Hansard

As a new member of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee who was appointed to it after it had heard evidence on the proposed bill, I thank the members of the committee and the clerks for their support as I got up to speed with the issues.

I suspect that I will not be able to cover all the salient points of the report and its recommendations in the time that has been allotted to me, but I confirm at the outset that Scottish Labour supports the committee’s recommendations and would, in one area at least, like to go further.

Colleagues might be forgiven for thinking that issues such as the proposed members’ interests bill are not among the most important matters that Parliament might discuss, but the legislation, rules and standing orders on such subjects help to ensure that Parliament lives up to its founding principle of transparency. Therefore, we must be very careful when we consider change, and we must be confident that any change that we propose will make the system better.

It seems to me that the committee’s proposals are sensible and—perhaps as important—workable. I commend them for that. The proposed measures will help to streamline and clarify exactly what interests members have. They will also make it possible for advice to members to come from one source—the parliamentary clerks—rather than from two, as at present.

As we heard from the convener of the committee, the report suggests some changes to our current procedures. One of the most significant of the proposed changes is that we end dual reporting of financial interests. As we have heard, MSPs are currently required to report financial interests to the Electoral Commission as a condition of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, or PPERA, and they may also be required to report to Parliament. As a result, the recorded information can appear on the Electoral Commission’s website, the Parliament’s website or, in certain situations, on both. The committee’s proposals would end that dual reporting and suggest that all such information appear on the Parliament’s website.

Similarly, the current rules mean that advice to members can come from two different bodies, depending on the issue, and that anyone who seeks to check what a member’s interests are needs to check both sources. As a consequence, ending dual reporting will also end dual checking, which must be a good thing.

Currently, breaches of PPERA are investigated by the Electoral Commission, but sometimes breaches overlap the two currently separate regimes and, as such, are investigated by both the Electoral Commission and the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland. The committee has sensibly suggested that they should, in the future, be investigated by the commissioner alone, which is both a simpler way of working and much more transparent.

There is one complication in the sensible changes. Without also making changes to the Electoral Administration Act 2006, dual reporting would not be ended for independent members. It seemed to me—the committee took the same view—that all members of the Scottish Parliament must be treated in the same way. Therefore, as we have heard, the committee will seek to make the necessary alterations in due course.

With regard to the thresholds that apply to the register of interests, as we have heard, the committee proposes that the threshold for registering a gift be reduced from the current figure of £570 to £280, or 0.5 per cent of a member’s salary. That will bring it into line with a recommendation by the Council of Europe group of states against corruption—or GRECO, as it is known. It is worth noting that GRECO specifically mentioned in its report that it believes that the limits in the Scottish Parliament and those that are used by the House of Commons and the House of Lords are too high. We are not alone in proposing to reduce our threshold in line with the GRECO recommendations—both houses at Westminster also propose to do so.

The committee also proposes amending the threshold for registering remuneration. It is suggested that that should go to the same percentage as that for gifts. We support that, but think that there might need to be more discussion about the threshold for shareholdings, which currently seems to be a fairly significant figure.

As Parliament knows, members are required to register remuneration and related undertakings, gifts, overseas visits, interests from shares and heritable property. However, I think that the time has come when we have to ask ourselves whether that is sufficient. We know that there is no financial threshold for registering a remunerated role and that if the criteria are met and the remuneration is of any value then the role must be registered, and we also know that the code of conduct prohibits forms of paid employment that involve lobbying. However, is that enough? Should we not now be stating clearly that paid directorships or consultancies be banned? Would not that be a significant move to ensure that all our constituents understand just how seriously we take our positions and their concerns?

As the committee’s members know, my party leader, Jim Murphy, wrote to the Presiding Officer asking that the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee be asked to look at how we could implement a ban on members seeking employment as paid directors or consultants while sitting as MSPs. I sincerely believe that in taking forward this issue and the work that the committee is doing on lobbying, we should look for an opportunity to consider Mr Murphy’s proposal.