Seòmar agus comataidhean

Why is it always colleagues who were formerly at Westminster who are fond of overseas trips?

Notwithstanding that casual observation, what are the obstacles to continuity? In the first session of Parliament, the Government had about 18 ministers but, in this session, it has about 25. We have taken out about seven people who might be available to participate in committees. We have a lot of committees with large memberships and potentially too many people competing on them.

To return to the point that I was about to make about convenerships, we were a bit lukewarm about that. The proposal is interesting, and we will support the motion tonight, because it suggests the investigation of the possibility of how all that might happen and how conveners might be remunerated. One argument for remuneration might be that the committee convener commits to convening the committee for the entire length of the session and sets aside any other ambition. Therefore, they would not see the convenership of the committee as a stepping stone to anything else and would instead be totally focused on that. They would be able to do it independently and their effort would be recognised.

I would hope not, but I understand the point. That is why there is an argument for the role of the convener being one that people value and something that they will adhere to for the duration of the session of Parliament.

Gender is an interesting issue. The only female that I had on my Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee was pinched by Martin Whitfield, who is recommending that single-gender committees should not exist. He stepped in and took away the female representative that we had on our small committee of five and then refused to replace her.

The committee recognised in the evidence that it submitted to the inquiry that, on some issues, because of the committee membership, the questioning of witnesses when interrogating certain petitions might not have been what we wanted. However, it is difficult, because if a party were elected with responsibility to represent on various committees but did not have full gender balance, that would mean asking the female members of the group to undertake the responsibility of sitting on more committees. I am not sure how reasonable it would be if they were tied down to having to do that and other colleagues were not. However, we certainly want to adhere to that objective.

Gosh, I have hardly managed to touch on anything, and my time is almost up. The issue of conveners is an important one that we want to reflect on.

In relation to experts and engagement, I welcome the fact that the report embraces the idea of citizens panels. We had an evidence session with Brussels on the European Parliament’s use of a people’s panel to work with parliamentarians. It was fascinating to hear about the exchange of views. They all got in the room, and the parliamentarians looked at the members of the people’s panel and said, “Why should we listen to a thing you say? You’re not elected. We have a democratic mandate. We are the people’s representatives,” and the people on the people’s panel said, “Yes, but we actually know what we’re talking about, and you don’t.” After they got over that, they worked very well together.

The use of experts and, potentially, people’s panels to inform committee members on the detail of certain subjects in a productive way would assist committee members, who ultimately have responsibility for determining what the outcome will be, to do so on the basis of informed opinion from a wider scope of people. That would be a useful thing to do.

Finally, post-legislative scrutiny has been the perennial talking point of the Parliament. Our recommendation is that a sunset clause on a number of pieces of legislation would actively force post-legislative scrutiny, because the Parliament would be required to consider the issue afresh.

As I said, we will support the report tonight. There is a lot of good content in it. I just hope that it does not end up being wishful thinking and that it can help to ameliorate some of the imperfections in our system, which could be better still. That will require momentum and commitment from all concerned.

Is there not a slight worry, though, that putting that block in place would favour returning members in a new parliamentary session? They would be in a position to introduce bills because they had prepared for them in the previous parliamentary session, but new members would be disadvantaged in that they would not be prepared in time to introduce a bill within the timeframe.

I will take an intervention from Mr Sweeney—one of the members who left me.

The point has been made previously that it would be helpful for committee conveners to have additional staff resource. That also points to the importance of continuity and of conveners being there for the whole of a parliamentary session. If they were to move, we would be left with the difficulty of reallocating that resource. That is one of the functions that might come out of having a commitment that, once elected, conveners will be there for the duration of the session.

I hear all that about training, but I have a reservation, which is that we will end up producing little identikit people. That is my worry. Who trains the trainers? Who decides what the training should be? I am full of horror: I read Ross Greer going on about all that in the committee report. I do not want to be trained by Ross Greer on what he thinks my responsibilities as a convener of a committee should be. Who is responsible for that?

I do not want a whole lot of identikit conveners. I want a range of personality and function. Yes, they have to understand some basic things, but let us not start straitjacketing what the job is with the definition of somebody with whom I might not agree.

The problem that I have with that is that it is not the experience of the Parliament. In my experience, when people initially suggest something, it is just that—a suggestion, However, as time goes on, it becomes embedded as a practice that everyone must follow. I can think of other examples in parliamentary life where that has happened and discretion has gone out of the window.

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate. I see that Richard Leonard is leading for the Labour Party. It is a kind of dinosaurs-R-us outing of the ancien régime of happy times past.

Over the time that I have been in the Parliament, I have come to like it. I have come to admire it when it is at its best although—like others, I imagine—I have despaired of it at times. I do not believe that anything can ever be perfect, because every institution has its imperfections, but I have come to believe that there are potentially ways in which things can change. However, there are obstacles in the way of every change. Sometimes the obstacle is a vested interest, sometimes it is a protocol or a practice, and sometimes, as I said earlier, it is the fact that the architects of a particular guideline move on and the guideline becomes a rule that people are then obliged to follow. It becomes a straitjacket rather than something that can be amended.

I will not repeat the bulk of the submission that we made as a party, because it was a serious enterprise, but I will touch on a number of themes. I am supposed to be leading for my party, but I might stray from that strict responsibility a little bit from time to time.

I commend the report, but the first thing that I want to talk about is continuity and committee sizes. I notice that the SPPA committee is a committee of five; my Citizens Participation and Public Petitions Committee is also a committee of five. Page 1 of the committee report highlights one of the big difficulties. It states:

“Evelyn Tweed left the Committee on 6 March 2024 and was replaced by Jackie Dunbar

Stephen Kerr left the Committee on 28 March 2024 and was replaced by Oliver Mundell

Ivan McKee left the Committee on 6 May 2024 and was replaced by Ruth Maguire

Jackie Dunbar left the Committee ... and was replaced by Joe FitzPatrick

Oliver Mundell left ... and was replaced by Sue Webber

Joe FitzPatrick left the Committee ... and was replaced by Emma Roddick”.

If I am right, that means that in practice only two of the people who initiated the inquiry were there at the end, when the committee published its report. That was exactly the same experience that I had on the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee when we were looking at the issue of public participation.

Where is the continuity in the narrative that emerges at the end of a process if those who have been party to the investigation have all gone? The only two people left on my committee—David Torrance and me—had to overcome the wave of indifference from colleagues who joined later, and who had nothing to do with the investigation about which we were about to write a terribly important report. Lack of continuity is fundamental.

Perhaps the cabinet secretary might urgently do so, because my Eastwood constituents would be unfairly charged by the Scottish National Party-run council every time they crossed the local authority boundary by car for work, university, college, family or social reasons. For example, every time they went to the Queen Elizabeth university hospital for essential medical care, they would be charged for crossing the city boundary.

Moreover, if every other local authority followed suit, we would have, in effect, a series of custom posts all over Scotland, with people being charged every time they crossed a city or council boundary anywhere in Scotland. That would be a disaster for the economy and a completely unrealistic and unfair burden on motorists.

To ask the Scottish Government what engagement it has had with Glasgow City Council regarding its proposals for an “at-city-boundary congestion charge” and a toll on the Clyde tunnel. (S6O-05047)