 Rwy'n meddwl i chi ddwy��gwch ar y ddweud i'r ddefnyddio ei dweud i'r ddechrau'r awdd, ond mae'n bolw i ddwylo dangos o'r ddweud i'r awdd. Rwy'n meddwl i chi ddweud i ddweud i'r awd, rwy'n meddwl i'r awdd, ond mae'n gweithio i'r bwysig o'r ddechrau'r awd, ond mae'n fod i'r dweud i'r ddechrau'r awd, ond mae'n osgymryd i'r ddechrau'r awd i ddweud i'r ddweud i'r ddechrau'r awd, y decision on taking business in private. The committee has invited to agree to take agenda item 7 and 8 consideration of draft reports on draft budgets in 2017-18 and payments to the turning officers in private. Are we agreed? Okay, thank you for that. We now move to agenda item 2, Scottish Housing Regulatory Anger Report and Accounts 2015-16. At agenda item 2, the committee will take evidence for the Scottish Housing Regulatory Anger Report and Accounts 2015-16. We welcome this morning to the committee's chair. Michael Cameron, chief executive, Scottish Housing Regulator. Can I invite you to make a brief opening statement to the committee? Yes, indeed. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for giving us this further opportunity to present our work to the committee. As I have said previously to the infrastructure and capital investment committee, we welcome parliamentary scrutiny of our work. We are a listening organisation. We're keen to hear feedback and wherever possible, we're keen to act on that feedback and reflect these views and how we regulate. I'm delighted to be able to present our annual report and accounts, which we laid before Parliament in September. I'm also here to answer any questions, along with Michael, chief executive, any questions that the committee may have on our work in the annual report or indeed up to date. Our annual report highlights our work to protect the interests of tenants, of homeless people and of other customers of social landlord services. We've had a continued focus since we started on good governance, on financial health and good service delivery. Many of these are intertwined when we come to look at organisations. It's not just a financial health issue that we're looking at, it's across the board. I have to say I'm very proud to say that we met all of our objectives in 1516. We were within budget and we delivered, we believe, good outcomes for tenants and others. We also very importantly gave lenders confidence about the housing sector and that's a very important role that we play. During 1516 we brought accessible new information on landlord performance to tenants and landlords. This is mostly through the charter that I'm sure you will have seen and hopefully used. We published an individual performance report last year for every landlord and our national report on the charter showed landlords performing well overall. I have to say I think that this is a good sector overall. There are some inconsistencies in that but overall it's strong and it's healthy and I think that's really important in terms of the housing targets that have been set for new homes to have a sector that is strong that has the confidence of the lenders. As part of our digital transformation we provided tenants with even more performance information that helps them to compare their landlord. It's really important that they're not just looking at their own landlord but that they can look at other landlords that are similar, that are in the area and see how they perform, what their tenants think of them, how they engage with their tenants and that's really important. I've been told to keep this short so I will do and I'm coming to the end to be pleased to know. We did have to use our statutory powers which we haven't done before in a small number of landlords. We did this proportionately but decisively to protect tenants' interests. We only intervened when we could not get the necessary assurance from the registered social landlords that they were able or willing to resolve their problems on their own. Poor governance again was at the root of the problems in each of the four cases and by governance I'm talking about good leadership, good management and good implementation of services. I'm pleased to tell you now that we've ended our statutory intervention in two of the organisations after they had successfully resolved the main problems that they faced. Safeguarding and promoting the interests of tenants and other customers drives everything that we do and we know from feedback we have, we're very proud of our 500 strong national panel of tenants, other homeless people and other customers of the services and we have a tenant panel that we regularly engage with to give us feedback. They tell us that rent affordability and value for money are absolutely top of their agenda so we're obviously keeping a real focus on these areas going forward. That ends my opening statement. I'd be delighted, as would Michael, to answer any questions and I'm sure you do have questions. Thank you very much. That was very helpful and we'll move straight to our first question. You're referring your report to a cut in your budget, which I think is 10 per cent. It goes from £4.1 million to £3.7 million. Given what you've just said about the potentials of increase in work that is facing you down the line, how is that cut in budget going to affect the service that you provide? I think that's a very pertinent question. I think we have been concerned about our budget. We have increased demand and really reduced resources. We've gone down from about 79 people about five years ago to just over 50 now with a budget of £3.7 million. We've suffered 40 per cent cuts and costs over that time but it has made us work smarter. It's given us an opportunity to reassess our priorities, to reassess our focus and this year we were very fortunate in that we actually got a small increase in our budget. I think because the messages about the value that we add to the sector and the confidence that we give lenders is absolutely critical in this and I think we estimate that we save the sector. We save about £40 million in reduced borrowing costs in lower interest rates to the sector and this is what they tell us. Michael, do you want to say anything else on that? No, other than perhaps to say that we are extremely grateful for the proposed increase in our budget in the next financial year to £3.8 million. That will certainly help us in our work to maintain effective regulation. It's still challenging in the context of the overall budget settlement for any public body to continue to deliver effectively and efficiently but that's certainly the objective that we'll set out with. Okay, that's interesting. Follow-up on that, Mr Simpson? I had a slightly different question which I can ask now or later. We'll take it a little bit later if that's okay. I think we'll meet the guy next. Thank you, convener. Good morning, thanks for being here. In your annual report you state that the operating environment for social landlord is characterised by new demands, new and increasing risks, new uncertainties and new opportunities. Can you expand a bit more on what those are? I think that it's safe to say that the social housing sector faces a range of challenges and potential risks and that it's a very different operating environment than the one that it did perhaps five, six or seven years ago. We see a range of challenges. One of the most obvious is them stepping up to the target that the Scottish Government set to deliver around 35,000 new homes for social renting over the next few years. That brings a range of opportunities, challenges and risks. Many landlords are considering to get back into building houses. That brings financial challenges and financial risks. There are risks out there and directors routinely talk about a range of different risks that landlords face from the wider economic environment. There's probably not a conversation that goes by in this particular building without some reference to Brexit. There are challenges that are faced by landlords around some of the implications that will come from Brexit. We are looking at both finance and people risks there for landlords. There's quite an array of challenges and risks for social landlords. We, every year, review those risks and seek to understand how each landlord is placed to handle those kinds of risks. Then we form our engagement with those landlords in accordance with that annual risk assessment. I was interested to hear what specific things you would be doing to help landlords to operate effectively. As you brought it up, Brexit, you talked about financial and people risks around that. Could you speak a bit more about that? The people risks perhaps take some time to play out, but we are conscious that many social landlords rely on labour that is provided by EU nationals. Many landlords will have EU nationals residing in their homes. There's a range of uncertainty then around the availability of labour to social landlords and the potential impact on those social landlords of people who are either not remaining in those homes or not being able to avail themselves of the same kind of support that's available from the state. There's a range of uncertainties there. Obviously, the implications around the UK leaving the EU are affecting the finance markets. We're also seeing some cost pressures emerging around materials for the construction of new houses. The supply change we're seeing is cost pressures building there. At this point, principally, it's a consequence of the impact on the pound and the exchange rate. What's the regulatory doing to support landlords through this? It's actually not our role to support landlords. Our role is to ensure that landlords protect the interests of tenants and other customers. What we do is we identify and publish the range of risks that we think are there through our risk assessment. We encourage landlords to consider those themselves and to reflect on their business plans to ensure that they are accommodating those kinds of risks. We also put out guidance on business planning for social landlords to ensure that they are best placed to respond to the type of risks and challenges that they face. I think that there are real risks now that are growing in the sector. I think that capacity is an issue both within the organisations themselves but just general capacity in terms of new house building. I think the skills as Mike referred to have diminished and so that's an issue that's got to be faced. I think because we are risk based and proportionate we do identify where we think the most serious harms might occur or where there are serious weaknesses and try as much as possible to work with the organisations to get them to rectify the situation. In terms of risk though I think that rent affordability is a key risk in the sector. I think that you have increasing costs for landlords but in terms of tenants income that does not rise at the same proportion and I think tenants are very concerned about how they will afford to pay their rent. Do you want to add anything to that? Alexander Shortner wanted to follow up on some of that. Thank you for the comments on the uncertainty and risk that they face. From sometimes uncertainty there is also opportunity and potential to go forward and develop. What opportunity do you see coming forward in this turbulent time that we face and also what role do you see the Scottish Government has? Is there an increased role for the Scottish Government to support in the way that we go forward to try to mitigate some of the risks and uncertainty that you have or do you think that there are other organisations and individuals that you need to try and communicate with and develop another relationship as you go through this uncertain time? I think that it is absolutely key that the Scottish Government engages and understands the opportunities, as you see, as well as the challenges. There are opportunities for shared services, for instance. There are opportunities to look at value for money. In terms of it is not all in doom. There are lots of good things on the horizon. It is safe to say that social landlords over the last 30 to 40 years have been amongst the most innovative and responsible organisations in Scotland in terms of dealing with changing environments and challenges. I think that that is a real strength in the sector. I think that their place as community anchors and hubs for services present a real opportunity. There are challenges in that, too, in terms of the potential for withdrawal of other services in local communities and social landlords being viewed as the last organisation standing. That brings some real challenges, but there are opportunities in that, too. The sector has risen to opportunities in the past. Supporting them, as the Scottish Government is proposing to do, with increased funding to support new-build, is hugely important. I think that a clear focus on effective cost control value for money will be critical to that. I think that the whole idea of shared services gives us a great chance to see what can be done. Are there any areas that you have looked at that others may have done in other parts of the country or other parts of Europe or elsewhere that they have taken on board some of those opportunities and tried to manage them to benefit the social landlords and organisations that you are trying to support as they go forward? I think that, in terms of support to the sector, there is a role for the trade bodies in terms of being proactive and giving help, sharing best practice—that would be helpful. Already, there is quite a lot taking place in terms of sharing services and looking at how they can do things better. That is happening. I think that they are taking note of what is going on elsewhere. Can I pick up on a couple of things that you mentioned, Ms Blair, when you were answering Ruth Maguire? I do not know if it is in relation to Brexit or in relation to getting back in the game for new-build social housing with a significant budget over the next five years. You mentioned skills, and I was not sure whether you were talking about skills in the construction sector or skills of senior managers and housing associations that perhaps have not project marriage for a while in relation to new-build developments. I am just wondering if you could tease out a little bit more of the challenges over skills. I am talking about both. I think that, around governing bodies, they have to assure themselves that they have the necessary skills within that organisation to develop as they want to. Some of the past issues that have arisen for us have been because the organisation has not understood what it has got into and has got into some difficulties because of that. It is essential that they have the skills to understand the complexity and to understand what they do not know so that they can bring in some expertise from elsewhere. Certainly in seminars and in various briefings that we have had, there are skill capacities too in the housing sector in terms of building skills and development skills. I believe that, if you are a development officer at the moment in Scotland in terms of housing and construction, you are in strong demand, so a good career opportunity probably beckons. That is helpful. I am just wondering if you have a small social landlord or a small medium social landlord. Maybe you have 800 or 900 units, maybe there is a small gap site in the area in your thinking. I might speak to the Government or the local authority about getting some hagg money for this, maybe 40 or 50 units. It has been 10 years since we have built anything and you have to tie up that lending from the banks. You have got your 25-year projections, you have got to deal with construction companies or procurement processes. That is the skills that I was thinking maybe that are not as active as they have been in the past. Would the housing regulator have a role in relation to that process of support? Or would it have a role in terms of the sign-off in any business plans? Or would it be a role of looking back and seeing how the sector performs? Where would the housing regulator sit within that mix? We do not give advice, but in terms of business plans, every year we look at the business plans of the organisation, look at the complexity, look at the scope of what they are doing to give us assurance that they actually know what they are doing. Again, some of the areas that people have got into trouble has been when they have not known enough about what they are doing and what they are expanding into. What we have found is that the sector is very diverse, and that is one of its attractions because it is so diverse. However, that has challenges in terms of, as you see, some very small organisations that have decided not to develop just to manage their properties. Mr Cameron, do you want to add anything to that? Many associations are already collaborating with other organisations that have the kind of skills that you talked about. It is not always the case that, even where an organisation is developing properties to own and let, they will necessarily undertake all the work themselves. The sector is quite well developed in terms of its approaches to sharing those types of services, but it is certainly a risk that we have identified that, given that there has been a reduction in the delivery over a period of time by a range of organisations that now want to get back into it, that they need to be, in his case, ensuring that they have the right skills at board, committee level, within their own staff, in terms of the process of developing new houses, but also the finance skills that might be required to support that, and then ensuring that there are appropriate skills and capacity in the supply chain to be able to deliver effectively. The role of the regulator—I am cabling her, you mentioned—is not the regulator's position to look at business plans and that kind of thing, but would it be a retrospective role that the regulator would have to look back at developments over the past five years and see what lessons could be learned for the social rented sector? Is that the kind of thing that you would do? No, we do look at business plans. That is part of our risk assessment. For new developments? My apologies, I am talking about business plans in the round. Would you look at business plans going forward for any new developments in isolation or in the round as part of the overall package? At the moment, there are a number of ways in which we might become involved in that. In that case, each year we will look at the organisation's overall business plan, which will include its proposed future developments and new bill projects. We will look at that in the totality of the organisation's finances to understand the impact. At the moment, we have a role where an organisation is seeking to borrow money to build houses, and as part of that, it will be looking to dispose of some assets by way of standard security, and it would require our consent to do that. That is very common where there is a new build development happening, and that is part of it, and we would therefore have a look at the whole proposal in that regard. However, our role is principally to look at the overall finances of the organisation and ensure that any of its proposed business developments do not adversely impact on the interests of tenants over the longer term. I want to ask a question about homelessness, but before I do, I want to pick up the answers that you gave to Ruth Maguire's earlier question. Do you think that the risks, uncertainties and opportunities to talk about apply equally to local government as they do to community-based housing associations? We have a different way of scrutinising local government, local authorities, in terms of we have a shared risk assessment, so there are other regulators that we work with, and we really look at service delivery, so that is quite different in terms of we do not look at the financial or government situation, we only look at service delivery for local authorities, so it shares scrutiny. Do you say anything in your annual report about that shared scrutiny of local government? Yes, we do. I cannot remember what page it is in, but what have we found in terms of our charter? We have found that local authorities are doing well in terms of tenant satisfaction. They are slightly below the satisfaction levels that RSLs achieve, but that is often to do with the context in which they are operating, but it is improving and that is really important. Now we can benchmark that information because we have enough information from the charter to see where the improvements are and to compare, and that has been a real catalyst for improving standards. Excellent. Do you report a 4 per cent drop in homelessness? That is perhaps not statistically significant. Do you have a view on the state of homelessness and the contribution that the housing options approach is making to tackling homelessness? We are very concerned about homelessness. I know that the numbers are down in terms of applications, but if you just need to look at the streets and people sleeping rough to know that there is a real problem and it is a very complex problem. It is not just providing somebody with a house, it is providing most of the homeless people with a package of health and wellbeing that takes into account more than just a house, but we are concerned that there are too many people who are homeless and we are going to focus on that this year. Housing options we looked at, Government produced guidance around it and we have to look at that in more depth this year and it is one of our tasks. To echo what Kaye said, it will remain a key area of focus for us over the next year and probably beyond. It is the single biggest issue that we engage with local authorities around and you referenced the housing options report, which we published back in 2014 with a very clear recommendation to the Scottish Government that there was a need for guidance for local authorities around the implementation of housing options. That guidance was put in place last year, so we will revisit housing options to ensure that that guidance is being appropriately adhered to and implemented. That is very welcome. I have a second question and that is on your annual report that highlights that there is room for improvement in the services to gypsy travellers. Can you say something about that and perhaps what you intend to do in the year ahead? Again, that is a concern for us. Our report shows clearly that gypsy travellers do not have the same satisfaction levels as other tenants in housing. This is the first time that we have really got full data. We are looking at this in more depth now to find out what the particular sites that have the most problems are doing about it. I am very pleased to say that we have gypsy travellers on our national panel, and that has been really helpful in giving us feedback on what is important to them. Again, rent is key and the quality of the site is key factors for them. It is a concern, but we are focusing on it this year again. The Scottish Government published minimum standards for gypsy traveller sites, and that will be incorporated into the charter from this April onwards. That will become an important focus for us in our future plans around scrutiny of landlord's delivery of services to gypsy travellers. We will be looking to those standards as a benchmark for how those landlords are performing. You said that your staffing levels were now a little over 50. Your report talks about the average number of persons employed over 2014-15. Did your numbers go down and up to above 50? We continue to go through a change exercise to ensure that our resources are appropriately aligned to our priorities. We have turnover, and then we bring in new people. At the point of the production of that report, that was an accurate figure. We currently have just over 50 people in places in post at the moment. As I was saying earlier, our budget settlement, proposed budget settlement for next year, should enable us to maintain our level round about that figure. Thank you, Cymru. Rai sy'r social landlords have to meet the energy efficiency standard for social housing by 2020. I am just wondering what progress is being made towards reaching that. Yes, as you say, 2020 is the target for the achievement of the energy efficiency standard. We have been monitoring landlords' progress towards that. In the last year, landlords reported to us that just over 68 per cent of all houses that they let and that are within the scope of the standard currently comply with those provisions. The Scottish Government plans to include the energy efficiency standard in the new charter from April. That puts it on to a more formalised footing and gives it that statutory status. Our monitoring and engagement with landlords will reflect that new status. We will look to focus on the landlord's delivery of the standard up to that target deadline, and we will publish annual monitoring figures on that. I saw the 68.3 per cent figure, but that looks at the 160 registered social landlords. I am just wondering what the variance is between the landlords. Some might be at 30 per cent, some at 90 per cent. They are all on track to meet the target by 2020 or other difficulties that have to be addressed along the way. Obviously, we are talking about only three years, and there is still quite a number of tenants who will be expecting those measures to be put in. You are quite right when you say that there is a variation in the level of compliance currently, and that is an important factor that we will take into account in our annual risk assessment. We will do that in a similar way to the way that we monitor and engage with landlords around their delivery of the Scottish housing quality standard and the energy efficiency element in that. We will be engaging with any landlord that has further to go than that average suggests, as is the overall picture, to ensure that they have appropriate plans and resources in place to achieve the standard by the target. Are you confident that they all will? You have not actually said what the variance is. I am obviously concerned about whether there are any that are falling behind or that you have particular worries about. How does the RSL sector compare with the 32 local authorities in terms of reaching the target? We have figures around variance and the comparison between the local authorities and we can get that to the committee. We will engage with landlords, particularly from APRO, when the energy efficiency standard becomes that formalised part of the charter. That brings it very clearly within our remit to look at those landlords. We will engage with any landlord that we have a concern around in terms of the distance that they have to go and the potential capacity issues that they may have. We will have a requirement on those landlords to provide us with a clear plan that takes them to that compliance level. We will then start to monitor and report on their delivery against those plans over the coming year. That is very positive. I am pleased to hear that. How do RSLs in local authorities compare at the moment on terms of that? We have those figures, too. I have them here. If you give me a second, I will get them. Obviously, there will be variance within local authorities as well. Of course. I have those figures here. The overall average of 68.6 per cent breaks down to 72.6 per cent for RSLs. That is the number of houses that comply with the standard for local authorities. It is 65.2 per cent. Local authorities need to do more to catch up. They are marching them behind. At a level, that does not necessarily surprise me, given the age profile of the stock that sits within the two different areas of the sector. Graham Simpson, did you work back in for a follow-up question? It was really in relation to the three RSLs that he had to intervene on. I wonder if he can give us some details on why he had to do that. We had to do that because we felt particularly in one that there was a danger of insolvency. We had to do it because the boards themselves were not taking control of their own situation and they did not have the expertise to turn around the situation. Sometimes we met with appreciation and were welcomed to work with the organisation in terms of the statutory intervention, sometimes it was more difficult and more challenging. Michael, do you want to add? We have now used our statutory intervention powers in four organisations. As Kay mentioned earlier, we have now been able to end the statutory intervention in two because the organisations had made sufficient progress in improving with the support of the statutory appointees. Kay mentioned this before. The common thread in all those organisations was weaknesses in the organisations governance. That is what led us to have to intervene, particularly when it became clear to us through our engagement with them and our support of the organisation to try and self-improve that the organisations did not have the capacity or the willingness to address the fundamental issues that they faced. We did not look at our website because we have one of the reports on one of those organisations, the first one, and it is quite illuminating as to what the problems were. We are shortly going to be publishing the second one because we are very keen that the sector learns from the mistakes that were made. We are very keen that they take on board some of the messages about recognising diversity and complexity, making sure that you have the skills and making sure that you have the funding available. Our concern, particularly in one of them, was the threat of insolvency. Had we not taken action? Which one was that? Muir House Housing Association. We have concluded our statutory intervention and published our review report of that intervention. That is now in the public domain. What are the two organisations that you are still involved with? We are still involved with two organisations, the names of them immediately. Fergusley Park and Well House. No, Well House, we have now ended our engagement. Fergusley Park and Antinine Housing Associations. But we have not published the report on Well House yet. That will be at the end of next month, probably. I will quickly ask if you have created this digital comparison tool. What is the take-up on that? How many people are using that? We do not have hard and fast figures on how many we do. I have to say that what we do get is very strong anecdotal feedback on the popularity of the tool. We can look at that. We may be able to provide the committee with web page hit-type information. We will get that and that will give you a sense of the level of usage of the tool. However, from the feedback that we get from tenants, from our tenants panel and indeed from landlords, it seems to have been a popular addition to the range of tools that are available for people. We are going towards the end of our evidence session. There is one thing that I want to follow up with with Cabe Learon. Earlier on in questioning, you mentioned challenges around tenants income. It made me think about tenants arrears and how that is managed by registered social landlord. I am just wondering if there are any general comments on tenants arrears and some of the causes behind that. I am also interested to know what my constituent series is for asking this bit, but I will keep it fairly general about the link between policies in relation to housing investment that some social landlords may have in their stock and how they may or may not invest in individual properties that have housing arrears, sometimes quite small levels of housing arrears that they may miss out on stock investments. I will leave that bit hanging there. It is more about the level of tenant arrears, the issues for housing associations and local authorities, and whether there should be any consequences in terms of the level of investment to properties during an investment programme. For example, what should the consequences be? In terms of arrears, it is an area that we look at that we are obviously keeping a focus on. We have issued in the past some publications about managing arrears and landlords being sympathetic to tenants' cases where they do get into trouble and can't pay their rent. We are concerned, but nothing is escalating at the moment, but we will obviously keep an eye on that because we are aware that costs are going up in those organisations. However, tenants' income is not likely to go up in the same way, so it will not be proportionate. In terms of investing in current? I have asked you a bit about the clarity around it. I apologise, I have conflated two questions there. I have experience of a registered social landlord choosing not to do investment programme work, for example, in new kitchen and new bathroom and missing out some of the houses that are rent arrears but investing in other houses because that was part of a local policy. I had significant issues with that and I corresponded and I think got a result for the constituent in question, but I am just wondering. I did not really want to single out that one registered social landlord and I did not care to actually name them. It is more about the link between how local authorities or registered social landlords seek to take action to focus minds and rent arrears and what the consequences are for some quite vulnerable tenants at times. That was one example that I thought was deeply unsatisfactory, so any reflections on that would be quite helpful. In terms of decisions to be made around investment, we would expect landlords to not take account of the individual tenant circumstances, as you have described. We are aware that there are a number of different incentive schemes that landlords can operate to encourage full payment of rent but we would absolutely be interested in any landlord that was taking an approach that sought to penalise any tenant who is an arrears in terms of investment. That is helpful. I deliberately not named them but will correspond separately in relation to that but I was just wondering if there was a general theme of that happening that you were aware of across the board or other unintended consequences in relation to rent arrears. Some of my MSP colleagues do want back in but we have run out of time of my afraid but there is always time at the very end of an evidence session to allow either of both of you to make any final remarks or comments that you may want before we move on to the next item on the agenda. No, I would just like to say thank you very much again for inviting us here. I think we have had a good year as a regulator. We are concerned about the economic situation, about the impact of Brexit, about inflation and value for money, rent affordability. Those are issues that all concern us. We have to maintain the confidence of lenders in the sector. We think that there are exciting opportunities but obviously big risks and we are very keen that the sector identifies and mitigates those risks wherever it can. Mr Cameron, Ms Blair, thank you very much for your evidence. That concludes agenda item 2 and we will spend briefly to allow us to prep for agenda item 3. Thank you both of you. Welcome back and we move to agenda item 3, Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman Anger Report 2015-16. At agenda item 3, the committee will take evidence from the Scottish Public Sector Ombudsman on his Anger Report 2015-16. I welcome Jim Martin, the ombudsman. Good morning. I'm accompanied by Nicky McLean, director. Good morning, Nicky. I'm John Steeveson, head of complaint standards, Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. No opening statement has been indicated, so we'll move straight to questions. Ruth Maguire. You convener, good morning everyone. I'm interested to hear more about your new responsibilities around the Scottish welfare fund. You touched on that in the briefing note that was helpfully sent to the committee, and I do understand that there's going to be a full report coming, but I'd just like to hear your reflections on your experiences to date, probably particularly around caseload. Transition to bringing the responsibilities for the welfare fund into the Ombudsman's office appears to have gone very smoothly. We seem to have got the confidence of the local authority sector and the third sector for the way that we've approached it and the way that we've brought things in. I'm going to ask Nicky McLean to go over the details of what we've done so far, but I have a caveat, and that is that we're only six months into our first year of dealing with it. There will always be issues about full year and how to look at numbers there. I mean that there are also wrinkles that have to be hand out in the first year of any operation, but… In terms of volumes and timescales, people will be aware that the crisis grants have to be dealt with within one day and 21 days for community care grants. In terms of our performance to date, we're achieving those timescales in pretty much every case, and that compares quite favourably in comparison to the previous local authority. Second tier stage performance, so I think in terms of our ability to process this work within the statutory deadlines, we're meeting that very comfortably at the moment. I think one of the significant benefits of the system that we're operating at the moment is that it is very easily accessible. We take these cases over the telephone. I think that that is working very well for applicants. In terms of volumes, we've dealt with around 175 decisions so far. I think the one change, it is very early days. I think we're in month nine, month ten now. So it is very early days, but one of the changes that we have seen is that the split between crisis and community care grants has altered compared to last year, so at the moment it's around a 50% split between the two types of grants. It's difficult to say if that is an on-going trend, but previously there were a much higher number of community care grants and a much lower number of crisis grants. Thank you, convener. Your experience of working with the local authorities on that, and I suppose particularly around the crisis grants, you said that you felt that you have the confidence of them and it's working well. Can you just tell us a bit more about that? So I think I refer to confidence in our ability to process these applications. I think that broadly speaking we are working well with local authorities. I think that one of the benefits, the perceived benefits of this system would be that we were independent and I think that that is bearing fruit in the sense that I think that we can offer advice, guidance, direction to local authorities around the level, particularly the level of information they provide to applicants when they're reaching decisions. We're seeing some requirement for additional explanation and information to applicants when they're being either awarded or denied these grants, so I think that that is where our expertise will really benefit. I think that one of the early concerns that was expressed to us in the extensive consultation that we did before we brought it on was whether we would be imposing a national standard on local authorities and what we have always said is that what we want to achieve is not that but a consistency of approach so that everyone understands where they are and that the rules are applied consistently. We haven't had any challenges yet to suggest that there are any inconsistencies that people have found. To that regard, the intention of having a single Scottish protocol for these things appears to be working, but, as I say, as Nicky says, it's month nine or something, so we've got a long way to go. Thank you. I know that Kevin Stewart will follow up on that. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning. Following on from Ruth Maguire's questions, in terms of page 7 of your submission, you talk about, since 1 April 2016, the ability to make binding decisions in relation to Scottish welfare fund review cases. I think that that's very welcome, but you also express our feeling in your paper an element of frustration that you're not able to make binding recommendations in specific limited circumstances elsewhere. You've pointed out again under 3.4, the third paragraph, that an organisation didn't want to implement a recommendation, could simply ignore it, and this seems to me inherently unfair. Although you've got it further down the page, I wonder if you can just expand a wee bit more on what you feel should be done about that. I know that this must be an important item, convener, because I say it in the times this morning, so it must be important. Let me share my frustration. I've been an ombudsman for eight years, so this is the last time that I'll be before a committee like this with an annual report. Consistently, over that seven or eight years, I have said that I did not see a reason for the ombudsman to have binding powers. The reason for that is that the recommendations made by the ombudsman are sometimes with a bit persuasion but invariably carried through. In the last two years, I would say, there's been a sea change in the attitude of some public bodies towards our recommendations. I think that whoever succeeds me as ombudsman is going to have some kind of extra power in their armory to ensure that recommendations are carried forward. The point that I'm trying to make in the submission to you is that once we make a recommendation, there is no power that I have to ensure that that recommendation is carried out other than persuasion and the threat of public exposure. On one occasion recently, I've had a chairman or organisation say to me, so what, Jim? So what are you going to do? And I said, well, I'll take it to Parliament, so that's a great Jim. You've been to Parliament, they don't even have a process for dealing with your special reports, you asked them to have it and they said, no, so what's the big deal? In the case that you've referred to, which may welcome to Parliament in the excitingly named other report provision that I have, which has never been used either since 2002, we have a particular local authority in Scotland who agreed to a recommendation which involved giving recompense to someone who was out of pocket and 18 months to two years later is still not carrying out that recommendation and is finding lots of obstacles to putting away. In my view, at that point or at some point along that process, the ombudsman should have some kind of power in order to make that happen. Now, if I'm a private individual, a citizen coming to the ombudsman, my recourse is judicial review and that I think is a big, big step. It's very expensive, very difficult to achieve. For a public body, the route of you do not want to comply with an ombudsman recommendation is to ignore it and at the moment there's very little that can be done. Now, what I'm not arguing for is binding recommendations in all matters from the ombudsman because I do believe that the recommendations being implemented through partnership and through a sense of doing the right thing is the way to go and it works for every other ombudsman in the United Kingdom. I think that's the right way. What I am saying is that in those few cases where my successor may find that they have got authorities who simply want to ignore the power or to say that the ombudsman really has no power, there has to be something in the armory to back that up. I share your concerns and frustrations and I note that alarmingly, in the second paragraph 3.4, you end that paragraph by saying most significantly the organisation's obstruction has delayed justice and I think that's clearly an issue that could be addressed. You talked about a sea change with public bodies. You're sitting here at a parliamentary committee, why don't you name and shame these organisations who are just blanking you when a recommendation has been made to mean this is your last year, ombudsman, go out in a blaze of glory, come on, let's name and shame some of these people. Why not if we're trying to get, as you have said in your report, justice? For that invitation to rant. One of the problems that I think we have in the public sector in Scotland is that there seems to be a view abroad that naming and shaming leads to improvement. It doesn't. Naming and shaming leads to defensive cultures in public bodies. It means that officials are less keen to be transparent. It means that decisions which are taken, which are wrong, are often defended to the nth degree. I've, over the last eight or nine years, dealt with chief executives. I'll give you one example of a chief executive at a health board who asked me not to lay a report before parliament but to issue a decision letter because if the decision is a report to parliament there'll be more publicity, more damage to the authority, that kind of thing. What we have found is by working alongside public bodies to generate a culture of improvement and learning from things that have gone wrong, things change, things improve. I would caution against the naming and shaming culture. Can I give a second reason for that, which is anecdotal? I was having a conversation last week or the week before with some colleagues who were pretty senior in private sector business, and I was trying to encourage them to think about bringing their skills and their talents into the public sector. The most common thing they said to me was, why the hell would we put ourselves through that? Because if you always see them as you going before committees and committees wanting to name, to shame, to pillory, and I think that in Scotland we really need to get past that culture. We need to embrace a culture which is designed to certainly be transparent but also to engender improvement. Thanks for the rant, convener. I don't think it was a rant, sorry. I have to say that I had a case that wasn't involving yourselves, but it was a financial ombudsman who had awarded £186,000 to constate in a mine, and the organisation, point blank, after two years refused to pay this retired individual a penny. I basically said to him, I'm sorry, if you don't pay up, I will name and shame you, and they wrote the cheque within a couple of weeks. I think that it depends, maybe public bodies might think differently from private bodies, but if you're being blanked year in, year out, surely there is an issue where the person who has come to you for your assistance would want that because they would want justice. I know that you're making recommendations in terms of having binding decisions in certain circumstances, but for that individual where you have said justice has been delayed, what are they supposed to do if there's no naming and shaming, the organisation says no, and at this point there is no binding power. You can understand how that person must feel in certain circumstances. I do, and that convenience is exactly why I'm asking for the power to be given that I'm talking about, because the problem there is not that you're not naming and shaming the organisation. The problem there is that the organisation has got no one telling him that they must do that. What I'm saying, if we got to a situation like that in the public sector, I think that you must trust whoever is sitting in the ombasment seat to use that power appropriately, but give them that power to make sure that people who do not want to carry through judgments, decisions and recommendations do that. That was a really helpful question, Mr Gibson. Can we just tease some of that out, because you've said that you don't really have many weapons, if any, in your armory at all in terms of making decisions, binding and enforcing compliance, but you don't want to name and shame and you're saying, Mr Martin, that perhaps in some circumstances some decisions should be binding. Can you be a bit clearer in relation to when decisions should be binding or what other additional powers that you would like? I think that I've set out in the paper that where a decision is reached with an organisation does not intend to challenge that decision in the court, but also that organisation shows no intention of actually carrying out that decision and its recommendations. At that point, the ombasment should have the power to say, this recommendation is now binding. You must remember, we can get past naming and shaming. We were the first ombasment office in the United Kingdom and Parliament was the first to understand the need for this, to give us the ability to publish our decisions. So we publish our decisions in summary form and we do it to protect the anonymity of the people who've brought the complaints and sometimes the professionals at the centre of it. By doing that, every month I publish 60 to 70 decisions and in most of these decisions, 95% of them will name the health board or the local authority or the housing association or the prison or whatever it is, so that is in the public domain. What I don't want to do is, while we are in the process of investigating or in the process of trying to get a recommendation carried out, where Parliament has told me that I need to do that in private and I support that. While we are in that process, I don't think it's appropriate to name and shame at that point, but you have given the ombasment the power at the end of the process to publish summaries which are anonymised. If I can just shift this on just maybe a wee bit, the other part of what I'm asking for is a common sense application of the use of the information that the ombasment has, so that currently, convener, if I have a piece of information as a result of an investigation which I believe presents a health or safety risk, I can share that information generally with people I think it's appropriate to do so. But there are other organisations where we are carrying out investigations where I may have a piece of information which of itself does not meet that high bar, but which I know would assist an investigation saved by the General Medical Council, the General Dental Council, whoever. At the moment, I'm precluded from sharing that information with them, and every year, I get requests from bodies like that and healthcare improvements Scotland, for example, for information that I have, which I know would be useful to them, which I cannot share. That seems to me not terribly wise, and I think that Parliament might want to give some consideration while protecting the rights of individuals to have their data protected, to enabling the ombasment to help other regulators and other bodies to carry out in the public interest investigations. The whole thing, I think, sits together. A particular point in relation to this, Mr Martin, you will shortly be without going ombasment, as we know. You'll move on to pastures and you whatever they may be. It's quite difficult for someone in your position when sitting in this post, when you're independent but you administer the rules and the structures and the statutes as you have been given, and now is an opportunity as you're departing this post to give a lot more clarity into how you would like to see the post develop in the future. Stronger, more binding decisions, not naming and shaming, but real powerful levers that a future ombasment could use. Once you're no longer in this post, will you be keen to continue to work with Parliament and Government to push some of that forward, because you'll actually perhaps be in a stronger position to do some of that? Is that a job offer for me now? I can't even get myself a job, Mr Martin. I think it's very important. I've held a number of high profile posts in the past. One time, for example, I was General Secretary of the Education Institute of Scotland. I was like, most people are too young to remember that time. I've always taken the view that when you go, you go. What I'm trying to do today and what I'm giving you today is a step for a hint that it's perhaps time to revisit what Parliament thought in 2002 and see whether it's relevant in 2016. I could go on forever, but I think that Parliament should be aware of one thing. The SPSO is probably perceived internationally at a higher level than it is in Scotland. Recently, the Ombudsman Institute, the World Wide Body, prepared a paper for the United Nations. For countries, we are thinking about setting up an ombudsman system. In the course of that, it only mentioned two countries as examples of innovation in South Korea and Scotland. I think that we have together, Parliament and the Ombudsman Office, built an evolving and improving ombudsman service for Scotland, which I think that everybody in the rest of the United Kingdom and Ireland are looking at. I would hope that Parliament would encourage my successor to continue with that. One of the things that I have found frustrating over the period is that it has been difficult to engage with Parliament and with Governments to some extent on the general powers and direction of the ombudsman, rather than in meetings like that, which sometimes with your predecessor committee has been quite adversarial. The approach has been quite rightly about scrutiny and not really about strategic thinking. I think that if the committee wants to think about how it might enable my successor to come and think with you and with Government strategically, I think that that would be an innovation that would be a lot of fruit. We will also reflect on the evidence that we get from this morning's session, and there are a number of other questions other than how reforms will be coming in that we want to ask today. I suppose that I was just trying to tease out whether this was a parting shot or an ongoing dialogue, which was the reason for asking that follow-up question. Jobs are not in my gift, Mr Martin. I am afraid in relation to that. Mr Simpson, what do you follow up on some of that, and then we will move on to another line of questioning? I think that this is quite outrageous. The phrase naming and shaming is not right. It is a matter of accountability. Councils are funded through the public purse. They are accountable or should be accountable to the people who pay for them, and that is the taxpayer. It is not a matter of naming and shaming. There is no point in having an ombudsman if you do not have the power to do anything. So, I think that if people are ignoring your recommendations, we have a right to know who they are. They should not be able to hide behind the cloak of anonymity. I think that that is outrageous. I have yet to be in a position where a body has not carried out my recommendations. My issue is that it is now taking me quite a bit longer to get authorities to the position where they actually do. By giving the ombudsman that extra thing in their armory, that is important. It is also important that the relationship between public bodies and the ombudsman is looked at very carefully. I was quite surprised by a couple of the submissions to our strategic plan for this year, from SOLAS and from SOLAR, from the chief executives group and the local authorities and local authority legal group. I floated the idea that, because of the resourcing issues that the ombudsman office faces, we may look at a different funding model. One of the things that I floated was perhaps some element of polluter pay, so that if we get more cases coming to the ombudsman from one local authority, they may pay a little more. I expected to debate about that. What I did not expect was for our chief executives and our heads of legal to respond to that by saying that the solution is to charge people for access to the ombudsman. That, in itself, I find abhorrent. However, I think that it speaks to a cultural problem that we have. If the response that we have to austerity, whether we believe that it is there or not, if the response that we have to austerity is the punter pays, then I think that that is wholly wrong. If we start putting barriers between our most vulnerable people and the people who have got power of their lives and their services and make it difficult to them to get to the ultimate point where they can resolve that, if we are going down that route, that is not the Scotland I know. I think that we maybe have to tease some of these things out and make one or two of our fundamental principles very, very clear. Thank you very much, convener. I welcome you here today. I am a new MSP, so I am quickly becoming familiar with constituents who have complaints about various public bodies and your role in that. I was particularly interested to read in your review about the complaints handling framework and the work that you do in advising public bodies to improve it, because I am not sure if you would agree, but ultimately, in an ideal world, we would not have an ombudsman. There would not be need for that level of complaint. In that sense, it is useful to track the kind of complaints that you are getting and where they are coming from. I wonder if you can give a little bit more detail on the public bodies that you have been working with over the time of your office and the extent to which improvements have been made and the process that you have put in place, such as the complaints handling framework, will contribute to better service delivery for the public. John Steams is the architect of much of this, perhaps he would be best of. I think that I should start off by explaining that the model complaints handling procedures that we have developed and implemented include a requirement to report against performance, and they include a set of key performance indicators, which really are the purposes twofold. First, it is to allow organisations to understand internally how they are performing end-to-end in terms of managing complaints. Secondly, it is to allow those bodies to start to compare and contrast their performance to benchmark their performance against other similar organisations. That is the first tool that we have developed and are using to try to improve and learn from complaints handling. You will see in our annual report that one of the issues that we find is that the percentage, the volume of complaints that we uphold, is still significantly high. Therefore, although we have model complaints procedures, while the process that we are claiming for complaining is simple and straightforward for our customers—people using public services in Scotland—we still find that, ultimately, the decisions that are made by public bodies are often erroneous or flawed or whatever, that the company or Government's office will uphold them. We have looked at how we can further support public bodies in terms of the decision-making. One of the tools that we have developed is the new Complaints Improvement Framework. The Complaints Improvement Framework looks at what would an effect of complaints handling service look across the organisation. It identifies six areas of good practice. It allows organisations to self-assess their performance against each of those areas of good practice. One of the areas of good practice is the issue of quality. It is quality of the investigation process. It is quality of the decision. It is clarity of the decision when that decision is communicated to the customer. It focuses very much on conducting a thorough, robust investigation that responds to each and every part of the complaint that has been made, so that the body can be assured that they have delivered their final and definitive response to complaints. Can I add something to that? You are the only committee of a Parliament or an Assembly in Europe who has access to the information that comes through that process. No other country in Europe has it. You have it and it is not being used. For example, in local government, the Improvement Service manages the network of complaint handlers, gathers the information that they have. There is valuable information there about the performance of local government. We are about to put the social work and the health complaints handling processes in place as well. For the first time, this Parliament will be able to see across the whole of the public sector in Scotland from a complaints perspective what is working and what is not. I would urge the committee to think about how to use that information, not just to hold local authorities and others to account, but to spot areas where we may collectively can improve the services that we are giving and encourage people to work together towards that improvement. Wales and Northern Ireland are going to have this next year or the year after. England has declined to have it, which is a bit of a sadness to me. I told that we had persuaded Westminster to do that, but you have this resource and I would encourage the committee to use it. The resource at gym refers to tells us that, for the past three years in Scotland, local authorities have received somewhere in the region of 60,000 complaints per year, and of those 60,000 complaints, on average, they close the result of 80 per cent plus of complaints at stage 1, which is within five working days. By any standard, that seems to be a good performance. The issue is for those complaints that are not resolved at stage 1, for those 15 per cent to 20 per cent or so, and the ones that eventually escalate their way to come to the Ombudsman's office are about the clarity of the decision and the ability for that decision to stand up to scrutiny. However, there is lots of valuable information coming out of the local authority sector in terms of their performance. There is lots of good work going on with the local government network group in terms of benchmarking and comparing contrasting performance for improvement, and we are very encouraged by that. I think that the one area that we are seeing that there is room for improvement is that of learning from complaints, which is one of the indicators. That is far more difficult for the local government sector to demonstrate. That information is all there, it is all available to you, as Jim says, and I think that it is adding value across the sector. I can just follow that up briefly. You also note in your complaints framework bit of the report that the notable differences between the two years of reduction in requests from the local government sector and an increase in requests from NHS. Clearly local government is accountable formally to local electors through elected members, etc. NHS obviously is not, it is a national service. Obviously the nature of the services that it provides can lead to people with very, very, very serious complaints. Is this increase in requests from the NHS for advice and support, I should say? Why do you think that that is happening? Do you think that that is just an additional increase in pressures that they are feeling? I think that that is possibly two issues there. First of all, we would expect over a period of time to see the requests for advice and guidance and support from the local government sector to decrease because we now have three, four years' experience of operating the model complaints procedure. We have the network, which is a great source of identifying and sharing good practice, so it seems reasonable to me that over a period of time the need to come to the office for advice and guidance in relation to complaints handling would diminish. Up until very recently, the NHS complaints procedure was different from the models that apply across Scotland. We have been doing a lot of work recently. In fact, we led the development of a new NHS complaints procedure, which will bring the NHS into line with the wider public sector in Scotland. A new complaints procedure will be introduced from 1 April next year. In part, that explains the reason for an increase of inquiries from NHS complaints handlers in terms of what looks like good practice complaints handling and what will the new complaints procedure look like and when will it be implemented. Can I check some of the conversation and talk about all the new data that we are going to have to analyse the nature of complaints across all public bodies? Is that what the learning and improvement unit comes in when you talk about how Parliament could use some of that information? Can you say a little bit more about that? I think that what you are saying is that we have a huge space of data and themes that are emerging over the types of complaints. Local authorities should be analysing that and improving how they handle certain services and functions that they do, so that complaints do not diminish or do not come in in the future, as should health boards, as should other public organisations. Would that be the job of the learning and improvement unit to foster some of that? Where would this committee sit as part of that process? Would we be scrutinising? Are those only one-year funding that the learning and improvement unit has? Is that the kind of unit that this committee in the future could scrutinise to see the type of work that it was doing to drive some of that change? Could you make it real? What would that mean in practice? Data is wonderful, but it can just sit there and gather dust on a shelf or on a table with an email that was sent to you. I will take that if that is okay, convener. I think that, to make it clear, the learning and improvement unit, as John has highlighted, one of the performance indicators that councils have to report against is the issue of demonstrating the learning. I think that that is the element. Now that we have a standardised process, we have stats available of volumes of complaints. That is the one element of the framework that we see that organisations still genuinely struggle with about how they can genuinely learn from complaints and how they can demonstrate that learning. The purpose of the learning and improvement unit is specifically to focus on how do you encourage bodies to actually genuinely learn from complaints. We are doing that in a number of ways. We did secure funding for a one-year period. We have actually built in funding into our future budgeting to continue the work of that unit. If I can just give you two illustrations of the type of work that that small unit of three people will undertake. The first one is that we have never had the resources previously to produce thematic reports. Of the very small number of complaints that come to the SPSO relative to the whole of the public sector, of those small number of complaints it is still possible for us to identify some themes and opportunities for learning. One of the things that that unit is doing is identifying and publishing thematic reports. The first thematic report that will be produced in March of this year. It is around patients obtaining consent because that is a theme where we have seen a number of different types of issues where we feel that we can add some value to the health sector in advice and guidance. That is one illustration and we would wish to continue to produce thematic reports. The second area that we are focusing in on is working with a small number of bodies where we can see that they generate either high volumes of complaints or have high uphold rates. High uphold rates are as a result of not carrying out in-depth thorough investigation at the late stage of complaints, where they have become complex and intractable. We believe that we can provide some support, guidance and further tools and techniques to public bodies when they are in that position. That is helpful. I wonder whether, at some point in the future, we want to give the learning opportunity time to bed in, but it might be something that this committee might be interested in hearing directly from. Set evidence sessions that that might not give the time to get to detail over some of that stuff, but that is very interesting. Mr Stewart, do you want to fall off on some of that? Very apparent that there has been real progress from the role that you play and also the impact that is having on some of those local authorities and bodies that are being challenged by individuals who feel that they have a grievance to deal with. To get to the stage that 80 per cent are being managed at local authority. My question would be about the whole aspect of training and managing the training within those organisations. For complaints officers, for the head of legal departments, for chief executives, to ensure that that is being transmitted across their organisation, to ensure that they can effectively manage complaints as they go forward. There is a role for you to play and for them to play in managing that situation. However, at the end of the day, for the complainee individual who has the problem, if they do progress to second stage and then they come as far as you, there has been a real breakdown in some of the communication and some of the training that should have taken place for it to get to that stage. If you then uphold the situation at your end, then there has been a failure right across the board. There is a lot in that, convener. I agree with almost all of that, actually. One of the things that we did, Nicky McLean, did, was establish a training unit within our office. That training unit has produced e-learning materials, which are currently now being used across the national health service in Scotland with Nes. It has been used by local authorities to train first line complaint handers. It has been used in some housing associations and in some further education colleges. It has also been used in higher education in Ireland. It has been used by local authorities in New Zealand and it has been exported and used without, I believe, credit to us anyway to the national health service in England. That training unit is 0.5 of one person. You can do an awful lot with very little. Generally, in the public sector in Scotland, we can improve our game by public bodies accepting that it does not require a lot of resource to make great improvements. I just add that as an aside, convener. I have argued till I am blue in the face that the Parliament should have given me the right to licence that material so that we can make an income from it outside of Scotland. We should have helped to offset the impacts of having 15 per cent reductions in my budget over three years, but that is another issue. That whole training element is something that is very close to our heart and something that we are working on. Do you want to add to that? Just to give a little bit more detail around the types of training that that unit delivers, as you rightly say, people at the front line of public services have to have the knowledge and the skills to be able to deal with complaints, but it is also absolutely about the culture and the ability to apologise very, very early on, and we know that if staff have the confidence and the training to do that, that is when you get the early resolution. If they do not, these issues escalate, so we also provide training around the investigation skills stage that I referred to earlier, but I think that it is quite clear that there is more work to do around the investigation skills stage, but I cannot overemphasise the importance of if the culture within the organisation is not there, so staff do not have the confidence that you can train for every day and it will make no difference whatsoever. You can train to your blue in the face, but if there is a nervousness about how the culture is within the organisation, if there is a blame culture potentially, or someone may be scapegoated in the process and someone may end up losing their role and responsibility because of a situation that occurred, then that has to be taken into the equation, but that has to be managed because that should be at the forefront to say, well, if we got it wrong, we need to get it right for the future. It is interesting to see that there is an increase across health because I still think that they are very resistant when there is a complaint. They become quite defensive in any that I have dealt with across local government and also across the time since I have been here. I have found them to be very defensive when you try to unravel a situation for a constituent that has had a complex complaint. The frustration from the constituent is that, once again, they are not being listened to because they do not believe that the way that they are being treated is in the customer service environment that they would expect. Mr Stewart, just before you reflect some comments particularly about health, it might be good to roll that together, because I know that Mr Simpson wanted to fall up in some aspects of health, so if you are going to give some comments and reflections, then Mr Stewart's contribution might be helpful to hear from Mr Simpson at this point. We are up against the clock convener, but really just in relation to health, and we have seen that increase in complaints. I wonder if you can give more detail on that. Was there a particular reason for that or any themes emerging? I think that the number of health cases that we are coming in here compared to when I began as an ombudsman is quite a phenomenal increase in the number of health complaints that are coming to the ombudsman. The cases that are coming are also more complex now, I think, by and large than they were before, and health cases almost always require us to get clinical advice. They are very, very complex. I think that a number of factors are at play. I think that people are now more willing to challenge their professions. They are prepared to say to doctors and nurses, I am not sure that is right, what happened to my family, whatever, can I have an explanation and to see it through. I think that Mr Stewart's point about the defensiveness is beginning to recede in health. I think that it is beginning to recede. I think that one of the areas where health really does need to work in, and you will know this convener probably from your previous committee life, is that there is still a consultant-led culture in a lot of our larger hospitals where the consultant still thinks himself as the reigning monarch of their field. I think that that is beginning to break down a bit and people are coming to us. I think that the kind of areas that we are seeing people bringing as complaints about are roughly the same although the volume is different. I have to commend Ness and the health ports for the approach that they took to post Francis in the Francis Inquiry to Mid Staffordshire hospitals in England. They said about working out how not to have that paragraph in Francis that says that had the chief executive and the chair of that trust listened to the complaints that were coming in and sought to analyse them, many of the deaths there may have been avoided. They set up working groups and courses on governance for their non-executive directors—for their executive directors and all the rest of them—to try and grapple with that. I think that the Scottish Health Council, moving towards getting a more professional-based health complaint system, which John has helped to introduce, will take that a step further. Do you know the most worrying thing for me? Look at the percentage of upholds in health that I am seeing. I am seeing 50 odd, 55, 56, 51 per cent, year on year. These are all complaints that have been investigated and inverted commas by health boards and we are upholding half of them. One of the things that I hope will happen from the new complaints process is that the health service will rethink how it approaches those complaints in the first instance and fewer of them will come to my successor and we will see a reduction in that uphold rate. Do you want to follow up on that, Mr Simpson? I know that we are up against the time. I appreciate that. I know that Elaine Smith wants to touch on health as well, but it has a final question, so it will take me now. I thank you all for coming along this morning. On the health and perhaps it is a question for Nikki McLean. You mentioned your first thematic report on the issue of obtaining informed consent, so I was just looking for a bit more detail on that. Do you, for instance, be hoping that that would encourage improvements? The thing that springs to mind for me, for example, has been in the news recently as the mesh issue for women. We are now hearing that it can still be used as long as the woman is giving her informed consent for it to be used. Is that thematic report going to look specifically at whether or not complaints have been made about whether consent was informed and whether it was sought? It is quite a specific question about your report. We can obviously only report on the complaints that people bring us. The types of issues that have been brought and will be included. I think that there is a case study of about eight or nine cases off the top of my head. The types of issues that we see are where things that were minor risks as a result of surgery may have not been explained in detail, where the amount of time given between information being provided and actually at medical treatment taking place has not been sufficient and where family members perhaps have not been involved in the consent process as they should have been. It is quite a wide range of issues, but it is based on the real case studies that have come to us. The purpose of it is what we wanted to do for a mathematic report is not simply do what other ombasmon schemes have done, which is just put out reports about a particular issue, but we wanted to be able to offer some guidance around that, so we have developed some guidance around if cases do come to the ombasmon, the types of questions that we would be asking health boards around the consent process and the types of things that we would expect to have seen them to have done. From memory, I do not think that we have had any complaints around mesh surgery. I can certainly double-check that, but it is not an issue that we have seen. I will go back to the special reports that we discussed earlier, particularly for Mr Martin. If I understand it, you have proposed changes that I am sure the committee will consider. If an authority has not made a payment to an individual the like of which my colleague Kenny Gibson explained earlier on, what it seems to me is that you are saying that you have the authority to bring a special report to Parliament, but today no special report has been issued. I suppose that I am wondering why no special report has ever been issued to Parliament. You are going on to say that an organisation did not want to implement a recommendation, but could they still ignore it after a special report to Parliament? What would happen if you had issued a special report to Parliament and what would then be the outcome? The cheeky answer to that, convener, is that that is a question for you. I have been asking for the past three or four years, maybe five years now, for Parliament to come up with a process and procedure of how it would receive a special report. The answer that I have got is to not worry about it, but it will be all right on the night. We will deal with it when it happens. You would not have issued one because you do not know what the process is for dealing with it? We have, in the last 18 months, been within a day. In one organisation, we were in a day of going to the court of session to require them to give us information that they have withheld, because I have court of session powers in order to give evidence. A public body said, I am not going to give you the evidence that you require for your investigation, and I had to get to the point of saying that tomorrow we are in the court of session to get it. With others, I have said to them that we are at the point now that we are going to issue a special report and it has got right down to the wire. This case that I was talking about earlier, which has taken a long time for the recommendation to be done, is also that authority. What is happening here is that the legal departments of some of our public bodies are looking at my legislation and saying, right, how long can we postpone this for? How far can we push this ombudsman to see what he is going to do or is not going to do? My predecessor, Alex Brown, never had to issue a report between 2002 and 2009, because we always got to the brink. I am at the point where I have always got to the brink, but when I said at the very beginning that I am seeing a change in culture over the past two years where people are playing the system. That is why I think that, as a Parliament, you have to understand what you are going to do when my successor brings a special report to you. Where is it going to go? Who is going to deal with it? You have got to give the ombudsman that bit of power that makes public bodies sit up and take notice. I suppose that I am just trying to clarify that your request and we look at extra power, but I am trying to clarify what the situation is with not using the power that you actually have at the moment. I think that it is pretty clear, Mr Martin, that all the committee members have listened very carefully to your appeal for additional powers and processes to be enhanced in relation to special reports, for example, and I have no doubt that we will analyse that carefully when we consider the evidence that we have had this morning. I think that it is only fitting, given that this is likely to be a last appearance in front of a local government committee, that we put on record our thanks to yourself, but your rider team as well for all your work over the years. We should really give the last word to yourself, Mr Martin, before we move into private sessions. Is there anything that you would like to add? I was once introduced to speak at a meeting in Glasgow. The person who was introduced to me was not politically on my side. We have been very fortunate over the years that we have had a number of very good speakers. Unfortunately, today's speaker is Jim Martin, so I wouldn't say his speech too often. The one thing that I would ask the committee to do, please, is with my successor to give my successor a year or so to have a look at the organisation to assess the climate and Scottish public services and then listen to them when they come back and say that this is how I think things can be improved. The one thing that we do not have, apart from the annual scrutiny of reports, is an area where elected members and the ombudsman can think and talk strategically off the record about where to take this service. That is the only advice that I would give the committee. I thank you very much for hearing me today. I thank you very much, Mr Martin, Mr Stevenson and Ms McLean, and we now, as previously, need to move into private session.