‘The Scottish Parliament: from concept to reality.’

I have chosen to focus my lecture on the lessons we have been learning and the challenges we have been facing within the Parliament, as it moves from a concept to reality. It has indeed been a stimulating time for all involved.

There has been some interesting press comment recently about an opinion poll conducted by MORI in the Economist which suggests that Westminster will hardly matter to Scots a generation from now – as one commentator put it "Westminster is dying a lingering death". It is interesting to note that the "Economist’s" political editor, Peter David, said "The Scottish Parliament seems to be a more real, accessible place to Scots than Westminster is to English people". These are sweet words to someone like myself who has fought so long for devolution. We cannot be complacent, however, and in reality the hard work has just begun.

I will concern myself mainly with reality but I must start with the concept. Of course, when one looks at the concept of a Scottish Parliament it is fair to ask the question which concept and, in particular, dating from when? I will confine myself to more recent concepts reflected in the final report of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, the Government’s White Paper "Scotland’s Parliament" and latterly the report of the Consultative Steering Group or CSG as it is known.

The Scottish Constitutional Convention said the creation of a new parliament is a rare and exciting moment, one which affords unique opportunity for change and renewal. The Convention saw the establishment of a Scottish parliament as a chance to effect fundamental improvements to the way Scotland is governed. It therefore expected that the parliament would provide through its practices and procedures a form of government in whose accountability, accessibility, openness and responsiveness the people of Scotland would have confidence and pride.

In the White Paper it was stated that the Scottish Parliament would be responsible for drawing up and adopting Standing Orders. The Government intended that these Standing Orders should be designed to ensure openness, responsiveness and accountability. There are minimum requirements covering stages of Bills, Crown interests, preservation of order, Members’ pecuniary interests, reporting of proceedings, public access and committees.

The common themes I take from these bodies of work in terms of concepts are openness, accessibility and accountability. In the CSG’s report is the view that there should be an "aim to provide an open, accessible and, above all, participative Parliament which will take a pro-active approach to engaging with the Scottish people". These will be my common themes as I (and others no doubt) look to test reality against concepts.

Can I start by drawing a distinction between the two major pillars of devolution, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Executive (or Government). This is vitally important for understanding the way in which the settlement in Scotland works, and in particular, the concept of accountability. The term "parliament" is sometimes wrongly used in a generic sense for the totality of Scottish devolution. But the Executive of course is there to do things – to administer or run devolved Scotland. The Parliament, on the other hand, is there to make sure it does those things properly. A major strand of accountability therefore is inherent in that relationship. I will come back to that later.

The visible core of any Parliament, I would argue, is the business it undertakes in plenary and committee. By that I mean the issues it considers for debate, legislative programme, enquiries undertaken by Committees and, almost as important, the timing and the way in which those various issues are considered. Parliamentary jargon for this is business management. An open Parliament must have an open system of business management allowing transparency through the decision making process.

The operational side of the Parliament is looked after by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body – the SPCB – this provides Parliament with its staffing resources, controls the budget and provides all the facilities and equipment to allow the Parliament to operate smoothly. It consists of 4 people elected by the Members under my chairmanship. However, by far the biggest issue dominating the Corporate Body at present is the new building at Holyrood.

We take our client responsibilities for Holyrood very seriously. Since June we have been working with the Design Team to get the internal layout of the Debating Chamber exactly right for our needs and those of you who come to visit us. We have examined very closely how to achieve sustainability in the building’s construction and the operation of its mechanical and electrical services; and we have ensured that the needs of the disabled are taken into account on all aspects of accessibility.

Above all, however, we never lose sight of the need to be careful with taxpayers money. We continually monitor and review construction cost estimates and engage in the search for ways of achieving best value. We are striving to reconcile all the extra demands for space which arise and to critically assess our needs for example for car parking. Such value management exercises are best practice in the search for securing working space which meets the Parliament and the Scottish people’s needs and which gives us all a distinguished building of which we can be proud. We are not going to be extravagant. The £109 million estimated cost for the entire new Parliament is much less than half the cost of the new office extension nearing completion for the House of Commons. Neither are we penny pinching, but we will make economies where we possibly can.

One of the main innovations of the Scottish Parliament reflects the desire for transparency in business management. That innovation is the Parliamentary Bureau. It replaces what, at Westminster, is sometimes called the usual channels, a term redolent of smoke-filled rooms. The Bureau is a very real example of concept becoming reality.

On 9 June the Parliament discussed the principles of the CSG report and agreed a motion" That the Parliament records its appreciation of the work of the Consultative Steering Group on the Scottish Parliament, acknowledges the contribution with the Group’s Reports have made to the development of the procedures of the Parliament, and agrees that its operations should embody the spirit of the CSG key principles". But how does reality work? The Bureau has responsibility for determining the business of the Parliament including the allocation of legislation to Committees. All four major Parties are represented on the Bureau. The Bureau meets every week after which it seeks the Parliament’s approval to its plans for business for the following two weeks. Though the Standing Orders provide for a weighted voting arrangement which gives the governing coalition an overall majority on the Bureau, it operates largely on the basis of consensus. And to date that ethic has held up very well even on some tricky issues. That is very much to the credit of the four Party Managers. Obviously, there is a long way to go and politics being what they are there are bound to be disagreements. But the Bureau has already proved itself to be a constructive and forward looking body and I see no reason to think that will change.

There is also an important thread of accountability here too in that the Bureau must come each week to the full Parliament to get specific endorsement of its plans. Given the make up of the Bureau, one would normally expect the Bureau’s proposals to be accepted without comment and indeed that has been the case to date. But the important point is that the opportunity exists for Members to object in an open meeting of the Parliament to the Bureau’s proposals. I should add for the benefit of MSP’s as well as the public that there has been too much loose talk of the Executive "controlling the bureau". In all our meetings covering hundreds of items on our agenda there have been only two votes – where the Executive majority of course carried – and neither of these was about the choice of business to go before the Parliament. We operate by consensus under my chairmanship.

I mentioned open session. And, of course, the Parliament always meets in plenary in open session. We are not only open to any members of the public wishing to come and watch proceedings but those proceedings are broadcast live and made available to the major TV companies in Scotland. I am pleased to say that the TV and radio companies appear to be making good use of the coverage in news bulletins and other specialist programmes though I would hope that in time more live debate is broadcast to the public. Already many people have commented to me on the contrast between the Wednesday afternoon "yah boo" sessions of Prime Minister’s Question Time broadcast from Westminster and our own less raucous proceedings.

The Committees also meet largely in public. We have issued guidance on the basis that a committee meeting should be held in public unless there is a decision by the Committee to meet in private. The decision must be taken by the Committee, not the Clerk or the convener. It is of course not possible to produce an exhaustive list of situations where a committee might consider it appropriate to meet in private, but situations could include:

• a discussion of questions to be put to witnesses
• a discussion of draft reports
• taking oral evidence and considering written evidence of a particularly sensitive nature
• discussion of a future work programme and the ordering of Members’ diaries

The Official Report of the Parliament is in many ways the foundation stone on which openness is built. It is produced for plenary sessions by 8 o’clock the following day and for Committees within a few days. It is the definitive record of what was said and agreed. Immediately it is ready the Official Report is launched on the Internet and is also published in hard copy form. I read all the Official Reports of Committee proceedings and am regularly urging conveners to make less use of the Official Report when discussing their own housekeeping matters. We are learning as we go.

Not everyone will want to read through pages of the Official Report and so it is vital that the media covers the work of the Parliament. I have already mentioned the broadcasters but clearly the print media have a critical role to play also. I am pleased to say that a number of newspapers now include regular considered coverage of the Parliament, and in spite of strictures I have made before on certain press coverage, the great majority is informative, sometimes entertaining, and constructively critical as it should be.

Finally, on openness, we have a dedicated visitor centre which explains the background to the Parliament and how it operates. It has been professionally designed to make it as easy as possible for visitors to understand the key elements of the Parliament and indeed the whole devolution settlement in Scotland. And, inevitably, there is a Parliament shop to demonstrate that openness can also extend to people’s wallets.

Accessibility

Openness and accessibility are in reality interconnected. I mentioned under openness how people could access the Parliament in a physical sense and how the broadcasters and print media open the Parliament up to people in their homes and places of work. The Parliament has made a very significant effort to develop a website which is both comprehensive and user friendly. It is rightly regarded as one of the real success stories so far. It provides accessibility to the growing number of individuals who are hooking up but also through schools, libraries – of which more in a minute – and many other institutions. There have been some 5½ million hits since the Parliament opened and around 31 thousand hits each day.

Another initiative of which I am proud is the Partner Libraries Scheme – one in every constituency across Scotland supplemented recently by three additional libraries in the Highlands. Each of these partner libraries has a special relationship with the research and information service in the Parliament for the benefit of local constituents. They receive free collections of Parliamentary publications as well as advice and support in dealing with queries about the Parliament from their users.

Our Education Service is another pro-active means of improving accessibility. Every week schools from all over Scotland visit the Parliament through our education service. We have had school visits from as far afield as Tobermory, Dingwall, Selkirk and Aberdeen. We welcome five schools a week, and already most visits have been booked up to the Summer recess. Usually the children get to meet with MSPs, and they often catch them off their guard with the most direct questions imaginable.

I should add that both our visitor centre and education centre are greatly admired by those of our Westminster colleagues who have visited them and would wish to emulate them.

It was already envisaged at the concept stage that the Parliament would not be confined to Edinburgh in a physical sense. This too has been taken forward in reality. There is a strong expectation that Committees meet both formally and informally outwith Edinburgh. The best example to date has been the meeting in October in Inverness of the Enterprise Committee. I am also pleased to say that facilities were provided for those wishing to address the Committee in Gaelic. Again, this is a prime example of the Parliament being pro-active in making itself accessible.

However we must be wary of tokenism in this regard. It would not be right for Committees to meet out of Edinburgh simply for the sake of meeting somewhere else, for these meetings are costly. There must be a reason – a local connection, a relevance to local people or local issues - so that the Parliament is seen as meaningful to the lives of the people it serves.

The Committees of the Parliament will therefore in my view play an increasing role in making the concept of accessibility a reality. They cannot and indeed should not attempt to do it all themselves. An important development in this regard has been the recently announced civic forum. I am pleased that the Executive has found the funds to enable this to start up and we were delighted to announce that the Parliament too will put funding through the Committees into civic participation.

After all, we are building a new political culture. There are many ways to secure external participation in the development of policy and legislation. I think the Forum will be a key gateway between the Executive, the Parliament and the people.

Among mechanisms available to the Parliament’s committees are the appointment of expert panels and assistance to their reporters in acting as a focal point on specific issues; citizens juries and panels to provide representative feedback; deliberative polling and consensus conferences; and inputs to wider forums such as a Youth Parliament and an Older People’s Parliament.

I make no apology if this sounds something of a list. Openness and accessibility must be about a range of measures and initiatives to suit the varying needs, interests and indeed motivation of the people of Scotland. Accessibility in short must be easy and engaging. There is clearly a long way to go but I believe we have made a good and positive start.

Accountability

The third main concept was accountability. I want to divide this into two distinct elements – that is accountability to the Parliament and accountability by the Parliament. The key to understanding accountability to the Parliament rests on the distinction made right at the beginning of this lecture between Executive and Parliament. The Executive governs and the Parliament holds it to account on behalf of the people for the way in which it does. That is the concept at least. But what about the reality? The Executive are, of course, required to come to the Parliament to answer questions to take part in debate stimulated by the non-Executive parties and they also come willingly so to speak to make statements and to take part in Motions at their own hands. In all these areas they are open to questioning on the record by the Members of the Parliament. Anyone who has listened to the debates will I think agree that many have been vigorous, most have been constructive and all have exposed to scrutiny the issues at hand.

Of course effective debating itself is not something which most people are born with nor which can be learned in institutions. For most people, it is something which comes with practice. In any case, the Parliament is not and must not become a mere debating society, measured more by the presentation of contributions than by their content. What I would say without fear of contradiction as the person who probably sits through more debates than any other person is that the quality is improving. Indeed, some of those nervous Members who were criticised for reading their maiden speeches have since given robust, informed and sometimes moving speeches on topics dear to their hearts and experience. It is that trend which is important and gives ground for optimism. We must never forget in the Parliament that any individual listening to a debate on a subject which he or she thinks important will rightly expect contributions to be well informed and well expressed.

Although the plenary is clearly important as the set piece of the Parliament it is through the Committee system that the Parliament in reality holds the Executive to account. And for that reason it is perhaps unsurprising that there has been a good deal of comment about the relationship between Ministers in particular and committees. Committees are in a no win situation here if you read the reports which were circulated over the last couple of months. Some people appear to believe that committees are far too soft on Ministers when they appear in front of them while others believe that the Committees have been unduly hard on Members of the Executive. There is obviously a very fine balance to be reached and I personally consider that generally committees are doing a good job when you consider the time they have had to bring themselves up to speed on their remits.

I believe committees and, more importantly, members of the public looking to them to do a job on their behalf, have a right to expect Ministers to come prepared to answer questions directly and openly. Ministers should not see committees as a platform on which to make presentations or speeches. Equally, Ministers have the right to expect committees to be constructive and genuine in their desire to elicit information and explanation rather than to catch them out for the sake of a party political point, best made elsewhere.

In my view virtually all the Committees are working well. And those that are still finding difficulties are the Committees where partisan battles have been injected into their proceedings, contrary to what was intended. The great majority of them have, however, settled down to a happy and heavy constructive workload.

There has also been comment about the extent to which committees have been reactive. Here, again, to deliver accountability committees must strike a balance. There are some issues which require deep and therefore well planned investigations. These are the subject of additional committee enquiries whether it be drugs or smoking or whatever. There is no doubt that, properly to understand the actions and consequences of the Government, research and consideration is required across a broad spectrum and over a period of time.

But there are other issues where the public concern is more urgent where I think it is quite reasonable for committees to pick up on topical issues and invite a Minister to explain his or her actions. Otherwise, there is a risk that Ministers, in particular, are perceived as only giving their side of the story. No one for a minute doubts Ministers’ integrity but the only way to build public confidence in some instances is for the difficult questions to be asked and indeed answered. I make no apology therefore if a Committee feels it is right to pick up on a current issue, and the Ministers are to be congratulated for their willingness to appear before Committees in those circumstances without having to be formally summoned.

The reality I think is that the Parliament and the Committees in particular are bringing far greater accountability than existed under the previous arrangements pre devolution. But there is clearly some way to go as Committees each develop their operational procedures, begin better to understand their remits and focus in on the key issues. Similarly, Ministers and others responsible for running the institutions of this country will get used to operating in an open, parliamentary environment.

Another important aspect of accountability was demonstrated recently by the Standards Committee Enquiry into the Beattie Media affair. Allegations, even insinuations, against Members are never welcome but they are an almost inevitable part of public life. What the Parliament must demonstrate and I believe in this case did demonstrate is a willingness and an ability to hold its own Members publicly to account for their actions. In this case, I am very pleased to say that the Committee cleared the Member’s mentioned but just as important the Standards Committee were seen to be determined and thorough in its approach to investigating the actions of Members. That is critical to public confidence in this institution. I believe both the process and outcome of the enquiry were an important and, ultimately, positive early episode in the life of the Parliament.

I said at the outset that there were two distinct elements to accountability. The second of those is the accountability of the Parliament to the people. The Parliament must above all demonstrate that it is accountable, that it is in partnership with the people, not distant from them. We must take care not to replace the perceived remoteness of London governance, which fuelled demands for devolution in the first place, with a new remoteness of Edinburgh. But how? Obviously, every four years through the ballot box when the 129 Members put themselves in the hands of the electorate. That, of course, is the definitive test for the Parliament but it is not alone sufficient.

The Parliament must, I think, prove that it is sensitive and responsive to the people of Scotland through other means. An obvious example is for the broadcast and written media which I have already mentioned in connection with openness. But their role is not simply to report it is also to comment. And I can say with absolute confidence that we can rely on the media to take the Parliament to task if they think we are failing to act in the best interests of the people we represent.

There are also other ways in which the Parliament can be directly accountable to the people of Scotland. Most obviously, through the MSPs themselves who have their bases in constituencies and regions. MSPs are given allowances specifically to set up offices and to run surgeries with their constituencies. We are going to review these arrangements after one year of working to see that the public gets good value. We also operate a telephone service in the Parliament that is accessible through a local call rate so that wherever someone lives in Scotland it costs them the same to ring the Parliament. And MSPs have individual email addresses as well, of course, as traditional postal addresses so that their constituents can make their views known directly to their elected representatives.

An area in which our procedures differ from those in place at Westminster and which significantly enhance public access is the role played by our Public Petitions Committee. In Westminster, a petition cannot be presented unless a certain threshold is reached for signatures and, even then, the petition has to be made through the local constituency MP. The most likely fate for a public petition at Westminster is to find it is dropped in the bag at the back of the Speaker’s chair with no further action being taken.

In this Parliament, there is no threshold for signatories. Provided that a petition is in what we call proper form, and this does not involve complex legal wording, it can be lodged with the clerk to the Public Petitions Committee with only a single signature. That committee will then monitor the treatment of the petition which is referred to the appropriate subject matter committee. This allows unprecedented direct access to the Parliament by individuals and groups who wish to draw matters of concern to a committee’s attention.

Before I conclude I would just like to say something about the Parliament as a legislature. It is undoubtedly the core business – indeed perhaps the defining business – of a Parliament. The concept here I think was of good quality, well considered and relevant legislation which, obviously, seeks to improve the lot of people living in this country. It is too soon to say what the reality is as we are really just beginning down that road. But in respect the Bills which have begun their parliamentary journey there is evidence of delivering on the concepts embodied in the CSG report and elsewhere. In particular, the notion of pre-legislative scrutiny and inquiry – a vital component of a unicameral system - appears already to have been widely accepted.

The three Executive Bills before the Parliament have already been subject to widespread pre-drafting consultation which has been further tested by the Committees before the Parliament even gets to begin a debate on the principles of the legislation. This is a refreshing change from Westminster where the tendency has been to introduce Bills by a certain deadline almost regardless of their state of readiness in the expectation that they can be sorted out during their parliamentary passage in the two Houses. Indeed, in the circumstances I think it is premature to say the very least to consider developing a further stage of scrutiny and amendment of Scottish legislation in some reformed House of Lords. As a Member of that august body, I recognise its usefulness in tidying up loose ends left over from the House of Commons. But as I say our legislative system is superior in its structure with its pre-debate examination and I would regard interference by their Lordships to be contrary to the entire spirit of the Scotland Act and unnecessary from what I have seen of the Parliament and its committees in action so far.

Before I move away from legislation, it is also worth noting the power of committees to initiate Bills. Clearly, under our system, it is right to expect the Executive to promote the bulk of the legislative programme. And that is already the reality. That the power of Committees to initiate legislation is a key innovation over Westminster. I do not in reality expect vast quantities of committee legislation but it gives them an important lever. In particular, it reduces the risk of important committee reports being left to gather dust.

If a Committee feels that the Executive is failing adequately to respond to major recommendations, it can itself introduce a proposal for legislation. If that is backed by a majority in the Parliament then the Executive must either pick up the legislation itself and take it forward or accept the Committees right to instruct the drafting of legislation in its own name. This is a radical step in British parliamentary practice of which we can be justly proud. But it is important to stress that it is there to give committees leverage rather than to produce an alternative source of major rafts of legislation. Both the Executive and the Parliament should be judged by the quality of their legislation, not, simplistically, on quantity.

Conclusion

I hope today I have been able to work some of the key concepts through to reality. It is too early to judge the reality. We are only a few months into the life of the Parliament and inevitably we must focus on the process to date rather than the outputs never mind the outcomes in terms of improving the lives of the people living in Scotland. That is the reality by which we will ultimately be judged.

But I do believe there are grounds for optimism. The Parliament has already demonstrated that it can act swiftly and effectively when required as when for example it plugged an important loophole in the Mental Health legislation. It is already considering legislative proposals on a range of important policy areas from public finance to land reform. It has given individual Members of the Parliament opportunities to introduce legislation of their own choice - subjects such as warrant sales and fox hunting. It has provided a platform for discussion on important issues such as Europe, transport, the economy, domestic violence and many others. It has shown that the Committee system can work and that it can handle legislation and hold the Executive to account.

I spent 32 years as a Scottish MP at Westminster and I can assure you that never has there been such close contact between every aspect of Scottish society and their elected representatives as we have seen started this year.