 Felly, fel y diodd 23 yma yn y Cymru Cymru Cymru, yn cyfnodol anfodol o.d. Mae'n ddod i'r cysylltu iddyn nhw i ddweud o gyd, credu'r ystod y gweld y gydag i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r ystod i'r private. That item relates to a paper on parliamentary privilege. Do members agree to take that item in private? Thank you very much. Agenda item 4 will be taken in private, which means that we now move to agenda item 2. It is an evidence session with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards and Public Life in Scotland on the annual report in 27-28 and on a review of operation of the 2013 code of practice for ministerial appointments to public bodies in Scotland. In joining us today are the Commissioner for Ethical Standards and Public Life in Scotland, Bill Thomson. Iain Bruce, Public Appointments Manager and Commissioner for Ethical Standards and Public Life. I invite the commissioner to make a short statement, if that is suitable. I thank you for the invitation to attend this session. I anticipate this being my last annual report evidence session with the committee in my capacity as commissioner. The process for the appointment of my successor is under way and I hope to be able to organise a handover prior to the meeting office at the end of March 2019. For the benefit of those who may be less familiar, my role combines two former roles, those of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and the Commissioner for Ethical Standards. I suspect that you will be more familiar with the ethical standards role in pursuit of which I report to you on complaints about the conduct of MSPs. Another aspect of that role and one that actually demands much more of my time involves the investigation of complaints about breaches of the councillor's code of conduct and complaints about the conduct of people appointed to public boards. If, after investigation, I conclude that there has been a breach of the relevant code, I submit a report to the Standards Commission for Scotland. Complaints generally come to my office from members of the public who have concerns about the conduct of individuals in public life. Around 80 per cent of the total number of councillor and public body complaints are initiated by members of the public. Another 18 per cent, roughly, are submitted by councillors and they are remaining few by MSPs, by MPs or by council officials. Initial investigations are conducted by experienced investigating officers. There are five of them, all of whom are appointed on a part-time basis. There is also a senior investigating officer who assists with difficult issues, monitors progress and is the first reviewer of draft reports. When a code breach is reported to the Standards Commission, they generally arrange to hold a public hearing at which evidence will be led in support of my conclusion that there has been a breach, followed by any contrary evidence on behalf of the councillor or the board member. Responsibility for presenting the evidence at the hearing and making submissions is shared between me and the senior investigating officer. I am not normally involved in the initial investigation of complaints unless it relates to the conduct of an MSP, but all of the reports that are issued by the office are mine, most of them will have been through several iterations between the first draft and the final version that is issued. I want to turn now to the work on public appointments, which is really of quite a different nature, even though it does involve a regulatory element and, very occasionally, consideration of complaints submitted by applicants. In this capacity, I have a dual role, ensuring that public appointments are made openly and fairly with due regard to equality of opportunity and also promoting compliance with the statutory code of practice. The regulatory role applies to appointments made by ministers to the board of any of the regulated public bodies that are listed in statute. There are currently 96 such bodies. They include health boards, national park authorities, enterprise, environment agencies and many others. Appointment decisions, as you will be well aware, are made by ministers, but the job of attracting and assessing candidates is delegated to an appointment panel. Vacancies are advertised and candidates are assessed on the basis of criteria that are determined at the outset by ministers. Appointment panels are generally chaired by senior civil servants from the sponsor directorate, the minister's directorate, if you like. They often include the chair of the body whose board has a vacancy and they may also have an independent panel member who is familiar with the field in which the board operates. In addition, the panel may include a public appointments adviser drawn from a team of experts who are contracted to my office to provide both a supportive and a regulatory role. The extent of the adviser's involvement varies according to the nature of the position being filled. For example, if it is a round to find a new chair for a national body, the adviser will be involved throughout the appointment round up to the stage at which the panel submission to the minister has been agreed. In some cases, however, the adviser is only involved in the planning stage and in others there is no direct oversight. That is because we want the regulation to be proportionate. Ministers and appointment panels are expected to observe a code of practice for public appointments. The code was drawn up by my office and, following a public consultation, it was agreed with ministers and with the Parliament that it was last revised fully in 2013 by my immediate predecessor. The code is a permissive document, despite what you may sometimes hear. It allows considerable freedom to those who are charged with making public appointments so long as they respect the three principles. Those are merit, integrity and the third is diversity and equality. Appointments must be made on merit. Merit is defined for each post by the minister when setting or agreeing the criteria at the start of the process. The panel reports to the minister on the relative merits of the candidates by assessing how well they meet the published criteria. As I have indicated, the code is a permissive document. It does not require appointment rounds to be conducted in a particular way. On the contrary, we are keen to encourage and support improvements to processes and new approaches to attracting a more diverse field of applicants. The public appointments advisers, to whom I have already referred, and the small team in my office, which in fact is Ian, plus one other part-time, have considerable expertise, which is available to support and improve the appointment process, as well as to monitor compliance with the code of practice. We also conduct thematic reviews periodically to assess the extent to which the code is being complied with, including in cases in which my office has had no direct involvement. We have been working together with Scottish Government officials on groundbreaking research to gather evidence on the impact of diversity on the governance of public boards in Scotland. That has not been done elsewhere. We have also been working on induction sessions for newly appointed board members and with officials and experienced board chairs on a mentoring scheme for board members who may wish to consider applying for a chair role in the future. That is all that I wish to say by way of introductory statement. Thank you very much, commissioner. What we would like to do, if it is all right with yourselves, is to ask a few questions, none of which shall be too onerous, I believe, but you never know. Can we please just go through things in a reasonable order and talk about complaints, first of all, against MSPs, as you previously mentioned yourself? There were 28 complaints of possible breaches of the code. Only two of them were within your remit, apparently. Of the 26 inadmissible complaints, to give guidance on what the commissioner's role is, you referred to 11 to other bodies and 15 were not referred onwards. Can you explain how the inadmissible complaints are handled and why they are particularly inadmissible in the first place, if that is possible? I think that you'll be aware that section 9 of the code sets out a number of types of complaints that are excluded from my jurisdiction. For example, complaints about the conduct of a member in a committee meeting are dealt with by the convener. Complaints about the member's conduct in the chamber are dealt with by the presiding officer. There are other examples that I will not go through, but I did, although I have lost it, make a note of the 16 cases that were not even referred to anybody else. There were five that involve conduct that simply is not covered by the code. To give you examples, comments made on TV in the course of an interview were a complaint. First of all, about the conduct of two members in the chamber, which I referred to the presiding officer, and about the presiding officer's apparent failure to reprimand them for that conduct. That is not covered by the code at all. There were complaints about statements made or actions taken during the UK election campaign. Those are not covered by the code. There was another complaint that a particular party leader had not taken action in relation to the conduct of two of the members of that party, which had offended the complainer. There have been others in which there was simply no factual basis for the allegation. Those tend to relate to alleged failure to declare or, in some cases, register an interest. What happens is that I write to the member who has allegedly failed to do so, and if they are able to establish that either they do not have the interest or it has been registered or declared, then there is no basis for an investigation. I believe that Tom Mason would like to hear a small follow-up on that, if you do not mind. Do you think that the information that is available to the public and others about what your role is is not robust enough if you are receiving complaints that do not fall within the code or, alternatively, does the code need to be widened? The last option is one for you rather than for me. I think that it is quite difficult for people who are not immersed in it to be aware of what the code does and does not cover. It is particularly difficult to realise that some of the complaints that come to me should have been made to the corporate body of the Presiding Officer or the First Minister. We endeavour to make it plain on our website and in documentary material that is available, but I do not think that it is realistic to expect people to absorb all of that. If I may just say that one of the things that we have been doing is updating our website and it is due to launch either later this month or early in the new year. That will include for the first time an online complaints process, which will take people through step by step. There will be various pointers in the course of that, which will discourage people from proceeding if they are raising something that I or my successor will not be able to take on board as a complaint. I hope that that will help, but it is very difficult to explain the ins and outs of this in a clear way to the general public. I think that that will help. We will see in future years what happens to the numbers. Yes, that is a very useful question. I think that the pointer towards the online procedure will help a lot of people then. Thank you very much for that. Is that something directly related to what we have on your site? In that regard, if there was a complaint that should be appropriate for a party, leader, would you sign post that, or would you just not take it any further? I am required by starting to notify any member against whom a complaint is received. If I received a complaint about a party leader's actions or failure to take action, they would be notified of that. In responding to the complaint, if it is outside my jurisdiction, I do my best to explain why. If there is an alternative, what the alternative might be? That is good. In the forum that you have put online, will there be a reference in there for that facility? Yes. We have to strike a balance between complicating the thing dreadfully and allowing people to get through it without losing their rag because of the nature of the process. The short answer is yes, but I cannot remember the detail of what it will say. The idea is to simplify and make it easier for people to understand. Thank you very much. Tom Mason, please. Good morning, gentlemen. Targets. You have been quite successful in achieving most of the targets except the initial assessment. Can you give any good reasons why that has not been achieved and is the target itself realistic? In fact, are all the targets realistic? I think that the table 14 is specific. The annual report might be slightly misleading in that respect. Table 14 relates to the initial assessment of complaints, specifically those about counsellors and members of public bodies. We have set 100 per cent target for the initial assessment because that is what I would like to achieve. It is probably impossible to achieve, but I think that a stretched target is a good idea in the sense of trying to get as close to it as possible. One of the reasons why we do not always achieve it is because, in order to make the initial assessment, we need to obtain information from other people—it may be the person who has made the complaint, it may be the person about whom the complaint has been made, or it may be the council or the public body whom that person is on. We simply do not always receive replies quickly and very occasionally we get to reply, which requires a follow-up question. Some of them just do not make the 15 days, but we do not have a big problem in terms of delay. With MSP complaints, the stage 1 process, which is the equivalent, has all been done within the rather more extended time limit. Jamie, do you want to follow up on that? Yes, follow up on the previous one. In the information that you provided, particularly for the counsellors, you provided an origin of complaints. For the MSP complaints, I could not see anything in there that identified where those complaints, a breakdown of where those complaints had come from. Is that information that you hold, if so, why was not that included? I think that the simple answer is that I am not required to produce it, but I do have the information and I can let you have it. There are probably two or three complaints every year made by one MSP about another MSP. Regrettably, those have tended to include complaints which the person complaining has leaked or gone to the press about. That, of course, is a breach of the code in itself. Sometimes it results in a sort of tit-for-tat complaint in which the person who started it off ends up being the only one who breaches the code somewhat ironically. Most of the others come from the public. Some of the public are politically active. Some of them may have held elected office in the past, but motivation is not an issue as far as I am concerned. I wonder whether there were perhaps complaints that were multiple complaints and whether that is something that you have seen in some of the complaints, whether they were admissible or inadmissible. Convener, there have been a small number of multiple complainants. There are very few in relation to MSPs. There is one particular part of the country in which there is somebody with great interest in making complaints about councillors, but it is not a big issue with MSP complaints. Thank you very much. Okay, well, thank you. I think reasonably well covered that issue. Can we move on to public appointments, please? I think that Mr Bruce might have a thing or two to contribute here as well. I know that Maureen Watt has some questions that she would like to ask on this. Thank you, convener. Maureen, gentlemen. Before I start, I think for the record, I would like to mention that I was an independent assessor of public appointments prior to coming into Parliament in 2006, a job that I really enjoyed. The number of active appointment rounds completed in the past year has risen sharply compared to previous years. Given that there should be fewer public bodies around, why has there been that increase? Is it failure to a point, or are people not serving their full terms, or can you give a bit of an explanation as to why that is? There are multiple reasons or factors. The number of regulated public bodies changes. I think that three new ones were created, certainly, within the last year, not necessarily the year reported, but some have been abolished or removed from our remit. The number varies. Another factor is that Governments occasionally contemplate changing the landscape of public bodies, and that does not always follow through. If they are contemplating changes, they may hold back on making new appointments, and it may be that, if it does not go ahead, there ends up being a little bit of a backlog in effect. Some appointment rounds occur unexpectedly because people leave or become unwell, and there have been quite a number of those. The other factor—probably the biggest one in the year that we have reported on—is that we have had discussions with Government staff about how best to improve the process. One of the big factors from our point of view is being consulted early at an early stage in the appointment process, which allows us to have more influence in terms of what might be appropriate in terms of attracting a more diverse field. There are at least 12 figures reported where we were involved early on, but the round-end did not go ahead for whatever reason. There is nothing sinister in that, and it is something that I welcome. Maureen Watt. Constraints on resources available to ministers to advise and support them were identified by you as a risk for the 2017-18 period. In the event, did resource constraints have an impact on what you were able to achieve in that period? I think that they did have an impact. You will see from the tables that, although there has been a small increase in the percentage of women on boards—it is up by 0.5 per cent in the course of the year—an other small increase in the numbers of people under the age of 50, which is two of the target groups, as it were. The progress has been in the wrong direction in relation to other categories of applicants, particularly those who are disabled. I do not think that the Government has been able to, at the official level, apply sufficient co-ordination to the range of different factors that are involved in attracting, successfully, more diverse people to boards. It is not a simple exercise. It does require co-ordination at quite a high level of a number of different types of effort. It has been a perennial problem. It is not something that is just a reason. I am sure that I heard a few days ago a radio interview about this particular thing. Scotland was actually doing better than the other nations in terms of diversity, but it still was not good enough. You have identified the Scottish Government restructuring as a potential risk to public appointments activity in the coming period. Can you elaborate on why you see this? It may sound simplistic, but it is not. I have mentioned this in the report and elsewhere. There was a public boards and corporate diversity programme, but it was a programme that, among other things, was a significant contributor to progress that was made in increasing diversity on public boards. The main factor was probably the First Minister's profile on gender balance, which I think had a very big effect. However, the programme brought together quite different aspects of, if you like, Government effort. I think that, probably in the year or two before the one that I have reported on just now, there was really quite a lot of progress in a systemic way. It is fair to say that the proportion of disabled people on boards in Scotland is higher than it is in other parts of the UK, but it could be better, it should be better. Part of my statutory responsibility and that of my successor is to ensure so far a reasonably practicable equality of opportunity. I think that that means making changing the process in such a way that it is more attractive to and easier for people from other groups to put themselves forward and to succeed in appointments. I think that the loss of that co-ordinating programme, which has not been replaced by anything effective in the last couple of years, is one of the contributors to the progress not being such as it ought to be. I should say that I have very recently had discussions with the relevant director general and I understand that reporting to the civil service people board is what will replace it, but there has been a gap of a couple of years when nothing effective has been there. Do you think that we are relying on Government too much to do this and that it should be more of the boards themselves and their local communities who make a point of advertising the fact that they want a broad range of people on their boards? There is always this thing about women who do not think that they can do things and perhaps the same is true of ethnic minorities and folk with disabilities. What can we do at a local level to encourage more people to come forward? I think that I will ask Ian to come in in detail, but just very briefly, there are some very good examples where boards themselves have, as it were, taken the initiative. Because we have the early engagement public appointments advisers in the process, they have been able to assist along with Government staff in making that more effective. There are some really good examples of that. I do not know if Ian might be able to give you such. Excuse me, it is a very astute question, unsurprising given your background, but it is one of the points that we have made to Government. Clearly, the Government is not capable of changing the profile of all boards in Scotland. We have done great working together in terms of nearing the gender diversity target, but those other groups are a bit harder to get on board. It is more difficult. I am not saying that it is an intractable problem. It is something that we are working with the Government on. When it works, it works really well. It genuinely is about everyone taking responsibility for what they can take responsibility for. Just to use a very simple example, we have been very clear that we have seen a lot of changes in this area when application packs are being put together. People generally speaking are not attracted by the Scottish Government brand, no disrespect to the Scottish Government, but they have genuine interest in the work of that public body. That is potentially why they might want to be a board member. So, if the board itself engages with the public, and that can be through social media and other means, it is engaging with its communities, its stakeholders, and all the branding around the appointment exercise is clearly belonging to that public body, then people are going to be much more attracted to apply. A recent example, and I think that it is still live, would be for the Scottish Housing Regulator. They are doing fantastic work, because it is a really, really accessible pack. They are running open days because they are very keen to have new members who have first-hand experiences, tenants who have registered social landlords, and those are the groups that they are targeting. It all makes complete sense, and we certainly anticipate that being successful. We have seen success where boards do engage in that way, certainly. Can I come back in on this? This is dependent on the board having a clear idea what they are looking for, and that is done effectively through succession planning, on which the Government has issued fairly recently excellent guidance. I know that the Government is trying to introduce what they are calling smarter sponsorship by the sponsor department, which should help to encourage boards to engage in succession planning of this nature. Of course, succession planning involves thinking about it sufficiently far in advance, and I do appreciate that, in some cases, their appointments occur unexpectedly. Thank you for that. Thank you, Morrin. Tom Mason, do you want to follow up? Yes. I just wondered in this debate on ethnic minorities and disabled people on boards and things. Some of the problem is defining disablement in the wrong terms. Who is disabled? We are all disabled to some extent, and we are all different. Certain categories are included in certain categories, and certain categories are just not. It has always been a bit of a muddle to me as to how it will work. Do you have any thoughts on that? To be slightly controversial, I think that difference is a benefit rather than a thing that you would class as a disability. However, I agree with the point of your question. That is maybe something Ian could explain in greater detail. There are issues about what data is collected and how it is used and trying to apply a one-size-fits-all solution, which will not work. All of the targets in the annual report ultimately were drawn from diversity delivers, but they do to an extent lump people together into groups. That is why, as I said, it is not an intractable problem, but it is a bit harder when it comes to things like BNE and things like disability. Some of the recommendations that we have made are about disaggregating that 20 per cent, for example, for disability, so that we have a clear picture and the Government has a clear picture about where people are falling out and what that might be attributable to. There is a big difference between someone with a visual impairment and someone with mobility problems and the ways in which a board needs to adapt to accommodate members, depending on the disability that they may have. Clearly, that varies quite a lot as well, and unless the analysis is done, it will be far harder to redress under representation in those areas. That is why the research in the annual report last two annual reports has been recommended to help us to understand what the issues are at that granular level. Elaine Smith, would you like to go more on the gender aspect? I was going to ask about gender representation in public boards and under representation. I think that it has mainly been addressed in answers to other questions, but could I just ask on the underrepresentation and the strands that you identify? Do you include religion in that at all? Are the questions asked about religion and representation? When I look at the report, I do not really see it mentioned, I just wondered. Yes, we do. The monitoring form is very extensive, and it covers all sorts of things, including religion. We do not report on everything that we monitor, but certainly anything that the committee had a particular interest in, I am sure that we would be happy to provide the figures. We do get them from the Scottish Government and we do review them. The last time I reviewed them, I did not see any differential in terms of how people were progressing through the appointment process based on religion, but I would be happy to look those out for you if you felt that was of interest. I think that that would be if I could follow that up separately. It was just when I was reading in the report all the different strands that religion was not there, so I did wonder. Under sexual orientation on the strands, you say that I assess why such applicants for chair positions are fair more poorly than those who declare that they are heterosexual at short listing stage under interview and address any barriers identified. That was non-heterosexual applicants. Do you have any more information on that? We have asked the Government to research it, and in the absence of that research, it is not possible to provide an answer that I would certainly like to. That is something that the committee might want to pick up in the future to look at. That is very useful. Thank you very much, Elaine. Appointment rounds. I think that Mark Scott is something that he would like to ask at Mark Scott, please. Yes, thanks, convener. Good morning to you. I think that you have already covered some elements of succession planning and the good practice around that, but I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into that because you make comments in the thematic review about the importance of individual board member appraisals. Although the picture looks pretty good around that, you do highlight some examples, I think, for boards where that sort of appraisal process is not perhaps being implemented in the best way it could be. I just wonder if there are lessons or good practices there to draw on. There has been, for example, quite a lot of public concern about the Board of NHS Tayside and some of the comings and goings throughout that board. I am just wondering whether there is an issue there for some of these boards in terms of the depth of work that is being done in terms of appraisal and how that feeds into succession planning. Yes. I do not think that the review demonstrated that there was an issue there, to be honest. It was a very small proportion of all the reappointments that we looked at. From our perspective, it was very much an improving picture and we saw very clear and very good evidence that appraisal was going on. To supplement that, I have seen there is a new NHS blueprint for governance, so clearly it is a live issue for the NHS in Scotland and one of the recommendations in there is about improving on what they currently do in terms of practice. I understand that they are going to set up a steering group to draw in the best practice from around Scotland and that is with a view to improving on a number of areas, including succession planning, but also the way in which individuals are appraised. Over and above that, and it was very heartening to see clearly there ought to be a thread running through individual appraisals to board appraisals and the extent to which you bring in people from outside to have a look and see the extent to which that is operating effectively as well. I am aware that the Government is doing work in that area, but from our review, it is certainly an improving picture based on what we saw previously. We have had a discussion already about improving diversity in terms of background and experiences of those coming on to boards beyond the protected characteristics. You mentioned that there has been a slight increase in under-fifties coming on to boards. I am just wondering to what extent your work involves engaging with young people to really identify what the barriers might be and how that direct lived experience of young people, for example, is brought into that thinking around good practice. Do you ask young people about why they are not coming on to boards? The short answer is that we do not do that. I know that the Government has a pilot scheme at the moment, with one particular major employer, to try and encourage younger staff to be interested and to be released to undertake work on public boards. We do get involved in outreach, but not to younger people specifically, I think that it is fair to say. We do not do it on our own because that is not the role, frankly. What we do is to try and support the Government with exercises that they are undertaking. Under-fifties is quite a broad categorisation for younger people. Some of us are struggling to remember it. Maybe under 30 before the issue of how many people under 30 do we have on public boards. There are obviously particular issues. I think that it is an area where it should be possible to make progress. One of the challenges is making the work on boards attractive in itself. What has come out of the thematic review is that people in that younger age group are particularly attracted by the opportunities for personal development. That is something that we have flagged up in our report, personal and professional development. Another issue is whether a rather old-fashioned approach to assessment is taken, which depends on what position you have held and how long you have held it, as opposed to what is your experience, which may not actually be in a working environment anyway, but it could be perfectly valid. There are all those aspects that, if they are brought together, will achieve progress. As I said, there has been an increase in the number of under-fifties appointed, which is a good sign. That is in the right direction. It may be worth saying that we have done some outreach with the University of West of Scotland, which we are hoping to expand, and with all of the colleges. That has been attached to the diversity research as well. We are certainly trying to encourage people from a broader spectrum and their stakeholders. Primarily, for the University of West of Scotland, we were talking to academics, because that is something that they might aspire to, but equally, you have a whole range of students' different backgrounds there, and we are encouraging the academics who work with them to encourage and turn their students to have a think about a role in public life at some point in the future. Mark Ruskell, you have to declare an interest. Please do not forget anybody over 65. That is a serious question. There is no bar to the appointment of people over the age of 60. It is a chance of forgetting anybody when it is gill unlikely. Mark Ruskell, do you have something for the public appointments that require parliamentary approval? Obviously, that requires an additional process in here. I have been part of that in relation to the appointment of the Scottish Land Commission. Do you think that that acts as a barrier to the diversity of applications? There might be some people who quite enjoy the opportunity to come in and make their case in front of a committee, but perhaps there might also be a barrier to some. I think that it is probably too early to say on the basis of experience in this Parliament that we do not have evidence of it being a barrier here. There is research conducted at Westminster that produced evidence of a fairly comparable process that is not identical, but being a discouraging factor. Although I agree that there will be people who would love to have a chance to say something to the committee, the process has to be restricted to the criteria for appointment. I think that there will be more people who would be slightly daunted by the prospect of having to justify themselves in front of a parliamentary committee, even one as polite as this one. The evidence at Westminster was that although the process started off, it was being quite constrained and contained. As time went on, committees became more relaxed about the sorts of issues that they would ask about and more political, which is clearly going to inhibit people who are not so minded from applying. The other thing to remember is that, given that we are talking about diversity and attracting people from groups in society and I appreciate Mr Arthur's point that they are not homogeneous groups, but attracting people from groups that do not identify with, first of all, the process of government and secondly with public bodies, it is going to be particularly difficult to encourage people from those smaller or more marginal groups to put themselves in front of a parliamentary committee as part of the process, I would suggest. Do you see any good practice there? I referred earlier to the appointment of the Scottish Land Commission. Do you feel that there was good practice in the way that the committee in this Parliament went about that? So far, with the bodies to which this has applied, the process has been able to run, I think, within the bounds of the code of practice for ministerial appointments, but there are real risks with it. It is possible that a committee might take a different approach. For example, the big concern that I have is not restrict itself to the criteria that have been advertised at the beginning. Merit is the key principle in terms of appointment. If questions are asked about something that has not been part of the definition of merit and somebody fails on that basis, they then have legitimate grounds for a complaint about the unfairness of the process. I think that that is what we are trying to avoid. We are also trying to avoid bluntly political cronyism, people being appointed or not looked at because they are right or wrong in terms of the people they know. So, these risks are increased. The process takes longer as well, which is another factor. It is not a particularly attractive factor. On this, what if the committee decides that they do not like the applicant on grounds that are not specified in the criteria for appointment? What does the minister do then? I suppose what do you do then? I do not do anything. I monitor the process, but if a complaint comes in, I will have to deal with it on the basis of the criteria set out in the advertisement for the post and the code of practice. So you would be reliant on a complaint coming to you before you could? It is not for me to go looking for trouble. Thank you very much, Mark. I thank the commissioner for that. Can we touch, please—I want to take us too long, hopefully—on the financial position of the commissioner's office? I know that Gil Paterson is interested in that. We see that there was a significant decrease in expenditure between 2016-17 and 2017-18, and I note that you are underspent. It looks like good news in many ways for the public bus, so I wonder if there is any background to that of why there would be a decrease. I will explain it. I think that the detail that is set out on pages 41 and 42 of the report there was a major reduction in staff costs, and about half of that—about £60,000 of that—was attributable to the introduction of the new process for the initial assessment of complaints about councillors and members of public bodies. I do not know why we did not do it before, frankly, but we now do it in the office rather than—we used to send that out to investigators who are employed part-time, and it took more investigators' time to do it that way than it does the way that we now do it in the office. That was one factor. The number of complaints against councillors and members of public bodies is the biggest part of our complaints work, reduced by about 25 per cent in that year. It was the year after an election that people make fewer complaints. It would appear in the year after an election, certainly councillors and public bodies. We also had a number of staff changes, which meant, first of all, there are little gaps between paying for something and going on with somebody else coming in. Secondly, the person who is appointed to replace tends to be at a lower point on the salary scale, so between all of these things we save quite a lot of money. Is that okay, Gail? Yes, that's fine. Can I move on to the lobbying? Well, I am a future work in terms of—thank you very much for covering the financial side. Can we think about the future work and Gil Paterson's questions on that point? There are a couple of questions. I know that, because of the lobbying act, that just came into force earlier this year, and it's just been passed on to your remit. I'm just wondering about that. Because of the commencement of the lobbying act, what impact has that had on you and do you anticipate more cases in regards to that? Convener, the short answer is that it has not yet had any impact by a way of complaints that I've had to deal with. That's partly due, I think, to the being a six-month period before anything could really have gone wrong in that sense, in terms of the way the act's structured. I know that the general approach within the Parliament, when the legislation was going through, was to try and take a light touch. Even though the actual process setting in it set in the act is a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it's quite a clunky process. It's modelled on the process for dealing with MSP complaints, which is quite clunky. No complaints have come in. I'm pleased to say that I had very good relations with the registrar and with the lobbying registrar's team, so I'm aware of what is going on behind the scenes. I'm hoping that there won't be a flood of complaints. I have no reason to suppose that there will be, but it is possible that there's a very large number of people registered, lobbyists registered, and things could be missed. I think that if they're missed by mistake, then they will be rectified. If they were missed deliberately, then it would be more difficult to ignore. As it goes on, there are bound to be complaints, but I can't say how many. Thanks for that. I hear you saying that the system looks a bit clunky. Would you think that there may be this committee? First, if it is clunky, is that the reason for people not utilising the system to make the complaint? If it is clunky, should someone be looking at it to refine that a bit better? I don't think that it would inhibit anybody making a complaint, but the handling of it is clunky. I've said this before, but it's not a new point. If this committee or anybody else were prepared to have a look at it, I would be delighted. It could be improved. I know that there is to be a review of the operation of the act anyway, and it's possibly something that can be dealt with as part of that review. Can I get him? Sorry, are you still on lobbying at the moment? You know I was just going to go into the next one. I was just going to say that the lobbying act element is extremely important to a lot of us because we could be targets of being lobbied, so that's extremely useful. It might come back to a later stage, but as far as I'm going to like Gil Parsley and speak because my voice has just gone naturally. I'm struggling just to make headway. I've got a terrible cold, that's a man's cold. No like men are hopeless. A very similar question is because of events happening and you're involved in it. When it comes to sexual harassment, and I think the profile, it seems to be almost a worldwide phenomena, that the profile of sexual harassment and other harassment against women indeed are, have really reached a crescendo. But I know that you've only had one case in that regard in terms of sexual harassment. Are you anticipating an upward number of complaints, and if so, are you preparing for it? I have no better knowledge than anybody else in this room about whether there will be more complaints. I think that we are prepared already for handling complaints. If they do come in, I think that the biggest challenge is going to be reaching agreement on an appropriate procedure for the handling of complaints. As you're aware, that is quite a controversial issue at the moment. I'm not directly involved. I'm aware that this committee will at some point in the reasonably near future receive the report of the joint working party in this Parliament, and I'm guessing that that will require this committee to take views on aspects of the procedure. For example, is there to be a time limit of one year for the submission of the complaint at the moment with MSP complaints if it relates to conduct that is alleged to have occurred more than 12 months before the person making the complaint could have been aware of it? I can't investigate without referring it first to this committee for a view or a direction. I've read very carefully the report by Dame Laura Cox into issues at Westminster. She argues quite cogently that there should not be such a restriction in terms of timing on the submission of complaints. That is something for you and others in the Parliament to take a view on, but that might well have a knock-on impact on other complaints as well. There are quite difficult issues about who gets to comment at what stage on the reports that are being submitted. Under the act that covers MSP complaints, that would apply at the moment if a sexual harassment complaint were to come in in relation to the conduct of an MSP. I have to allow any witness to comment on the summary or the statement of their evidence that goes in the report. I have to allow the person against whom the complaint has been made to comment on the report before it is submitted to you and not required to pass the report to the person who made the complaint. Under the Laura Cox recommendations, that would not be acceptable. If you are minded to go down the road of saying that both the person who complained and the person who complained about should have an opportunity to comment, there is a question about the stage at which that is allowed to happen. From what it is worth, and I have not seen what is coming forward, my preference would be that that should be at the stage of findings in fact. If it is at a later stage when I have then, or whoever is in my position, added conclusions, you then end up with the curious position where you might have three or more sets of views on the findings. In fact, which I or my successor will have assimilated and taken a view on and then drawn conclusions, and then you might have at least three views on the conclusions. You will be faced with quite a lot of comments and observations on the comments, and I think probably an almost unworkable position. I am making a plea in advance if there are to be opportunities to comment on the investigation before it comes to you, and I can see the force of that argument that it should be at the point where findings in fact are being set. Thank you very much for that. We have the Scottish Parliament joint working group coming to give evidence to us at our next meeting on 20 December, which we will raise those elements that you have pointed, which could be useful to yourself, feeding back to us if there are such complaints coming through. I do not know if there are any—sorry, Gil, were you still? No, I am not specific. There is just one non-procedures, and it is the first point that you made in reaction to my question, and that is the point of time back. It is quite a feature in the Scottish law in general, but do you think there should be some change to that, and not specifically on sexual harassment? I am talking a bit across the board, where the seriousness of an investigation that has been found or a complaint upheld that there should be an architectural differential between certain types of complaints, or do you think that there should be in serious definitions of seriousness that there should be a longer time? I am convening that it is a very fair question, and it is quite a difficult issue. In part because of the problem of definition, we can talk quite easily about serious complaints, but we could have endless arguments about whether something is sufficiently serious to be treated one way and differently from another, which is less serious. That is a real issue, and I think that it would be a problem for either the committee or the commissioner if it was the commissioner's responsibility to draw that distinction. I think that you would probably never be finished with challenges to the decisions that are made. I do have a legal training. If it is good enough for one category of complaint, why shouldn't it be good enough for another category of complaint? I think that you may receive arguments or arguments that may be made that sexual harassment is a category on its own, and I am not diminishing the importance or seriousness of it far from it, quite the opposite really. There are other serious issues that might be the subject of a complaint. I do not see why the rules for the two different types should be different because what we are talking about is natural justice and being fair to the person complaining and the person against whom the complaint is made. One of the other things that you will probably find yourself wrestling with is whether the process is an investigation or whether it is an adversarial process. Some of the arguments that I have read in the press has been made in the House of Lord recently confuse the two. At what you have at the moment is an investigatory process conducted by me or whoever succeeds me, then reporting into you. You do not have a properly adversarial process, unlike the Standards Commission, which does when it deals with complaints about councillors. The rules of engagement are different according to whether you have an investigation or an adversarial process or some sort of amalgam of the two, which is what we have here. Those are quite difficult issues that are going to have to be addressed. I do not know if he is going to address it, but Jamie Halcro Johnston has a quick word with me as well. In terms of your key risks for office for 2018-19, the one that I was interested in was that the systems suffer a significant cyber attack given the nature of some of the things that we have been talking about today. How confident can you be or how confident are you that the systems will be in place or that protections will be in place at the information that can be very sensitive will be protected? We are doing everything that we can. We have already achieved the Government's cyber essentials accreditation for the security of our system. We are trying to achieve what is called cyber essentials plus accreditation. We have been trying for weeks. Ironically, the external body that is assessing our cybersecurity cannot get into our system to test it, which I find quite a relief. I am not complacent about that at all. We are very well aware of the issue, and we are doing everything that we can to make sure that we are as well prepared as we can be. Thank you very much. You stood up to the rigours of our questioning extremely well, both of you. I thank Ian Bruce for coming along very much for the in-depth discussion that you allowed us to have with you. I particularly like to thank Bill Thompson as the commissioner for ethical standards and public life in Scotland, as this may well be the last time that you appear in front of this committee. I would like, as a committee, to thank you for all the work that you have done during your period as a commissioner. I wish you all the very best for the future and whatever you do, you are always welcome back here anyway. That is very kind. Much appreciated. I think that we will just suspend for a second or two so that you do not have to charge out the door, so you are okay to just take your time. You are all right. For the moment, agenda item 3 on cross-party groups, to consider an new update on the cross-party groups compliance with the code of conduct. There are 106 cross-party groups at the moment, and members will see from the report that compliance with the code is very high. Are there any comments from members, please? That is good to the compliance that is high. I just wondered if, where we did not get an explanation, would it be worth asking for an explanation for some of the groups where perhaps they have not submitted their annual returning time, for example? That is a very good point. We have an annual monitoring report, so we want to make sure that we take the monitoring seriously. If there are 106 groups, there is a law, and if there are some that may not be meeting what we can see as the compliance standards, we should potentially take that forward. Will we bring that back again for a future meeting when we get a chance to look further in-depth to that, or is there anything in particular at the moment that you have pulled up? I just think that there are often explanations in those that are given, but where an explanation is not given, I feel as if we should ask for it, because most of them give explanations, and those explanations are perfectly reasonable and understandable. However, where there is not an explanation, I think that the honest would be honest to just ask for one. As we know, our clerking team is very strong on ensuring that people comply with the code and chase people up if there are issues. However, if there are any potential issues, and there have been, as far as we know, three groups that have basically folded in previous times and in recent times, but for decent reasons, I think that we are very much, our clerks are very much on top of the issues, but we could bring that back if there are any specifics that maybe are not potentially being covered, as we believe it just now, in terms of people's response and in terms of why they may not actually be meeting with the code. We could bring that back, but can we take note of that at the moment in any line, and we can have a look? I think that we should also just thank the clerks for the work that they do, trying to make sure that members, sure conveners et cetera, do comply, because it is often difficult and busy timescales. As I said, there are often good and understandable reasons, but we should just put it on the record that the clerks do a good job in trying to elect groups and make sure that they do comply. Yes, I would be happy to note the report just now. I thank you very much, and I think that that is something that we would all go along with this. The efforts of the clerking team, which are pretty much successful, as far as I can make out, but we can have a look at it anyway on our own basis and see if there is anything that we would like to raise. However, we will note that. Thank you very much. Anyone else, any other points? Oh, Maureen, please. Yes, 10 days calendar notice of meetings to clerks. I can see that it might be an oversight to not inform the clerks, but I just get the impression from my inbox that the notification to MSPs is not often 10 days either, so I think that something needs to be done about that, maybe just a bit more. Well, just people need to be aware that, you know, just saying tomorrow there's a meeting, tomorrow night there's a meeting of such and such a cross-party group is not acceptable. And also, those who seem to think that it's okay to always have the group meet on a Thursday night is not acceptable to me anyway either, that there should not always be on a Thursday night, that it needs to be sort of at different times. Well, we could certainly notify groups, I believe, to sort of put forward those points, because I think that the points are well taken. We can notify groups about their responsibilities to ensure that their MSP members are taken into consideration and not taken for granted, I suppose, if we can put it that way. When meetings are being established, we'll take that forward. I think that that's very useful, thank you very much. I don't, I think that most groups are aware that MSP members do have a lot of other issues and items that they've got to cover as well, including other cross-party groups than members of, but it does no harm at all just to make everyone aware that, you know, they have responsibilities to ensure that the cross-party groups meet with their duties and also meet with their MSPs, because we don't want to make it difficult for MSPs, in particular those from distances away to actually have to meet with them. So, thank you for that, yeah. Yeah, talk. Just to ask, is there a sort of one-sheet guide as to what they should be doing? Yes, it's in the code of conduct. Is it readily identifiable? Well, I think that, well, I personally don't know that, but what we will do is that we'll bring back a, well, we might be able to let people see what the code of conduct actually says, because I'm guilty as anybody of not looking at it myself, actually, you know, so that we can actually be aware that what's in it, and then maybe we could have a look at what's not being met by the cross-party groups in our experience as MSPs, in which case we could actually maybe contribute a wee bit there to help with their meeting their duties. Okay, I think, well, that was faster than we even expected, so that was very good. It was very worthwhile doing, though, because, and I would like to thank the clerking team again for the annual monitoring report, which is a lot of work, but we've got it there and we can take those items forward, so thank you very much, everyone. So that's us now moving into private session, please, so I can ask the public to leave. Thank you very much.