The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 1830 contributions
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
The biggest concern for me personally is the completeness and accuracy of the registers. There are lots of stand-out questions on that, particularly about Scotland. For context for those who are watching, I will share something on completeness. A report that you have produced shows that the major errors total in Scotland in 2022 was 18.5 per cent, which was up from 16.5 per cent in 2018. What the watching public might be interested in is the comparison with Great Britain, where the figure is at 13.4 per cent for major errors—we are at 18.5 per cent. That obviously requires explanation. On minor errors—again for context—the number in Scotland is 13.4 per cent, and across Great Britain it is 8.6 per cent.
Something different is happening in Scotland and it seems to be getting worse over time. Why?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Do we have a particular challenge in getting any specific group to come on to the register? We have not even begun to talk about accuracy yet—we seem to have a specific challenge with that as well. I take Craig Westwood’s point about not reading too much into one data set, but that is the data that we have. What groups do we have to work particularly hard with to get to the register?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
What is the Scottish dimension to all of that, particularly the attitudinal stuff?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Ivan has just prompted a question in my head about—
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 9 November 2023
Stephen Kerr
Is this the significant challenge to the resilience of our electoral system that Dame Susan Bruce referred to in her opening remarks? It is a significant challenge, to my mind. We have an electoral system in a democracy in which one in five of the potential voters is not even on the register, let alone voting. That is very alarming for Scotland’s democracy.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Stephen Kerr
As Dr Allan—when he was in the room—and the convener said, the group is obviously a good idea and it is a way of expressing our collective solidarity with the people of Ukraine in their darkest hour.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 5 October 2023
Stephen Kerr
It is all very straightforward, and appropriate actions are being taken to encourage the required compliance with the code of conduct.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Stephen Kerr
It is astonishing that there has not been a cross-party group on fisheries and coastal communities until now.
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Stephen Kerr
Have you tried to raise those issues in any existing CPGs? What has been your experience over the past two and a half years?
Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee
Meeting date: 21 September 2023
Stephen Kerr
As a member who represents Central Scotland, I have to be honest that the issue of fisheries has not always been at the top of my inbox or on my casework agenda, but I repeat that fisheries are a vital—in fact, a totemic—part of Scotland’s economy, and it seems extraordinary that we have not had a cross-party group to look specifically at the issue. I am therefore, as you can probably tell, very sympathetic to the proposed group. It highlights that, despite there being however many cross-party groups there are—