 My name is Ken Macintosh, I'm the Presiding Officer, and I'd like to welcome you all to Holyrood this evening to the debating chamber at this Scottish Parliament. I hope that it's familiar to you. I'm sure that many of you will have been here before. I think that it's actually become a very familiar place for virtually everybody in Scotland these days, which is quite remarkable when you think that it's 20 years ago exactly this month that the first elections to our new Scottish Parliament took place. I'm joined by a group of fellow 99ers, as we're known. I still remember that sense of excitement, the optimism, the anticipation that greeted us, the sense that we're going to offer a new kind of politics. I hope that that's what we're going to explore tonight. We're going to talk about the principles on which the Parliament was founded—openness and accessibility, accountability, the sharing of power and the promotion of equal opportunities. It's not just for our panel but for you to perhaps give us your thoughts and views and questions about have we lived up to those principles, are we still practising them, and what can we do to do better for the people of Scotland. I believe that we're joined. I think that some of the early members of the consultative seating group—I can see Esther, Joyce and Andrew Coopie—are here as well, but they're not, although there are some members here as well. We've got a distinguished panel to answer to us. We're also doing this presentation in conjunction with The Times of Scotland. I can see Kenny Farkerson. I was looking for you, Kenny, around the audience. This is a festival of politics event, but we're doing it in partnership with The Times of Scotland. If I can, Kenny, I'll bring you in to ask a couple of questions later in the evening. I'm delighted to introduce our very distinguished panel this evening. Starting on my right, Annabelle Goldie, now Baroness Goldie, who is now a Government whip in the House of Lords, but for us was a Conservative MSP from 1999 to 2011 and a leader of the Conservative Party. I've taken five years off your service, Annabelle. I'm a leader of the Conservative Party in that time. Robin Harper, who not just led the Green Party—it was an MSP here from 1999 to 2011—was the first ever Green Parliamentarian elected in British history. I claim to fame, which I'm sure you're very proud of. On Robin's immediate left, George Lyon, who not only was an MSP colleague, a Liberal Democrat representing Argyll and Bute and part of that first coalition Government as a finance minister and as a business manager—that's one of the people whose job it is to organise the MSPs and get them to vote the right way or otherwise—went on to serve in Europe as an MEP, just in case the B word comes up tonight. I'll throw the questions. Patricia Marwick, who served for the SNP from 1999 to 2016, also served as a business manager and on the corporate body, which governs the running of the building and the support network that we need to keep the place functioning. Perhaps she's still best and most affectionate, as our first and only woman ever elected in the Scottish Parliament. Last but not least, Henry McLeish, who, as well as being and still is very proud to this day of being one of Scotland's first ministers—a claim that we're all very envious of Henry. More than that, he was an MP in Westminster and as an MP in Westminster was a devolution minister, so he was responsible for putting through the act that brought about devolution, for which I'm sure you're also extremely proud. Ladies and gentlemen, our panel this evening. I talked earlier about the principles. One of the principles is the sharing of power, often translated into what's called participative democracy. It's not just representative but participative. That means that you have to participate, so think of questions. Before we do, I'm going to ask our guests if they can, just for a few short introductory remarks, just to kick things off. Just some thoughts on their own experience as MSPs and perhaps either looking back on the reflections on their time here in the Scottish Parliament or perhaps even looking forward at some of the challenges. I'm going to start in reverse order, if I can, with you, Henry. Okay. Well, thanks very much, Presiding Officer, and thanks very much to all of you for coming this evening. I have very fond memories of the whole devolution issue, and I'm very fortunate to be involved from 1997 to 1999. My back is to you, so I'm going to turn around a bit. From 1997 to 1999, and these were really three years that changed the face of Scottish politics for the good and forever. That's a point that I think is worth making. I suppose that the other issue for me is quite nostalgic, because whilst I spent 30 years in elected politics, this is the first time that I've sat in the well of the new Scottish Parliament. I feel very privileged, and I feel very pleased as a result of that. My early recollections are that, 20 years ago, when the Parliament was established, there was a great sense of pride, a great sense of occasion, a great sense of history, a great sense of excitement, enthusiasm, whatever good emotion you wanted to describe, it was there. I do believe that, when we've got 20 years, it is a celebration. There will those who rightly will be able to criticise, rightly be able to say it could have done this, it could have done that, but all in all, when you consider that Westminster has been on that site, not necessarily in parliamentary terms but in administrative terms for nearly 1,000 years, we've only been here for 20 years. It's the start. I think that all goes well for the future. And the final part I'd make in the opening remarks is that Parliament's are essentially legislatures, and that's what they're there to do. This Parliament has become the voice of Scotland, has become a platform for Scotland, has been a focus for issues, and whatever the political party, this is where we debate them. The ladies and gentlemen, the key issue for me is the fact that, since 1999, we've passed something like 280 pieces of legislation. Now, people who are against legislation might frown at that, but when we were in Westminster, we had one piece, one and a half pieces, two pieces per year. Scottish interests were not being dealt with. Scottish interests had to wait in a very long line, but once they had the Parliament, we've been able to tackle some of the big issues, whether it be land reform, whether it be health, whether it be education. In that sense, I think that all everyone from every party has made a huge contribution to that. As I said, this is merely the start, and I think that the best days of the Parliament are certainly still ahead. Tricia, I think that I saw you in the paper the other day talking very similar terms about how the Parliament has become embedded in Scotland's public life. I think that that is really important to say. I tell the story in the run-up to the Scottish Parliament elections, where I was working for Shelter of Scotland at the time, and I was an SNP candidate. I was invited to a panel session with the Scottish Council for voluntary organisations, the CVO. On that panel, I can remember, quite vividly, Sarah Boyack was there, but I can't remember who else. One of the questions that we were posed was, what difference is a Scottish Parliament going to make? I told the story of when I worked for Shelter that whenever we wanted to see the MPs, we had to go down to Westminster. There was a cross-party group on housing, and we had to all go trot down to Westminster to see them, maybe for about half an hour. There was about one debate a year on housing at Westminster, Scottish Housing. That was what there was. I was asked what difference it would make. The first thing is that we can make legislation in our own Scottish Parliament, but the second and the most important thing of all is that half the population of Scotland is within an hour's journey of the Scottish Parliament. Even if we wanted to, the new MSPs will never be able to escape. That is absolutely true. When we see the engagement of the people of Scotland within their Parliament, not just the visitors to the Parliament, but the people who take part in the cross-party groups, the people who come in the organisations, who come in here for receptions and to meet with MSPs, it is completely alien to what existed before 1999. I think that the greatest achievement of the Parliament is that it is now the centre of public life in Scotland. It has the ability to do so many things. Have we met the brief of openness, accountability, equality and sharing of power? We probably have not got it right yet, but what is important is the journey that we have travelled. There was such great hope, such expectation of the Scottish Parliament when it was set up in the first place. I think that in many ways we were set up to fail because we could not at the beginning meet those expectations. We were being held to such a high standard that it was almost impossible. That is not to say that we were not culpable in some of it, the MSPs. We made some mistakes at the beginning, but it seemed to me that there was no forgiveness for those mistakes. It was a new institution, we were really lucky that we had the steering group who came forward with proposed standing orders, the way that the Parliament should operate and I think that they did a great job under Henry's chairmanship. I can see a few people here, but I think that the difference was that that was a hypothetical Parliament. Until such times as we actually got in here to see how it worked and what we actually needed, it was a bit difficult. I look back on the first 20 years of the Scottish Parliament and there have been huge achievements, free personal care for the elderly, tuition fees and taking away the tolls on the 4th and the Taberidges, which is very close to my heart. If you look at the Scotland that we had in 1999 and look at the Scotland that we have now, it is a different place. There are two examples of that. The convulsions that we had over section 28 in the Parliament, right in the early days, when it seemed that everybody was up in arms about it and a lot of Scotland was not happy, and then one of the proudest moments of my tenure as Presiding Officer was presiding in the chamber when this Parliament passed the Equal Marriage Act and it meant so much, not only to the people that were the beneficiaries of that, but it also gave a message about how far Scotland has travelled. I do not think that Scotland would have travelled that far and that fast if it had not been for the Scottish Parliament. George, you have had the benefit now of two parliamentary chambers, in fact one on which this is almost modelled, the European Hemicycle. How do we compare as an institution? My experience of the Scottish Parliament, I came from outside politics. I was not involved at all. I was a farmer. I brought up Nyland and Bute. I had all the challenges of living in a rural area, trying to run a business and trying to create employment, and then I became involved in lobbying through the National Farmers Union. The biggest difference that the setting up of the Parliament did for rural Scotland is that it brought us much closer to the decision making, as Tricia said earlier on. You had to travel to London if you were involved in trying to get decisions about how your future political direction for your industry would go, as either London or Brussels. The setting up of the Parliament brought the islands closer to the seat of power, because it is not quite an hour's drive right enough for where I live to hear, but compared to going to London, it is still much more accessible. In terms of comparisons with other parliaments, the biggest difference between the two is that here, everything that you do, you are held accountable by the media for what you say or what you do, and therefore party discipline here is probably now as tough as it was at Westminster, and is rigid. I am not sure that people actually thought that that would happen, given that the type of Parliament that we are trying to create where compromise and working together was going to be the way that we actually did business rather than the confrontational approach. The difference between that and Europe, of course, is that you can say what the earth you like. It does not matter what you say, nobody reports it, because it is an invisible institution where a lot of big decisions are taking the effect of ordinary people's lives, but it is not accountable in any way that they perform because the media does not actually engage and report what is going on. It is quite a different institution to work in. There is one big commonality between the two. In this Parliament, many of the speeches were always laced with only when we had the powers to be able to sort this problem. The exact same happens in the European Parliament. They want more power as well, but they want to take it from national to this international organisation that we have set up, whereas in the Scottish Parliament it was the reverse. No matter where you go, in which institution you are in, there is a common thread about only if we want more power, and there is this notion that that actually is a way to solve problems rather than sometimes being an excuse for actually using the powers that you have to try and resolve the issue. That is the biggest difference and the biggest similarities between the two institutions. That is good. You have set off, I am sure, a train of thought amongst half the audience already here. Robin, I introduced to you the first-ever Green Parliamentarian, but now the Greens are doing pretty well. Did you feel like a pioneer at the time? Was the Scottish Parliament good for the Green Party and for you personally? Yes, it was a bit top-heavy, because we had any Green councillors at that time. We now have Green councillors who were really embedded in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and there was no balance to restore. We now have a balance, if you like, of being a representation at the local as well as the parliamentary level. I think what really struck me, you were talking about the hemicycle with George, it was a much more closed circle, and so you could have eye-to-eye contact with almost everybody in the chamber in there. I do remember, I think we were also, everybody was so happy to be there. We were all wandering around with fixed smiles on our faces, saying, God, how has this really happened? That did pervade most of the first four years of the Parliament. We made friendships at that time, and I could see one or two old mates from those times as well. I was able to run a parliamentary show in the Edinburgh Festival with representatives of every party doing their bit. I could see Jamie at the back there saying a great song for us. The reception is afterwards, Jamie. Good guitarist. You went into committees and you would probably found it very difficult to tell which party people were members of in committee discussions, because we took those discussions very seriously and discussed things absolutely on their merits. The amount of influence that was allowed, I have, maybe these will come out later as the process of this evening goes on. As Donald Durr said in his wonderful opening speech, devolution is not an event, it's a process, and it has continued. There's been more devolution since. I would like to see it go much further down. Are community councils, for instance, are a joke in the same way that school councils are a joke? If you don't give people money to spend, they've got no decisions to take or make anyway. That's what happens in far too many school councils and far too many community councils have a little bit of money, just a pickle peckle of money. There could be more devolution then. We'd have a stronger democracy all round because people would be involved at their very local levels in decision making. I could go on and on about that, but there is one thing. Can I just finish on one thing to give you an idea of how open the parliament was? Obviously, as the design for the parliament unrolled as the sole representative of the Greens, I wanted to make sure that it was as environmentally friendly as I could possibly make it. Now, one of the things I continue to do is work with the Scottish Ecological Design Association. At that time, I managed to get four architects together with me. We sat in front of the design people, the people from the contractors. Ron Jam and the builders. We had two hours with them, quizzing them. There was just me, backbencher, just one person in one party, but that was the amount of access that you could get to working with people where you needed to ask a few questions. Thanks very much, Robin. I'm just conscious that one of the aspects of the parliament is that the budget has grown and it's now well over £30 billion. I'm trying to work out what a pickle is in the £30 billion. Annabelle, it's strange to think of it now, but in 1999, the Conservatives were at a low. In many ways, the Scottish Parliament and the voting system were actually very good for the Conservative Party. Would that be fair to say? Yes, I think that the low is perhaps charitable. Sinking through the floor seemed to be my recollection of the times. I was looking joist at you, and I remember being in a debate. Joyce McMillan ate lumps out of me during this debate. I thought, golly, is this politics? Am I really wise to be standing for this parliament? Robin, I may not have been in your party, but I do remember coming here at Green was how I felt absolute rookie. I thought, this is tough. It's exciting. I think that we all felt that we were part of history, part of history in the making, and it was an extraordinary sensation, a great privilege, to feel that. However, we also had a sense of burden, a sense of responsibility. I always remember going into asking someone where the lady's loo was, and I went in and he were all these ladies of different political background. What were we interested in? I like your lipstick. Where did you get that foundation? Immediately there was a bond of amity. That was one of the features of the Scottish Parliament, that in a sense, although part of political differences were there and party politics was important in the democratic function of the Parliament, there was a sense that we were a political community of Scotland and very, very proud to be that. However, I remember coming in and looking at that desk there and I think of how I would have to stand up at First Minister's Questions. I had to try and ask the questions and be regularly pulped by one adversary or another, but there was also a huge sense of, and I think that you referred to it, Rob, in this immediacy, that there were very important decision makers just sitting along from uniform of the Scottish Government, and yet we were close to them in terms of access, we were close to them in terms of discussion. One of the features that struck me forcibly about the Scottish Parliament was the accessibility, the accessibility for the public, for people who wanted to access politics, whether they came as visitors to visit MSPs, whether they came as witnesses to committees, whether they came as spectators to watch the proceedings as they unfolded. It was, and I believe still is, one of the most accessible parliaments that you will find, and I think that that is hugely to its credit. Thank you for those opening remarks. That phone going off reminded me not just to switch my own off to get out, because this programme has been broadcast, and we are also taking questions on social media, so I will be taking the odd remark here. We are now open to questions, so anybody that wants to catch my eye, just put your hand up. I have noticed quite a few former colleagues, and they are going to look at that. Richard Simpson is straight in with his hand up there. Anybody that wants to catch my eye, please do so. I will take Richard Simpson and then I will take the gentleman at the back there. Two quick questions. In the first Parliament, we had a part of the European system. We had reporters, and when I came back in 2007, having been out for four years, the reporter system had disappeared. I wonder if the panellists felt why that happened and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. I think that the media did give the Parliament a real kicking in the first term, and I wonder if the panellists felt that that was the case and whether they felt that it settled down over the time that they were in. I will turn to you simply because I am not sure if any of us know why the reporters were less used, but I know that you introduced a series of reforms, including some of which are still to be implemented and which are still in discussion. Do you have any comments to make about the role of committees in the way that they worked and the way that they still work? The committee system here was set up to be a hybrid of the standing committees and the select committees at Westminster. The jury is out about whether that has been the most effective way of doing it. I do not think so. I think that there should be a system in which the committees can be set up specifically for one piece of legislation as they do in Westminster. I have not been convinced that the committee system has been as effective as it could have been, but, in the particular point about the reporter system, I do not know the answer to that, Richard. It was up to the individual committees to decide whether they wanted reporters or not. I cannot think of any sort of edict from the bureau or anybody else discouraging that from happening. I think that it was down to the committees that whether they thought that it did not work or not. I do not know, but I think that there was a bit of a waste of an opportunity if that happened. I brought in a number of reforms. I tried very, very hard to reform the committee system. I have got to say that it was like trying to pin Blamonge to a wall to try to get any of the business managers to agree with it. We did get away with introducing topical questions on a Tuesday, changing the format of the week, going to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday instead of just meeting Wednesday and Thursday, and I think that those are both great. Perhaps the changes to the committee system are not least the proposal for elected conveners that I put forward. I think that the most charitable way that I can put it right now is that time had not come. I think that there are people in the Parliament from all parties who thought that their reforms had gone far enough. I know that Ken has taken on that mantle. I am hopeful that we will get elected conveners by the start of the next session, because elected conveners are really important. They show that it gives a message that the conveners are elected by the Parliament and not just simply appointed by their political parties. When we talk about sharing power and openness and accountability, I think that that is one piece of unfinished business that needs to take place. I wonder if I could also bring you in this, just because the point that Richard makes is that there was going to be this new style of working in the Scottish Parliament. You have experienced the Westminster style, and not everyone will be aware of this, but the Government at Westminster has a lot of powers of patternage, a lot of paid positions. It is interesting to note that, since the Scottish Parliament was set up, Westminster has reformed and they have now got elected conveners. That has made a difference. Have you any thoughts about those contrasting styles having experienced them both? The work of the constitutional steering group was essentially to look at Westminster, and not for the sheer hell of it, but to try and devise something for Scotland that would overcome what we perceive as some of the problems there. Clearly—I hate to use the B word—we see excessive tribalism, excessive partisanship and huge power of the executive, which has always been the case at Westminster. There was a great determination to try and move this on. Even the horseshoe-shaped Parliament was a major change. At Westminster, you have the chamber, the boxes and two red lines running up the chamber, which are two sword lengths apart. In the early days, if you did not win by the discussion, you could take them outside and have a sword fight. All of that was to be pushed into the background. It has significantly worked. Although, when you talk about the rapporteur of the European Parliament, it is really part to Europeanise our Parliament and the way that we do things. I am a great believer in the idea of coalitions. I am a great believer in the idea of consensus. Certainly, in the early days, it was an experiment with the Lib Dems. Do you actually talk to the opposition parties? How novel when you reflect on it. It seemed to be that there was a push to be more European than there was to be more Westminster. Just a point, Presiding Officer, on the question of the committee system. The committee system at Westminster does have powerful investigative committees. I was privileged to be on the Public Accounts Committee in my early days. I do not think that we have quite replicated the same level of investigative committees in the Scottish Parliament. Partly because of numbers—129 people—it is very difficult to have bill committees and select committees spread it over. That is why they were joined. However, I believe that, in the future, there is much more purpose that we could embrace in relation to more investigations. Just for pure interest tonight, my first invitees would be ScotRail, but, as a five-traveller, I will leave it at that particular point. I agree entirely with the idea that the Parliament should vote in the chairs and not the party structure. Again, we would be moving in a very positive way, not because we are trying to distance ourselves from Westminster, but, to be quite honest with you, the governance of Scotland looks exemplary at the present time relative to the shambles that exist at Westminster. To move forward with the Parliament that we have, I think that there are great opportunities and, hopefully, we will take them. My question is about Donald Jure's famous phrase about devolution as an event and not a process. I suppose that those of us who have observed devolution as it has developed would say that it has developed quite asymmetrically across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Among many other reasons, one of the core tenets of devolution was that it would, I suppose, appease nationalist sentiment in Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Has that asymmetry with hindsight had the opposite effect and actually fragmented the concept of the union and the unionist identity in the UK? That is a huge question. I think that the one that many people will ask about has devolution encouraged a certain direction of travel or workers against it? Annabelle, can I just bring you in on that very point? It is something that Robyn touched on as well about centralisation and localism. Is the United Kingdom a different place because of devolution, but is it now moving in a totally different direction and fragmenting? I can see why, from one perspective, you might think that. I have a feeling that, with the global world in which we live, it is very important that individual constitutional entities have influence whether that is Scotland with its devolved Parliament, Scotland as part of the United Kingdom. I do not think that devolution has threatened the union. I think that what devolution did was that it gave people a confidence that they could address a lot of domestic issues locally in Scotland and have been doing that to a very good effect. There will be different views as to the policies and the politics of what should be applied in that scenario. However, if you have that confidence to deal with domestic issues, you can feel at ease with a constitutional structure where you are part of a partnership of another four nations. We do not know what lies ahead. Certainly, the last independence referendum in Scotland, when people were given the choice, they decided to stay with the existing constitutional structure. We do not know what lies ahead. I do not be surprised to hear that the union has a value and that it is worth supporting and that it delivers benefit. Others will disagree with that. However, I do not think of itself—just because we have devolution—that of itself is a threat to the union. I think that what may be a greater threat to the union is whether voters feel impotent, marginalised, uninvolved, disengaged. That, to me, is a much more dangerous scenario. That is where there is an obligation on all politicians to ensure that they are doing everything that they can to dispel that view. Can I go back to the committee thing, if I may, because there was something that did strike me, as Henry and Trisha were speaking? Because the Scottish Parliament is unicameral, because it is a one-level legislator, the committees were always going to have a vital role in reviewing legislation, because the strength of the legislation, no matter how well-intended by the Scottish Government of the day, regardless of its political composition, the strength of the legislation is only going to be as good as the scrutiny, the preparation, the exploration and the ability to identify weaknesses or flaws before that legislation finally is translated into law. That is where I feel that, if I may say so, I think that the Scottish Parliament has got a distance still to travel, because it seems to me that the strength of the Parliament would actually be enhanced and reflected by stronger committees. I do feel that very firmly. I have to say, as part of the Government at Westminster sitting in the front bench in the House of Lords, I can tell you some of the most difficult things that I have to deal with. Our committee reports from the House of Lords, where the convener is a member of my own party, and by golly the punches ain't pulled, I can tell you. There's a real sense of independent thought, there's a real desire to look at the issue regardless of party allegiance or adherence, and try and actually get to the heart of what is working and not working, what may be strong, what may be weak, what might be an improvement, what might be worth eliminating or getting rid of. I do feel that, in a sense, there's still a journey for these committees to go, and I think that the Parliament and I think that Scotland would benefit if some fresh air could blow through the committees. The back benchers making up these committees felt that they had a voice, a voice that really could resonate, and also not all talent is found in government. Very, very important talent can be found in the back benches of all political parties, and I think that it's important in a Parliament to give these back benches an opportunity to show their skills, flex their muscle and let them get on with doing a good political job, which many of them are very capable of doing. At the moment, it's slightly inhibiting under the current committee structure for that process to take place. I suspect that we might come back to this whole issue of party discipline, tribalism, party loyalty and so on, and how the conflict between that and the promise of the new politics with George wants to bring you back in, perhaps back on that earlier point, about the nature of the political setup in the United Kingdom at the moment? I think that it's a fallacy to think that that's actually facilitated the debate moving in one direction or another. If you look at European countries, there's a great mix of Germany with 16 landers who are relatively powerful, but it's still a very united country. I mean, they united after being broken up after the Second World War. France is very essentialised, and there's different models right across Europe. Not one model is responsible for any kind of political direction. What we do see, and what worries me most about politics, is that the post-war consensus that we are sharing soventry is coming together in binding nations economically so that you can act together and bind the nations together. That whole post-war consensus seems to me to start and to break down. Brexit is the classic example, the most extreme example of it, but we are not alone in terms of countries around Europe where the exact same thing is happening. The rise of parties who are much in favour of taking power back to the nation state rather than pulling at a supranational level, you only have to look at what's happening in the United States. Trump's whole agenda is driven by America first, so it's a big, big phenomenon. We have to put it into that type of context. For me, I am unsure how we put all of this back together. We're about to have a European election, and I suspect that the populist parties could well be the official opposition in the European Parliament. The socialists and the EPP will not have enough numbers to form a governing majority, which is what usually happens in the European Parliament. Is that whole worldwide pulling back from sharing power, sharing sovereignty, is the right way to make sure that we prosper and deal with problems? That's the bit that really concerns me about where we're going at the moment, and I don't see a way that we manage to control and pull it back. Indeed. Those are questions on many of our minds at the moment. Ken, if you've got any thoughts, just catch my eye and I'll bring you in. It's all been quite gentle so far, and you've also been writing very supportive columns. Anybody who can ask questions from upstairs don't think you're out of the line of sight there. I can see Jamie McGregor, one of my former colleagues. I'm just going to bring in a few other members first, Jamie, and I'll come back to you. A young man up there and I'll come to you, Kenny. Yes, young man there with the red tie on. Here comes a microphone, that's good. My name is Ryan McShane, I'm a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament currently, alongside my colleague Liam. One of the main, biggest successes that we have had is implementing votes at 16, and it was just to get your views as a panel if you think that's been successful in influencing young people to commit to politics in Scotland. Votes at 16, yes. One of the, again, the bigger changes that have taken place here, and we want to contribute first, Henry. Just to agree, it makes no sense that we shouldn't give 16-year-olds the vote in every election in the United Kingdom and in Europe. There's a big debate in the United States just now about, in the aftermath of school massacres and a whole range of bad things that are happening in the US about young people getting involved, it strengthens democracy, and now people say that 16-year-old doesn't have the experience, doesn't have the knowledge, doesn't have the brain power. Hey, I meet a lot of people as old as I am, and they've maybe not evolved either, so I think that that position is not sustainable, not tenable. So I think it would be good, it would be a shot in the arm because you know millennials, young people generally, there are so many issues, including climate change, which is so understandably to the forges now, they should be involved, and the best way to do that is to say, not only can you contribute in rallies, campaigns and other activities, but you do have the most powerful way to change in this country if you're a Democrat, and that is to utilise the vote that a lot of people fought hard for. So the sooner 16-year-olds get the vote, the better. Kenny Farkerson from The Times, any questions for our panel or any thoughts, in fact? Thanks, Presiding Officer. In the spirit of learning from our mistakes, learning from the past 20 years, can the panel identify missed opportunities in their own personal experience, perhaps, and the regrets of the last 20 years? That's also difficult, isn't it? I can see all their eyes ducking down now. Any thoughts? Anyone to go first on this? How about you, Robin? Did you take advantage of every opportunity as they interfere? Well, I don't know if we've had a chance or not, but in the green part we drew a lot of red lines, and I don't think it's a good idea to draw too many red lines in politics, you know, about who you're going to be able to work with and why or why not. And I think we missed enough opportunity in 2003. I won't go any further than that. Well, you'll leave us tantalised now. George, you're... Yeah, I think if you had predicted before the Parliament was set up and constituted that, the big policy differences that we enacted, which were tuition fees, of course, and free personal care, free prescriptions, et cetera, that the Parliament would choose to reward those who, you would argue, are the better off in society, rather than taking that opportunity where there was a lot of public expenditure available at that time, to actually target those from the least well-off in our society. So I think if you'd been arguing at the beginning where the reasons for setting up the Parliament would have been actually to tackle the problems facing those who are least well-off and yet we took the decision to do the opposite, in my view. I think the other one is, I think if you had suggested that 20 years on down the track that our governance structures below the Scottish Parliament would be the ones that a Tory Government in 1992, I think it was, put in place. So local government health boards are virtually the same. The only difference where we've made changes, of course, on the police force, where that has been centralised and it's not been without its difficulties. I think that in these two areas it's really surprising that the Parliament chose A to do nothing and B to make the choices that it did make. Trisha, it's here. I think that there's been a lot of really fine achievements by the Scottish Parliament, and I think that we should focus on them quite a lot, whether it be votes at 16, whether it be minimum alcohol price in the smoking ban, free personal care, the adults were incapacitable on the first piece of legislation that we actually passed in here. But I do think that the Governments that we have had since 1999 have not been brave enough to tackle local government and that there have been opportunities for local government reform, that every single Government has walked away from. I can remember having discussions with my good friend who is sadly no longer with us, Tom McCabe, who was Labour's first business manager. Tom and I spoke often about the reform of the public sector. I've got to say that there has been no appetite very much to do it. I think that there's a lot of vested interests in making sure that it doesn't happen, and that's why I said that I thought that none of the Governments have been brave enough to say we've now got a Scottish Parliament. It was never anticipated that local government would stay exactly the same. There should have been some sort of commission to look into local government reform, and I think that that is one of the areas of Scottish public life that we need to address, because it is ridiculous that there are 32 local authorities, 32 chief executives, 32 directors of education and 32 directors of do, do, do, do. We are a country of five million. If you are going to reform local government, you need to talk about what Robin talked about. That is devolving down to the lowest possible level. The community councils make sure that they have power. It was always assumed that the community councils would have a big say in Scottish life when they were set up in the first place, and it simply never happened. I think that that is the big gap that we have got, and I think that that is what should have been tackled. To be fair, we changed the voting system. PR for local government broke up all the big strongholds where there was dominated by one party. We did one step, but we were frightened to touch the actual infrastructure and the governance that sat there. At least you can argue that PR for local government made a huge difference in terms of who sets and represents those in the town halls and made sure that your vote actually counted. That was to be applauded, but the rest of it we just backed off because we were either too scared or unsure of that. All the colleagues want to come in now, and I will bring you all in, but I want to bring the audience in first. There is a gentleman right there, and then Jamie. Yes, that is the guy. My question is really about how you have gone through the celebration part and how you committed to being, but just some points you are bringing up in relation to transparency and scrutiny. Robin, you brought it up first in terms of community councils and school councils. They are just a token paper exercise. They do not represent the MD other than the head teachers or the local political party. It is most dominant in an area, and they only get funded when they want to push them on a specific reason. It is the same here, but I watched the convener's debate yesterday. Each convener was discussing with the First Minister the lack of transparency in health, the lack of accountability in health, the lack of ability to get data for things such as young people's mental health and how that was operating throughout the country and local authorities and health boards. I happened to go to Stratford Clyde today and there was a talk, and it was young carers that were there. It was heartbreaking listening, because I have no involvement in that, but when you are saying that you are looking for a committee to be a chair to be elected, why is it not somebody who is being a carer or being in the care system? Is there not a bit of arrogance about the use of having a committee to discuss what they have been through and, in fact, they should be making the agenda and pushing it forward? There was another very interesting guy there who was a judge or a sheriff, and he was looking at the difference between putting community payback and getting individual who are going into difficulties and making sure that they were getting housing, getting a job, getting training, getting health—all things that other human beings would expect, but those guys just do not know how to manage it because of the trouble to add through in their lives. It is all very good to have a discussion here about legislation, but it is just a piece of paper. If you have not got the scrutiny here and you have not got the scrutiny locally and people cannot access it and cannot complain about it locally, you have got to ask yourself what is the difference between you and Westminster? You have raised a number of points about transparency and openness, about whether or not, for example, the lived experience of people is taking account of here, which perhaps we will pick up on. I can tell you, just speaking for somebody who is still a parliamentarian, that the committees are still very actively engaged in trying to hear directly from the people whose lives are shaped by the public services delivered or financed by this Parliament and the laws shaped by this Parliament. There is an attempt to listen to those voices and whether that translates into the service that they want to receive is a different matter, but I think that there is an attempt. Henry, you wanted to get back in, possibly, on the earlier point. A comment on that. My concern is a genuine one about local government. I was the leader of the five regional council in the 80s. It is a purple patch for local government, but I think that there is a crisis in local government, a financial crisis, a crisis of confidence and a crisis of identity. The point that you make is that I am no great believer in strengthening alternatives to local government through community councils and school councils. I think that there are people capable of running communities and running schools that do not need to be elected or participating. Unless we take seriously local government, it is diminishing in its confidence in the way that it goes about, and it is not just about money. One of the reasons why we are flailing a bit is because we are talking about a constitution. The UK does not have a written constitution. Scotland, at this point, does not have one either. What is the function of local government? How important is it regarded in our society? How important is health in our society? How important is the relationships between people and our Parliament, the relationships between Europe and Westminster? If you look at Europe again, you will find that there is much more interface taking place between different levels and more respect. I believe that one of the problems that we have is antipathy. When I was a Westminster MP, I was in local government, I was in the Scottish Parliament and at every level there is not the same trust, respect and understanding that there should be to create a more healthy environment. What I just wanted to say was that Kenny was asking about whether it could not be done better or what should we have done. Let me be radical here, Kenny, and say that when we started the Scottish Parliament, the thinking about the Scottish Parliament from the convention, there was this notion that we would have a list system, which is a form of PR, but which is still have first passed the post. That never produced natural long lasting coalitions in the way that I would like to have seen them. One of my ideas for the future, and I have to say that it is only an idea in my head, is that why do not we go for electoral reform, scrap the first pass the post and have Scotland's Parliament elected on a major change in line with much of what is happening in Europe? No, it is only an idea, but to try and overcome the point that I think is a Parliament, we have to want consensus, we have to want coalitions. 95 per cent, 96 per cent of everything that happens in here, most people agree with, but the politics of tribalism can end up as exploiting the politics of difference. So we will fight on the 4 per cent, but we will agree on the 96. Therefore, there is a simple message to me in that, that the Parliament has done extraordinarily well and I am a great champion of it, something to celebrate, but I think that there are practical steps that we can take, as I said, to become more European eyes regardless of Brexit and whatever happens there, and also take Scotland forward in the way that has been outlined by the fact that not only have some of the legislation been sound secure for Scotland, but it is world class legislation. The Parliament put through ban on smoking in public places the fourth country in the world to do that, that should give us impetus to be more ambitious, more assertive, maybe more aggressive, and Parliament should be the way to lead Scotland forward, and I think that there are great opportunities in that sense. I have a number of people who have caught my eye. I am going to take Jamie McGregor first and then the young woman in the first front. Thank you. Yesterday, I got a message to do with the European elections from Mr Farage—I suspect that many other people got it as well—and my son said to me, I see you got a message from the breakfast party. I said, no, I said, isn't it called the Brexit Party? I said, why do you call it the breakfast party? He said, well, it's a dog's breakfast, Dad. However, my two questions are. The only point that he made in it was that British politics is broken. My first question is, does the panel agree with that, or will normal service be returned in a couple of years or so? The second point is, if the Scottish Parliament had to deal with it, would it have been much more effective or would the same thing have happened? I am going to ask Annabelle and the young woman in the front row of the gallery there, who has caught my eye. I just wanted to get more audience participation. Just while they were waiting, I am getting a lot of questions on Facebook now. Another one is, should there be greater youth involvement in the Parliament? I have several questions about that specific question for you, Tricia, about your involvement in politics as well. Young woman. I was wondering if the panel could share their thoughts on the impact that devolution and the establishment of the Parliament has had on the involvement and representation of women in Scottish politics and perhaps what work is still to be done, how we might go about that. Thank you. So Annabelle, I am going to bring you in first, so you might want to deal with that question, but the involvement of women in politics or the couple of set-up questions clearly from Jamie MacGregor for you there. The one that I like best was from Kenny. But I will try and cover all. Kenny, you asked if there was anything that we regretted, any omission that we regretted. In my case, I regret greatly that I did not join the Scottish Parliament Weight Watchers Club, which was attended by a number of colleagues to have a very good effect. It is a salary instruction to me to learn from what others are doing and not be afraid to do that. If I may go to the young lady first of all about women's representation, I mean the whole, one of the founding aspects of this Parliament was it should be family friendly, that it should be constructed in a way that it did not prejudice against or militate against women being part of it. I think I am trying to say in the first election in 1999 that we had a very good female representation. I can't remember the precise percentage. 48 were in 37 per cent representation. It was a very credible performance indeed, and it did suggest that the architecture of the Parliament, not the buildings, but the architecture of how the Parliament should be designed and how it was meant to function, was perhaps having an effect in that. I know that there was a different subsequent elections, and then I think it went back up again. So it's not something I think we can ever take for granted. I think some women will naturally want to have a voice and be good at having a voice and will find out a way in which to use that voice. We've had some very, very fine examples of that in this Parliament from all parties over the last 20 years. However, there may be other women who still feel inhibited, and I think that there may be still a job to be done about how we reassure, give confidence, educate, and it's partly for the political parties to do themselves. In the whole, we've got quite a good story to tell. We've got Nicola Sturgeon, female First Minister, Trisha was the first female Presiding Officer. A number of female leaders of parties up here have been produced. So a good example, and I think encouragement for other women, but not something that should ever leave us taking it all for granted because that will not work and we can't take it for granted. The really big questions from, not applying the other questions, weren't big questions, but the testing, the perplexing questions from Jamie McGregor. I have to say that Brexit has been one of the most divisive issues I've known in my whole life, whether in or outside politics. As many of you will be aware, Brexit has divided families, it's dividing parties. It has proved to be an issue around which it has been very difficult to get any form of consensus as Henry was desirous of seeking. My own view is that, and I was a remainder, I voted for a main, but if you say to people, we're going to give you a say and we're going to listen to what you tell us. I think there's a huge obligation to get on and deliver that. I really do. I think that what we're seeing is a disillusion by the public in politicians across parties, I have to tell you, and certainly down at Westminster, there has been a constant demonstration of anger and frustration by both sides of the argument with placards saying that politicians are denying them what they want on the one hand and on the other hand saying that politicians are betraying the country and we should remain. This is proving to be a very, very difficult issue indeed. Time is going to, I think, ensure that one way or the other something happens one way or the other. My impression is that the country is crying for the thing to move on in some fashion. I think that once that has happened, and we cannot tell what's going to happen in the House of Commons. When the House of Commons took control of the business schedule of the Parliament and said, look, we're taking control, we're not letting the Government now run the business of the Commons, we the House of Commons will take control, fair enough, but they weren't able to agree on anything. That is a measure of the sort of paralysis we're in. It's not good for the country. I don't think it's good for people's morale, and it's certainly not good for the integrity of politics. It's very damaging to it. I think that we all want to see a situation where one way or the other situation is resolved, and we move on. Going back to Kenny's question, I was struck. I was looking at some headlines recently, and this is not a party political comment, but we're aware of challenges in the health service, we're aware of challenges in the education system, we're aware of a lack of GPs, we're aware of a lack of STEM subject teachers, we're aware of a worrying level of students wanting to study the STEM subjects. That was being talked about 10 or 12 years ago when I was in this Parliament. All I'm saying, Kenny, is that these issues are not new, and they have to be dealt with. Whether that's political will, whether it's different types of policy, whether it's radical thinking, that is for the MSPs in this place to determine, but it is revealing that, 10 or 12 years on, we are still discussing issues that were topical all that time ago, and we don't seem to have answers to those issues. I think that, Annabelle, I'm Robin... I'm just going to bring you in because, although the first question was said up there about the possible breaking up of the current system, but in many ways, certainly breaking up a dominant two-party system has surely been for the benefit to hear of the Green Party and other voices, the Lib Dems and others, to hear that multiplicity of political voices in Scotland. Do you think of what's happening now as that fragmentation as a bad thing, or actually a good thing, an opportunity for Green politicians, for example, to make their mark? First, I find it a bit frightening to think of it as being fragmentation, as if everything is breaking apart. There are huge stresses. Those have been caused by the use of a very blunt instrument, the referendum. I think we need to take a look at how we go about referendums. 51% to 49% divides the country. Perhaps we should say that there should be a higher point in a referendum, like 60% of the vote before government has to take notice of it. That's the first point. The second point is that British politics have, I think, very successfully managed our present and our future for a large number of years through most parties. In fact, all parties have their left, right and centre, and these sort of move together where we find the answers that people can tolerate are where the centres of those parties collide, if you like. And we get the decisions that take us forward. What's happening now is that extremist populists are commanding people's attention in a way that they haven't done for many, many years. I do find that frightening. I find that very dangerous indeed that the politics of assertion, this is something when actually there are very little in the way of facts or evidence to support what they're saying. So this, I'm sure, can be addressed, but I think the mistakes were made. We should never have had a referendum for a start on leaving Europe. That was a dreadful mistake, but the other mistake was that Westminster, bless their cotton socks, don't take it. The further away you are from Westminster, the more likely you are to be ignored, and that's why we wanted our own Parliament, and that's why the people in the north of England are so dissatisfied and so fed up with things as they are at the moment, that they have reacted in the way they've done as the only way they have in their armory of taking a kick at Westminster. George, I can see you want to get in. I'll bring you in in a second. I'd also like to just comment, just following off on your point there, Robin, that without relation to the overly controversial, the Scottish Government is about to publish a new referendum bill very, very soon, so it's not certainly off the political agenda. Now, for a question about women MSPs, I'm very conscious, I can see, Irene Oldfather, Margaret Smith and Mary Scanlon, three of my colleagues are colleagues, and Mary Scanlon had her hand up to ask a question, Mary. Yes, I did actually, I was quite struck by Henry when I mentioned over 200 pieces of legislation, but it was the gentleman in the second back row who really hit home when he mentioned the young carer, and he expressed a view that I feel about very strongly. I was here for four sessions of Parliament from 99 to 2016, and it was one piece of legislation after another. It just kept churning and churning out, so probably I was part of countless pieces of legislation, but I spent about one day, one morning, doing post-legislative scrutiny on a minor, minor part of the mental health bill. Also, if I may say, Presiding Officer, three of us here were on the free personal care bill in the first session of Parliament, this was our convener. Afterwards, it was the implementation of that, and I think that what we believed was being implemented in passing legislation was not how it was implemented by local government, and quite often in Parliament you would say, well, what about this and what about that? That will be done in guidance. Although we passed the legislation and the act of Parliament, the important part of the scrutiny was guidance, and that was done by civil servants, and quite often that led to a disconnect between what we wanted to happen and what actually happened. I just wanted to put that in, because this gentleman's comments really hit home. I can see that. I do not know whether what is coming up, but before we do, I want to bring in Esther Robertson, if I can. Esther Eichishner was sat on the original consult of the steering group that devised the principles on which this programme is founded and on which this discussion is premised. Esther, you would make a point. Can I make a couple of points and come back to Mary's, because that is really fundamental for me? I was originally co-ordinated at the Constitutional Convention before I got into the CSG, and I have to say that I am very conscious of big names such as Campbell Christie and Kenyon Wright sitting on my shoulder, tragic they are not here, and I can only think that they would be hugely proud that we are here having this discussion. I would start by saying, and Henry will smile, I have a son who is almost exactly the same age, and I can tell you that he is not grown up yet, so I think that this Parliament still has some growing up to do, but it is a young person that we should be very proud of, because I think that it has come a very long way. I do think that the committee discussion is the most interesting one of all, and I am going to remind you of some drafting you did, Henry, because you actually helped us in the CSG to remember that the Parliament would not just be about legislation. It is a participative approach to the consideration—I will get the wrong round—development, consideration and scrutiny of policy in legislation. I think that Trisha made the point about how our rules were hypothetical. We did enormous work on the number of bills that we thought the Parliament would deal with every year. We never imagined, despite the backlog that we knew there was, that it would do the amount of legislation that it has done. I think that there are two issues there for me. One is that we are at risk of thinking that, because it is a legislature, if we have a problem, we should legislate for it. Sometimes legislation is not the answer, but the second bit is that, when the convention scheme devised the committee system, it was to make those committees really knowledgeable and really specialist in their area, so that they could hold the Parliament to account, so that it could do its own investigations, get out and meet the young carers and all that. However, because of the volume of legislation, they have not had the time to do that. I think that that has been one of the challenges. I would like to think that that legislative process will slow down a bit and we might step back from it. I think that picking up Mary's point, one of the things that I was frustrated by was that we thought that the committees would start at investigations of their own, they would do the consideration of government, they would scrutinise legislation and they would do the post legislative scrutiny, so they would know what they were talking about. I was really disappointed that it ended up in the Audit Committee, because I think that that was not what was ever intended, and there may be good reason for it. That might be my small point, but I think that the committees have done a really good job in the circumstances on a workload that we never envisaged, which has grown with the powers of the Parliament when the numbers have not. I think that the only thing that I would say and a number of you have reflected on it—for me, I think that the only disappointment that folk around the convention table would have is that party politics and tribalism have played a much bigger part. I do not think that we can just blame Kenny in the media. I do not think that it is all about the media at all. I do think that Henry is right. We in the public know that most of the politicians agree on most of the issues, but you would not believe that when you watch what goes on in this chamber. I would like to think that, as the Parliament matures, we might get back to that more consensual approach, whether your answer has changed the voting system, I am not sure, but I, for one, am very proud of what the Parliament has done. I think that it is something that we should all be pleased about, and I am delighted with some of the contributions that the panel has made. Is that Tricia's brushland to get in to respond to some of those points? Just to say how much I agree with Esther on this, the Parliament very quickly became a legislative sausage machine. The amount of legislation that was going through the Parliament, and I can remember in the first session that we had to set up two justice committees because there was so much justice legislation. What that did was stop the investigative role that Esther has spoken about. It also stopped the post legislative committee because the committees were so bound up with the legislation. I have to say that the cynic in me tells me that Governments of all who have actually been quite fond of the number of pieces of legislation because it makes the timetable of the committees their timetable and not the Parliament's timetable. The timescale for legislation to be examined and going through, and that leaves very little scope for anything else. One of the huge disappointments that I have had was the lack of committee legislation that has gone through in the Parliament. That was one of the key points that was made that the Parliament committees should be able to bring through their own legislation. I have to say that, as Presiding Officer, when I was a Presiding Officer, I would have all those meetings with the conveners groups and others and make suggestions about how we can change the committees, how we can be stronger, how we can do things differently. Always at the back of what I used to say to them, we have had no committables for I don't know how many years in the Parliament. That was one of the checks and balances that was about the sharing of the power between the Parliament and the Government. That has been a disappointment to me. Like Esther, I hope that we can get off the treadmill that is legislation, legislation, legislation, which sometimes you think is being done for the sake of it. We have a problem, we will legislate, we do not always have to legislate. There are policy solutions out there, but what that number of pieces of legislation means is that the committees themselves, the committee members, are so tied up with them that they have no space to think, they have no space for their own investigations and I think that that is one of the biggest failures in the Parliament. I will bring George back in. I said that it is probably about an earlier point, George, but you are trying to attract my attention. I think that that is when we are still talking about centralisation and localisation in this Parliament. Just to follow up on the point that is made there, as a former whip in the first two Parliaments, the committees were really very powerful. There was no real control over what the committees did at that stage. I have been out of the Parliament for the past 10 years, but my feeling is that that is not the way it is any longer. Committees were certainly very powerful in their own right in the first two sessions. They tended to do their own thing, and the politics were much more of a compromise. People actually bandied together, regardless of party allegiances, to come up with solutions. I get the feeling that that is not the case any longer that the party whips are all powerful and that it is very much on party lines, correct me if I am wrong. My experience in the first eight years was that, as a party whip, it was very difficult to try and manage that, if you so felt as if you wanted to try and do it. It was virtually impossible. Does it briefly say that, as a member of the Opposition for those first eight years, that was never my belief about the committees? I can remember that we did a housing bill with the Government. The SNP group put forward almost 1,000 amendments. Not one single amendment was accepted by either the committee, where the Government parties had a majority. I have to tell you that, from an Opposition perspective, it was downright frustrating. I remember that I sat at a committee and had put forward an amendment, which I had thought was a really, really good one, and it was just rolled out completely. It was not accepted, not at all. We came to stage 3 in the chamber, and I had been going through all of the amendments. It suddenly dawned on me that the amendment that was getting moved by the Government was the amendment that I had put forward at stage 2 that they had voted out and that they did not even have the courtesy to say that they were lifting my amendment. It was not all sweetness and light in the first eight years. I am not saying that party politics did not get in the way afterwards, but let us know, write a story about how wonderful it was, under certain circumstances and it wasn't. I think that it depends whether you are in government at the time or whether you were in opposition. At least you have your way in the end. I will bring Henry in and then I will bring Irene and the gentleman up at the back. Henry first. Just to make you feel slightly better, Trish, at Westminster, amendments were just a joke, because I spent 10 years in opposition with Mrs Thatcher and John Major. Essentially, he went into committee, so the Conservatives would sit, understandably, doing their constituency business, because they were told, shut up. We put up empty amendments and, of course, no opposition amendment was ever accepted. When you then look, and this is why I come back to the short termism, because essentially this is the Parliament in its infancy in a way, I think that it is absolutely right to say that the Parliament has been a huge success in terms of its committee work, but you know that there is a limit to what you can do with 129 MSPs. Westminster has 650 of us at the time, and whilst it is a bigger country, the number of MPs relates to the business. How many are you suggesting we should have? Watch this space. That is why I feel that if we are looking seriously at giving more authority to our committee members, more investigative work, more time on the job, more ability to review legislation, then you have to think quite seriously about where the numbers of the Parliament might be going in the years that lie ahead. Now, whether it is independence or whether it is federalism or status quo or home rule or whatever you call it, this Parliament now has a lot of choices to make in relation to how I think they are elected, but also to be fair to them, a lot of fantastic work has been done, but you cannot keep pouring a quart into a pint pot because, essentially, something has got to give it. I feel that we should be more ambitious in a way when we look at those things. The other point about it is that there are only ideas. Scotland needs ideas, ideas, ideas, but at the end of the day, I would not like to think that we should not applaud what is happening in Scotland. If you want, as I said, to look inwards to Westminster over the 14 years that I was there, this is really powerful stuff. People complain about the amount of legislation, but that was the pent-up frustration at Westminster. Things needed to be done in Scotland. Some were administrative, but most of it was legislative. I do not see the figures actually diminishing at the present time, and if Scotland requires things to be done in the interests of Scots, hey, here is your Parliament, use legislation. I have got hands going up all over the place now, so I am going to take Iron Old Father, and then there is a gentleman right up at the back row, so I read first. Thank you very much, Ken, and it has been really interesting to listen to this reflection on the committee structure. I had the privilege of chairing a committee, but I also set up and chaired a cross-party group. I would be interested in the panel's reflections on the role of cross-party groups within the Parliament, because it seems to me that they provide a huge opportunity to pick up the point that was made by the gentleman in the second row from the back. They are sitting round the table. Communities and organisations and young carers are sitting round the table with parliamentarians with a huge opportunity to influence that agenda. Thinking about the cross-party group that the three of us actually worked on—the cross-party group on Alzheimer's dementia—have the opportunity to produce pieces of work, and we did the charter of rights. I am proud that the two colleagues sitting beside me, who are from different political parties from my own, put their heart and soul into working with communities and people with dementia and their carers to produce that piece of work. To me, the cross-party groups in Parliament provide a great opportunity. I do not know if there needs to be a little bit of amendment around how they are currently working, but that might be something that the panel would want to reflect on. I ask the member to think about who will respond to that point while I take the gentleman right at the very back up there. I just wonder what the panel feels about how the standard of debate has changed over the last 20 years. Has it improved? Is there still room for improvement? And has the famous horseshoe shape, which Henry referred to, actually encouraged a sort of consensus? Certainly sitting in the press gallery, it never looked like that, and I suppose it never will. But I would be very interested to hear whether the actual sort of atmosphere of the Parliament has improved the standard of debate. Very good. We'll have a thing with that. I know that Kenny Farkson was talking about the first speech by Donald Dewar, talking about the voices of the marins, the ring, the speaker of the marins, that's right. The din of the Clyde ship. The din of the ship where there's no welders. The new voice in the land. A new voice in the land, that's exactly it. Now, I'm going to skip generations, if you don't mind me saying, so to a young woman just over here. So I'm 17 years old, so I'm not even as old as the devolved Government here, and I know that social media has played a huge role in my involvement in politics and my choice to study politics. Specifically, the independence referendum in 2014 was kind of my first taste of Scottish politics at 13. But I was wondering what your thoughts were on devolvement and the reflection on then and now and the youth involvement in politics, specifically Scottish youths, with pressing issues discussed such as young mental health issues that I'm quite passionate about, or even the scrapping of music tuition, just with discussion of 16-year-old votes and how youths will have their competence at 16 to be involved in politics and have that level of knowledge to vote in politics at 16. Thanks very much. Good point, yes. Good point. Now, can I just ask the panel to respond to a couple of different points there? Cross-party groups are the standard of oratory in the Parliament, and our involvement and the support that we give young people and whether or not that has changed over the 20 years of this Parliament. Robin, I can see you looking at me, unless you know that it's quizzically or with enthusiasm. I'm trying to concentrate my marks on this one down as much as I can. One of the things about the debates is the five minutes, six minutes limit. I think that every MSP should be given a ration of time to use over the year so that, just occasionally, you can stand up in this chamber and give a reasoned, long speech of 15 to 20 minutes where you can show that you've been listening to other people and comment on what they've been saying, and that would be a debate. What happens at the moment is not a debate. If you've got five minutes, you take one intervention, and if you politely and do mention another MSP's contribution, that's a third of your time gone, and you're left with three minutes, which is 150 words. Well, 300 if you speak very fast. They're not debates, they're just, you know, I remember very, very few discussions in this Parliament in here that could have qualified as being a real debate. Debates happen in committees. I wish that the press would comment on what happens in committee more than they do. I would just add two comments out if I may just, as somebody who's currently looking at that very issue through parliamentary reform, we do, some of the best debates are actually in the, what are called the members' debates, after the vote. So they're not quipped, anybody can contribute, and they're nearly always slightly more thoughtful, very less party-placed or less tribal. I should amend that. That's right. And another issue that also appears into it, one of the biggest features of this Parliament is that we are family-friendly, we have a decision time at five o'clock every day, it's one of the most important principles in which the Parliament is founded, but a downside, if you can call it downside, is that everything then works back from five o'clock and you have time-limited debates on everything, because if you have to have the votes at five, then you've only got, let's say, three hours for a debate or two and a half hours for a certain debate, and then you have to be proportional, therefore you have to divide the time up within that, and that's how you end up with this, you get a six-minute speaking slot, or a four-minute speaking slot, and in that four minutes you've got to get a couple of points across, and therefore you don't take intervention, so it becomes a slightly self-fulfilling prophecy. And so people end up standing up and reading their party positions at opponents rather than discussing issues. So I just say that because we are wrestling, and in fact we've introduced a new reform, and it's already in place, that if we can agree on a debate, members can take more time, and by agreement members can stand up and speak for 12 minutes, so long as they discuss it with me and others beforehand, because I'm in the chair. But so far, nobody's really pushed that, we've had a couple of nine-minute contributions, but that's all we've had so far, so I'm still full of hope for that. Now, cross-party groups, Annabelle or George, did you ever sit in a cross-party group, were you a fan of the way they allow access to the Parliament? Yes, I was, I think, on certainly one, if not a couple. I agree with Irene, I think they have a relevance, the great thing about a cross-party group is, it diffuses, and this is Esther's concern, it diffuses the part of political friction, because you get people bonded together by an interest in something, whether it was dementia, whether it is mental health issues affecting young people, for example, they are bonded by that interest, and they will work constructively, they will have an open remit to invite people in, to speak to them, to hear of experiences, to learn about views, and then they can compile a report, and if I were a Government, I would be very close attention to what that cross-party group was telling me, because it might very well be the genesis of some much-needed legislation. So I think they do have a role to play. Henry, you were nodding, I think particularly at the involvement of the young people as well. Yes, I agree with the cross-party groups, I mean that's a great way to build consensus, but the other point, maybe if I could make an without boring people analogy with football, you know, if you're good enough, you're old enough. I mean, I was in chair of a local government committee when I was 23, I played the first professional game at 16, and what I say to young people is, put yourselves forward, come forward, because you'll be patronised as I was, and I have done to say, the future is about our young people. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to do that, and so there are far smarter people around when I was first in local government, far better football players than I was when I first played professionally. So, hey, take it with both horns and get on with it, because we need young people. The second point I just wanted to make was the question of, Jamie raised, Jamie, are you listening? Right, belated that. I just wanted to say, anything that Farage says about broken politics, I wouldn't agree with Farage on anything, but secondly, Jamie, in terms of Scotland might doing it better, we just have to remember we voted to remain, that would have solved a big problem in Scotland, as we did in terms of the vote. Finally, the point about the horseshoe shape, I think psychologically, it's a lot better. I remember standing at the dispatch box during the devolution debate, and one of the English ministers threw a Scotsman at me. That was the only peril that I nearly fell under. But psychologically it's good, and the quality of debate I think is influenced by Robin's point. You cannot have a speech or three, six or twelve minutes, and apart from maybe a bank of minutes that you can use during the year, it would be a great opportunity to allow parliamentarians to have a longer speech sometime, not just a maiden speech, a longer speech. And if it's anything to cheer you up, Robin, when I did my maiden speech in the House of Commons, it was July, it was 1.30am in the morning, it was about the future of local government and there was five people in the chamber. Hey, we've done a lot better than that, so let's stick with it. Tricia. I think you covered very well, Presiding Officer, the difficulties of extending speeches and also to hold to the principle that it's a family-family parliament. And that would need a huge change in the way that we operate. If we want to go on till 12 o'clock at night, one o'clock in the morning, then fine, you can have as long speeches if you want, but having sat through some of the Brexit debates, quite frankly, speeches are 30-35 minutes, not only are boring, but I'm not sure that they contribute much to the greater wisdom that there is. But, you know, if you want a family-family parliament, you've got to make concessions about how you can achieve that. Same thing, cross-party groups, I agree. I think that when cross-party groups work, they work well, and I think that they've made a huge contribution to this place. I think that it's one of the finest things we've done. I think that there's too many. There's not enough MSPs. I think that there needs to be a bit of consolidation of the cross-party groups. You can have a cross-party group on every single health issue there is, and sometimes that's how it feels. In terms of young people, I think that I want to mention two things. Firstly, I don't think that we've even talked tonight about our Public Petitions Committee, which was, you know, a world leader in what we did, or the electronic voting that we were so ahead of it. But one of the other things that we did that is rarely spoken about is that at the very inception of this parliament, we had an education centre. With an education centre up the road, we've got an education centre built in here, we've got train teachers, we've got youngsters from all over Scotland who come in here, they engage in their parliament, they learn about their parliament, they meet with the parliamentarians, and I think that's been fantastic. And we've also had, almost from the beginning, the Scottish Youth Parliament, which runs in parallel to this Parliament. And they have had some great campaigns, they have been really engaged. I think we are not perfect. I think votes for 16 is a huge leap forward. I agree with Henry that we need to have votes at 16 in every single election that we have. But I think that we've come an awful long way, and we are far further ahead than I think most parliaments throughout Europe or the world. Thank you, sir. And George? On the issue of speeches, I mean, I look back fondly, having six minutes to speak after experiencing the European Parliament, where the maximum length of time was two minutes, and it's through interpretation. So six minutes sounded to me a really luxurious amount of time. And I think, if you actually think back to some of the big contentious debates around free personal care, myself, Goodnam or Irene Margaret, et cetera, Mary Scanlon all took part. That was a hugely powerful debate, despite the fact that we were only limited to four or five months. The phishing debate was another one, massively powerful debate. So I'm not convinced it's only just about the time. It's actually about the subject, it's about how motivated the politicians are to express themselves. You find that in very, very big debates of where there's real contention, you actually find that politicians within 45 minutes can actually articulate and make very powerful speeches in favour or against the issue that's before us. So I don't think we want to get too hung up on time. Maybe the problem is too many bland debates where there's actually nothing at stake. So you maybe should maybe think a little bit more about that. A final point from Robin. Yes, parliamentary engagement with schools and young people. The cross-party group on children and young people is one of the best attended cross-party groups in the entire Parliament. This certainly was when I was here and I hope it still is. Anybody confirm that? I hope so. We also hosted the finals of one of the big schools debating competitions. But essentially this is where schools come in that schools, our educational system, should be giving young people the confidence, activities in school that give them the confidence to get up and speak for themselves. Comment I made earlier about school councils. If you don't give them a budget, then it's toy politics. All they learn is when they go to the head teacher with the discussions they've had and he says no or she says no, all they've learned is that politics does, democracy doesn't work. Are schools really that there's something, when they desigregated the regions, a whole lot of extra things, or people things taught as extras, like outdoor education went out the window. Every school in Lothian region had a school bus that took people out. They had skiing, they had teachers who got time off to take kids away. This has all disappeared, and yet everybody knew how fundamentally good outdoor education can be for the personal development of young people in terms of confidence and getting on with other people, empathy and all these things that will make the politicians of the future and good politicians. And I think some of these good politicians are clearly in this room but I'm afraid, despite I can see Cathifida and other members' hands going up now, I'm afraid it's not the end of the evening because we're going to adjourn downstairs at a which point please grab one of the many politicians either on our panel in the room and over glass of wine continue this conversation. But I'd like, if you can, you to join me in thanking our panel. I'd like you to thank the many MSPs who've come along to join us. Members of the Constitutional Convention, you can see a Joyce McMillan there as well, as Estlur. Kenny MacFarkerson and all colleagues with the Times for their co-sponsorship, but most of all yourselves for making this such an enjoyable night. Thank you very much indeed.