that time could usefully be spent in developing the group so that it's ready to move on in the next Parliament if it's re-established. Right, colleagues. I suspect that we've enough from the evidence session to allow us on the next agenda to make the decision, yes? Right, okay. Let me thank you, David, for providing evidence. Let us move on to agenda item 7, which is whether to consider to accord recognition to the cross-party group consumer affairs. Does anyone wish to make any further observations before I simply put the question to colleagues? No. In that case, the question is, are members agreed to accord the CPG and consumer affairs recognition? Well, you've got to say yes or no, Mary. If you want to defer the decision, that would be for further consideration, but if we do that, you know, defer it rather than taking a decision today, we'd need to be clear what it is that we want to happen before we make a decision. Mary. Because I suppose my concern is the actual specifics of what the cross-party group will look at, and I do have concerns at this late stage that it will actually be able to do anything, and I'm also concerned that at the start of the next session that it's not picked up again, so we'll have a cross-party group that only meets three times and then falls. I'm afraid that we'll be inclined to say, no, I don't approve. Right. The case is not made. One moment, please. Patricia, do you believe that the case is made? I think that the balance is that the case has to be made, and if we're not satisfied that the case is made, then we should not approve. Patricia, do you have a view? I'm thinking. Sorry. All right. In that case, George. I've got a similar opinion to Mary's, but where I differ is that Dave explained the reason why he wants to do it just now is because so that it's set up and available, and someone else can pick it up when the new session moves in. I can see why you did that because once you've got the process and the groups are all used to coming together and working together, I can see why you want to do it. Because initially, my attitude was the exact same as Mary's, but I think that you've swayed me, Dave, by saying, I can understand why you want to do it at this stage, because that was going to be my question. Why now? I have a concern about the time frame that's now left, and I wonder whether, when we're looking at cross-party groups more generally, that might be something that we could usefully feed into the process. And I understand the case that Dave has made about what he wants to do. I'm also very conscious that Dave's already mentioned that he's not going to be here next year, so whether or not someone else will pick it up and run with it is perhaps moot at this stage. I don't like to say no to cross-party groups, and I'm very conscious that that's the role of this committee is to make a considered decision. I have two reservations. One is the timing, and one is that I'm not 100% convinced that the work as proposed of the cross-party group actually fits him with the powers and responsibilities that this Parliament has closely enough for us to be happy that it should proceed. But I do think that there is a kernel of... There's enough information there that makes me think that it's actually quite an interesting concept and quite an interesting cross-party group to be proposing, but I just do think it's almost pointless to do it now, frankly. But on the other hand, that's not my judgment to make and if Dave and his colleagues wish to do it, then should I stand on their way? Probably not. Right. Well, let me just take... Well, no, I think it's useful to have these points on the record. And we have previously without coming to a conclusion discussed whether, in the last year of a session, we should establish any, and this clearly fits into that timescale. But we've not come to a conclusion on that, so it wouldn't be appropriate to apply that issue to us. And I think very narrowly the balance of the committee from the chair is that we will accord. Now, is anyone disagreeing that that's the view the committee has come to? No. Right, we're agreed. In that case, we're agreed, but the record will show that we do so with the not-insubstantial reluctance. The reluctance is due to the timing rather than anything else, is it? Rather than the efficacy of the... Well, to be fair, Patricia articulated a virus issue which was perfectly proper. There is no restriction in the parliamentary rules to our having cross-party groups and matters that the Parliament cannot legislate on or have administrative powers on. But nonetheless, in our decision making process, it's perfectly proper to consider that matter. I think we've put it on the record. May I suggest that members no longer make any other comments because we are minded to approve and any comments you might make might dissuade us? So, on that basis, we are agreed to accord the CPG and Consumer Affairs recognition. Thank you very much. Right, now that ends the public part of the meeting so we're now moving to private session.