Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Official Report 527KB pdf

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New Petitions

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Whistleblowing in Local Government (PE1488)

The next item of business is consideration of three new petitions. As previously agreed, the committee will take evidence from the petitioners in each case. The first petition is PE1488, by Pete Gregson, on behalf of Kids not Suits, on whistleblowing in local government. Members have a note by the clerk, a Scottish Parliament information centre briefing and the petition. I welcome Pete Gregson—I am sorry for the delay; as he probably picked up, we had quite a busy earlier session—and invite him to make a short presentation followed by questions from me and my colleagues.

I will start by asking who shapes change in our local areas. We may think that it is the council politicians whom we elect, but most of the matters that occupy the council business agenda are there because senior officers have tabled them. In a report, they tell politicians about a problem or an opportunity and why they believe that their solution is the best one. Our councillors must accept the statements that are made in such a report as written. However, such reports can be biased or misleading, as we have seen in Edinburgh with the trams, with property conservation and even with the Castlebrae high school closure proposals.

When such reports are biased or misleading, there is a very good chance that there will be at least one worker somewhere on the council staff who will be well aware of the issue. If an officer is concerned about a bad report, mismanagement or the unintended consequences of a council decision, they have just two choices: they can keep quiet or they can go to a manager. There is no doubt which course most bosses would prefer them to take, because nobody really likes a troublemaker.

Most councils have a policy on public interest disclosure that is meant to encourage staff to take malpractice concerns to their managers. The first problem with such policies is that a biased report cannot be construed as malpractice; the second is that such policies do not protect staff. In Edinburgh, two council whistleblowers have been disciplined or sacked in recent years. In the case of the property conservation whistleblower, the council’s audit committee heard in 2010 that there were problems, yet the departmental head assured it that matters were in hand—they were not. The whistleblower was rooted out and sacked, as reported in the Edinburgh Evening News in July last year, and his case goes before an employment tribunal in November. He had raised his concerns with his line manager but nothing changed; then he went to a more senior officer, but the deafness went all the way up to his head of department so that did not help either.

In 2006, a similar thing happened. A council officer disclosed anonymously by email to the council leader that almost £500,000 of council cash had gone missing from the Edinburgh lifelong learning project. The leader passed on that information to the education department, which chose to hunt down the whistleblower—he was traced and disciplined for the leak as council staff are not allowed to disclose to councillors. He took the case to an employment tribunal at his own expense and won, receiving a £5,000 compensation award.

Sometimes, staff leave the council rather than risk blowing the whistle. Ten years ago, politicians were warned about the tram plans. Deputations to committee focused on the financial shortfall, to which councillors replied that they must rely on the advice of senior officers, who were saying that the fears were unfounded. However, transport engineering staff were expressing concerns about issues to their managers. However, those staff members who flagged up problems were marked men and many chose to preserve their professional integrity by leaving the council.

The union knows that staff are victimised. In early May, Edinburgh Unison passed a motion calling for better whistleblower protection for council workers, which would include allowing staff to report malpractice to councillors. As I mentioned, present policies forbid that practice.

Council workers from two other big Scottish local authorities have told me that they are fearful about or have been disciplined for reporting malpractice. Also, councils discourage staff from speaking to councillors about their concerns. The 2010 councillors’ code of conduct backs that stance. It tells councillors

“not to engage in direct operational management of the Council's services; that is the responsibility of the Council's employees.”

We need a safer system—a system that puts knowledge in the hands of politicians directly because they are accountable to the electorate, who must foot the bill. Whistleblowers feel safer if politicians are involved because they are outside management.

The only safe scheme, I think, is for each council to contract a commercial whistleblowing hotline that reports mismanagement or poor advice to senior politicians from within and without the ruling group. The politicians would come from the audit committee, as every council has one. A sub-committee comprising a representative from each party should consider disclosures to the hotline. If all agree that a disclosure represents a risk worthy of public concern, it should go on the council risk register and become public. The committee could then ask the monitoring officer to report on the risk, which would subsequently be made public, too. An important consideration is that, before that report gets to committee, the whistleblower should have the right to comment on it and to highlight matters that they do not agree on. The councillors may then decide to seek further evidence.

It is important to note that the definition of whistleblowing is presently restricted to malpractice. However, council staff should be allowed to blow the whistle on misleading reports as well, because such reports lead to funding decisions. It is public money that is at stake here. My petition calls for staff to be allowed to point to such reports as mismanagement, which allows a broader definition than malpractice alone.

At present, the Government considers that it is for each council to come to its own whistleblowing arrangements. The president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is not convinced of the need to change. However, whistleblowers go to employment tribunals. They must keep outside of the media for fear of damaging their case. If they win, they are usually forced to sign a gagging clause, so it is very rare for that problem to be publicised.

I believe that what has happened in Edinburgh will take place in other authorities, too. Much funding to councils comes in the form of a block grant from the Government. It is public money at issue here. Whistleblowers often want to report mismanagement or misdirection because they feel that bad financial decisions are being made. I am asking you, as holders of the public purse, to instruct measures to ensure that they can feel safe to speak up.

Thank you, Mr Gregson. I have a couple of points. My questions may overlap your statement a little, but that is no bad thing if it gets clarity on the record. What is your assessment of the current whistleblowing measures in Scotland?

I know that the NHS has a line that is run by Public Concern at Work, which is a helpline rather than a hotline. It has a different function because, as a helpline, it is there to advise a staff member on what they should do with their disclosure. The adviser will probably have the health board’s disclosure policy in front of them and the usual advice is for the staff member to take their concerns to their line manager or the trade union. A hotline would be quite different. I do not know of any Scottish local authority that has a hotline, although I know that Edinburgh approved a new policy last month. Do you want me to go through it quickly?

I am afraid that we are a wee bit tight for time, but if it is in writing, perhaps you could pass it to the clerks.

The new policy is very much along the lines of what I have just described. The governance, risk and best-value committee will take reports from a commercial hotline. Edinburgh has decided to go down the way that I am proposing. It did not originally intend to do so. In June, it was going for a different option. Since then, it has realised that this is about the management of risk. If it wants to avoid risk, the safest thing to do is to involve elected members and have a whistleblowing hotline that is outside the council.

Do you wish to see legislative change in Scotland so that every local authority and public body would have to follow the same new whistleblowing charter?

I would like every local authority to have the same measures in place as the ones that Edinburgh is adopting.

Good morning, Mr Gregson. I am going to be a bit robust, if you do not mind, because this is quite important. Have you ever stood for the council?

No, I have not.

Do you believe that our councillors are so supine that they do not ask relevant questions of officers?

I think that councillors work very hard but they are often part time and do not have the facts in front of them. They have to ask questions. Decisions are made that are subsequently regretted.

That happens in all walks of life, I am afraid. Do you believe that MSPs are supine?

No, but I do not think that you are really involved in the comings and goings of local authorities—

That is not the case. If someone raises an issue with me or any of my colleagues regarding a council decision or an issue in which we find that the process is not being followed, we would not be doing our jobs if we did not follow through. You are suggesting that there are things going on that the elected members appear not to be made aware of. Do you have evidence of any particular situation?

Well, they cannot get directly involved—

Do you have any evidence of a particular situation, Mr Gregson?

The only one that I can think of is where MSPs might comment on a council decision, such as the closure of Castlebrae high school, on which Kezia Dugdale was happy to say that she thought that the report was biased, but MSPs do not have access—

Did the public take issue with that? Did those who were affected demonstrate or make representations to the council?

11:15

Yes. The school pupils and parents did so. However, I know from council staff that there was a perception that the report was biased and did not state the full picture. There have been other issues. In Edinburgh, there is a desperation to reach the Scottish housing quality standard by 2015, with the result that several thousand houses have been demolished three years too early. It was known some time ago that the credit crunch meant that demolition should not proceed, but the councillors had okayed it. If council officers had been allowed to speak to councillors, they could have pointed out that the process needed to be slowed down. However, Edinburgh wanted the SHQS as soon as possible, so there was an urgency that was not real, given that other authorities were not driving at the same speed.

But you will accept that sometimes there are exigencies that affect the way in which we have to approach issues.

I have one final question. Your petition states:

“Cash which should be spent on the front line gets lost in the back office—and our kids are the biggest losers.”

How much money do you think would be spent on chasing every hotline call that was made to all the authorities in Scotland and therefore how much cash would be lost that could be spent on kids?

In Edinburgh, the cost of the trams has been £400 million or £500 million over budget and the property conservation scandal will cost about £40 million. A whistleblowing arrangement would perhaps cost the council £20,000 a year.

You cannot pretend that the trams issue has been kept under wraps and needed a hotline or whistleblower.

No, but when the decision to proceed was taken 10 years ago, some council staff were unhappy with what was being fed to councillors.

In the committee, there are five members who were formerly councillors, so we have some experience—

It is six.

My apologies, Mr Brodie. I just ignored the party that you represented at the time.

The petition on whistleblowing is interesting but, to an extent, it is a bit naive given the decision-making process that takes place in some local authorities. I cannot generalise about how decisions are made, but I know that in the two authorities in which I was involved as an elected member decisions that came to committee had been predetermined by the convener or the majority group in the local authority. So the point about taking a whistleblowing complaint to a special committee to consider could be negated because if the majority group was involved in the original decision or recommendation to the council, it will have predetermined the decision. How do you see us getting to a position whereby, when whistleblowers are concerned about recommendations that have been made to the council, the decisions can be overturned? My experience is that if a majority group on a council votes for something, that is the decision, irrespective of the recommendation from senior officers or consideration by the convener of such a committee or the council leader.

That is usually down to the audit committee, which is generally concerned with risk. If something is happening that needs intervention, that committee, as the guardian of risk, would put it on the risk register—or keep it on there—and flag it up as a public issue. There are always agendas and directions, but sometimes decisions are made without councillors having the full information. In the audit committee—or, in the City of Edinburgh Council, the governance, risk and best-value committee—there are opportunities for scrutinising some of the decisions that may prove to be problematic later on.

Not when that committee is dominated by the majority party that made the original decision. That is the point that I am trying to make with regard to the democratic process, or lack of it. I know of a recent example in which a local authority group leader issued an instruction to conveners of committees in which the group holds the majority and the convenership to shut down any debate or questioning in the committee structure of issues that are presented to the council for recommendation or approval. How would a whistleblowing line help in that situation, in which a clear instruction has been issued to shut down any questions or dissent in the council committee structure? How does the whistleblower get their views expressed in that domain?

My proposal is that, within the audit committee, there would be a sub-committee that would include politicians from every party, including the parties that are outside government as well as those in the administration. Those politicians would be party to looking at the whistleblower reports, and I suppose that it would be up to them to decide. If the group agrees that there is an issue that needs to be explored, that can happen. If there is a split in the sub-committee, and the ruling group thinks that the subject is closed but the other party does not, those members can go back to their group and try to raise a motion to bring to the committee to flag up how dangerous it might be not to act on the issue.

Mr Gregson, I have every sympathy with the intent of your petition; the difficulty lies in the application. You gave examples in your opening remarks of situations in which officials of the council have felt that recommendations that senior officers made to the committees or to the full council were not correct or were made on the basis of misleading information. Apart from the audit committee, to whom would the whistleblowing hotline members be responsible?

The difficulty that I find is that, if a council official is responsible to a line manager who is responsible to an executive director who is responsible to the chief executive, at what stage is the complaint from the whistleblower stymied as it goes through the system? Do you think that senior officers of the council who were party to making the recommendations would be happy with dealing with some of the whistleblowing complaints that may be made?

Well, no, they would not, because the complaint would undermine their judgment, but it is still important that that happens. What Edinburgh is doing is interesting, because it is splitting up concerns by asking the hotline provider to parcel each concern up according to whether it is major or minor. If the concern is major, the council will ask the hotline provider itself to carry out the investigation, take evidence from various sources and write a report on it. The council suggests that minor concerns will probably be left to a line manager to deal with.

The mechanism that Edinburgh is proposing is quite good, in that the council will get the hotline provider to do the investigation and then take its conclusions to the monitoring officer and chief executive for comment. The matter would then go to the governance, risk and best-value committee. Those two officers would get a chance to comment on whatever the hotline provider has written up.

I welcome that response, but I still have a difficulty with the internal process for whistleblowing in a local authority, particularly about whether the issues raised by a whistleblower would be adequately dealt with in the investigation process or whether, because the officers dealing with them might in some cases be fairly junior officers accountable to line managers and others, the complaints could be quashed. For example, if an officer in legal services made a complaint through the whistleblowing hotline about how a decision or recommendation had been made or presented to the council, the officer could be accountable to the legal services senior manager, and the question is whether the senior manager would be happy with the complaint coming forward. Would it not be better to have a whistleblowing hotline that was completely outwith the local authority’s control and allow whistleblowers to make a complaint or raise issues with an independent body that could carry out an investigation to find out whether there was proper scrutiny and whether full information was provided to councillors before a decision was made?

I think that the independent hotline would be an independent body. If the hotline is operated from outside the council, then it is independent, even though the council has a direct arrangement with the contracted provider. I am not sure about having a national hotline, because it is probably important that each local authority has its own hotline provider and can choose who that would be and maintain a relationship with them.

I will leave it at that.

We are a bit short of time, but do any other colleagues want to come in?

My local authority has a facility for whistleblowers to highlight areas of concern. As a councillor and, more recently, as an MSP, I have been approached on a number of occasions by council officers or individuals who have had concerns regarding committee reports or reports on investigations undertaken by the council, so I have some sympathy with the petition. However, I also have sympathy with John Wilson’s line of questioning. Given that a new structure has denied democracy in my local authority—Falkirk Council—because debates are guillotined if they are allowed at all, I am concerned about how an audit committee or sub-committee could properly address the issue. How would you address a democratic deficit such as the one that we have in Falkirk Council? Do you agree with John Wilson that there is a strong argument for having an independent hotline rather than one that the local authority monitors?

I do not have a huge problem with a national hotline, but I think that a hotline that is monitored by the local authority has a relationship with the authority and is beholden to it. I do not really know what has gone on in Falkirk. For me, the issue is about an audit committee and a risk register. I think that councils have to hold a risk register. It is about putting things on the risk register so that it is in the public eye that an issue has been flagged up that needs to be explored. Until an issue gets on to the risk register, it is not a public matter.

One of the problems at the moment is that councillors tend to be excluded from the whistleblowing process; it is expected that it will all be done within the management system and the corporate management team. I do not feel that that is fair, because councillors will often end up carrying the can for something that they did not fully understand or appreciate at the time because there were facts that were not made available to them. On that basis, the process is unfair, because they will get the boot after four years but officers are there for life. That is why I think that the councillors or politicians need to be brought into the process so that they hear about mismanagement reports. That could be done in a number of ways, either following John Wilson’s approach or following mine.

11:30

I am afraid that we are short of time. The committee is at the point of summation before we decide the next steps. Members have a note of the various options that the clerk has suggested, one of which is to continue the petition and seek advice of the Scottish Government, COSLA and Audit Scotland.

Mr Gregson, I appreciate your intent and understand how you might feel. I share some views about how we train, manage and ensure participative management across industry, commerce and public service. Sometimes there are political problems, but the culture needs to be changed, not so much the process.

On that basis, convener, I suggest that we do not continue the petition.

We should continue the petition. Convener, you named the Scottish Government, COSLA and Audit Scotland. I suggest—and I declare an interest here—that we also write to Unison, Unite and GMB. We should also write to the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman—I hope that the witness for the next petition is listening—and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers.

I agree with John Wilson that we should write to those additional bodies. When we write to COSLA, can we ask for its figures on hotlines and helplines and ask what procedures are in place for whistleblowing among its member local authorities?

Chic Brodie and I are meeting the president of COSLA on another subject on Friday. If we give advance notice, we might be able to get a verbal report at that time.

I agree with John Wilson that we should write to the organisations that he listed, including the unions.

I agree with John Wilson.

You might receive a verbal report on Friday, convener, but will you receive a written report?

Yes. COSLA might not be able to give us a verbal report because of the lack of notice, but we will certainly ask for a written report for the committee.

Will we call for a vote?

We do not tend to have votes on this committee. There has been an overwhelming majority in the comments.

Being a good democrat, I will go along with the decision.

We have a unanimous decision to continue your petition, Mr Gregson, and we will write to all the organisations that members such as John Wilson mentioned. We will keep you up to date with any developments and I am sorry again that you were delayed. We had a very busy evidence session earlier.

One thing that I forgot to mention is that bullying can be an issue but the current definition of malpractice excludes it. I am thinking of mismanagement and bullying—other issues could come through the hotline.

Thank you very much for giving up your time.

11:33 Meeting suspended.

11:33 On resuming—

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Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (Parliamentary Governance) (PE1489)

The second petition is PE1489, by John McLean, on realignment of parliamentary governance on the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman. Members have a note by the clerk, the SPICe briefing and the petition. For the record, I draw members’ attention to the fact that I am a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.

I welcome John McLean to the meeting. I apologise for delaying you and keeping you waiting. As you may have picked up, we had a very busy evidence session on our inquiry. I invite you to make a short presentation; if possible, keep it to no more than five minutes. My colleagues and I will then ask a series of questions.

Good morning, convener. On behalf of me, the co-sponsors—Accountability Scotland and Scottish Ombudsman Watch—and 141 signatories, I thank the committee for finding time today to review our petition. Our petition identifies the interface between three tiers of complaint handling in Scotland: public service providers, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and parliamentary governance. Our petition concentrates on parliamentary governance, as it is only through the realignment of that tier that we can be assured of success.

Some brief notes were suggested to give the committee an overview. Diagrams 1 and 2 identify the SPSO’s basic parliamentary remit towards its annual reports, strategic plans and budgets. Diagram 3 defines the partial scope of the legislation and the regulatory obligations for parliamentary governance. It also identifies the relationship between regulations and specific SPSO documents that are required by the Parliament.

Regretfully, we contend that none of those requirements was ever fully applied by the SPSO or soundly scrutinised by any parliamentary governance body. Those aspects of our argument can be reviewed in the suggested delinquency list. It is only a selective representation, but we consider that it clearly identifies questionable aspects of the parliamentary governance process and the scope as it is applied. Those aspects include the absence of any overarching parliamentary governance logic. We therefore strongly suggest that the current parliamentary governance process demands realignment.

We reference some key political environment-type documents for the committee. There is a strong commonality in those well-known examples, as they all failed to define the public as a key stakeholder in complaints handling or to achieve putting the public at the centre of the process. Interestingly, none of the literature that has been published throughout the history of the SPSO has referenced the need to interrogate the SPSO’s integrity or considered the impact of the parliamentary governance process on the administrative justice performance of complaint handling in Scotland.

An important Crerar recommendation that was never advanced stated that Government needed to be

“more proactive in seeking assurance.”

We avidly agree. Why was that never put in place by parliamentary governance?

We have also provided an outline corrective action flow chart, which notes that an essential building block for successful reform of parliamentary governance is the criticality of an independent investigation into the SPSO’s performance and integrity.

We pose the following important points for consideration by the committee. First, why is there parliamentary governance of the SPSO? We suggest that parliamentary governance is not an arbitrary decision, but one that is of critical weight, as it is essential to provide accountability to Parliament.

Secondly, what is the purpose of scrutiny? We contend that it is to ensure compliance with an approved remit and to provide an opportunity for timely corrective actions, but we strongly argue that neither matter has ever been properly applied.

Thirdly, what is the subject of parliamentary scrutiny? The subject is the SPSO’s performance, which should be achieved against its parliamentary remit. That is defined in statute as a review to ensure the ombudsman is fulfilling all the functions of the post as set down in legislation, and for the use of resources. A dictionary definition of “functions” is “office-holder’s duty” and

“mode of action by which it fulfils its purpose”.

Therefore, the ombudsman is required to comply with all the legislation and regulations that govern a body that was set up by Parliament. Our position is that the scope of the SPSO’s mode of action is not recognised within the parliamentary governance process. That is a fundamental and fatal omission.

The Public Petitions Committee’s remit to advance democracy is possibly the most powerful and demanding of any parliamentary committee. We therefore expect, support and welcome critical scepticism as an important action to establish the truth, and we trust that we will match that challenge. We also trust that similar consideration will be given to all opinions that are provided to the committee by others who may offer contrary views on our petition. Regrettably, history has proven to us that the written and the spoken word are sometimes not necessarily worthy of the integrity that we are all anxious to attribute to them.

Thank you, convener.

Thank you very much, Mr McLean. Thank you for keeping to time. As you can see, we are very busy today. Thank you for providing us with a highly detailed simplified logic diagram. I appreciate all the time and effort that you have spent in preparing documents for the committee.

I have two questions for you. First, are you looking for legislative change to enact the aims of your petition?

I think that some could be made, but just getting the remits as they are written implemented would be a major step.

You will know that there are two simple ways of dividing how commissioners are governed both in Scotland and, indeed, in Westminster. First, there is responsibility through the parliamentary arm—as you know, most of our commissioners have some responsibilities to committees but mostly to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body—and, secondly, some organisations are responsible to the Scottish Government. For example, in Westminster the victims commissioner is effectively a governmental body rather than a parliamentary body. I would make that the divide. Do you see a third way in which the process is neither parliamentary nor through the Government but some other body is responsible for a commissioner?

No, I think that the bodies are suitable. They just need to look at what is in front of them and apply it.

Thank you. Chic Brodie has a question.

I do not have a question, because the convener has just asked my question.

I have no questions at present, because I am a member of the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, which will take evidence from Jim Martin, the ombudsman, in December. That committee is designated by the Parliament to receive the SPSO’s annual report and ask questions about it.

I know that, in the past, the SPSO itself has raised issues about the powers that it has, because there is an issue about what happens when the SPSO’s report on an organisation has found it not to have carried out its duties as it should have done and it has not dealt with the issues .The SPSO now covers quite a wide range of organisations, as its remit is much wider than local government and includes the Scottish Prison Service as well as other bodies. There is an issue about what powers the ombudsman has to instruct organisations to correct procedures. He can make recommendations, but currently the SPSO does not have legislative power to force an agency or organisation to carry out recommendations that it has made. I may be able to look at that issue when the Local Government and Regeneration Committee questions the ombudsman.

That is not really what I am talking about. I am interested in the ombudsman doing the job that he is employed to do and carrying out his remit. I understand the argument about extra powers, but why does he not apply properly the powers that he has?

The Local Government and Regeneration Committee takes evidence, but it does not really get answers. There is a complete breakdown between what that committee believes is its function and what I believe the legislation states. You do not apply the term “functions” in anything that you do with the ombudsman—you say that the ombudsman is entirely unaccountable, but he is accountable to Parliament via his report. The report should cover all the items that he has to report on, but it has never done that. The ombudsman provides information about recommendations, implying that they are remedy and redress, but they are not. If you read his own definitions, he says that. However, no one takes up the matter—mainly because people are so busy. I understand and appreciate that, but they do not have sufficient information on which to act.

Thank you, Mr McLean. I appreciated your earlier comments about the committee’s important role. The key thing for us is that we have always seen ourselves as the window to the Parliament. Whatever has gone on in the past is—in one sense—irrelevant to us, because we are looking at the matter afresh. Today is our first opportunity to have you before us, so we are keen to see how we can progress your petition.

Perhaps I could give an example of a possible way forward. This is just off the top of my head, so bear with me.

Go for it.

11:45

Audit Scotland is overseen by the Scottish Commission for Public Audit, on which I serve. The commission meets on a regular basis and considers the annual report from Audit Scotland. In effect, the SCPA audits Audit Scotland. There might be an argument for a non-parliamentary committee similar to the SCPA to be formed to oversee the SPSO. What would be your view of such a solution?

A separate entity is needed, whether it reports as a sub-committee or is a hierarchy in itself, to see that the thing is done. [Interruption.]

I remind anyone who has their mobile phone on to switch it off, please. They interfere with our sound systems. It may well be our witness’s phone, in fact.

I apologise, convener. It has a mind of its own.

I just thought that I would throw that idea into the pot.

It is an excellent idea. I made suggestions that there should be a sub-committee, which would report to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, say, or to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. However, my correspondence with both those bodies has not proved fruitful—but your suggestion, off the top of your head, is excellent, Mr MacDonald.

I do not come up with many.

I wish to expand on that suggestion. Who do you think should be on such a body?

What a good question—there would need to be someone with the experience and the skill set required. I do not think that there is any specific place that they would have to come from. The resource is available all over. It could be inside the Parliament, or it could involve people who are external to the proposed committee being seconded. It would require people who understand what the ombudsman is doing and how that is being failed by that parliamentary committee and the SPCB.

There are no other contributions to be made before I move to the summation. As you know, Mr McLean, the next stage is that the committee decides what the next steps will be. We have an options paper that gives us various options, one of which is to continue the petition and to seek advice from other bodies so that we can make a more informed decision. If we do that, we will need to write to the SPCB; as you have mentioned, it has a key role, as well as the SPSO.

We could take any other action that the committee views as appropriate. One possibility that is not on the paper but which, it has occurred to me, we might want to think about is to refer the petition immediately to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. We tend not to do that, in that we want to make as much mileage as we can ourselves—we are not a simple referral agency—but, as Mr Wilson pointed out, that committee will be considering the matter. That is therefore an option for this committee.

I disagree with the convener about referring the petition to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee at this point. That committee is tasked with examining the annual report that is presented by the SPSO. There is an issue here for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. Our recommendation should be to write to the corporate body in the first instance to get its views. Although the Local Government and Regeneration Committee has oversight as regards the SPSO’s annual report, as presented, the corporate body has a specific role in overseeing the management and operation of the SPSO. It would be more appropriate if we referred the petition to the corporate body—bearing in mind that you are a member of the corporate body, convener—and sought its response on the issues that have been raised. At a later date, we could then perhaps refer the matter on to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, so that it could take on board the views of the corporate body as well as those of the petitioner.

Mr Wilson has outlined the normal process that the committee follows, and we are just flagging up the available options. In terms of timing, it makes sense to get advice from the corporate body before we do anything else.

As John Wilson said, convener, you are a member of the corporate body. Could it at least consider Angus MacDonald’s suggestion, which I think is highly appropriate in relation to what we are trying to achieve and what the petition has brought to light?

I shall certainly ask for the full set of papers to go to the corporate body, along with Angus MacDonald’s suggestion. That makes a lot of sense.

I agree with that.

I agree with that decision.

Angus MacDonald made the suggestion. I take it that he agrees?

Agreed.

As you have heard, Mr McLean, the committee is unanimous that we need to take forward this important petition. The corporate body has a key role to play, so we shall send it all the paperwork, along with Angus MacDonald’s suggestion. We shall keep you in the frame as to how things are developing and look again at the petition in a future committee meeting once we have had the information back from the corporate body.

Thank you again for coming along. You have done a thorough piece of work here. I am particularly impressed by your simplified logic diagram, and I know that you have put a lot of time and effort into the petition. The committee will continue the petition and keep you up to date on development.

I know that you are tight for time, convener, but may I comment on Mr Wilson’s position?

I am sorry. It is a matter of procedure. Once we have had the summation we cannot bring anyone else in again. Nevertheless, we appreciate your coming along. Thank you, Mr McLean, and I am sorry that we delayed you.

I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to swap round.

11:51 Meeting suspended.

11:52 On resuming—

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Control of Wild Geese (PE1490)

We come to the third and final new petition today, which is PE1490, by Patrick Krause, on behalf of the Scottish Crofting Federation, on control of wild goose numbers. Members have a note by the clerk and a SPICe briefing on the petition.

I welcome the petitioners: Patrick Krause and Roddy MacDonald. I apologise for the delay, gentlemen. I should say that I am familiar with both petitioners as I am a member of the cross-party group on crofting. I invite Mr Krause to give a short presentation of no more than five minutes.

It will certainly be no more than five minutes.

Thank you for inviting us to defend our petition. I wish to say at the beginning that Roddy MacDonald and I are not experts in wild goose management. We have raised the petition on behalf of members of the SCF, who asked us to do so, and I have done that in my capacity as chief executive of the SCF because our members see the escalating numbers of geese as a problem.

The problem is not new. It has been going on for a long time now—decades rather than just years—and it is getting worse, so we have raised the petition to ask the Scottish Parliament to put pressure on the Scottish Government to look at whether it is addressing the situation in the most appropriate way and whether the budget that is afforded to the control of wild geese is sufficient.

We are looking particularly at the Uists, because that is where the membership raised the question with us and asked us to lodge the petition. As members might know, the Uists are an area of high nature value. The machair in the Uists is unique in the world, not just in the UK, because it is cropped in a traditional way that encourages biodiversity. We are saying that the vast numbers of geese in the Uists, particularly the greylag geese, are threatening the biodiversity and conservation of that unique habitat and, from our point of view, are threatening the very existence of crofting in the Uists.

When we raised the petition, the Scottish Government’s public response to it in the press was to say that the SCF had not been participating in the national goose management review group. I should say that we participated in the group at one time, but we then stopped for a period because it was felt that the group was not active enough and that—rightly or wrongly; probably wrongly—our presence on it was perceived by our members to be condoning what the group was doing. We stopped going to the group in response to that public perception. However, we now go to the group again and, in fact, we will attend it next week. I just thought that we should get that issue out of the way.

I will conclude by introducing Roddy MacDonald, who is a crofter on South Uist and who sees the goose problem on a daily basis. He used to work for the comhairle and was on its goose management committee. I think that it is much more likely that he will be able to answer many of members’ questions—with your permission, convener.

Thank you, Mr Krause. I was just going to extend that courtesy to Mr MacDonald—please feel free to intervene and to provide any answers that you wish to contribute, Mr MacDonald.

As you know, Scottish Natural Heritage has a scheme in Orkney to permit the limited sale of wild goose carcases under licence. Would you support an extension of that scheme if the European Commission agreed?

Yes. We have discussed that issue at length. We feel strongly that SNH is reducing goose numbers through its adaptive management programme. We applaud that and we are supportive of the adaptive management approach, but the trouble is that, obviously, it creates a lot of dead birds. In the Uists, they have been getting buried. Not to put it too strongly, that seems to be a bit of a perversion of what we are trying to do. It is a resource that really needs to be used.

Would you support the introduction of goose management schemes? There were schemes in the past that have not continued in some areas.

Yes. In the past four years in the Uists, we have had the machair life project, which has involved RSPB Scotland, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and the SCF. It has been looking at crop protection, which is one of the main issues in the Uists.

As Patrick Krause said, the machair is unique and is hugely important to the crofting set-up, because most of the crops that are grown are hay and cereal crops, which are fed to animals. The scheme has been on-going for the past four years with money from the European LIFE+ programme, but it will come to an end at the beginning of next year. People are really worried, because it seems to have worked well. Crops have been protected using lethal and non-lethal methods.

Running alongside that for the past year or part of the year has been the adaptive management that is being undertaken by SNH. If crops are not protected and people stop cropping, there could be a problem with what happens not only to the agricultural or crofting side but to the environmental side.

This question is perhaps best put to Mr MacDonald. It is clear that the common agricultural policy and the Scotland rural development programme are crucial for farmers and crofters in the Western Isles. I spoke in a debate on that issue just a few weeks ago, and I know that we are not totally in place to get the programme up and running next year, although there will be some transitional funding. Do you see the rural development programme as vital for farmers and crofters on this issue?

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Yes. It has been difficult for some people to get into some of those programmes. When the programmes started, the environmentally sensitive area scheme was running, and the take-up in the Uists was fantastic. Nearly everyone who was cropping on the machairs joined those schemes because they were seen as a payment for traditional cropping methods, which people were using anyway.

As schemes have developed since then—I think that that was in the 1980s—they have perhaps become more focused on the environment or other issues, and crofting or agricultural production has not been the main focus. I am not saying that crofting should be the main focus, but there should be a balance between the environment and crofting because of the importance of producing feed for cattle production in the Uists.

A fear that we have about such an important scheme being under the Scotland rural development programme is that it will become a competitive measure. We do not believe that something as vital as it should be a competitive measure; the Government should have a budget specifically for it.

When you say a competitive measure—

We fear its becoming a rural priorities measure, for example, and applicants having to compete and gain points to be able to get the money. Realistically, that would mean that crofters in the Uists might compete to get money to control geese against somebody in the east of the country who wants money for a slurry store, for example.

It also depends on the exact size of the rural development programme. The last time we looked at the matter, we did not have the final figures. It is clear that the size will be vital. We also need to know what the modulation rates will be, as they affect the move from pillar 1 to pillar 2. The Government is still considering that particular move.

Good afternoon. I ask my question out of some ignorance. I know that we have talked about adaptive management measures—I assume that that means culling the goose population—but what can legally stop the geese breeding? As a townie, I know the impact that seagulls have had, for example in Ayr. People cannot cull them because they are protected, but they use measures to prevent them from laying eggs. What can be or is being done in that respect?

A number of measures have been tried. The adaptive management measure involves killing birds before they nest. That has been part of the approach taken to reduce the numbers of nesting pairs and chicks that are raised.

There have also been small attempts to oil eggs and take eggs out of nests, for example. That was done only a couple of times. I cannot say what the scientific answer has been, but some birds certainly just gave up on their nests and went away and nested somewhere else.

It is quite difficult to know what else to do. Shooting has been the main thrust. Greylag geese are a quarry species that are shot during the open season. Adaptive management tries to reduce the numbers that produce young. The counts of resident geese have gone from 2,000 in the early 1980s to hit a point of 9,500. Those are not migratory geese. Some 3,000 barnacle geese are resident in North Uist over the winter as well, so we are talking about resident geese. The adaptive management scheme has been about attempting to reduce the number of breeding pairs.

Good afternoon, Patrick, and good afternoon, Roddy. Hailing from a farming background on the Isle of Lewis, I have a great deal of sympathy for the petition. In my younger days, I would be lucky to see four or six geese on a field at any one time. Just last week, I saw hundreds in one field and proceeded to move them on.

Geese can do colossal damage to crops; four geese can eat as much as one sheep. There is also an argument that geese excrement can cause abortions at lambing time. No farmer or crofter in the Western Isles or indeed the northern isles can continue to sustain such losses. The problem will get worse before it gets better.

There are different goose management procedures on different islands. Islay has a completely different system from Orkney. On Islay, people are paid a considerable amount a year to shoot geese. Would you be seeking similar systems throughout the northern isles and Western Isles, including the adaptive management system that you mentioned, rather than the current piecemeal approach in which different islands approach the issue in different ways?

From the point of view of the Uists, what is really needed is both of the strands that have been going on for the last number of years. That is a crop protection scheme that is lethal and non-lethal—because you can scare geese away from crops—and the adaptive management scheme to try to take numbers down to manageable levels.

There have been resident geese in Uist since the 17th century. Caithness, Solway and Uist had resident populations of greylag geese. What we have now in Lewis and Harris, and Coll and Tiree, is the overflow of geese from those areas. There are now resident populations in those areas, whereas in a lot of other areas, such as Islay, the geese are mainly migratory, which is a different problem.

The Uist scheme has not been to protect grass; it has been only to protect crops. You still get the fouling on grass because, when the geese are put off crops, they will quite often go on to grass. Some people might disagree with that approach, but at least the grass is growing. If a crop is damaged, it will not grow again. From that point of view, both strands have to be part of a scheme, especially in the Uists, for the machair area.

I apologise to both witnesses that we are a bit short of time. Mr MacDonald, as an active crofter you will know that there are a number of ways in which you can scare off geese. I think that there is something in your report about old cars being dumped in fields. I was not quite sure of the relevance of that, but I am sure that you can tell us.

Geese are wily beasts. They very quickly get used to something that is not changed. The non-lethal scaring methods are things like wee fences round a plot. The geese like to land on a loch, for instance, and walk in to a plot. They will not land on a growing crop; they will land on a flat area, where they can see that there are no problems, and then walk in to a crop. There is therefore a whole list of methods of scaring them off: kites, bird scarers, whistling things and scarecrows. You can even use a fence round a crop because geese do not like to jump over anything; they like to walk in.

The aim of the machair life project, supported by the RSPB, has been to try to get more corn grown, and to take that on to sheaves and stooks and so on, so that you are feeding corn. The seed that you get off that is good for the birds. What you have then is areas that are cut for silage and areas that are kept for seed and corn. If you do that, you get runways for geese to land, which makes those areas much more difficult to protect. You would use every method that you could—lethal or non-lethal—to scare the geese and try to protect those areas.

That is very useful. Unless there are no urgent questions, we come to the summation point, which, as you probably know, is where we decide what the next steps are.

Members have a note of various options. In this case, it would seem sensible to refer the petition to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee because it has included this issue in its work programme and is very enthusiastic that we should refer the petition to it. While we are not normally a referral agency the first time that we take evidence, this time it makes a lot of sense to pass the petition to a committee that is specialising in the subject.

As a member of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, I alerted the committee’s members and clerks to the petition. There has been some concern among the members of that committee in the past about the control of geese. The committee is fully aware of the situation in the Western Isles and northern isles. To save time, it would make sense to refer the petition to that committee right away.

Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

Under rule 15.6.2, we therefore refer the petition to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee.

I thank our witnesses for keeping us informed. Clearly, this is a key issue, and we will ensure that the petition is referred to the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee as soon as possible. Thank you both for coming along today. I know that Mr MacDonald has had a long way to come.

12:10 Meeting suspended.

12:11 On resuming—