Mae'r gweithio i chi i gyd, yn dod. Felly mae'n ddod o'r cyfleteidio'r gweithio. Rwy'n ddegweld i'r 24 oed, gydag y byddoedd y 2018 ymgeithasyniadau a'r cwmysgolol fwyaf o'r Cymru. Ymgeithio ymgeithio ymgynghwyl ymgeithio ymgeithio ymgeithio ymgeithio, sydd wedi gynhyrch i'r cwmysgol ymgynghwyl ymgynghwyl ymgeithio, ac mae'n ddod i'nddîm o'ch cymysgol y Ierwyrdiadhau, fel y popeth yn y meddwl arweithio. Felly, rwy'n ddod i'n ddod i'n ddod i'r cymysgol ar y prifydd. Rwy'n ddod i'n ddod i'n ddod i'r cymysgol arweithio. Mae'n ddod i'n ddod i'n ddod i'r ddod o'r cymysgol jyfaforol ac drerwy sut ar roedd eich cymysgol a'u cyfysgol arcrod pan ddod i'r cyrrafffyn同 o ffroedd yg Fanthicheu a'r fyddiol should be taken in private at future meetings. Do members agree to take these items in private at future meetings? That's great. Thank you all very much indeed, thank you. So move to substantive items item 3, sexual harassment, sexist behaviour and it's an evidence session with the joint working group on sexual harassment, sexual sexist behaviour and join us today our Susan Duffy, the Duffy, trying to get your name right, Susan Duffy, group head of committees and outreach and Vicky McSherry, culture of respect team leader in the Scottish Parliament. So welcome to you both and thank you very much for coming along and I would like to invite Susan to make a short opening statement please. Thanks very much convener and thank you for inviting us along this morning. I thought I would just do a quick sort of reprise of how we've got to to where we've got to. The SPCB set up the joint working group on sexual harassment in January this year to consider and agree any actions that needed to be taken in light of the sexual harassment survey that we issued. I had the privilege of chairing the group and other members of the group were Vicky, David McGill who's one of the assistant chief executives here. We had three MSPs, Michelle Ballantyne, Rhoda Grant and Rona Mackay, two MSPs staff, Gillian Mackay and Cheryl Kruger and we also had Emma Rich from Engender. I thought it would be useful to give you a quick reminder of the headline survey results that while 78 per cent of people working in the Parliament hadn't experienced any sexual harassment or sexist behaviour, 30 per cent of women had experienced that behaviour. It also told us that people weren't reporting issues and that people who'd experienced such behaviour were the least likely to have confidence in our reporting procedures. The results of the survey plus the comments that we got and the focus groups that we subsequently set up have shaped the recommendations that the group is now putting forward. We also took into account the recommendations that your committee made in the report that you published in June this year. What have we done? When we published the results of the survey, we set out broad strands of work that the group wanted to take forward. They were a programme of awareness and training, improved reporting procedures and policies, additional measures to support people who've experienced sexual harassment and mechanisms to monitor and review what's been put in place. On the first point about awareness raising, the culture of respect workshops, which everyone was asked to attend, began at the end of October. I hope that you've either all been on one or are due to go on one. So far, around 700 people have attended those workshops, and we've set up more sessions in the new year. The report that the group published last Thursday, on 13 December, sets out our recommendations to improve procedures and, crucially, to provide an independent support service for everyone. We've also set out in that report how we intend to monitor and review going forward. The group issued a statement in June setting out what zero tolerance means in the Parliament. Our recommendations are designed to deliver on the principles in that statement, and those principles were to take complaints seriously and deal with them promptly and sensitively, to have transparent, easily understood policies and processes, to be consistent, fair and proportionate and to ensure that there are consequences for inappropriate behaviour. We had another guiding principle, and that was to replicate the principles of effective employment policies, as far as possible, even though we've got a number of different employment relationships within the Parliament, and, of course, particularly members, because you are not employees. All of those principles underpin the recommendations that we are making in relation to complaints against members should be handled. As we have currently a system set up under statute, it's inevitable that procedures will be different for complaints against members, but we wanted to make sure that the same principles applying to complaints against anybody else would also apply to complaints against members. In summary, the main changes that we were suggesting to the way in which complaints against members could be dealt with are to remove the current one-year time limit that is in the Code of Conduct and under statute to ensure that the complainant is given a copy of the commissioner's report and the opportunity to comment in the same way that a member currently can. All complaints against members should go through the same procedure—that's currently not the case at the moment. We also asked in the report the more fundamental question about whether going forward complaints against members should be dealt with in a different way entirely. We're very happy to answer any questions in any of that. Thank you very much. That gives a good outline of what the report stands for. Just last week, you published, obviously, do you have any idea of the next steps that will be taken in terms of implementing the recommendations and also what are the timescales involved? I'll hand over to Vicky for that. We've started a period of consultation that consultation is open now, and that will run until 31 January. Once we've had all the responses back, we'll have them analysed. The joint working group will then consider them in February, and the intention is to report back our findings to the corporate body at the beginning of March. In the meantime, on the basis of trying to have something ready to go once we've had final approval from the corporate body in March, we are working on getting the independent sports service up and running, with the intention that we will be able to implement the new policy and processes at some point later in March. That's very useful. People get concerned that things go into the long grass and all that, but at least that shows that it's moving on reasonably quickly. Is there anything in particular that you think this consultation will add to the processes that we already have? I know that it's quite a wide-ranging thing, but is there anything that's really going to make a big difference as people will see it? What we were trying to do is we wanted to make it relatively focused. The reason for doing the consultation is that we started that off by asking everybody who works in and for the Parliament their views. We thought that it was only right before we finalised the policy to go back out to everybody to check in that they think that we've captured everything, but we have made it deliberately focused firstly because it's only on the policy, it's not, of course, on the changes to the code of conduct that are quite properly the domain of this committee. Really, we're just asking people if they think that there is anything, for example, in what we've set out, how you deal with something informally. Is there anything else that should be added to that? Is there anything else that we haven't thought about that should be considered for the way that we deal with complaints formally? We just give people an opportunity if there's anything else that they feel hasn't been captured in the overall policy. We just wanted to check in with people that what we're doing is going along the right lines. OK. Is there anyone who wants to just add in? At this point, I just want you to wait until we can move on to the specifics. OK. Well, thanks very much for that. It's really useful. Can we just move on to the using the ethical standards commissioner and how he or she will be involved in this? Mark, you've got some questions on that, please. Yeah, thanks and morning. I just wanted to ask you about the advantages and disadvantages that might be moving away from the current procedures that we have where complaints such as this eventually come to this committee. We eventually consider sanctions where appropriate as well. I noticed the point. You also want us to reflect on this and reflect on how a change might be brought to bear, but I just wondered what your thinking was within the working group and what you saw as the advantages, but if there are any downsides to that as well that we might need to consider? One of the overall advantages of not having complaints dealt with in this setting is that the process would be exactly the same for all complaints, regardless of who the complaint is being made against. Obviously, one of the things that we've tried to do with this is to take into account that we already have a code of conduct and to try to make suggestions for how the current code can be changed. Now, obviously, you will obviously have to look at this, but we don't want to knock the code of conduct out of shape in terms of this. One particular disadvantage of not having complaints taken through this process is that the commissioner has currently got powers under statute in relation to power to compel witnesses and documents that a non-statuary investigation wouldn't have, so that's one of the disadvantages. I don't know whether it's an advantage or a disadvantage, but it's a question in terms of whether you took the commissioner and this committee out of the process who would apply a parliamentary sanction. I think that that's probably one of the key questions. The joint working group's purpose was to try and look at our current procedures and how we could make them fit with the overall policy, but they very much felt that it was, obviously, properly for this committee to decide whether or not this was the system, the right system going forward. I'm happy to expand on some of the thinking around that. The Dame Laura Cox report at Westminster was recommending something quite similar. Did that feed into your thinking at all? I mean, I read the Laura Cox report with interest. There were a couple of different proposals that she was looking at. One was that they would have a service-type organisation set up that would independently look at complaints, and the second one, which she seemed to favour in her report, was that the standards commissioner down at Westminster would have the power to make sanctions. I would say that we've got the results of the survey up here, but I do think that the situation that we have up here is different to Westminster. I think that there are particular problems down at Westminster as well. How do you mean? I mean that all of this in terms of harassment is to do with power imbalances. We know that the results of our survey up here is that people have experienced sexual harassment and sexist behaviour. Our experience, though, and through talking to colleagues down at Westminster, I think that we don't have, if I can use the word, as differential a culture as perhaps there is down at Westminster. In terms of what you would want us to look at then, specifically around code of conduct, specifically around who might apply sanctions if we were to depart from this current process and an option would be to look at the powers of the commissioner and whether it is appropriate for the commissioner to apply that. Is there anything else you think we should be looking at in that round? I mean, I think that there are a number of issues and I would say up front it's not because the system is broken or that there have been any issues with the system. Some of the things that came to us when we were looking at this was that we were thinking about it from the point of view of the complainant and how confident somebody would be in terms of bringing something forward in a political sphere. For example, one of the questions that we asked ourselves was, now it's very obvious that in any report on any investigation the complainant's identity should not be made known. When a report is published, even though someone doesn't see their name in the report, it still feels as though they know that that is them. We did ask ourselves a question, could we have a situation where we didn't publish that report? Because of the system that we have, we didn't think that we could ask the Parliament to take a decision on sanctions against a member without the Parliament knowing what the basis is for that. That wouldn't happen in a normal employment situation. We recognised that the report had to be published, but then we asked ourselves a question, but knowing that, that put somebody off. There are also issues that we can talk about in terms of how we have a system of appeal and representation. Again, it was looking at it from the perspective of the complainant and how it would feel your interaction with the committee, even though it would be in private. It can still be a daunting process. Anyone want to drop it? No, okay, great. Can we look at one of the thorni issues—time limits on complaints? I know that Elaine Smith has some questions on that. Thank you very much, convener. Thank you for coming along, Susan and Vicki. Can I go back one step to the previous line of question and what you were saying about Westminster? Is it just a power and deference issue, or is there maybe more than that? Is it perhaps the male-dominated matril culture, which the Parliament may not have to the same extent because of a more critical mass of women? Do you think that that makes a difference? The report makes clear that a lot of that comes from structural inequalities. The report also talks about a lot of the work that the Parliament is doing to try and alleviate the structural inequalities. When you do that, you are absolutely right that that has an impact on the overall atmosphere within an organisation. The Parliament continues to do a lot in looking at those structural inequalities and ensuring that, in terms of key bodies, we take gender balance into account and that women are represented in key decision-making bodies. I suppose that you have two women here in senior positions in the Parliament who have been involved in that. However, no one is being complacent about that either. All of that work is being done and will continue to be done. Absolutely. No, there is lots more to do. On the time limits of complaints, we had a brief discussion with the commissioner about that as well. Under the current arrangements, the commissioner would be obliged to seek a direction from the committee to investigate complaints that are more than one year from the date of when the complainer could reasonably have become aware of the conduct complained about. That does not mean that there is a year limit as such. It could be that the committee would give that direction if asked. I wonder if you could talk a bit more about the reasons why you are proposing that there should be no time limit applied to complaints about sexual harassment? Just on the first point, and I think that it is good that the committee can apply a direction. One of the reasons for saying that we should change that is not to put the committee in an invidious position where it is having to take a decision on a case-by-case basis that we had something blanket that said that there is not going to be a time limit on any of the complaints. The main reason for the recommendation that there should be no time limit is that we know that it is always better if people can try and raise complaints as soon as possible after something has happened where everything is fresh in people's minds. However, we know particularly with this type of complaint that it can be really difficult for people to do that. It might be because they feel that they are powerless to do something about it if it is somebody in a position of authority or power over them. They are frightened to come forward, frightened that they will not be believed and frightened that the overall culture is not going to help in terms of that. I think that there have been instances where women have now come forward, where they have felt either that they are in a position now where they feel more confident in bringing something forward or that they feel that things have changed so that they might be believed and that they are not going to be blamed for something or that they see that someone is going on to do another job and that they want to highlight that. However, I think that with these types of complaints it can be extremely difficult for people to pluck up the courage to bring that forward. Because we are trying to put in place a system where it is easier for people to come forward, where people will feel more confident, we thought that it would seem contradictory to then say that there is a time limit. We did think that if we got rid of the one-year time limit, we should have put a time limit in it at all and we decided against that because we thought that any time period would be arbitrary. What we do recognise is that what will have to be taken into account with any investigation is how far back the allegations go, whether it was something that was a one-off, whether it continues the seriousness of it, how much people can remember about what happened, but that would all be taken into account into the investigation as to whether or not there was a case to answer. I suppose that we might come to it later about what the sanctions might be, particularly if it was ex-members, for example. However, if it is not entirely clear whether the complaint relates to sexual harassment before it is being looked into, would there be situations in which it could be difficult to determine on initial inspection? How would that affect the time limits? That was also something that we were grappling with. We took a decision when we started this that we wanted to focus on sexual harassment specifically rather than bullying and harassment more generally because, as we have just spoken about, the issue of structural inequality and power imbalance plays out very much in relation to sexual harassment and sex behaviour, and there are particular interventions that we need to look at for that. However, we also recognise that what we are putting in place, when we are then reviewing our procedures on harassment and bullying more generally, those procedures are probably going to look fairly similar to what we have got in terms of what we are proposing for sexual harassment. That was why, in the report, we were inviting the committee to consider whether, if you were perhaps looking at having to make a separate class of complaint, rather than just making it on sexual harassment, did you want to make it slightly wider in relation to perhaps a treatment of others, which would kind of future proof the code of conduct for the time when we then revise our procedures on harassment and bullying more generally? That is a long way of saying in terms of the question that you have asked. If you did it in that way, then there would be less likelihood for something to fall between two stools, because that is the last thing that we want is for a complaint not to be taken forward, because we are not sure whether it is sexual harassment or whether it is bullying, and we do not want something to fall between two stools. If I might just explore slightly further, do we have time? I suppose that we are going to be talking about ex-members, if you like, but thinking about that, you mentioned the culture of respect workshops at the beginning, Susan. Ex-members will not have had the opportunity to do that. In some ways, the culture of the Parliament will change no matter whether it has been better or worse than other places. I suppose that under the sexual harassment policy that you have put the annex to the report, you are talking about things such as the invasion of personal space. I suppose that I am wondering how great areas might then be dealt with, because the kind of thing that I am thinking is a number of years ago, maybe there is an ex-member who thought that it was appropriate to give everybody a cuddle that they came across, and now we might not consider that to be entirely appropriate at all, depending on who it is, what the circumstances are etc, if you have been on the workshops and thought about it. You specifically talked about the invasion of personal space. How would that kind of thing be dealt with, given that the culture may have been very different five or ten years ago? One thing I would say is that our code of conduct, and again we were talking about Westminster and unlike Westminster, our code of conduct from the beginning has mentioned sexual harassment specifically. It never described in detail what that was, but it talked about sexual harassment. We obviously have definitions under the law of sexual harassment, and we have had a culture from the beginning of treating people with respect. What we are trying to do now is to try and put a bit more detail into those definitions. To be honest, a lot of what we are talking about now was, I would argue, even five years ago, still unacceptable. Even though it is now that we are specifying that, and the question that you are talking about there, my context is everything. It goes back to the old power imbalance. I might give Vicki a cuddle when we go out here, and that is absolutely fine, isn't it? If I were to do that with a member of my staff when I am in a position of authority over them, that is very different. It is interesting, particularly the ex-member's issue, which will probably come on to more a bit later. Thank you very much for that. Elaine Edd, Gil Parterson, please. If I have a couple of questions further on, but this is a particular one that hasn't been raised yet. In terms of perhaps the party systems in operation and there is maybe an investigation within the party, and no matter what the outcome is, that, because now what is being proposed, is no time limit. Should a case go before a party and an individual is cleared and then somewhere down the line, the complainer complains through this process, what actually would happen? A complaint that has been dealt with previously? Yes, by the party system specifically. I suppose that if we are giving people the opportunity to raise their concerns through this new policy, then we need to give them the opportunity to raise them. It goes through the process. We have a different process in place. We have an independent investigator. It goes through that process. I suppose that once it has been through the investigator, it then goes back to the party or the employer or whoever it is that is making that complaint. I do not see that because it is a different process and we have been more explicit about what the expectations of behaviour are. It would have to be tested against the standards that are in that new process and the new policy. My question here, in the line that I am going on now, would be two factors, including the change to the time. If you keep that in mind. My question is simply this. The GIWGs concluded that it might be considered appropriate for the complaints of sexual harassment to be treated as a separate class of complaint and we are looking for what the reasons were. I am particularly concerned because at the last meeting of this committee, the commissioner had come before us and the question in relation to that had come up in regards to differentials. What we are proposing here is a differential in two areas, the time limit and then the categories. We are having different from what we have at present time. We will have a separate category for action in regard to sexual harassment. However, I think that there is one or two around this table that would express difficulty and the commissioner talks in law about the difficulties that this creates. I can read that quote out but he is concerned about having differentials. For instance, if there was a time limit on someone that had been verbally abused or physically attacked and for the same reasons, and it might be the same people, they do not come forward within the year, but it looks like the commissioner would be unfair because we are defining something that one inappropriate behaviour is different from another equally serious matter for individuals. I wonder how we can ask where that circle is. In terms of a separate category, meaning the last point that you made, I agree and I think that that is why we were saying that if you were to create a separate category, would it be better for it to be something broader, such as the treatment of others? It is about somebody's behaviour, whether that is sexual harassment, harassment or bullying. The reason that we suggested that you might want to look at a separate category is because it is a question back to you as to whether the changes that the group is proposing that we think need to be made to ensure that we can have the same principles applying to complaints taken against members in relation to their behaviour. We think that those changes need to be made if we think that that should apply across the board to other complaints that we deal with under the code of conduct. Obviously, that is for the committee to take a decision on, but that is why we suggested that, if perhaps you thought that by applying what we are looking at across the board and that it might not be appropriate for all the different types of complaints that you have to deal with, whether that is members' interests or issues about confidentiality, I do not know, but that is why we thought that one option was to create a separate category, because what we are talking about here is the way that people's behaviour is a different type of complaint. I can understand that. There is clearly a difference, but impact can be the very same on the individual. I wondered if the group that we are looking at this took evidence on that or looked at that, specifically how it would impact on—it is not in any way, I should say, to say that what has been proposed has not to be dealt with. Those are very serious issues, but my line of questioning is that there are other very serious issues that we in this Parliament need to deal with. It is when you separate them, but I wondered if any thought and discussion and investigation into the impact of this, if this committee did not make changes in the way that you are suggesting, to the other elements of the code of conduct, it would bring them into a holistic fashion for all inappropriate action. Basically, when we look at the code of conduct and when we are thinking about complaints—as I say, in this case it is sexual harassment—but complaints generally about bullying and harassment. If we are looking at this from the point of view of trying to put the complainant at the centre of the process, there are issues in the code of conduct that jump out at you that do not put the complainant at the centre of the process, for example, or that do not afford the complainant the same rights as the respondents. For example, the fact that a member who is complained about will be given a copy of the commissioner's report, but the person who complains does not get a copy of the report or the ability to make representations. The other issue is that, the way that the code is written at the moment, our policy is saying that if people can try and resolve an issue informally and we would encourage people to do that, we are appropriate, but sometimes it might not be appropriate to do that, a person might not feel comfortable, something might be too serious. What we are saying very clearly is that people do not have to have gone through all of the informal processes before they take a formal complaint. In section 9, in relation to excluded complaints, the way that it is written at the moment, what that suggests is that people would have to go through lots of informal procedures before they could actually have a formal complaint taken to the commissioner, and that decision would be for complaints from members of SPCB staff or member staff. The decision then on whether to refer that complaint formally to the commissioner and to the committee would be taken by the SPCB rather than the commissioner themselves. That was our thinking behind why we said that we thought that the code of conduct had to change, but, as I say, that is in relation to complaints about somebody's behaviour because it is around the issues of natural justice, around the issues of the complainant feeling that their voice needs to be heard. It is then a question for the committee as to whether you think that that is appropriate for other types of complaint that you deal with. As I say, I am not talking about complaints about somebody's behaviour here. I am talking about, for example, breach of the members' interests act, or something like that. To open that up a bit wider, I would get Maureen Watt, please. Thank you, convener. Maureen Watt. Elaine Watt alluded to former members and what might happen. What do you think are the challenges of establishing the findings and conclusions of historical cases? Maureen Watt, I think that some of the disadvantages are that memories can fade over time, that there might be confusion over dates and facts. Some documents might not be available any more, so there might be difficulties in relation to that. What we would play into that is whether what happened, how serious it was, and whether it was one-off or recurring, because if it is something more serious and recurring, people are probably more likely to recall that than, for example, a one-off sexist comment that was made, say, 10 years ago. What then do you think is the merit in carrying out investigations into former members? I suppose that the main thing is what can then be done with the outputs of such an investigation? The policy would also apply to, for example, a former member of staff as well, and that is just a consequence of not having the time limit. I think that we recognise that the issue of sanctions then comes up because, in the case of a member—the member is no longer a member of this Parliament, so he cannot apply parliamentary sanctions—for a member of our staff, we could not undertake any disciplinary proceedings because they do not work here. However, a couple of the reasons for doing this is one, particularly if this is somebody who has been thinking about taking a complaint for a long time. It is a way of perhaps giving them closure or a way of giving them the opportunity to be heard. Also, it can be a way of the organisation learning lessons. So, while we appreciate that we cannot then proceed to a disciplinary sanction, perhaps for those reasons, we can learn lessons and, as I said, the person can perhaps feel closure that their complaint has been listened to and investigated. Can I just ask more generally, when a person complains, at what stage is the person who is complained against informed? This is especially important if such a thing is played out in front of the press that it is in the public domain. How soon is, for one of the better words, the accused informed? How is that done? In terms of, through our new process and where we are using our independent investigators—not in relation to members—as soon as that investigation starts, as soon as that complaint is received, the individual is told that there is a complaint being received. In relation to members, as far as when the commissioner receives a complaint, the commissioner will contact the person against whom the complaint has been made, so that they will know first of all that a complaint has been made against them, and subsequently they will be invited to come in to be told about the nature of the allegations against them, and to respond to those allegations. And what training does anybody involved in this process have to distinguish between real complaints and vexatious complaints? In terms of, obviously, for our new process, we are going to appoint an independent investigator to investigate complaints against staff. We will be going through a full procurement process for that, so it will be experienced and qualified people who do those investigations all the time. Obviously, they will be brought up to speed with our processes, what the standards are that we expect in terms of the standards of behaviour. Those are people who come predominantly from an HR or a legal background, so that is what they do all the time, if you like. In terms of the commissioner, I do not know, I am assuming that there is some kind of training that goes on in relation to the commissioner and his staff. The commissioner's staff are trained in investigation, but what the report makes quite clear is that, recognising the nature of those complaints, investigators should also have the skills to be able to be inquisitorial without being adversarial and to deal with things appropriately and sensitively. We would, obviously, specify that in the contract that we would be tendering, and what I think the report says for the commissioner is that the commissioner would need to satisfy themselves that they had within their staff the skills and abilities to be able to carry out the complaints on that basis, so that they will have the skills of investigators but also the skills to deal with those types of complaints, sensitively and appropriately. Thank you very much for that, Maureen Watt. Thank you to our guests. Can we move on to anonymity? This is an important part of the report, and Tom Mason has some questions. Yes, thank you. It's a difficult process, but anonymity requires to be maintained most of the time. How soon and what is the balance between telling the respondent that there is a problem and not identifying who that person's complainer is? It's difficult balance, but at some stage that has to happen, otherwise natural justice doesn't take place. You're right, it's a really difficult balance. One of the reasons that we talk about this in the report is because the feedback that we got from the survey was that one of the barriers to people reporting was that they were worried about anonymity and confidentiality, so we wanted to be quite upfront about what people could expect. We completely appreciate that, particularly when you're talking about a power imbalance, a person who's making a complaint might not want the person that they're complaining about to know about that, but you make a point about natural justice. In cases such as these, well, in any case, anybody who's accused of anything has to have the opportunity to be able to respond to that. With those types of complaints, that means knowing the full details, and that is probably going to mean knowing the identity of the person who has made the complaint. I would stress so that that doesn't mean that the identity of that person shouldn't be kept confidential. It has to be kept confidential to those who have a legitimate right to know. There might be some occasions if you're dealing with an issue informally. For example, if a member of my staff came to me and said that someone had behaved in a sexist manner towards them, they didn't want to do anything about it. It might be that I've heard that from somebody else as well, and if I'm dealing with that informally, I might as a manager be able to just go and speak to that person and to have a word without having to say who had made the complaint. There could be some circumstances where you're dealing with things informally where you don't have to make known to the person who's being complained about the identity of the complainer, but it gets very different territory when you're getting into making a formal complaint. As we say in our report, and again to manage people's expectations, really the only circumstances where the respondent wouldn't be told the identity of the person making the complaint in a formal situation is in an extreme situation. For example, there was a concern over the safety of an individual. As I say, it is a difficult balance because we want to get rid of as many barriers as possible, but we also need to make sure that the process is robust and is fair to both parties. Carry on from that. If a complaint comes in and is dealt with informally in the first place, but then leads to a series of complaints, maybe to different people, for the same person perhaps or for multiple persons, how do you log that and how do you keep that logical within the domain of the total as opposed to just held by individuals?  If there's going to be a formal investigation taking place, then the person who's responding to that complaint needs to know who the individual is. You need to have the details, you need to be able to respond to that complaint, therefore you need to have the details of it. As Susan had said, the details of that include the name of the person. I think that maybe—correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that maybe what you're talking about there is that if someone hasn't taken forward a formal complaint, that has maybe logged in some way. When we have our support service set up, people will be able to contact that on an anonymous basis just to speak to somebody, so they don't have to give their name. They maybe just want to talk to somebody, they maybe just want to log somewhere and come back to it again in the future, so they may log at that point and they may not want to give their name at that point. If it then proceeds to a formal complaint, we would expect people to have to put their name to it. You said log, but how can that be done effectively to collect the whole organisation? You're dealing with a whole domain and there may be complaints and comments being made to different managers in different places. This would be done through our independent support service because I appreciate that it is difficult to collect data across the piece of people who are just coming in and having a chat with their manager. We will be able to log things essentially through the independent support service, which is available to everybody, and we are encouraging people to contact that service regardless of whether or not they want to take forward a complaint. They might just want to talk something through with somebody. Will the respondent in that case know that the log is being kept? Will they have access to that? If I'm sitting there with dozens of complaints, am I not entitled to know that I'm getting complaints against me? When we're talking about a log, that is a log of people who have phoned up, who have had an issue with somebody, they're not logging, if you like, at that stage a formal complaint. If they were, then yes, we would tell the respondent. One of the things that we are looking at is because we know that one of the barriers to people coming forward is that they might feel that they don't want to be the person who puts their head above the parapet. We are going to explore with our independent support service how we can have some system whereby, if a number of people are logging concerns about the same person, no action will be taken on the back of that. It can't be, but what we are looking at is whether there is some way, and it would have to be in a confidential and secure way, that the person who is operating the system can go back to the people who have complained and said, look, you're not the only person who's made a complaint, and that allows them to think about whether they want to take further action or not. That's very complicated, because there are lots of things that we have to, a lot of safeguards that we have to put in place in relation to that, and the issue of fairness comes forward again. This is something that's still relatively new. It's been trialled by a few universities in the States. I think that the EHRC, and they had a recent report, and I think that the Department of Justice is looking at something like this as well, but it is complicated because there are issues about fairness, there are issues about data protection, so we don't have the answers at this point, but this is something that we want to explore further. Just before Elaine Gil, did you want to follow that? You're okay, Elaine, please. Thanks. Just a supplementary on that then, Susan, you mentioned data protection, so I could see that being an issue, because if you were keeping information about someone with their name against it, then that person would surely be allowed to come to you and ask to see what's being held with their name against it, I think. Yeah, yeah, and that's one of the things that we need to investigate, but my understanding of this is that it's a piece of software, and my understanding is that it encrypts it, so it doesn't actually record the individuals. It's not a complaint recorded against the individual's name, it's all codied in some way, I don't know what it's all about technical, I'm not going to pretend that I know what it means. But yeah, so we need to look at it further, but obviously that's a big factor in terms of data protection and stuff. I'm taking some advice in terms of that, and if we can have some kind of system where it is encrypted like that, where it is a code rather than a person's name, then that should help in terms of data protection, but we will obviously not put in place anything that would go against natural justice or would go against data protection or GDPR. You would have problems with disclosure, if that person was one of the, but at some point, once there's disclosure document, it would be one of the places where one would look to have that confirmed or otherwise. Would that not be the case? These are all the questions that we're going to have to look at in the round, and we've been consulting with our legal team on this, and we'll continue to do that on that basis, because you're right, people can make a request for disclosure about records that are held about them, so these are the issues that we're going to have to look at. As I say, that's one of the reasons that we're looking at this particular system, because rather than a person's name showing up, it's been obvious to others that it's encrypted, but this is why, by this stage, we haven't got a final solution to this, because it is difficult for all the reasons that you mentioned. I can move on, please, to access to an opportunity to comment on the commissioner's report. I know that Jamie Halcro Johnston has a question or two there, please. Can I just ask very quickly on the last point? I mean, recognising that it could be encrypted, but I take it that you can confirm that this wouldn't be subject to freedom of information request. We would check that out, but we would not want that to be subject to it, but we would have to make sure that we were doing it in such a way that, because then that would just undermine what it is that we're trying to do, so. Okay, thanks. Thank you very much, convener, and formally good morning to you. As I mentioned, this is about access and the opportunity to comment on the draft report, and when the commissioner gave evidence to us recently, he expressed a preference that the opportunity for the comment from the complainant to be made was at the stage of findings in fact, not when there was a draft report, which would include finding, in fact, and conclusions, so I was just wondering if you could comment on that and provide more detail on the approach that you recommend. As I said at the beginning, we tried to have the overarching principle that we would approach things in a very similar way regardless of who the complainant is against, so the starting point for this is thinking about what would happen in an employment situation. Now, if there was an investigation in an employment situation, the respondent, the complainant and any witnesses would be given the opportunity to review their witness statements to see that factually that was correct, but crucially what the complainant would have is that once the investigator has come to a conclusion and is given to the decision making body to decide whether or not to uphold the complaint, if at that stage the decision was not to uphold the complaint, then the person who had made the complaint would have the opportunity to appeal that. Now, that was our starting point, so that is where I probably differ slightly from the commissioner, because I think that if you just had the opportunity for someone to comment on findings in fact, but not on the conclusions, then we are missing out in effect of that appeal process, because I think that it is absolutely right that people are given the opportunity to clarify that something is factually correct. For example, if the commissioner then concludes that sexual harassment has not taken place but the complainant thinks that there are reasons why that is wrong, then we think that they should be able to make representations on those conclusions. Now, although we have tried to make this fully analogous with a normal grievance procedure, we know that we cannot, because to be fully analogous with a grievance procedure would mean that the complainant would be able to not only make a written representation but appear in front of you and you, as a committee, would act to some kind of appeal hearing that, for two reasons, one, your committee was never set up to act in that way and secondly, that can be really quite testing for someone having to do that, so what we are suggesting in the report is for the complainant to be able to make a written representation, but I do think that it is really important, because if at that stage we say that there is no case to answer, then there is nowhere else for the complainant to go and they have to have the opportunity to appeal that. Now, the person against whom the complaint is taken has the opportunity later on to appeal, because in an employment situation, if action is then taken against them, they have the opportunity to appeal against that, to appeal against any sanction, as does a member, but we think that it is critical for natural justice that a complainant has the opportunity to appeal against a finding, a conclusion, and that would be a conclusion as to whether or not there had been a breach of the code. Is that situation or the procedures or the processes altered if both parties take issue with either the contents of each other's statements or with the report itself? With those kinds of complaints, there will always be a case where people will interpret differently what others have said. We were talking earlier on about the skills of investigators and that is why investigators need to be skilled, because particularly with those types of complaints, investigators will need to weigh up, because the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities. Investigators will have to weigh up differing interpretations of what has happened and to come to a conclusion. Rarely with those types of complaints, are they easy to investigate and where there is a very easy answer? In terms of the investigator, I do not know not to put words into the commissioner's mouth, but he has indicated that it becomes very difficult when you are sitting with all those different evidence and you have all these different… I think that is going to be the case in these types of situations anyway. That is exactly what it is like. It is always as Susan says, it comes down… Potentially 99% of the time it comes down to one person's word against the other and it is just… I suppose that is the role of the investigator. It is to sit there and say, right, here is that person's view, there is that person's view, there is not necessarily going to be lots of other witnesses, there is not necessarily going to be lots of other evidence and it will come down to making a decision based on that. I suppose that if to give the respondent more of an opportunity to input to that, but not giving that same level of opportunity to the complainant, it just does not really sit very well, it does not feel right. On another angle on this, Maureen Watt, please. Yes. Just to follow on that, the committee has been conducting work to tighten the confidentiality provisions. I suppose that I am asking, do you foresee any risks to the confidentiality of processes if the complainant had access to the commissioner's report before the committee completed its deliberations? I appreciate that, obviously, at the moment, if a member who is complained about if they breach that confidentiality, then this committee can take action against a member. I appreciate that you will not be able to take action in that sense if a complainant were to breach confidentiality. If it was, for example, a member of our staff, then breaching confidentiality would potentially be a disciplinary offence. Whilst, yes, if you have two people with a report, as opposed to one person, then potentially you have twice the risk of something being leaked. For me, the balance is that the complainant has to be given a copy of the report for natural justice. I think that we make the point very clearly that the confidentiality has to be respected. As the report says, we work in an organisation that is not like other organisations where things are subject to media scrutiny. Confidentiality is always important and it is vitally important here. I know that the committee takes that very seriously. Can we just move on to excluded complaints, please? The GIWD report recommends that complaints against a member about treatment of staff, any member of staff across the parliamentary area should no longer be excluded from the commissioner's remit. What would be the effect and or advantages of no longer excluding complaints about a member on how that affects staff and MSPs? The way in which the code of conduct is written at the moment is that where a complainant comes from a member of SPCB staff or a member of staff will be looked at by the relevant business manager or the HR office. In a sense, that is covered in our policy, what we are describing is how you would look at things on an informal basis. If someone came to us and wanted to deal with something informally, they may want to deal with it themselves. They may want to talk to the person's line manager, but it also may be that they want to talk to HR. If it is a member that somebody from HR or me as a manager would go and have a word with the relevant business manager. Firstly, the code does not reflect what the situation is with the policy, but the crucial thing for me in that is that the way in which the code is written is that for those kinds of complaints, to be dealt with by the commissioner, you would have to have gone through all those informal processes before a formal complaint could be taken. It is also the SPCB that would refer any complaint. That takes it away from the complainant itself and goes against the overarching policy, where we are saying that you do not have to have gone through all those informal processes if you want to take a formal complaint and it is your choice. That makes sense to me. You have held up remarkably well throughout this. You can move on to a final area, which is the treatment of visitors to the Parliament. Did the group give any consideration to recommending that members should be held to a standard of behaviour in relation to the people that they encounter in the context of the parliamentary duties within Parliament and how that should be treated under the code? When the joint working group was looking at this, what we wanted to do was to make sure that we were clear about standards of behaviour that would apply to everybody who works in or for the Parliament. That standard of behaviour should apply regardless of who people are interacting with. To be honest, when we were looking at this, we probably thought at the time that the code already did cover members' treatment of witnesses, but I think that looking at the code possibly does not. I do not see any reason why it would not. For example, on the non-MSP side of things, if someone comes here and believes that they have been treated badly by a member of staff, there is already a complaints procedure that they can go through where they can take a complaint against that member of staff. If somebody came to me and said that a member of my staff had been sexually harassing somebody, I would probably then go through the procedures that we are talking about now to investigate that and to take a decision on that. Again, if we are looking to apply the same principles, I would see no reason at all why the code of conduct would not make clear that that standard of behaviour is expected of a member's treatment of a visitor to the Parliament and that they could also take a complaint under the code if they feel that they have been treated inappropriately. Thank you very much. I will not relate it to that. You mentioned at the beginning that you talked about the culture respect workshops that were taking place in training. I think that over 700 people attended one yesterday. I just wanted to know what feedback or how you were monitoring basically feedback from people that had attended it and also how you will be analysing, monitoring the impact of the workshops? Everyone fills in the evaluation sheet whilst they are there, so we are taking the feedback from that. We are collating all that. Once the workshops are finished, we will analyse them. We had feedback as we were going along, so we made minor changes to the workshops after the first few sessions and have done that to an extent as we have gone through it. Obviously, we talked about the training as just the first step. It is about changing the culture, so we need to look to the longer term and look at the impact of that, whether it is changing, what changes are taking place. We have a wee bit more work to do in the joint working group in terms of what measures we are going to put in place, how we are going to measure it, whether at some point, once the policy has been in place for a while, whether we look to then come back to the parliamentary community again, ask similar questions, see if there has been any change. One of the measures that will definitely be in place that we do not have really just now is that the independent support service will be collating and not data for us that will collate in stats in terms of number of complaints, number of contacts that they get, so that will give us data that we do not currently have. So, yes, there are plans to measure the change. Difficult though that may be, I think, but yeah, absolutely. I am back to the evaluation of the actual workshops themselves. How confident? I mean, the workshops are 15 maximum. The feedback is semi-anonymous. I do not know if you can have semi-anonymous, but you see what I mean. You are one of small group of people and where you sit within the Parliament structure is recorded in that. How confident are you that the feedback that is given will be entirely honest, accurate and constructive, or that people will feel confident enough to highlight concerns or whether they felt that it really was relevant or what extra-additionals they might like to have seen, because it was simply circling, I do not know if I am revealing anything amazing here, but it is simply circling one to five in terms of response. It is not the opportunity. I am sure that we could provide an opportunity to say, actually, that this was good but that was not good or this needs to be done better. To be fair, where people have been completing the sheets, they have been writing quite a lot of comments on the bottom. There are free texts on the bottom, so there has been quite a lot of constructive feedback. One of the things that has came through quite strongly is that people have appreciated the fact that they are mixed groups. There are not groups just for MSPs, there are not groups just for staff, and I think that that has been really useful in starting a conversation in terms of sharing different views, and even just for different groups to hear the views of others has been really useful. That is some of the feedback that we have had from it. We then need to look at what we need to do next and what if there is any further training required. There will certainly be an exercise once we have got those workshops done and out of the way in terms of taking all that feedback. We may even have to go back to people again and ask for further feedback. We might have another couple of focus groups specifically on the training and say, what can we do, what are the next steps that we can take? The diversity of the people in there and the backgrounds and the roles was actually really important, so thank you very much. I actually want to ask you something specifically about the conclusion, but before I do, could I just explore slightly further? This is an unusual workplace. I think that all workplaces have politics as we know office politics in power situations, but it is quite an unusual workplace because I suppose sometimes people looking at what goes on in the chamber might not think that there is much of a culture of respect at all, and that can just be the cutting thrust of political debate. However, on the other side of that as well is that reputation damage is important to anyone, but to members it is particularly important that that could be the end of their political career. For other people in their working environment, it might mean training, and they might still keep their job, but reputation damage would be very difficult for some members to recover from depending on the situation. If fixatious complaints are made, how are those to be dealt with? We are very clear in the policy that any fixatious or malicious complaints will be taken very seriously. We expect that to be rare, but we are very clear as we are with any other policies that we have at the moment, whether it is a grievance policy or not, that fixatious or malicious complaints will be taken very seriously. If someone is found to have made a fixatious or malicious complaint, they will be disciplined and dealt with. Going back to your point about reputation damage, that is one of the reasons why confidentiality is so important for both the complainant and the respondent. If someone makes a fixatious complaint, there is no case to answer. If that has been kept confidential, it is less likely that someone's reputation is going to suffer because that has not made it into the public domain. Again, that is why it is so important that any investigatory process can go ahead without the glare of publicity and done in confidence. Finally, on the conclusions number 141 on the report, you say that you recognise that there are some tricky issues for the committee to consider and that we would need time to do that. I will talk about that. It might be a need to make legislative changes as well as changes in the code of conduct, so we may wish to consider in the intervening period whether transitional arrangements need to be put in place. Could you elaborate a bit on those transitional arrangements or what your idea of that is? Just as one example, going back to what we were talking about earlier about the one-year time limit, as you said, the committee can currently issue a direction to the commissioner. I know that, in terms of changing that, that is probably likely to require legislative change, so, although the committee can make a direction on an individual basis, does the committee want to look at whether they say that, as a matter of policy, they want to follow what the joint working group has said that their intention would be that any complaint that came that was over a year old, that a direction would be issued to the commissioner to look at that? Those are the kinds of issues that I am talking about. There will be some things that, presumably, if it is just a change to the code of conduct, will take a lot less time to do because you will obviously have to inquire into that and produce a report, and that is for Parliament to agree on. For issues where legislative changes are needed, that will obviously take a lot longer. It is to look at whether there might be things that you might be able to do through directions or through changes to the code that can help in the intervening periods until such time as legislation can be changed. On something like that, we need to make a decision first and put into place the legislative change process before, as a committee, we would put a transitional arrangement in, because we would have to have agreed with the report. Is there anything else, though, that you think should be transitional at the moment when the committee is deliberating, rather than coming to a conclusion? As I said, in terms of time, we always appreciated that we were going to be able to put in place a policy, but we might not, by that point, have been able to change the code of conduct in terms of the complaints against members. Ultimately, what we would like to do is to be able to have this policy in place and to have everything in place. As we said at the beginning, we will hopefully have this policy finalised by March. Whether this committee will have been able to take decisions by that point as to whether the code of conduct should be changed by March, I do not know. Certainly, if there is going to be legislative change, that would definitely not happen within that timescale. I suppose that it is really just for your committee to decide that if you do agree with the recommendations of the joint working group and if you know that some legislative change will be needed to do that, is there something that you can do in the intervening period to send out a signal that says, we have this policy, we know that there are changes that will have to be made down the line, but that is what we want to do going forward. Thank you very much indeed both to Susan Duffey and Vicky McSherry. That was quite an intense say, but the amount of work that you covered extremely well and were extremely useful to the committee. I hope that the committee's questions have been useful to the joint working group as well, and I wish you all the best going forward with that and for Christmas new year as well. Thank you very much. That is at the end of the public session, so we can clear the gallery.


The property is phenomenal in that the history is obviously very entrenched in fortified wine and has been since its origins in 1851, but this latest I suppose generation of ownership and investment has broadened the appeal right outside just wine experiences but weaving in art and culture and authentic food experiences now on the property. This cellar in particular, the Centennial cellar is really the jewel in the crown and we've put a lot of effort in building the reputation of this cellar in terms of an international treasure and being able to taste things like your birth year, direct from barrel or taste through a lineage of wines of moments in history during the 20th century, it's the feedback is phenomenal. There's obviously a number of experiences that are dedicated in the Centennial cellar itself in terms of tasting but we extend quite far beyond that in the sense of food and wine pairings in cellar door that people can go through and then the inclusion of jam factory in itself there's a number of workshops that people can do from knife making to hat making and leather working which again comes back to that village concept and the community making something on-site through an artisan that based on site. Fino, Seppelt's Field I think are a really fantastic flag bearer of authentic cuisine so they don't call themselves fine dining it's more of an authentic progressive regional cuisine and being very true to the products that are around us. People are looking for a lot of different activities, people travelling in groups aren't all interested in the same thing so that's about lifestyle and experiences and that doesn't always include wine. More than just a wine experience it's something that people can really immerse themselves in and leave with a fantastic emotional connection to a property based on a number of different flavours that people can get here.


We come up with this idea and we needed to try to help the Phelps Fire Department and help the community and just something fun to do here in the community and something different to enjoy the river. We just come up with it one day, come home from work, thought we was looking at the river and just decided we need to do something with the river.