 Let's kick off, and let me welcome members and our visitors to the 18th meeting in 2015 of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. I remind everyone as usual to switch off mobile phones as they may affect the broadcasting system. We have received apologies today from Dave Thompson, who can't be with us. Let me move to agenda item one, which is for Fiona McLeod to declare any relevant interests. Let me welcome Fiona back to the committee, which she previously served on. George joins us to replace George Adam, and I'd like to place on record our thanks to George for his work on the committee. Let me invite Fiona to declare any relevant interests. Thank you, convener. I have no relevant interests to declare. Thank you very much, Fiona. Let's move on to item two, which is for the committee to agree to take items five and six in private. Item five is for members to consider the evidence that they had at their own table on the Scotland lobbying bill, which we're about to commend. Item six is for members to consider correspondence received from the private presiding officer. Do members agree to take items in private? We agree to. Item three is for members to agree to take the following in private at future meetings. First, consideration of evidence had issues, papers and a draft stage 1 report on the lobbying Scotland bill. Secondly, code of conduct changes in relation to cross-party groups. Thirdly, code of conduct changes and changes to the written statement forms in relation to the interests of members of the Scottish Parliament amendment bill. Do members agree to take these items in private at future meetings? We are agreed to take these items in private at future. We now come to the main substance of today's meeting, agenda item four, which is for the committee to take evidence in stage one of the lobbying bill. We are operating this in a round table format and just to indicate how I'd like us to try and play it and get the best out of it. The convener will try and take as light a touch as possible, perfectly content that people interact with each other over the table, but let's try and remember that it's kind of works best if only one person is speaking at a time and I will intervene to make sure that that actually happens. I expect we'll hear a number of statements and assertions and claims from people. That's perfectly proper. What I hope that people when they do that do, however, is they explain to us why they make these statements and claims. If any of us feel that that isn't happening, we may invite the member who's making a claim. I just give as an example not to single anyone out for any particular reason, but it's simply because I have a paper that the electoral reform society and the lobbying bill have provided us with. One of the things that is said there is that the old way of representative democracy is described as being in malaise. That's fair enough that we might instinctively feel that we could agree to some extent with that, but if we were to say something of that character at this meeting, I would expect to hear some expression of where that's actually come from. It's perfectly legitimate for that to come from the experience of the individual who says it and for them to say that that's why they say it. That's okay, but of course where something's come from will help us weigh in the balance of what might be conflicting things. Slightly longer preamble. Let me just recognise that today we have Professor Raj Chary from the Department of Political Science at Trinity College. We have Dr William Dinnan from Spinwatch. Yes, you're over there. John Downey from SCVO, Peter Duncan, I think I can fairly say representing lobbyists, or at least a lobbyist in his own right, if not representing him. Neil Findlay, who, of course, perhaps set the Parliament on this course some considerable time ago, welcomed here as well. Steve Goodrich from Transparency International, there we are. I've got a wee chart, but I haven't got myself familiar with it. Steve Mon, the head of campaigns at CBI. Oh, a big burn, you're quite correct, you're quite correct. It's quite encouraging to be reassured that you know who you are. Andy Miles, a well-kent face in these corridors from Environment Link and Willie Sullivan from the Electoral Reform Society. We have a number of themes that we are going to try and structure our inquiry and round table round today, but it's not an exclusive lesson if there's another theme emerges. Then, of course, let's go there. The headings we've got, just to share with you, is striking the balance. Does this strike the right balance between not making it so burdensome as to, in particular, discourage small organisations from engaging in Parliament and seeking to persuade us to a particular point of view, but at the same time capturing enough information that it genuinely helps the general public and the third sector to see what's actually going on? Direction, definitions and exclusions have we captured in what's before us what lobbying actually is and how it works? Threshold and triggers, because do we capture things, do we things leave out? What's in the register? How the compliance regime works? Ultimately, the last one, which I suspect may not exercise us in this forum too much, does the bill give Parliament enough flexibility to change, for example, the contents of the register and the way things work as we learn from experience of the register that we need to further refine it? Do we have sufficient powers? However, I suspect that that may be for the Parliamentarians to consider rather than this particular group. Having said all that, I'm minded to let this run for approximately an hour, but we'll not cut it off in mid-sentence. Who wants to start? See? We've not pre-arranged anything. Right, Andy. That's a well-kent face. Several well-kent faces, because I've been here in different roles, and as a former special adviser to Government ministers, I can actually say that I've been a lobbyist and lobbied in this building, so I'm able to see it from both points of view. I don't know whether that makes me a game-keeper or a poacher, but it will probably be a bit of both. The first thing that I'd say on behalf of Environment Link is that we still think that there are blind spots in this bill. If I'm doing an advocacy training course for our members, one of the first lessons is to sort out what your message is, what you're actually trying to lobby for, and secondly, sort out who your target is, who's going to be making the decision, who do you need to talk to. That will often not be an MSP. It will often be a civil servant or a special adviser, and they're covered by the code of conduct of the civil service, which is not mentioned in the policy memorandum or anything. It's as though when they use the word government, the government is only government ministers. I would beg of you to remember that vast numbers of the decisions that are made are not made by ministers. It would be humanly impossible for ministers to make all the decisions that government makes. I think that there are blind spots in there, and I'm peculiarly aware of them with regard to special advisers, for example. On the other side of this, there's this question of the striking of balance between onerous information and all of these questions. The first thing I'd like to say on behalf of the environmental organisations that are members of Link is that we are completely committed to transparency and openness. We publish our briefings to MSPs, we publish our letters to ministers on our website and we completely understand the need for openness. However, I'm representing civic organisations. I'm not representing commercial interests. None of my members are lobbying for commercial interests. They're not going to gain from this. They're regulated already as charities and they are in a particular position. So is this going to be onerous under this bill for my members? This is not talking about commercial lobbyists, this is talking about civic organisations in Scotland. The answer is, I fear that it might be. I could be reassured by the committee and I hope to hear some reassurance. I hope to be here reassurance from the Government but my fear is that the bill is taking an approach to these charitable and civic organisations which is not proportionate. The reason I say that is simple. If you take a member like RSPB Scotland, they've got paid staff and I was their head of advocacy and media for eight years and I told them all. Every one of you is a lobbyist. Every one of you has a duty to talk to MSPs. Every one of you has a duty to talk to journalists. There's no member of staff who's supposed to be protecting birds who should think that you can do that without talking to MSPs. Are all those paid staff to be registered for that organisation? Of course, they're not the only ones because the RSPB also has volunteers who might be coming along to represent the organisation when talking to MSPs. Furthermore, people who are RSPB representatives on an environment link task force are coming along to lobby on behalf of link, my own organisation, but they're not paid by link. They're paid by their own members. Are they paid lobbyists or unpaid lobbyists? Do they have to have an active or an inactive registration? That question is one that's been weighing on my mind as I read the policy memorandum in particular. There are other issues that will come out during the course, but to start off with, I just want to say that there are still blind spots in the bill and there are some real questions for civic organisation. My fear is that the complexity and complexity of the registration process may have the same effect as the Westminster bill, which undoubtedly has had effect on civic society in terms of making people shy away from the valuable participation that is recognised by the committee and the Parliament. Is it really, really, really valuable and important part of Scottish political life? I just wanted to come back to Mr Miles and ask for the sake of our discussion. You mentioned that there were what you called blind spots and you mentioned special advisers as possibly one category of blind spots, but did you have any other categories of people in mind? I know that the Electoral Reform Society's briefing paper, which I haven't had a chance to properly read because we got it this morning, suggests senior civil servants, for example. Was that the kind of thing that you were thinking? We mentioned specifically senior civil servants in our earlier written submissions on the process of lobbying. We also have mentioned special advisers and I would add to that if we didn't mention them, senior officials inside government agencies, because frequently I might advise a member, no, don't bother going and bothering a member of the Rural Affairs Committee with that. What you want to do is speak to that official in Scottish Natural Heritage or SEPA. That is who you want to talk to. They are included as well inside government agencies. I will briefly write to, perhaps, to accept much of what Andy has said. First of all, I should say that you are introducing me as representing the lobbyists. I would probably push back slightly and say that around this table we are probably all lobbyists. I remember making the point to you last year that we are all part of the same game here, which is looking to put forward a point of view. MSPs will look to put forward a point of view within their own group meetings to each other. Voluntary groups charities with respect to Andy will be looking to put forward a point of view, which is equally valid as anyone who wants to pay someone to put forward a point of view. In answer to your initial category that you said to me, does it strike a balance? I think that with some of the APPC it takes the view that this does strike a balance. As you know, we started from a position of not seeing the overwhelming public case, we have to say, for legislation in this area. There is not an overwhelming public problem, but we accept that a case has been made. If there is going to be legislation, this is a decent and balanced starting point. Like Andy, there are some areas that are illogical exclusions. For example, I do not think that it makes sense that just because a meeting has been initiated by an MSP, suddenly that makes it different from a meeting that has been initiated by someone else, for example. I concur with the view that senior civil servants and special advisers will logically come. What we are interested in, if there is going to be legislation, it needs to be sustainable and it needs to be sensible. If it is not sustainable or sensible, then there will be overwhelming public demand created. We did not think that there was a problem to address, but given that we are going to address it, let us get it right. Let us create a problem that was not there in the first place. I have seen a number of people catch my eye. I will just tell you the order that I have got them in at the moment. Willie, Neil, Steve and then John is my current list, so it is Willie first. I think that one of the questions that I want to address first of all is the idea of proportionality. Somebody described that it is a sledge hammer to crack a nut, so I think that we should have a look at the size and strength of the nut. In your introduction, you spoke about the concept of democratic malaise, which is not ERS's concept. It is a concept that is well known in political science and is being discussed as a big problem at the moment. Our contention is that—I have given you election turnout figures—I did some focus groups with Ipsos Murray last year and all sorts of study from the Economist, Demoxy and Dex to others say that there is a real problem with people's view of representative democracy and trust in it, and on the other side of the rise of populism, which is a reaction to that. What people say in these surveys is that the influence of big, wealthy, powerful interests sometimes feel that it can often trump the power of the voter. That concept is called democratic and political inequality. People's view of political inequality—whether it is true or not—is the perception of it. That is a real worry. David Runsam and Professor at Cambridge political scientist wrote a book last year called The Confidence Trap. His premise was that democracy is really flexible and takes a lot of hits, but at some point it might not take all those hits and be flexible. That is the kind of trap that you can fall into. You cannot just rely on it and sort it all the time. We have to do something about it. Transparency is vital to that. People have to be able to see who is talking to who and in who's interests. That is the knot that we are trying to crack. The sledgehammer has to be pretty big. I do not think that the bill has given us enough transparency. The key point that I would make is what triggers registration. Is it just a face-to-face meeting or is it email exchanges and other forms of digital communication that we know is quite important in this day and age? We would suggest that it is quite possible to put that in. It might not be that you have to record over that time period every single email or every other form of electronic communication, but if we can define clearly the persons who are to be lobbied—whether they are politicians, senior civil servants and spads, which we suggest it is—then any contact with them in any way over that period might go in the register. Even if it is 10 emails or one email, as long as that is recorded, we think that face-to-face meetings should be recorded, the number of them. If you have five or face-to-face meetings, they should be recorded in the day and one should be recorded. As far as electronic communications, if it is going to be too onerous to record every single email, then the fact that the contact was made with that person, we think, would be enough. I think that it is fair to say that in looking at how we might extend this, we would probably be more concerned if the number of registrations had to rise, because that could get out of hand in terms of being able to run the register. However, if the amount of information that needs to be put in the register for an individual registrant rises, as it would do if we included a wider range of communication, I do not think that the committee has yet to persuade itself that that would be an issue. I just say that to give a little context of our current thinking. We will come back to you. People are not just getting one shot to speak, so I have now got Neil, Steve, John and then Richard. Thanks very much for the invitation to come along. For the outset, it is very clear, and I have been clear when I introduced the bill, that lobbying is a very important part of the democratic process. I do not think that nobody would suggest otherwise, because it informs Parliament and our debates, and I find it very helpful in the work that I do. There is no evidence of wrongdoing, but that is not to suggest that there may not be wrongdoing, but there is no evidence of that. However, the whole thrust of Government over the past while is in relation to preventative spend and preventative action. I see that that is a preventative action. We have hopefully ensured that there is no scandal within our Parliament, and I want it to remain that way. As more powers come to this Parliament, the more lobbying will come. That is just an inevitability. If you look back to before the Parliament was here, there was almost no lobbying going on in Scotland. As powers have increased, the graph goes up significantly and will continue to go up. That is a preventative measure that we should be putting in to prevent any of the scandal emerging or any wrongdoing, and that was the whole purpose behind the bill. I think that the bill is a bit of a travesty from what I put forward. A lot of it bears little resemblance to what was agreed to be taken on by the Government. If you look at some glaring examples, the bill appears to be living in the 18th or 19th century and has not realised that the telephone and the computer has been invented. We do things such as conference calls and the like. There is a whole new range of modern communications other than people turning up in top hat and tails to speak to one another face-to-face over teen crumpets. We have significantly moved on since that was the way in which people lobbied politicians. I think that the bill has to recognise that, because at the moment it very much does not. I fear that we may be in the process of releasing another show of red herrings on this stuff with how onerous this is going to be. It is hellishly onerous. I am sure that people find it a grind to fill in their expenses form every month, but I am sure that we manage it. That is not much more than that, because we have seen how other countries operate a register and what information you need to put on it. Most of it will already be populated. If you do not need to put your address and your company number in every month that is already there on the form, all your filling in is the detail. In relation to the voluntary sector that Andy mentioned, this is going to stop people. It is going to be hellishly onerous for them. Everyone in the voluntary sector and the charitable sector is there to do good. They are all there to do good. In their opinion, they are there to do good. In other people's opinion, they are not there to do good. I will give an example of the debate over same-sex marriage. On one side of the argument, you had charitable organisations saying, we are here doing good. We are promoting same-sex marriage. On the other side of the debate, we had the other side saying, we are here to do good and we are opposing same-sex marriage. It is not so simple enough just to say that the voluntary sector is a force for good because it is a force for good in the eyes of the person who is looking at it. Therefore, I think that it is essential that voluntary organisations, trade unions and others are covered by the bill. It may be worth saying that, in the informal discussions that the committee has had with itself, the bill is unlikely to survive in its present form in relation to just oral communications. I just do not think that the committee feels that. We have not come to a formal position, so I do not carry the weight of our making a decision, but, I think that the Government is already on a warning on that one and is aware of that. We will see where that takes us. I have Steve John, Richard William. Thank you. Just a quick bit of context about my background. So, San Sebastian International is a global charity of over 100 chapters and 20 years of experience fighting corruption. I am also a gamekeeper in poetry. I used to work at the Electoral Commission as a senior policy adviser, so I have quite a significant experience dealing with similar types of regulations and engaging with Scottish charities and other organisations throughout the UK on things like regulatory burdens, scope of legislation and so forth. So, hopefully, I have got some expertise to bring to bear here. The first thing I would like to say is that the Transparency International thinks that, fundamentally, lobbying and transparency are key pillars of the democratic process. As has been already said, that you need people to engage with would be MSPs, ministers, but also civil servants to bring to bear expertise from civil society and business as well to make sure that the laws that are passed are fit for purpose and workable in practice. But, similarly, it is essential that there is transparency about not only that kind of activity but about the way in which our policies work, which is why members have to declare their pecuniary interests, which is why ministers make public their diaries, which is why there is a whole load of things, including the minutes of this meeting that I made public. This is not a new thing that we are asking for, it is just something that complements the arrangements that are already in place. Why are we doing this? We have talked about what is the issue that we are trying to solve here. I think that there are at least three bits to it, which is not necessarily just to do with scandal. The first is just making politics accountable, and this is not just accountability about those who are making decisions, but accountability for those who are engaged in lobbying practices as well. It is a two-way street, it takes two to tango, so it is about citizens being able to hold representatives, public officials and also lobbyists to account. Secondly, it is to not only prevent or identify incidents of corruption but reduce the likelihood of it. Sunlight is the best disinfection for this kind of thing. If you have more transparency about how politics works, then there is less opportunity for corrupt incidents to happen. We did a piece of research last year, which identified that not only proactively disclosing information helps to detect and deter corruption, but it can also help to widen an understanding about how the democratic process works. It is also about ensuring that there is equal access to participation to know, for example, if business is lobbying a certain individual. It may be that charities or other organisations have a different point of view and they have not realised that they have not had the opportunity to put their voices forward. Having a more comprehensive register can benefit those three public goods, not just to tackle corruption. On the definition, it is positive that MSPs are included in the scope, and interactions with them. The UK register, as you know, does not include interactions with MPs. It is also good to see that the Scottish Parliament is recognised and the Scottish Government that there is a need to include in-house lobbyists. We did some research recently that showed that the UK register only covers a fraction of those who are engaged in public bodies and institutions. However, I would like to echo what has already been said about the need to cover civil servants, to cover SPADs and to cover a wider range of communications, such as telephones and emails. Lastly, on the issue of regulatory burdens, I think that what we need to ask ourselves is, as a lobbyist myself, we are becoming increasingly adept at recording our interactions with public officials. To be an intelligent lobbyist, you need to know who you have spoken to, you need to know what you have said to them, that is why they have things like content management systems. I think that this is something that is certainly, even like we are a relatively small charity, but we are able to do that. Just thinking realistically and in reality, what are the kind of issues, and that is what I will be interested in hearing from other people today. How can you mitigate against putting onto regulatory burdens on people? There are things that you can introduce like thresholds. For example, if you are only spending over a certain amount of money on lobbying, you would have to register. Those are the kind of things that have been applied elsewhere, like with campaigning at elections. I think that, although they have had some of the problems with that, they have certainly worked to help to reduce undue regulatory burdens on campaigners. Can I just ask a very brief question on what you said about thresholds? Maybe it is just the way my mind works, but could the potential of introducing a threshold not have the effect of creating a loophole that people could be clever about what they do and how they do it, so that they keep under the radar? There was the potential for that. I think that it depends on how it is drafted. Going back to my experience of working on thresholds for campaigning at elections, there were certain anti-evasion provisions in there that stopped people from working together effectively as a whole unit to try and evade the thresholds. That worked relatively well. They applied to the Scottish independence referendum recently, and my former colleagues there did a good job, I think, of engaging with people and getting them to understand how those anti-evasion provisions work, so you need to be mindful that people are always going to try and evade regulatory burdens, so it does in the detail, but as a principle, I think that it is something that is good to look into. The people who have got my list will, when I am exhausted, mean that all our visitors will have spoken, and so it has been quite structured. We can make it less structured, I think, once we have heard from initial people, if I may. So I have got John Richard, William Raj and Andy's, the first one to bid to come back. And I will take him at the end, unless he really wants to come back in the middle. You know, usually, if he wants to immediately come back on something that has been said, well, I will leave you to that. I have got a couple of points that I want to clarify. Okay, well, I will come back to you. I will just take them in the order that is coming to you. Right, John. Thank you, convener. I mean, I think it is listening to the different perspectives. I think, you know, it is interesting. I think we are looking at this, particularly at the moment, you know, if you look at the bigger context, you know, SCB will be actually, in a UK context, concerned about the real war on charities. At the moment, it has been driven by the UK Government. The lobbying act is part of that. We saw the attacks on Oxfam and other big charities last year. And frankly, UK, large UK charities, are running scared of campaigning at all. At the moment, we had the fundraiser review by the UK Government in the summer. And actually, if I was being a conspiracy theorist, I would say it was all about £12 billion worth of welfare cuts coming and actually wanting to mute and actually stop the sector speaking up and campaigning. Now, I say that now because that means we are opposed to the register as it is, but you've already seen the context because we've done some research for our membership. They're about to publish and will no doubt submit to the committee about the impact of the lobbying act on them, the UK one. And actually, maybe it's more perception, but actually they are really concerned about it and how that affects them. And I think that so that there is that there in the whole situation. I think from your point of view, as we've said, our view has always been that the burden of transparency in lobbying should be about those who are being lobbied. And we've talked about MSPs. And we certainly said in our other submission that ministers, yes, definitely, they are spads and senior civil servants to a certain level now. You might consider that deputy director level how far you would need to go down and you would look at. But I think for us, again, it has been mentioned that it is about that proportionality. Yeah, for an organisation like SCVO, we can cope with this. Like Andy says, we're not worried about ourselves. And I had a conversation last night with the director of quite a large Scottish charity who's part of a UK organisation. And I was basically saying to him, what's proposed here, even with email communication included, you could live with it. His response to me was, well, why should we? We've run a balance here between some of our members who want a stronger bill and actually still a lot who are totally opposed to that. We believe the third sector should be included because we are one of the strongest lobbies in Scotland. Let's not forget that. Maybe not quite as good as higher education sometimes, but definitely in others. But we're certainly in there. So I think for us, you know, it's always been about what are the core principles that we're trying to achieve here? What's the solution? What are we trying to do? How do we make it proportionate enough for that? We, you know, I don't think I would agree with Willie in terms of the democratic malaise, but I do think trust is important. And I think that's extremely important for the third sector in terms of the engagement with government. But I think maybe taking on to some of Andy's points, I think it's right. It's a lot of it is about, not just MSPs and committees, but it is about officials. I'll give you a good example. When I think it was in the second of July, we did a whole day on new potential employability powers, new social security powers, and we had 35 grassroots members and about 10 medium-sized organisations. And we had probably 15, 16 officials there, and it was a working day to help them understand the complexities of that. Now, the Fair of Scotland document on where we are on welfare powers published the other week there by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice included a table from that meeting that actually gave the principles for a social security system for Scotland. So actually, we could probably say that was a low-being success, but I think the point in relation to the bill would be that I don't want those 35 organisations who are grassroots who are there to be having to register if they don't generally engage with MSPs. We should be able to do that on their behalf because that was an SCVO convene meeting that's about Andy bringing a group of members together. And as Andy said, we were working there with officials to think about how do we do things better in Scotland. And I think that a lot of that engagement, the balance there, organisations like intermediaries and membership organisations, let's say we bring a lot of members together to talk to whether it's Cabinet Secretary, the First Minister, officials. We can convene and facilitate those meetings to make sure the engagement. Now, in this case, we wrote out to all those grassroots organisations saying that day you came and spent with those officials wasn't wasted, but I don't want the burden of any register to fall on them. I'm probably happier that it falls on us. So we need to think about how we manage those type of situations within it. I think in general we think what's proposed at the moment does strike a balance. I think there's a lot of points here that we have to get to grips with in terms of some of the communications issue and actually who falls into the scope of it. And as we've always said and many of our members said, you have to readdress the issue of MSPs' diaries. Now, whether you call it MSPs' public engagements, because actually if transparency is there, it's got to go both ways. And I think we want to see more transparency from those being lobbied as well. And I'm probably just repeating this all the time, but I think you need to seriously think about that as part of the bill as well, and that needs to be strengthened. I'm going to, because Willie Signol clearly wanted to come back on something you said there. And I think it's proper to bring him in, because of course he is an objective observer of what goes on. I just wanted to speak about the UK Lobbying Act because people can decide themselves whether the Government deliberately linked things together to cause confusion and fear. But the thing that the third sector is genuinely concerned about within that Lobbying Act was the third party campaigning in general elections, not in any elections, and Steve might want to say a bit of this. And that, and some people have suggested that that was deliberately put in with the bit about controlling a register of lobbying to cause that kind of confusion and to get it through. So I think there needs to be clarity on that. What is the third sector concerned about there? Is it concerned about the controls with third party campaigners, or is it concerned about the, you know, there's no sort of duty at all or responsibility within that Lobbying Act? With the lobbying part of that act, I think. I don't know what you think, Steve, on that. So there was certainly a lot of confusion when talking to campaigners to actually get them to differentiate in their minds between lobbying, which is trying to influence public officials and politicians, and trying to influence the electorate. And there are two fundamentally different things, two different audiences, and trying to get people to understand that was extremely difficult because the Government put them together in the bill, that I think also the pace at which the legislation was rushed through Parliament as well was very unfortunate, which led to a large amount of confusion, and trying to engage campaigners in the run-up to the actually hitting, the House was extremely challenging to get campaigners who hadn't really dealt with the non-party campaigner aspect, the electioneering aspect of it at all, and probably the being the first time they'd heard about it was very challenging. I mean, luckily here, this is the third time, I think, there's been pre-legislative scrutiny of this party legislation, which is extremely novel considering there was almost none for certain aspects of the Westminster lobbying bill. So, I think there's been enough time to sort of discuss and debate and try and understand that difference. But, yeah, I certainly think that the confusion caused by the Government was potentially, it appeared to be, intentional almost with the Westminster. I have. At the risk of stating the obvious, it's obviously a value for us to know what's going on in relation to the lobbying bill, lobbying act, as it now is down south. But I suspect you should not look to this committee's activities to remedy the perceived defects in that act, because you may be disappointed if you do. Andy, is a narrow point very specific to this because I do want to bring in others who have not yet spoken. Very, very narrow. It's on the Westminster bill. I would say that there is, in my mind, a clear distinction between the fears at Westminster about non-party political campaigners intervening in elections and the day-to-day lobbying that I'm doing all the time and should be registered for if there's a register. I'm quite happy to register for it, Neil. The fact of the matter is that a lot of that bill was driven by some fear that American habits of non-party political organisations coming in and campaigning against candidates at elections would be abroad. And I'm fairly sure from your discussions already that you're not going to be allowed yourself to be distracted by that chimera, or however you pronounce it, from... Chimera. Chimera, chymera. No, chimera. I hope we're not going to be distracted into that one. There are lessons to learn from that bill because it does impact on the civic sector, but it's not that non-party campaigning business that's about... Yeah, the business of packs and super packs looks fascinating, but I can afford to not spend too much time in it. Right. Let me return to the list of people who've been there. Richard. Yes, sir. Thank you, convener. My diagram's upside down from my point of view, sir. On you go. Thanks. So the CBI, first of all, is an employer's representative organisation speaking for businesses and including sectoral trade associations across the UK and of course in Scotland as well, where our members cover about half a million employees about a quarter of the private sector workforce. Our starting point on this issue is, as I'm sure, it is the same for most of you. Lobbying is an essential part of the political process. It contributes to better public policy outcomes and we also think that it should be conducted in an open and transparent way. We think transparency is a good thing, but I think one of the key issues is that transparency itself is not a settled term and I think it probably means different things to different people in this room. So we've got to find a sort of a framework, a shared framework for looking at any new regulation that might be brought forward on this subject and really we're approaching this from a regulatory affairs standpoint. We're looking at it from our member's perspective in terms of the costs and the burdens that it might impose. We're looking at it from a practical sense in terms of how it might work and what might be realistic and proportionate and in that regard we think that the bill as drafted does seem to strike a decent balance in terms of looking at that proportionality. We actually looked at the bill and looked at the proposals over the summer and before that and from that regulatory affairs standpoint by the Scottish Government's own principles of better regulation, we're not sure it quite meets them. I think there's a lack of evidence of a problem. I appreciate that the proposals came as a preventative measure but I think we also have to appreciate that the proposals do impose costs and that's costs in terms of time dealing with the register which may seem incidental but the cumulative impact I think when you look across all those that will be affected will be large. And it also presents an opportunity cost what are the things that organisations will not now do because they need to focus attention on dealing with those proposals and I think that anything that includes criminal sanctions which this does is currently drafted. Clearly there's a legal dimension there and there are legal fees and legal costs that organisations need to bear. So while I think that the costs will differ depending on the types of organisation that might be affected I don't think that we can put aside that issue at all. In terms of the bill itself I think the government's been seeking to find the right balance I think there are some things in there that we would welcome in terms of the proposals from the summer we welcome the focus on organisations rather than individuals I think that makes more sense we welcome the focus on face-to-face contact because I think that you need to look at what a proportionate system is and I think that this is an effective starting point and we welcome the fact that financial information isn't included I think that opens up a whole other kind of tranche of considerations for organisations and businesses about which I would add to the regulatory burden I think there are some practical questions which I'll just throw into the mix in terms of face-to-face contact how are we going to deal with maybe the incidental kind of contacts that individual members of staff might have with politicians I mean imagine a site visit that you as MSPs might do quite regularly to people in your constituency to take a supermarket for example a conversation with a member of staff on the shop floor I am sure that it is not the intention of this legislation to capture that kind of interaction but how do we do that I think there are also issues of sensitive commercial information that might be discussed at meetings either with ministers or MSPs and we have to ensure that any information recorded is at the right level and then that point around criminal sanctions to come back to that I appreciate that there's a phased process set out in the explanatory notes in terms of dealing with minor infractions versus the more serious deliberate infractions I think that has to be set out very clearly I think that we don't want to get to any kind of situation where there are criminal sanctions applied for getting a form wrong or anything like that and I think it's very important that as Bill goes through that we've got clarity on that so does it strike the right balance I think that in the circumstances we'd say probably yes but we've kind of questioned consistently the evidence base for bringing forward the legislation throughout this process Thank you for that I recognise Steve wants to come back on something you say I personally however want to just tease you slightly before doing that The CBI like quite several hundred organisations that are registered under the Companies Act actually operate under Royal Charter rather than the articles of association as a company would otherwise be where is the CBI's Royal Charter published because I can't find it I believe that the Royal Charter is available on our website Well, neither myself nor Spice who the parliamentary researchers could find it So I'll be very happy to It's just a gentle tease but it does illustrate a more general point actually that there appears to be no statutory requirement for companies that are registered and have an RC code in the register of companies to provide that There appears to be no statutory requirement at all and I'm pretty confident many of them by neglect perhaps by design simply don't have it there I'd be very happy to receive that outside the scope of the meeting Right, anyway Steve I think had a specific point he wants to come back on Yes, it was just to do with the sanctions at the moment there is only really criminal sanctions available for instances of non-compliance Now again going back to my former stamping ground directoral commission had the whole range of different sanctions that were available to them and they were obviously a thing of last resort everything to be front loaded as we used to call it on advice and guidance to make sure that people had the knowledge and skills to be able to comply with the rules and then it was about having on-going discussions with campaigners to make sure that they they were able to comply When they didn't whether because of consistent dare I say incompetence sometimes or through willful negligence or willful evasion there was a whole range of civil sanctions that the commission had available to them so a range of fines that could be increased or decreased depending on what the type of non-compliance was I think there's a real danger that if you only have criminal sanctions that if there can be persistent non-compliance with let's say for example reporting requirements that may not be in the public interest to pursue via criminal prosecution but then there's no other means of redress or deterrent for future non-compliance and that results in what you call an enforcement gap where there was non-compliance but there's no means of actually getting people to to actually start complying You're opening up a new topic I mean I think this is something we do need to discuss and it's one of our headings but I think in the context of my trying to get through everybody you're opening up a new topic to which if I may well I'll come back to that a little bit later and I've made a note to use it because I really do want to hear from both William and Raj before perhaps and it's William first Thank you, convener I think just as broad observation in terms of the contribution so far is that there's actually quite a lot of consistency consensus about some of the flaws of the bill as it's currently drafted I mean I completely echo the concerns that senior civil servants and special advisers are excluded as the draft has suggested and it just doesn't seem to make any sense it seems to fly in the face of the evidence that this committee has taken through the process where people were quite open about their lobbying strategies and tactics and said that of course it's not all focused at MSPs this is no shock to you but it's very surprising that the bill just seems to kind of want to focus on MSPs and ministers I think also the exclusion of electronic communication and email just doesn't seem to make sense it's frankly ludicrous and it's one of the easiest things that people would actually have access to so I think there's very little compliance burden we're having to kind of disclose the kind of the fact of an email contact not necessarily the content and I think this is one of the things that kind of puzzles me about it I've got two observations broadly about the bill one is it almost stands in isolation from freedom of information and other transparency measures I mean this to implement this bill is going to cost a lot of money and there's almost an inefficiency in not thinking about something like if a contact is disclosed let's imagine a journalist will then start trolling FOIs if actually we know there's already communication they don't have to waste civil servants time we're going through a whole list of FOIs before they get to yet another round of FOIs to force this information into the public domain and I think it's much easier if actually the fact of the communication is already in a register and then people can make a more informed judgment about whether that's worth pursuing or if more transparency is needed in that particular area the other thing I suppose I would say just broadly as an observation on this is for me just reading the bill there's a bit of attention here between the fact that the trigger for registration is about whether people are paid to lobby and the rest of the bill is completely silent about that question of payment and the magnitude of payment and I think we probably do differ from the CBI a little bit on this I think in lots of the other more kind of the more mature transparency disclosure systems that there's been a recognition that you can't kind of fudge this issue of payment that in some way most of them have some kind of financial disclosure and that seems to have been off the table for quite a long time in our discussions but I think you know the bill almost recognises there's attention there the metric that's probably very meaningful for the public looking in on the whole influence game in politics is how much resources are devoted to influence in decision making and you get no sense of that with the current proposals so I just as a kind of a push back on this because I mean I think the public you know may be slightly dismayed by this I mean how much how much extra transparency will this bring to the process for the public who are not following the detail of activity at Holyrood so I'm a little bit concerned about that and just to go back to the very very final point which is about whether this kind of regulation will put people off interacting with the political system I mean that claim is made repeatedly in the kind of hearings you've had the evidence and submissions and I can understand the concern that's behind it but just going back to some of the research I did a long long time ago actually the first time this debate this issue was debated in Holyrood in 2001 we contacted people who ran registers in North America and they said quite the reverse you know the fact that you have registers begins to explain the system to people a bit more and they understand how they can interact so I think it's very possible to create a more ambitious register that with proper guidance can actually inform people about where the responsibilities lie I mean the example in Ireland at the moment is quite striking they have a much more Raj can tell you more about this obviously but it's a much more comprehensive register but the guidance is actually incredibly simple I was just looking at it recently and actually it's very easy for a member of a public or someone who might be involved in a charity that doesn't campaign an awful lot to see where they would have to register and what they would have to disclose I'll tell you what I've got one person left who hasn't yet spoken so and we're now just on the brink of it get more interactive but I do want to hear perhaps Raj although this will worry John considerably because of course he's an educationalist but he's from Dublin I'm from Dublin that's fine okay thank you okay so these have been very good comments I don't want to go over the comments that have been made already but maybe what is good to do is to put them in international comparative context so our research group works on lobbying laws and examines lobbying laws in different countries throughout the world I myself am Canadian but as William said correctly was involved with the Irish legislation as well and I'm very proud to say that I think it's actually very comprehensive look there's some good things about the bill as I see it right now I think it's very easy to criticise it but it's also important I think to say what's good about it I think the fact that explicitly says that individuals who are lobbying and not being paid don't have to register and is explicit about this and the bill is a very good thing this happens and this was a consequence of why the UK for years didn't have a lobbying law given the Nolan committee report so I'm glad that that's addressed very explicitly compared to the UK legislation as everyone knows this includes in-house lobbyists as well which is I think before you go on do forgive me you said it's a good thing that people who are not paid are excluded would you like to explain that on how you say that I could explain it but I would like to hear you explain it okay what I really meant to say with that is if individual constituents want to talk to their MSP they don't have to register sorry I if I wasn't clear on that that's the only thing I was trying to say that it's available online for free for public consumption this goes to William's point as well as I think part of the whole reason for having this to foster transparency and accountability though I wish the word online and free were actually explicitly in the bill it's in the explanatory memorandum but it's not in the bill okay so when it comes to the orally and in-person communication on what is captured as regulated lobbying I have to admit when I saw this in the bill I don't think I've ever seen this before in any other bill that we've looked at generally that it doesn't include telephone calls for example and more importantly that it doesn't include written communications is something that we found well that I've found looking at this quite striking I've never seen this sort of wording before and it kind of pains me to say that even the UK recognizes that lobbying takes place by way of written communication and of course civil servants aren't included as well so a model there going forward might be to look at what Ireland's done and what Canada's done in the term designated public office holder which would include things that Andy was saying as well as advisors as well as high level senior civil servants so going forward that might be something to consider going beyond a little bit of the conversation when registering I found it a little inconsistent with this committee's recommendations and recommendation 9H in February of 2015 that a lobbyist simply has to state the purpose of the lobbying this is very vague and it doesn't go to the spirit of giving details of what's being lobbied on and who is being lobbied and what exactly is the intended outcome of the lobbyist and so I went to the Irish legislation here and when registering the lobbyist there does have to include the subject matter the name of the bill to be influenced in particular if there is a bill as well as the results intended to secure final point we haven't touched on here and this has found I think in a lot of different countries legislation that refers to cooling off or revolving door provisions these are remarkably absent I think from this bill at this point at least in my point of view given the number of countries that have these types of provisions which basically refers to the idea that a public actor has to cool off or can't go straight into the world of lobbying without a delay in order to create a level playing field in order to basically not use insider information when working as a lobbyist right away once leaving governments I know Richard had some issues on financial disclosures and thankful that it wasn't included in the bill I think the other perspective would be that well why isn't it the European Union the joint transparency register actually does have some form of financial disclosures and it's not considered well for in-house corporates it does it's not considered a particularly robust piece of legislation in terms of having transparency and accountability and it was just unclear why that was absent I'm not saying that it's going to necessarily be easy for lobbyists to spend the time to do it but again if the end objective is accountability and transparency in particular I think it would be something that your citizens might want to see as well the final thing I guess is on exemptions the exemption that if a minister calls a lobbyist and it doesn't have to the lobbyist doesn't have to register that's what I understand so this is really going down the wrong path I think the Canadian legislation is a good example here so in its first iteration in the late 80s and 90s the Canadian legislation actually had this and it said if a minister calls you and you don't need to register as a lobbyist it was a very big loophole and the Canadian government realised that it was a loophole and as a result it made amendments to the legislation later on so my advice would be don't start with something you know is probably going to go bad and start with something that learning from other jurisdictions doesn't need to be amended right now I've got a number of names that I've put down here but I'm going to because I cut them off earlier go back to Richard who I think had a very specific early point to want to burn camp then I've got Peter Andy and John now that may not be the complete picture but anyway Richard of a me thanks convener I just wanted to come back kind of very quickly on the point around financial disclosure because I think that there are almost two questions here there's one in terms of what what's your desired outcome but then there's also the one around practicality and these things aren't simple and I think once you scratch the surface of an issue like financial disclosure it actually throws up kind of a number of other questions I think that there is a it's a practical kind of issue around what gets included in terms of the financial information I think when it comes to needing to factor in overheads salaries then it becomes much more complex and maybe it's a much more complex picture than than is being painted and that adds again to the to the burden of needing to comply I think there's a question around commercial sensitivity of information fees paid for consultancy services and the like fees paid or salaries paid to kind of members of staff and I would also say there is a bit of a risk here that that while on the face of it financial information might seem a good thing it's actually quite a blunt instrument and I mean what do we what do we learn from it it doesn't say anything about what what the the quality of the lobbying is what the the influences which is being achieved I think that there are different kind of costs for potentially a a large business to the one ones that might be for a for a charity so you know not all lobbying is kind of equal in terms of the the international comparison certainly the European transparency register registers in in Washington and in the States I think it's a stretch to say that these are are are perfect in terms of the financial disclosure I think there are big assumptions made and we perhaps shouldn't kind of hold them up as being kind of examples necessarily which which we should follow it's just that point on financial disclosure okay now before I yeah no I've got sorry I have spotted you right well no come on in on Neil yeah it's on the financial disclosure when I did the consultation we we actually listened to those arguments and what people are interested in is the scale of the lobbying operation so they're they're more interested in whether you spend a five or five hundred thousand that's what they're interested in and we were very sensitive to the fact that people were raising the issue about you know commercial sensitivity and all the rest of it so that's why we introduced a banding to say it was between this and this it didn't say exactly what the figure was understandable you're bidding for contracts and all that kind of stuff but it gave an idea of the scale and I think that's the way to go over that given the financial information I think is key because it does tell you the extent of the lobbying let me let me just I want to just take a slight pause because I recognise that my committee colleagues have been comparatively silent unusual for politicians but there we are and I just want to make sure I'm not missing there wanting to come in Patricia does oh I'm sorry a big pardon in that case it was merely a passing expression over the face now willy is it directly on this point and Peter's getting really quite impatient so I'm definitely coming to him next willy I just like to say quickly that on you know the you know again the the Pipera act is is a good example how you can you know measure financial information on on on on on these sort of activities and I've been a responsible person under that act and I know and sometimes it is difficult in allocating bits of office space and staff time but I think you know and if you ask the public what they would want to know about the level activity they would want to know how much was spent on it does that tell you anything about the activity well I think it does it tells you you know how important it is to the people that are lobbying it tells you you know so it's a measure of how important it is to the lobby it's not anything about the lobbying sorry I'm just being deliberately provocative trying to take a position but it does does tell you like how much staff time is being spent on it how much so it tells you the power of that okay that side of the argument okay pita the power that's mass behind it sorry pita finally I would contend it tells you absolutely nothing of of of the issue about financial disclosure really is but and some of the elected representatives around the table will know this some of the most effective representations you receive are from people who are just the old lady up the garden lane the individual at the bus stop who says do you know what I'm going to write to that committee convener in the Scottish Parliament tell him exactly what I think and because it has the authenticity and the it's handwritten and you know they've put a lot of thought in that's what gives it credibility the fact that an organisation is willing to spend 100 100 pounds 5000 pounds 23 pounds whatever it is tells you nothing about the effectiveness of it I would say and we get to say from my industry perspective a lot of money is spent on some very ineffective lobbying that's just how it is actually I would approach and this goes back to I think William's contribution actually was he brought up the concept of paid lobbying and then used that as a to get into the argument on financial disclosure actually I'd probably look at it if I may convener from the other perspective and that is there are people who are not paid to lobby who are extremely effective lobbyists extremely effective lobbyists a good friend of I suspect Yw Zemin Gord Nickman is not paid to make the case for the case that he makes but he has been hugely effective in the way that he's made it and their money as a result he will make a difference and decisions will be taken on the basis of what he said so I think it's not as straightforward as just so he's very effective in his lobbying yet he will not be captured in a lobbying register absolutely that's my point my point is I have to say I think you need to look at the definition of paid lobbying because paid lobbying excludes some very effective influence that is exerted by those who are volunteers and enthusiasts but want to take a case across Scotland and make a difference and very often they do and they would not be captured by this bill and the other thing I would just like to which again came from Willingham's contribution and also Rajah's if I may is I think there's a useful hurdle to set yourselves in the Parliament over this legislation we've all agreed that lobbying's a good thing we've all agreed that the Parliament needs to be accessible and the way in which Holyrood has set itself up has been admirable in the way that it's open this I've been in another Parliament which has had a different culture and has not made as progressive steps in that area but I have to say if a useful hurdle to set is if this legislation when it's bring in brought in results in conversations not happening that are perfectly legitimate in a way that they would have happened before then this has failed if it results with respect to some of the submissions for extending the scope if it results in emails not being sent that would otherwise have been sent then I think this legislation will have failed and that's my worry about extending mission creep if you like I've taken a view that I've got to convey it earlier on that I think this is proportionate become disproportionate and this will result in Parliament receiving less communication from the outside world and I think that would be a bad thing and counter to the principles in which the Parliament was set up on the basis of the perfectly legitimate conversations perfectly legitimate email of course anyway just declaring that I'm the honorary president of the Scottish Association of Public Transport and my hero is Madge Elliott who for 50 years championed the cause of border Israel and has now been successful and I suspect she's bought a few dozen postage stamps and that's probably probably it Andy you happen to be next on my list then I'm coming John and Steve I think right on you Andy there are several points that I want to come back on the first one is this question that Steve raised of equal access my colleagues in England friends of the earth England Wales and Northern Ireland because friends of the earth Scotland are separate put in freedom of information requests to find out how many meetings had been held prior to the new tax arrangements being set up for fracking companies there were 19 with senior officials or ministers from the fracking companies to set up their own tax arrangements and I think there was only one by a campaigning group on it so this question of equal access does to a very large extent depend on resources in terms of what is a paid lobbyist and I think the public are very very interested to find out this kind of fact and if the register is going to do that that's a good thing I'm not sure at the present moment that this actually is so just to intervene you're therefore saying to us that the test of success in this regard is that you could see there was 19 meetings from this interest on one side of the argument while there was one on the other side of the argument rather than they spent three million to get the 19 meetings and they spent for up and safety to get the one yeah that's completely correct because in fact as all of us around the table know the one meeting may have been brilliant effectively and the 19 may have been a load of dunderheeds who made no difference whatsoever and you can't really come out and measure that I've always been asked to give key performance indicators I'm saying a bit difficult there but I share the kind of fear that Peter is making here when you start using this term paid lobbyists I'm paid not very much but I am paid and I am a lobbyist but the majority of my work is not lobbying I'm only a lobby part of the time I try to darken the doors of Holyrood as little as possible what I'm trying to do as an advocacy strategist is to get our members to come and talk to you and to try and get the right members to come and talk to you to get the people who have got expertise now they may be paid by their individual organisations or they may like the formidable campaigners recently from the Scottish Allotments and Garden Society who did a brilliant job and changed the law on allotments in Scotland in the community empowerment bill and they're a classic example of completely unpaid people now they would have only registered voluntarily and I read the policy men were random again last night and I can't really work out at the present moment what advice I would give to SAGs with regard to registration I would probably advise them to register as voluntary in the spirit of openness because again I stress that we are very much interested in open government and transparency so I think they would probably be best being registered but I don't know and I come back to this question of paid lobbyists they are the warden of the Woodland Trust's Glenfinglas reserve may well speak to several MSPs in a year and it may be arranged meetings and they will undoubtedly lobby and they will lobby about some subjects which are financial but it might take a few hours if that person is time they're still a part time paid lobbyist so the registration process would be for the Woodland Trust but my fear is that they would try and narrow down the people who were actually speaking to MSPs because this category of paid lobbyists who was paid and who was a lobbyist and I think it would be tremendously disadvantageous to the Parliament and to Scotland if it did lead to a professionalisation of the people from Civic Scotland who were in this building as I say I try and stay out of it I try and get real people in here to talk to you about real issues with experience and with knowledge and if I come along it's just another political hack and you can see that in the face of the people that sometimes you're speaking to so I think it is important that as you shape the register you make sure that there is something in relation to this trigger of the lobbyist being paid to reflect the fact that um as Richard has said not all lobbying is equal I mean I'm constantly aware that the turnover of the entire environment movement in Scotland link and all its 36 37 members is probably less than the turnover of one large supermarket and our ability to mount lobbying campaigns and spend millions or billions or whatever is tiny by comparison to the average corporate capacity to actually mount lobbying not all lobbying is equal the real equality that counts though is the equality of the arguments that are brought before Parliament for good order I earlier said in our but clearly we're not finished in our and we'll continue for about another 30 minutes now that will require a little bit of discipline in expressing arguments and points of view quite concisely if I may suggest to you may I also suggest that we're and in Andy's contribution we've just particularly focused on what the access point should be for what ends up in the register and what not and I think it'd be helpful to the committee of those who are contributing are able to make some specific identified what are the tests that are different from the tests we can have in the act now I think we'd be quite content to hear later you know by writing or whatever if that's the right way to do it but I think it would be important to focus on that and the other one which I think if I recall correctly Steve I sort of shut down the debate about compliance I want to if we can have a little bit of chat about how compliance works to test whether what's in the bill because we as a committee I think informally think there is one difficulty in that right so I've now got John and then I seem to have Steve I think yeah thanks I think we'll probably come back to you on some of the detail of some of these points and maybe make some general points I mean I think touching on the financial disclosure or actually that I would probably think of that scale issue I mean certainly from from SCVO's point of view that for us naming X amount of people in terms of our public affairs activity would give you an idea of the scale because we have public affairs officer or as a policy public affairs manager myself as director you know and obviously your senior staff are involved in that you would get an idea of the scale how we would allocate that in terms of all of their time if I was looking at we're about to hire two new public affairs officers and I was trying to judge one of them how much time they'd be spending in terms of thinking about you know dealing with parliamentarians and probably be less than 20% of his time you know and he was a focus on parliamentary activity because he's obviously dealing with officials and other stuff so we would rather see where we could be able to put the scale of our activity around that and I think that would be more helpful for our members particularly who have you know you know staff say of 15 but you know maybe only two or three people are dealing with policy work and maybe campaigning if I use that in inverted comments so it's not about because that'll be their whole job so you could look at the scale and that person you could see the level that person you would understand there I think in some of the other stuff I think in terms of email communication I think we'd need very precise scale again on what you mean by that I mean we had John Swinney and Alex Neil on our office last night we made a delegation of members to talk about the shape of the budget and we had three emails about car parking spaces from officials I mean I don't say that to be you know take it lightly but you're thinking there about what are the subjects that are actually covered in terms of that and where does it stop what I would maybe suggest is particularly from a third sector organisation that you know maybe the committee would want to bring in you know people like Shelter Scotland Inclusion Scotland British Heart some and some of me and these members small and actually say what does this mean to you in a practical sense in terms of how would you work to get an idea of actually how it might work for them and I know I'm going basically take someone like Inclusion Scotland 12 staff brilliant organisation do a lot of campaigning and policy work what it would mean for them I have no idea but I think it would be helpful to get a better understanding if he actually spoke to those organisations who would have to to implement this I think that that would be helpful for the committee I think in terms of compliance I think that that is something that needs to be addressed as Steve said we've been thinking about it particularly in relation to we carried out a fundraise and review over the summer and it's very clear if you look at say Oscar which regulates charities in Scotland and I'll give you an example for example Oscar there's 900 cross-border charities in Scotland Oscar likes the charity commission be a lead regulator and they are the secondary so there's a co-regulation situation but if you look at in terms of fundraising Oscar actually has very limited powers in terms of a regulator there now we could extend them I'm not sure there's a need for that but actually so there are regulatory gaps in all the areas so we need to think very carefully about what that complies with look and we can't go from zero to criminal act you know criminal acts right away when we need to have a scale about what does it mean if you're not complying with the register so again and it's that proportionality you know in terms of how is the registers kept up to date for example who's checking what people are saying you know are all going to be really important in this and I think for us I think that the fact that it's going to be free is critical you know we had John Major this week talking about there should be a levy in charities and I'm going to pay for the charity commission you know and that's going to happen with the fund raising down south as well so you know we don't want to be seen a cost burden particularly on organisations that we do want to register but we want to engage so it's that proportionality thing but that's we'll come back to you in some of the detail that'd be helpful right let me take Raj then Steve then Willie okay just a quick question maybe it was an observation a whole debate on compliance and oversight I think that this is something when I was looking at it so if I understand this correctly the bill provides for the register to be kept and maintained by the clerk of parliament right further the explanatory note talks about the registrar of the Scottish Parliamentary corporate body which is a term actually not found in the bill itself but the explanatory note talks about this who will oversee and manage the administration of the register on behalf of the clerk so that's one function okay that's the answer right okay then the second is that if you want independent investigations to be done if there's a failure to provide accurate information right this is what earlier you were getting at this can be done by the commissioner for ethical standards in public life in Scotland okay so what you it seems that you have effectively on this oversight mechanism you have two actors largely speaking involved one is a registrar that reports to the clerk and then if there's found to be some inaccuracies or if there's investigation to be done this is done by a different office which is the commissioner is it did I get this correct so my question would be well why would you do that why would you split this into two different bodies okay so generally when you have independent regulation done say in Canada for example or even in the case of of the commissioner we have now in Ireland this is done by one person who monitors and then investigates and then would report to Parliament as well in the case of making yearly or six month reports without seeking to justify it there is an explanation okay and it's because it parallels what happens in the member's interest regime where the clerks perform the administrative functions of recording and encourage and advising and encouraging those who have to provide information but the skills of investigation which are quasi-legal are fought to lie elsewhere and that is why there is that separate no I don't okay I don't use that to justify merely to explain and I'm Peter if it is now I'm beginning a run at a time so it really needs to be 22nd point and that is and the initial feedback from Orchill at Westminster is that actually there is a there's quite a big administrative task to ensure the quality of the information is correct the initial feedback is from from the registrar there is that actually the first round registration quality is awful one little point and that is I think the bill should look at trying to get the the registration dates into sync I personally think that this random six monthly thing that different return dates let's get one date and I think it should be synchronous with the Westminster registration regime as well let's just be let's just try and create as few deadlines as possible so it's all immediately I seem to see that having been written down specifically because what I want to talk about I totally agree with this going to random six month thing you're one of my reporting on this that and the other I think a census date will be helpful but this is every six months the Irish system is every four months and other places are even more briefly the Canadian system for communication requires every month so if you've made contact if you've made contact in every month yeah so you register that but actually what you're doing is you're keeping I suppose in your mind you're complying with this with this regulation now that people might think that's more burdensome than once a year but if you think about some of the tasks you have to do what just once a year and I'm on the transparency register in Brussels and I come around to that and think what have I done in Brussels this year how do I comply with that I've got to go digging through diaries and back records which is a bit to me actually take much more time I think if I was to update monthly like the task I have to do monthly it's much more familiar to you and I think it might actually be easier to comply with it if it was more often and designed well but I completely agree with the point about having a consensus date or something like that rather than being individuals making a judgment when this contact happened and then reporting on that that actually everyone knows that there are consensus dates coming up and that I think will increase awareness in the public affairs community as well that actually this needs to be done right, made my point okay Steve and then Willie and briefly briefly again I'd support any sort of harmonisation of reporting on comments especially with the UK register just for those who are working across borders then it simplifies it for them and arguably reduces potential for confusion again I'd also spotlighting and questioning why there's two different bodies doing two different functions for essentially what's one purpose from working in a for a regulator seeing how having within one organisation the compliance staff the advice and guidance staff and the enforcement staff in one body really does help to ensure that there's a coordination and there's an understanding of how those different pieces sit together I'm not saying that the arrangement that you currently have in place for members' interests doesn't work however from my experience having it within one organisation is critical and also it's more a question than anything I did wonder why the commissioner for ethical standards had an investigatory role when actually the sanctions available at the moment are criminal and whether the investigations that would be undertaken by the commissioner could potentially have an impact on any subsequent criminal prosecution it's something that we always took into account as a civil regulator and there was a large amount of coordination between the commission the electoral commission and it would be the Procurator Fiscal during the referendum or the Crown prosecution service about who had responsibility for it because we didn't want to trample over the CPSs or the Procurator Fiscal's investigations so it's more a question of how those things link together it's again supports the need for maybe introducing some sort of civil element there Willie and we're in we're almost on the last 15 minutes okay on on the who's captured I mean I think in the last all the evidence that we've given in the last bill some sort of threshold seemed to be reasonable and while you know there's problems with that people who are influencing policy won't might not get captured in quite a heavy way you know that then but the trade-off is that you know you allow easier at you know more access and flow of information into the Parliament by setting some sort of threshold whether it's like a a half post or or a financial limit on whether you're captured or not so I think that's important I'll just quickly return to the question of money because would we then go back and say under the the political parties act that political parties shouldn't publish how much they're spending on their campaigns because they might spend it badly and not have enough influence I think the question is does the public want to know this and I think the answer is probably yes and it's about public comfort a lot of this is about public confidence and what's going on so that's the point I want to make John, were you trying to catch my eye? Well yeah I think we're talking a lot about public confidence and public trust and I think yeah maybe quite interesting whether the committee wants to do some work on that because actually you know it's bandied about and I mean certainly we're doing an Ipsos Morrie poll at the moment about public trust and charities given all the stuff that's happening in fundraising but you wouldn't actually assume that we'd be looking at that and actually I mean are the public really interested in this? Some might be some might not but I've not seen a lot of evidence that they are I certainly believe we need to make the whole system much more transparent but again you know we can bandied about the public wants to know this and I noticed the information the information commission was going to be using it the other week for 80% of the public you know were supportive of our extension of FOI into housing associations and I kind of thought to myself really I mean depends what question you pose to the public so I think we need to be clear on here why we're we're going back to this what are the core principles this what we're trying to achieve and actually why we're doing it and I think that would be helpful because it's not it's not in the bill as it presently stands and I think that's extremely helpful for people in understanding why they're doing that particularly smaller medium size organisations who as Andy said would want to voluntary you know sign up because actually they're engaging with parliamentarians and they're engaging with officials in different ways and I think the point coming back to you know the government the admin point about you know unpaid you know lobbies in a sense in a very successful campaign for mind and raising a lot of money but also the first minister committing to more nurses for MMD and stuff like that you know that was because of that campaign that the the organisation you know Gordon headed up but he was totally unpaid but you know mind did a great job you know in that campaign it was fantastic campaign for the resources they had very small right Neil I'm going to ask if the public are interested in this well I kind of hope that they're not to an extent because that's the whole purpose to bringing this in that we don't end up we issues that the public have huge interest in that become headlines and we all end up up there in the firing line I think the public probably are interested in some of the issues in lobbying that's going on I mean I've just had a freedom of information request back that tells us that any of us in the Scottish ministers met with each other 13 times before the moratorium was announced I think the public would be really interested in that in relation to fracking so so that was a fair lobbying attempt well I think I think I'm only teasing Mr Finlay only teasing I think time will probably tell that that was an unwise statement to give go no it won't but anyway go no it won't that is an issue this is an issue where I think there is huge lobbying going on at the moment that the public would be very interested in but the bigger point is I hope that they are not become fascinated with this stuff because there's nothing to report and it's the preventative actions that we take that will prevent that from happening so in essence what we're saying in relation to the public is they will want to use it once in a lifetime that we'll always want to know that they can yeah Raj okay I think that's an important point because if you have a mechanism for transparency where you can see who's trying to lobby who about what the public can get engaged but in our own research we interestingly found that the biggest consumers of these registers are actually the other lobbyists themselves that are trying to see what their competitors are trying to do in terms of influencing others so it's actually a very good professional tool for lobbyists to see what they need to do to try to influence government the other is other organisations such as say you know a cancer society a Canadian cancer society officials when we talk to them in Canada basically said you know we don't need to make these big reports every year now to tell our members or that are people that are giving money to us what we're doing we say go to the register see who we've tried to influence on what with regard to health policy and it became a very clever tool for marketing their own or for making known their own their own political activity so it's not just the public there are others that can get engaged and get useful information from these registers Andy I think it's a very important point that Raj is raising about who might make complaints under this legislation and looking at international experience would be very valuable but there's experience perhaps closer to home which the committee might also want to look at I suspect that if you looked at the number of complaints put to Oscar and their equivalent south of the border you'd actually find that competing groups tend to complain against one another rather than members of the public I know that the RSP I was going to give you an example of the RSPB who have been targeted by complaints to the charities commission about their fulfilling their charitable obligations their charitable status obligations in certain regards the RSPB have been completely cleared on each occasion that the complaints have been made but a great deal effort of distraction has gone into clearing their name the same has happened to the RSPCCA who don't really operate in Scotland it's the SSPCA here but as I say this is experience across the border with charities registration and the other one strangely enough is from the Republic of Ireland where everyone argued against equal rights of appeal in planning cases on the basis that everybody would willy nilly be running to the courts but actually 90% of the court cases I believe are brought by other developers not by members of the public and it would be very interesting to hear from Raj and others about just who the complainants are in other people's registers Right, Steve and I'm not sure if you caught my eye, John No, it's all right, Steve Just to provide another example of where it's not necessarily the public who are looking at registers as for those of you who have contested elections you'll know that after you've contested you have to submit a candidate spending return in which lots of people end up spending a lot of time sort of looking at you know your candidates your opponents and similarly at the national level as well there's scrutiny there and it's mainly I think that to a certain extent there are interested individuals and members of the public but it's often political parties their agents and party officials are the ones who look at it and it keeps everyone honest it's you know it's one of these ones that oh it's such and such reported such and such a leaflet is such and such reported such and such a donation and if you can have a situation where lobbyists as well are keeping each other honest if you can say it that way I said I'm a lobbyist myself and you know we will be interested to see what other people are doing I think that that sort of self regulatory almost sort of mechanism there seems to have worked very effectively in the political spin I think it can also work with lobbying as well Right now I sense we're almost there now looking round at my committee colleagues are there any matters that any of you identify that we haven't touched on to the extent that we reasonably could at this meeting right no Cameron there's one question here that came up in the who initiates who initiates the meetings that's the other point I was going to raise because I think that's quite important who initiates the meetings is it you know how easy it really would it be to show who initiated a meeting and what's the consequences I'm going to take John because he did want to come in and then come to you Peter Just on that point I think Peter made the point earlier about you know whoever initiates the meeting sometimes I mean we certainly get calls from MSPs and officials and ministers and obviously we're calling them so I think it just depends on what the issue is and what the workload and certainly a lot of the stuff that we're getting is certainly that MSPs and ministers want to talk to some of our members about specific issues and I think so that should as Peter said earlier should be captured but I was going to make the point convener for looking at this and the context of the whole thing I think we've said it in evidence before that I think it's time to look at the MSPs called a conduct in relation to this the ministerial code as well because I don't think they've been reviewed for a while when we know when we wrote a response to you know the scottish government's consultation you know ministerial diaries hadn't been updated since about you know during 2014 and I think that transparency stuff and I think the bigger picture here is scottish government is now signed up very strongly for the open government agenda which used to be driven by the UK and seem to be put in resources into it and seem to be much want to be much more transparent and they see this as one of the action points so I think we need to see it in a wider context of how it actually affects more transparency across government in different ways and I think the committee needs to have a look at some of the the other actions that are taking place there Peter I think John made the point but I don't think it matters who initiates the meeting would be our view the fact that you know I think the the spirit of legislation would be that a meeting is taking place to take Neil's example that 13v1 I'm not sure if six of that 13 was initiated by a government and therefore wasn't declared if that was a particular if that was particularly unhelpful I don't think it would be I think whoever initiates it should be in a level I think much of our drift is all about let's have a completely level playing field let's make sure that everyone whether they're paid or not whether it's said discussions initiated by elected representatives or not whatever it is let's make sure we are all treated identically if we do that I think we'll avoid many of the pitfalls of the Westminster legislation that community didn't want us to particularly strain towards critique right thank you all very much indeed I sitting in the chair found that interesting I think we covered a lot of ground we did of course revisit matters which are probably beyond the process purpose that we have which is to make a recommendation as to whether the bill that's before us we should accept the general principles that's the next stage I suspect we're probably going to find ourselves able to do that but we'll have that discussion but of course following that there will be the stage 2 when the bill will be subject to detailed amendment and I think the report that we produce is an opportunity for us to indicate to ministers our early thinking on what some of the changes they should bring forward at stage 2 and I think we've got some in our mind already and if after today's meeting there are very specific points in that regard that anyone who's here or beyond here wants to make to us then we'd be happy to hear that but our duty is to now and focus very precisely in the detail we as a committee can make our own amendments we don't require only it to be outside people although that's an unusual process but we certainly would do so if it appears they don't come from elsewhere and we think they're justified and required so thank you very much indeed I'll just briefly suspend the meeting so we can bring us to order for the next I'm going to move it I'm sorry I beg your pardon we are now going into private sessions so I