Procedures Committee, 25 Apr 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Official Report 156KB pdf

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Annual Reports

Item 5 is consideration of committee annual reports. The matter was raised by the Conveners Group and the committee has discussed it briefly.

Because the issue was in the public domain, a response was generated and we were rather taken by surprise by the seriousness with which people regard the matter. We have received written evidence from academics and evidence from the House of Commons library, which is particularly interesting because it suggests that committee reports are valuable and that there is demand for them.

The committee may consider various options. First, as the Conveners Group suggested, the practice of producing annual reports could be abandoned on the ground that matters are reasonably covered elsewhere. Secondly, annual reports could be improved to provide more of the information that people want. Thirdly, we could consider developing a new rule to ensure that the matters that committee reports cover are dealt with in other ways.

In that context, I circulated a response to a question I asked the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body on behalf of the committee. I asked about the Scottish Parliament statistics, which have not been published since 2002. The SPCB responded that production of the annual volume of statistics will resume. Perhaps some people's concerns will be addressed when the statistics are flowing forth again.

The committee must consider whether we should abolish the requirement for committees to produce annual reports or require that better information goes out to the public. We want the Parliament to be open and transparent, but we do not want to waste resources. We need a system that provides the best possible information for members of the public who are interested in the Parliament's work.

Whatever we decide, our first step should be to write to the Conveners Group, because it raised the matter, rather than follow our normal procedure, which is to make a proposal to the Parliament.

I am not convinced that we should spend a vast amount of time on the matter. We should leave the situation alone and allow committees to continue to produce what they think is relevant to the work of the Parliament.

Karen Gillon's suggestion is sensible. I add only that if there is a practical problem to do with producing reports in hard copy, reports could be produced online. If people want to print off copies, they can do so.

I understand Karen Gillon's point, but the matter was raised because there are restrictions on what committees can include in annual reports. It is too simplistic to say that committees should do whatever they want to do, given that the rules expressly forbid them from doing so—or at least militate against their doing so.

We must consider whether current practice is adequate. The response that the convener received indicates that it is not adequate. Barry Winetrobe might not be the favourite of all members in the committee, but he made relevant comments in his submission—

You like to play to the gallery, Bruce.

I apologise for not recognising Barry Winetrobe in the gallery—I would not know the guy if I met him in my soup. If I had recognised him, I could have said all sorts of wonderful things about him.

We must consider what people should expect from an annual report and what information the Parliament should provide. The response that the convener received from the SPCB indicated that the Scottish Parliament has not published statistics for nearly four years. Indeed, volumes of statistics were published only for three years. Westminster is not my favourite place, as members know, but I cannot imagine that that would happen there.

The general point is that the information that we provide should be in a format that the general public, who pay for this place, can understand and access readily, although I am not saying that everyone in the general public reads the annual reports. I have looked for information about the SPCB on the Parliament's website, so I know that trying to find the nooks or crannies in which information is hidden can be an exhausting task. That bigger issue is compounded by the fact that information that was provided previously has ceased to be provided. The SPCB response to the convener's question states:

"Staff turnover in the team responsible for their production has disrupted work on later volumes"—

for four years—

"but we will publish them as soon as possible."

I cannot imagine any company saying that it has had staff turnover problems for four years but has done nothing about that. There is a bigger issue that should not be dismissed.

I was pretty astonished by that answer, too. Members also have a paper from the House of Commons that is headed "Modernisation: Select Committees: core tasks", which might give us another approach. As I understand it, the House of Commons sets out each committee's core tasks, such as examining a department's administration or expenditure. Our committees could be instructed that their annual reports should relate to their core tasks. However, that would mean that we would first have to give the committees core tasks. We could clarify what the committees are trying to do, after which they could set out in their annual reports, more interestingly, how they are doing that.

Bruce McFee said that committees cannot do what they like. However, rule 12.9 of the standing orders states:

"Each mandatory or subject committee shall, as soon as practicable after the end of each Parliamentary year, submit a report to the Parliament containing details of its activities during that Parliamentary year, including details of its meetings and the number of times the committee has met in private."

Where does it say there that committees cannot produce what they like? It is up to each committee to decide what it wants to produce. If committees do not take the process seriously, that is up to them. It is not for this committee to prescribe what should be in other committees' annual reports. If we want to, we can prescribe what is in our report and produce a wonderful annual report as an example of best practice, but we should not prescribe in the rules of the Parliament what should be in committees' annual reports.

I am not suggesting that we do that.

The rule is open.

In practice, the Parliament does precisely that—it does not obey the standing orders. There is guidance, or whatever the correct term is, for the committee clerks. They have a bible that shows them how to write the wretched things and they must stick to it. Karen Gillon is right to point out that that is not in the standing orders, but the clerks appear to have rules.

That guidance does not come from the clerks. In addition to the rule that Karen Gillon read out, which prescribes only that an annual report must give an account of the committee's activities over the year and include basic statistics about the number of meetings, in the past few years the practice has been for the Conveners Group to agree a template that all committees follow. In effect, there is a self-imposed discipline that the Conveners Group could change or relax at any time. For example, the template sets a word limit that does not exist in the rules and has a few other generalised paragraphs and a structure that clerks follow in drafting reports for committees. The template is agreed by the Conveners Group.

So those rules are agreed by the very people who asked us to consider the matter again. We have considered the issue and, I think, we conclude that the rule in the standing orders is sufficient, although the implementation of the rule is perhaps lacking. We should forward the information that we have received to the Conveners Group, along with the rule, and ask it to bear in mind the views from civic society when it draws up the guidance to committees on the publication of annual reports for next year.

That would be useful. It seems strange that the group that hands down self-imposed rules in the form of guidance has said, "By the way, we should abolish annual reports, because there is not enough information in them."

I apologise to the clerks. I assumed that they composed the rules, but evidently the Conveners Group did. I was not aware of that because I became a member of the group only recently.

It seems to be the committee's feeling that we send all this stuff, including the stuff from the House of Commons, to the Conveners Group, which might learn from it and perhaps draw up core tasks and so on for committees.

Perhaps we can ask the group to be prescriptive by considering how the annual reports could be improved.

We can say that we are in favour of better information being provided and of the improvement rather than the abolition of annual reports, and that we hope that the group will produce interesting ideas.

We look forward to the group's inspired comments.

The rules should be sufficiently flexible to enable the information to be provided.

That is helpful.