Hansard

The report of the Citizens Assembly of Scotland is a welcome and important contribution to political dialogue in Scotland. I, too, thank the 105 members across Scotland, the secretariat and everyone else involved in the assembly for all their hard work and commitment, for their collaborative approach in preparing the report, and especially for working in the Covid pandemic and for giving up their weekends and evenings in the process. I also want to thank the cabinet secretary for his constructive engagement ahead of the debate.

It is not just here in Scotland that citizens assemblies are being used increasingly to hear what the public think about how politics should be done differently. The citizens assembly model is gaining in popularity and use, with the UK Government holding an assembly on climate change last year and another on social care in 2018. We have seen several examples in other countries, such as Ireland, Canada and Belgium.

It will come as no surprise that different parties in the Parliament have different views on the 60 detailed recommendations that are set out in the report. That point is made by the Conservative amendment: when the next Parliament looks at the report in detail, different parties might have different views on the recommendations. It is for the next Parliament to consider the policy implications of the recommendations and how the policy objectives as set out in the report might be realised.

For the purpose of today’s debate, I want to comment on the important themes emerging from the report and the work of the assembly as well as some general observations about how the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government should conduct their business and affairs.

First, one of the most striking observations throughout the report is concern about the lack of public trust in politics and the need for better public access to information, including increasing transparency on how decisions are made, better accountability from the Scottish Government and, in general, a higher level of interaction between politicians and the Scottish public. There are several issues that I want to touch on in relation to those common themes, because they are reflected in recommendations 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the report.

Recommendation 9 refers to that lack of public trust in politicians and calls on the Scottish Government and Parliament to deliver

“a more accountable parliament with acceptable standards of behaviour”

and

“faster public access to information on what is happening”

Recommendation 10 calls for more accountability and for the Scottish Government and Parliament to be held accountable when goals are not met. Recommendation 11 touches on the theme of good-quality, honest information being shared with the public, including

“an annual presentation of major commitments and policies”,

and calls for all information to be

“presented simply and without jargon.”

Finally, recommendation 12 recognises the challenges in relation to the public having information that is “accurate”, “reliable” and “verifiable”.

Those are not party-political points; they are about good government and doing politics differently, and they go to the heart of how the Parliament and the Scottish Government should conduct their affairs. As the largest Opposition party in the Parliament, we have worked hard to promote those issues. We have constantly campaigned for more transparency. We have raised concerns about how freedom of information in Scotland works, how parliamentary questions are answered and how information can be made more accessible to the public.

We do not need to look far to find examples of how we can easily achieve better transparency and accountability. For example, the Scottish budget, the process for which is on-going at the moment, runs to almost 300 pages, and even expert organisations such as the Fraser of Allander institute have long called for the budget process and the documentation to be simplified. That is just one example, although it is important, of how we could deal with the concerns that the citizens assembly has raised about the need to have less jargon and better public access to information.

On the theme of Government accountability, there have been a number of recent examples of the Parliament calling for increased transparency from the Scottish Government, including calls for the release of legal advice on the Scottish Government’s handling of complaints, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on Scottish education and further details on malicious prosecutions. Again, those are not party-political points; they are about good government and increasing transparency. When the next Scottish Parliament considers the details of the report, I very much hope that many of those fundamental concerns about transparency and accountability will be taken on board by the incoming Scottish Government.

The second common theme that I want to touch on is that the vast majority of the recommendations in the report, including many of the most important ones, fall in areas in which the Parliament and the Scottish Government already have powers. For example, recommendation 29 recognises the need to invest in industries to make Scotland “a global leader” in innovation and to build on Scotland’s “extensive natural resources”. Recommendation 33 calls for more funding and more resource for mental health services, including child and adolescent mental health services. Another recommendation calls for an increase in the availability of social housing. Recommendation 35, which is important, calls for “more apprenticeships” and better employment opportunities at the end of training. Recommendation 41, which the cabinet secretary touched on, is about supporting small local businesses to recover from Covid-19 while helping them to prepare for a green recovery and encouraging them to adopt “green values” as part of that.

The key point is that, whether or not we agree with the detail of the recommendations, they relate to powers that reside with the Scottish Parliament and which can make a difference. That emphasises the point that we have been making over the past number of years. The Parliament is one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world, and more attention should be focused on how we use the existing powers to make the changes that are highlighted in the report and in the feedback that we get from constituents in the areas that we represent.

I once again thank all the participants in the assembly. The report raises a number of important points and questions about how politics is done in Scotland, how we can do things differently and how we can build up more trust and accountability. I emphasise that those are not party-political points. They are fundamental to achieving a better democracy in Scotland, so it will be important for the next Parliament to take a closer look at the recommendations to see how they can be implemented. As the assembly’s convener, Kate Wimpress, has said,

“This is not a box ticked, or a full stop, but a beginning, opening up a new chapter in our democracy with citizens at its heart.”

I move amendment S5M-24165.1, to insert at end:

“, while recognising that different political parties will take a different view on the recommendations of the report.”