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It is a powerful set of recommendations. We all get repeat customers in relation to casework inquiries. It can often be a core set of people who are always coming back to us about issues because they have tapped into the mechanism of how to do it. That does not mean that the mechanism of how to do it is widely known about; it can be quite an arcane procedure and it can also be quite intimidating to get in touch with an MSP or an MP. I think that it would be useful to make that process more accessible.

From time to time, we get mass email campaigns, whereby a campaign organisation will create an information box that allows people to punch in an address and then send a model response on a campaign issue. We can get thousands of duplicate emails, to which we have to do a mass response. That can be fine from the point of view of perfunctory engagement, and it is broadly used to signal mass interest in a particular issue, but it is not a form of close engagement.

I suggest that the Parliament might be able to create a better interface that people could use to write to their MSP. It might be a matter of scanning a QR code on, for example, a bus shelter advertisement, which could bring up a pro forma document that provides their constituency and regional MSPs, asks about the nature of their issue and gives the text to fill out the box. That would make it easier to send an email; it might be less intimidating than having to sit and manually type it all out. That might make the process somewhat simpler.

There could also be a call-back service—if someone requested a call back on an issue, they could get a phone call—or a surgery booking service. Perhaps it would be better for the Parliament to have an interface on its website for doing such things, rather than people having to rely on individual MSPs’ social media and websites for information, because the quality of that information can be highly variable. That is just a thought.

There is also the TheyWorkForYou website, which makes engagement a bit easier, but that might not be the easiest of interfaces.

I agree. The concept is interesting. The only similar example that I can think of is that Poppy Scotland converted an old truck into a mobile exhibition about the first world war. It went around Scotland and it was incredibly successful at educating people, especially young people. It was almost like a mobile museum and it was very well put together.

A Parliament bus could be a wider thing, because a large part of the issue is that a lot of people do not know where the Parliament fits in relation to the broader range of concerns that they might have about local government issues and UK Parliament issues. We potentially have a broader educational opportunity to discuss more generally the roles of the councillor, the MSP and the member of the UK Parliament in relation to local issues and needs and how people can engage effectively with all the institutions in our democratic society. A bus could be part of a broader enterprise that could be quite successful. It would be worth testing that out.

The point about the Parliament’s function in relation to holding power to account is really important. It all merges into one blob in the mind of the public, so teasing that out would be useful.

I have often thought that it would be good to have a long-running fly-on-the-wall documentary that got into the mechanics of how Parliament operates day to day, like “Inside Central Station” on the BBC. It would be a long-running programme, but it would be a kind of public service broadcasting thing that covered councils and both Parliaments and dealt with what they are like day to day—not in a political sense, but in the mechanical sense of how it all operates. That would be a very effective tool for making the public aware of how the Parliament actually works day to day, so that people were not seeing only the political theatre. I keep pitching that to the BBC, but I do not think that it is going to take me on.

It is an interesting question. I have had the opportunity to participate in Prime Minister’s questions, and I know that the Prime Minister does not get advance sight of the questions. The order paper has numbers and members’ names; it is just sudden death, which is why there is a stack of notes that is gone through frantically. Frequently, the response will be something like, “That’s a really interesting point—I’ll get my officials or the relevant minister to respond.” That is usually quite good for constituency issues, because it can result in such matters getting escalated very rapidly, and you can get quite a decent outcome.

I therefore wonder whether there should be something else, instead of having some preamble in the Business Bulletin, which then leads to a pre-scripted response. Sometimes, though, that can be helpful; if you want a detailed answer on something, you might well volunteer to give the minister the information in advance. I just think that a different format would be an interesting way of changing things up a bit and could improve the relevance of responses—or, perhaps, make people keener to respond.

Thank you very much for the impressive set of recommendations so far. I found your comments compelling—you made really good points. Practical barriers seem to be having a chilling effect on engagement. Perhaps there should be statutory protection for people who want to engage in parliamentary business in some capacity, in the same way that jury duty is legally protected. People are not compelled to attend in the same way, but a protection could allow people who wanted to to engage on an issue—it could give them a legal right to do that and, for example, their employer could not discriminate against them for doing that or prevent them from doing it. It might be over the top as a solution, but it might be worth considering whether we need a statutory right for citizens to engage.

That is an interesting point. Yesterday, we had a stage 1 debate for the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Bill. That was a Scottish Law Commission bill that, on the face of it, was dry and technical. It related to people being able to raise finance and secure debts against moveable assets. It is primarily geared towards businesses. For example, it would enable them to raise finance against barrels of whisky or fleets of vehicles, not just land and buildings.

However, it rapidly became apparent that one of the unintended consequences of the bill was that it could open up an entire irregular lending market to consumers. Backstreet lenders could use household goods as collateral against which to raise finance or secure debts. It would be virtual pawn broking.

That became obvious only at the last point because the consultation on the bill had been focused on the banking and legal sectors. It was only because the money advice agencies brought through lived experience at the last minute that we realised that we could be opening up an explosion of unintended consequences and that the Government realised that it would have to amend the bill at stage 2 to take out consumers.

I wonder whether that is a symptom of a wider issue. Because there is such an echo chamber at times, people are not necessarily aware when they draft legislation that there are wider consequences. It could have been devastating for families if predatory lending practices had been introduced.

That is an example from a debate in Parliament yesterday where the improvement recommended would have resulted in better-quality legislation at an earlier stage if we had been able to engage with people who are at the sharp end of predatory lending practices.

I fully agree with what has been said. There is nothing to add.

To hear it put as starkly as that—that Parliament will have no capacity to scrutinise that—was powerful.

There is also the point that ministers will not be able to use the revocation replacement powers to increase regulatory burdens. The Hansard Society has stated that that

“is tantamount, with just a few caveats, to a ‘do anything we want’ power for Ministers”,

and that clause 15(5)

“imposes what amounts to a regulatory ceiling. This is contrary to previous claims from UK Ministers that in some areas REUL might be amended to enhance regulatory requirements (e.g., in the field of animal welfare).”

In your view, Sir Jonathan, will that preclude ministers from improving the standards, rights and protections that are currently enshrined in retained EU law?

I appreciate that, Sir Jonathan. Dr Tucker, do you have a view on the ratcheting effect, which can move only in one direction if the use of secondary powers for enhancements is not available?

It seems as though the power of determining that is entirely with the executive, and therein lies the risk of democratic overreach.

I emphasise that the UK Government’s position is—this is stated in the note from the Cabinet Office—that

“the power is required as there are approximately 2000 pieces of secondary retained EU law, including RDEUL, that the Government may wish to replace with legislation more suited to the UK’s needs. Doing so purely through sector specific primary legislation would take a significant amount of Parliamentary time.”

Its justification is that there is not enough capacity in the Parliament to handle that process. I assume, and you might agree, that that is an overly generalised position and that there probably is more capacity and a bit more nuance to it all. Do you agree, Sir Jonathan?

Before he does, I will add a supplementary question. If ministers were to choose not to bring forward replacement legislation, would there be any opportunity at all for Parliament to scrutinise their decision? Please also feel free to make a general comment in relation to the discussion so far.