 Good morning, and welcome to the 22nd meeting in 2017 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. Our only agenda item today is an evidence session with the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland on his annual report. Joining us today are Bill Thomson, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland, and Ian Bruce, Public Appointments Manager, Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. I would like to welcome both of you to the meeting and invite the commissioner to make a short opening statement. Thanks, convener. First of all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be here to discuss with you any issues that interest you in the annual report. I think that I have set out what I need to say about 16-17 in the report. Obviously, we will be able to update you on what has happened since then, if the committee is interested. I am happy to deal with questions. Thank you. I will start off with some questions about the report. The report was published in October 2016. There was a number of key risks for the organisation that was identified, one of which was the database. I believe that there was a business case put together with the Scottish Government to look at putting in a case management system. Can you bring the committee up to speed where we are at with that? Has that been funded? Is that in place? Yes, I can, convener. We put together a detailed business case that was submitted to the corporate body. We received approval from the corporate body to proceed along with funding up to a certain limit earlier in this financial year. We are about to go out to tender. We have, as you will appreciate, quite a small office. We have no specialist IT experience, which is why we are very grateful for the support that we got from the Scottish Government's digital wing, if you like, in putting together the business case. We are receiving support on a sort of pay-as-you-go basis from the Government's procurement office with the actual tender exercise. The specification is almost finalised, and we intend to go out in January. In an ideal world, we will appoint a tenderer before the end of March. It is slightly tight, I have to say, but we are hoping to achieve that. What contingency plans have you in place, should the current system fail before you have a new case management system in place? My answer may appear flippant, but the only contingency I have is to cross my fingers. This was identified two years ago as a serious risk, and we have been working very hard since then to replace the system. We could do things manually. It would be very clunky and very slow. We would not be able to obtain management information except with a huge amount of effort. I think that it would slow up the process of dealing with complaints to a degree that would be unacceptable. The system is robust enough. It was not designed to cope with the volume that it has had to deal with since it was developed about 13 years ago, and we do not have any backup for the IT basis for it. The person who originally developed it is still in the office, which is helpful, but the risk is there. That is why we have it as a high priority. Was the risk that it was identified two years ago, but there is still no solution in place? That is true. Developing a business case properly is not a straightforward exercise, particularly when you do not have the IT specialism in the office. It was not agreed instantly by the corporate body. The whole process of developing and seeking approval for the business case took over a year. Welcome. There has obviously been a lot of discussion. I understand that you are giving evidence to the Equalities Committee recently on the gender representation bill. On the higher number of women board members, we are also seeing under-representation of visible minority ethnic board members, which is at its lowest level in the period covered by the annual report, and an under-representation of disabled people and people under the age of 50, increased in 2016. I have a bit of a cheeky question, which is, has focus on gender meant that we have taken our eye off the ball on ensuring that there is proper diversity of other protected characteristics? I think that that is a stateable position. I am not sure that things are quite as straightforward as that. For a number of reasons, in the first place, the other protected characteristics that you have listed and I agree the rate of appointment of people with those characteristics is going in the wrong direction, but they are shared by men and women. I am sorry, it is a straightforward point, but given that women make up more than 50 per cent of the population, appointing women could and should also bring with it appointments of people who share other protected characteristics. The other thing that we should not lose sight of is that the focus on gender equality has raised the profile of the whole issue of diversity in a positive way. I think that it is a bit of a mixed picture. Perhaps I have asked the question other way, why is there an increase in underrepresentation of these other groups? To give a simple answer as possible, it is simply that not enough quality applicants have come forward from these groups and to develop that further before I hand over to Ian Bruce, I may be able to give you more detail on it. Attracting people to put themselves forward involves effort on the part of those who are seeking to recruit, and best practice also involves the bodies involved, as well as the minister who is making the appointment in outreach and trying to attract people to put themselves forward for the board. Now, there is some work going on on that, and it is going on in relation to younger people, in relation to visible BME and also in relation to disabled people, but it has not yet borne fruit. I think that Ian would be able to give you a little bit more information on that. I am happy to. As Bill says, outreach is very important, as is making the process accessible. You will have seen the recommendations in the annual report that we made for the Government. In relation to gender diversity, we have a very positive story to tell there. When it comes to other groups, the picture is more complicated, and that is why the recommendations were about getting underneath those top-line figures. Lumping disabled people together into that 20 per cent figure does not really give you a proper understanding of the particular barriers that are faced by people with disabilities. One of the things that I did say to the committee last year was that it is quite important that we get boards involved in this activity, as well. If you have a particular disability, you have a look at a board, you are not thinking just about the application process, as that barrier is free. You are not just thinking about whether or not the advert is attractive to you, the role is attractive to you. You are also thinking about what support will I have once I am in post, and that does not apply just to particular disabilities. Equally, if you are under 50 and you are a woman, you may have childcare responsibilities that you need to take into account, and you need to know that those are going to be accommodated by the board as well. Those are the sorts of discussions that we are having with the Government and with boards to ensure that they are more accessible to people. It really is not just about the appointments process, it is a much wider thing. The recommendations are about doing more in-depth research to identify specific barriers and how we can take those away. There are a whole range of things in train at the moment. Not just the research that the Government has tasked the analytical services wing, I think, is the term that Bill used to do that research in terms of the appointments process, and that is very helpful. Equally, we have some research with boards themselves under way at the moment, so it was really just starting when the last annual report was published. That has been fascinating. About two-thirds of boards have joined up to participate in the research, and it asks some questions about what particular barriers they believe they have to harnessing diversity and what particular activities they engage in to address those barriers. It is all being done on a confidential basis, but ultimately, what we are going to do is roll out the recommendations that arise from that, because it is clear that boards are doing things to make participation much more accessible for people. That is being done in tandem with outreach. If I can give you an example, last Monday evening, the Scottish Government ran a Come On Board event, and that was done in association with women on boards. There were about 70 people in attendance. Two board chairs were there, two board members were there. Questions asked from the floor—there was someone who was a wheelchair user asked about whether or not support would be available in the event they were appointed. Someone else with childcare responsibilities asked a similar question. One of the board members from the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration spoke very openly. He is currently a lecturer, works full-time, and he spoke about the fact that he is able to join board activities via video conference. He is the chair of the audit committee. All the other members of that audit committee are retired, so they completely rearranged everything that they do in order to come to him for the audit committee to be run. Are those small, specific things that individual boards do that make it more accessible? I do not know if that helps. Just moving on to the issue of complaints and the volume of workload on that has reduced again. Last year, we recognised that it had increased the number of complaints from the low 20s to 30s, and it has come back down again. Last year, when we had this discussion, you were not convinced that there was any connection to the electoral cycle, to the idea that because there was a run-up to the election, that might have been generating complaints that were politically motivated. Has the reduction since then, since the last year, changed your view on that? Do you have any reason or suggestion as to why the complaint level has reduced again? There were, convener, in 2016-17. After the election to the Parliament, we received a handful of complaints about newly appointed members from those who had been involved in the political process during the election, but that does not fully explain the difference in numbers. Interestingly, in the current financial year—I am not sure that this is the right adjective, but we are slightly ahead of where we were at the same time last year. You mean a slightly higher volume? Yes. The numbers fluctuate. I do not think that there are specific reasons related or readily linked to the electoral cycle. As I said last year, there have been elections or a referendum or something major every year since I have been in posts. It is difficult to tell. Making no predictions there. If the volume of complaints is not predictable in that way and does not follow any pattern, it fluctuates. What does that mean in terms of your workload, your capacity and your planning for being able to handle complaints on an appropriate timescale? It has an impact on budgeting, obviously. Your concern on this committee is specifically complaints about members of this Parliament. The total numbers involved are small. Even at their highest, we are talking about 30 complaints, the majority of which do not require full investigation because they are not admissible or excluded from my jurisdiction. That particular part of it does not have a major impact, but it is also true in relation to complaints about councillors and members of public bodies where their numbers are much higher. That does create a problem. The solution that was adopted until this year was that we had an agreed level of investigating hours, if I can put it that way, which was budgeted for plus a contingency figure—a reasonably significant contingency figure. The level of investigating hours was unduly low, so we have, up until now, always had to call on the contingency. We have agreed with the corporate body to submit a budget on a more, in my view, realistic basis for the financial year to come. I suppose that the risk transfers to me to try to manage it within the budget. The process of reaching the view that a particular complaint is admissible is that relatively quite campaign-less, or does it involve a certain amount of investigation? That varies a lot, convener. Some of them are patently outside the scope of the code. If I can give you an example without any names, there was an individual who had a particular view on energy policy and approached two MSPs looking for support for the person's view, and they did not agree. The complaint was about the failure of the leader of the party to discipline the two MSPs who had failed to agree with the individual's view on energy policy. That is patently outside the code. That was easily dismissed. Others raise issues that are purely legal or are legal in terms of interpretation of the code, because the code is not 100 per cent specific. It would be endlessly long if it was. Those can be quite difficult. On occasions, we have to get a certain amount of evidence as well to make the stage 1 assessment as to whether the complaint is admissible. Up to now, we have managed that within the two months that are allowed in the legislation. I intend to continue that, if possible. Thank you, convener. Possibly you have answered part of it, but I was reflecting on at the beginning, in response to questions from the convener, you talked about the budget, and you referred again about there being challenges in managing the budget. I suppose that goes back to the question about IT as well. I was a bit concerned that you said that there is a lack of IT specialism within the commissioner's office. I was thinking that, at this day and age, that can be expected. You would think that there should be resources available to bring in IT specialism when it is quite a big project. I would not expect a smaller organisation to have that capacity given ITs. That is not a question that you might want to address around why that has not been taken forward. The line of question that Patrick Harvie was pursuing was that there were not many complaints—30 complaints—that there are only 120 MSPs, so some of it is quite a high proportion of the number of MSPs. I was not sure that, given that there were many complaints but only six were admissible, it is possible to do a bit more so that it is clear to people what your role is and where cases might be admissible. You have explained that some of them are quite easily dismissed. Other ones are taking up resources of the office and taking up investigative time to come to the conclusion that it is not admissible, given that there are only six out of the overall number. I do not know if more could be done in that area. I think that it is a fair point. I am in the process of revamping the leaflet in which we have—it is available in paper form, but it is on our website as well—about MSP complaints. The difficulty is that some people are patently incensed by something that has happened, and in some cases it may be something that has been said or done in the media, or it may be something that an elected member has said when they are clearly involved in party political activities, for example, during an election. They wish to complain because of the title of my office, which is awful, by the way. Because I am the commissioner for ethical standards, anything that they perceive to be unethical has to be addressed here, which is in one sense fair. I do not think that it is reasonable for me or even for this committee or the Parliament to expect that those who are minded to complain should be fully familiar with the MSP code and the ins and outs of it. It is difficult to have material that is sufficiently clear and readily understood, but also sufficiently specific to discourage people who might be minded to put in a complaint that is simply irrelevant. It is quite difficult to get that balance right. You also have to take account of whether people are comfortable reading materials, either on paper or on the web. The code itself is—even in its newly simplified form—relatively impenetrable, unless you understand the organisation and its processes. I have a sort of apology if I have missed this in the report. Could you say the amount of complaints do they generally then come from members of the public, rather than within the Parliament or from political parties? It is not in the report—it is a fair question—that the vast majority of them come from members of the public who may or may not be politically active. I do not follow that, because motivation is not really an issue, as far as I am concerned. Every year, we have a couple of complaints—I am sorry, not to be more specific—that come from one member about another member. That is a minority of the public. It is a minority, yes. It is a minority, yes. A brief question. Your report mentions that disrespect as a reason for complaint is growing as a percentage of the total. I should caveat that by saying that I am not sure whether that refers to councils, because that is perhaps what the report was suggesting. Disrespect is growing. However, some conduct that might be considered disrespectful in another context is nevertheless permitted in a political context. Why is that number rising? I cannot answer that, convener. I am pleased to say that, in the current financial year, the percentage of complaints relating to disrespect in terms of what people have said about other people has gone down. I described it at a previous committee as having reached the, I did not use this word, but the zenith of its blossoming. I hope that it is now fading. I do not know. You would think, perhaps, that, given the preponderance of unpleasant things being said on social media, many of them, I appreciate about elected members, that there might be more complaints. Thankfully, that has not grown to a huge proportion either. Most of it is about what has been said. The bulk of them are about council meetings, what has been said in or around council meetings or, occasionally, in less formal meetings involving councillors. I cannot recall any involving MSPs of that nature. I may be wrong, but I cannot recall any other moment. With the commencement of the lobbying act, what impact do you see that having on loading your work practices? I have had to put some information in the financial memorandum or submit the information for the financial memorandum. At that point, the advice that I had was that it was unlikely that there would be a large number of complaints, and I have not received any other advice. I do not think that it will have much impact in the year ahead. I appreciate that the lobbying regime does not actually come in until March 2018, so I cannot imagine having any real impact in this financial year other than preparation that we are involved in. However, in the following year, the risks from my point of view are that there are complaints about failure to register lobbying. Given that people have six months in which to update their register, that would push it to halfway through the year at the earliest, or that there are complaints about the registrations that people have made as lobbyists. Given that the system is now open on a trial basis, I would hope that the number of complaints of that category would be fairly small, but I have no hard information on which to base the assessment. However, you have some kind of contingency there to try and anticipate what may happen. Indeed, convener, I have allowed a certain sum in my budget bid for one or two complaints having to be investigated fully and also for some of the preparatory work, which, as I said, we have already started. Thankfully, we have been involved in quite a lot of the discussions that are going on behind the scenes, so I am reasonably up to speed with how it is developing. I did not want to include this when we were talking about wider diversity, but I am a Highlands Islands MSP and I just wanted to find out what regional geographical diversity there was in appointments and what the barriers might be to that and what can be done to ensure that all Scotland is represented on some of these boards. I think that Ian is probably in a better position to answer that than I am. It is one of the things that we gather in terms of monitoring information. I am afraid that I do not have the figures with me today, but I am sure that I will be very happy to provide those to you and to the committee in due course. You are absolutely right. It is something that is considered. Territorial health boards are probably a good example. Generally, what they do is look for people with a live interest and a stake in provision in that given area for national bodies, not so much. Generally speaking, there is possibly a preponderance of people from the central belt, but we will get the figures for you and provide them to you in due course. There are other agencies, so Highlands and Islands Enterprise would be an example where generally we will look for people with live knowledge of the issues that affect people in those given areas, but we will get the figures for you. That would be very helpful. I just want to know if there are things that we could do to ensure that the meetings are more accessible and therefore people can put themselves forward for these boards, whether it is video conferencing or when meetings are scheduled, where they are scheduled and that kind of thing. Yes, absolutely. It is something that we recommend in our discussions with the boards of public bodies. One of the things that we hope to do as a result of the research is to roll out recommendations about all the accessible practices that are already under way. I know already that we have had a lot of returns. There are lots of instances of good practice, but there is not necessarily a forum for those to be rolled out. A lot of the good practice activity that I mentioned earlier has become embedded in one of those regular networking events between chairs. There, they discuss how they harness diversity on an informal basis. That is great. Bill and I attend those two or three times a year. It has been set up by the Scottish Government. There is also a governance hub, which is new and has been established by the public bodies unit. It includes advice on things like how boards go about succession planning, but you are absolutely right that there is more that could be done to bring everyone in. I mentioned to the commissioner prior to our meeting today, so I met with Equate Scotland last week. Their particular focus is younger women in science, engineering and technology. We have already agreed with them to run a couple of sessions next year. That will be in March. We will encourage applications from people that we want applications from. Equate is very clear that this time we are going to head up to Aberdeen. I have been in touch with Food Standards Scotland, which is one of the few public bodies based outside the central belt, other than the territorial ones. I have already got in principle agreement from them that they would love to host this event, so that is something that we are going to be doing in March. It is not as though it is off a radar, but it certainly is. That is very helpful. Thank you. You will be aware that, as well as the lobbying act that is coming down the line, there is a lot of discussion in Parliament around sexual harassment issues, and the committee, the corporate body, the Prime Minister has taken an interest in that. There are a number of different approaches. There are quite a few different streams if a complaint comes forward on how it is dealt with, whether it comes from a political party within the Parliament. Do you, as a body, anticipate any additional workload, or are you preparing for the need for additional capacity or knowledge around this particular area of concern? Convener, unless the code is changed, my remit in this area will stay as it is. If there were to be any increase in complaints, that would be down to, I think—well, it could be an indication of poorer behaviour, and I think that that is unlikely in the current climate. It would be more likely down to people feeling more inclined to make a complaint. I was about to interrupt, but carry on. No, on you go. I was going to—I do not know if it is appropriate to answer the question, but do you feel that the code is clear enough around the type of issues? Is there any—it is not very specific to say—have you had any complaints around this area coming in through the code? I do not know if you are able to— I also would not be able to talk about anything that was current. I have not had any complaints under this issue. If there were to occur in terms of my remit, I think that there would be in relation to lack of respect, which was discussed at another committee last week. Respect can mean a lot of different things, but if somebody were minded to make a complaint about sexual harassment, which fell within my remit, I think that that would be the basis for it. In terms of what we are doing, I am not proposing to increase our staffing in any way in order to deal with complaints that come in. They would be dealt with as part of our business. The one thing that I am setting out to do is to make sure that we have links in place and information that would allow us, if we needed to—we thought that it was helpful to point anybody involved in it in the right direction if they needed support. Because my office—my role—is investigatory, I cannot provide support to one side or another in an investigation that would be seen as taking sides or could be seen that way, which could undermine the independence of the investigation, so all that we can do, if we think that it would be helpful as advice people that they could make contact with here or there with, as appropriate. The code of—where you think it might be relating to code of practice around the description of lack of respect? For me, that would suggest that the code does need some clarity. That is quite a broad definition of where sexual harassment might fall within. I imagine—it is all conjecture here at the moment—as you say that you have not had cases brought forward that have already been dealt with. I would imagine doing an investigation around the wording lack of respect would be challenging. It is quite a responsibility to put on—to think that this is the definition that we are working with. It is a sexual harassment case, but it falls under lack of respect. To do an investigation around that, I would imagine that it would be quite challenging to make that judgment, or what is it? I agree, convener. Potentially, it is quite challenging. I think that it would be inappropriate for me—both as an investigator rather than the person in charge of the policy—to say much more about the code and its potential effectiveness, but I am happy to contribute at an appropriate point. If you see that, it would be appropriate. Thank you. It has been helpful to have clarity from the commissioner that lack of respect is currently where it would fall within. That is my understanding, convener. I am sure that the committee will be very keen to hear from you during the course of our inquiry. I have not had an indication that there are any both, sorry, clear. Yes, there was one other question just around the length of time it has taken between dates of interviews and people being involved with the outcome. I think that the report said that that has increased recently. What are the reasons behind that? Convener, I do not have information on the reasons. This information is based on statistics that are supplied to my office by the Government. On the positive side, even as extended there within the outer limit that was agreed some time back, obviously it would be better if the periods could be shortened. For what it is worth, in the current year, the number of appointment rounds in progress has gone up significantly from the previous year, and that will obviously put pressure on those who are involved in the system. I do not know whether they are able to make progress on that front or not. It is not something that I can influence. I do not have any guidance on that other than just reporting on the statistics that are given to us by the Government. I have not had any indication that any other committee members have questions, so I thank Bill Thomson and Ian Bruce for their evidence today and formally close the meeting.