Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. That has helpfully touched on my final point. The East Renfrewshire Council submission spoke about

“capacity, resourcing, timing, practicality, and limited ... data about the range of ... requirements”

for people. The Scottish Women’s Convention said that public bodies will need to be properly resourced to do a lot of this work. I can see folk nodding. I get the sense that, alongside guidance, there will probably need to be a degree of increased resource. I am taking the nodding as meaning that that was a fair comment.

Does anyone else want to come in on that point before I ask a final question?

I am quite interested in inclusive communication and the Government’s revised approach to assisting listed public authorities with embedding inclusive communication in what they are doing. What do you think about the Government’s revised approach? How do you feel it is progressing?

Good morning. I am particularly interested in the Scottish Government’s revised approach to inclusive communication and the embedding of inclusive communication within the listed public authorities. As an opening generic question, what are witnesses’ views of the duty, the revised focus on it and how it is progressing?

In the previous evidence session, we had a discussion about whether the Government could be clearer on what best practice and expectations should be. I referenced working with people who have a learning disability, where the challenge is often the agility of a public-facing service to provide what is required. For example, in the criminal justice system, interactions with police can often be very challenging, because it is a fast-moving environment. The interaction is very different, particularly when legal matters are involved. I appreciate that there are processes in place in law, such as for appropriate adult services and that sort of thing, but how do we become more agile, so that those things can be made available as standard?

In the public health space, the pandemic probably taught us a lot about agility in relation to getting information out to as wide a group as possible and not allowing people to fall through the gaps, but many people might feel that they were missed. Could I hear reflections on that from Nicky Page and John Dawson?

Nicky, do you have a view on that?

Would anyone who is appearing online like to add to that and talk about the experience of their own council?

I have a question about automaticity—I can never quite say that word correctly, so I apologise if I get it wrong. Debbie Horne mentioned the issue, and the committee talks about it a lot in the context of UK and Scottish social security. Has work been done on how that might happen? I understand that it is a complex process. Are there international examples of where it works seamlessly? We always hear about Estonia’s digital Government systems, which allow the free flow of information, but can you point us to any other examples?

I will wind up on the amendments.

I think that we are all trying to push towards a similar outcome in this debate, which is that there should be a process early on in the system to weed out complaints that are viewed to be

“frivolous, vexatious or without merit”

and that there should be a robust definition of that.

I point to the view of many stakeholders—not least the Law Society, which is of the view that the proposal in the bill to remove the existing eligibility test is concerning. That is because it has been an important test that has helped to do exactly what we have been debating this morning, which is to take out those unmerited complaints at an early stage. The test has been used extensively by the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission and other bodies since it was created in 2007, with almost 100 complaints rejected in 2023-24 alone. As a committee, we are obviously interested in how the processes in the bill ensure access to natural justice and ensure that people’s complaints can be heard. However, I think that we are clear that there has to be a process.

The Law Society’s view is that the removal of the early test goes against the objective of making the system simpler and ensuring that genuine complaints are dealt with quickly. That view is in contention with what the minister suggested, which is that we would achieve that objective by moving the test to the SLCC’s rules-based procedure. The Law Society’s view is that keeping the test in the legislation is the best way to ensure that the system moves quickly and that things do not become, in its words in material that it has provided, “choked off”.

My closing point is that we are talking about the same words and the same legal definitions, and about consulting broadly with a range of people to retain the processes around the

“vexatious, or totally without merit”

test. My concern is that I do not understand how taking the test out of legislation and putting it into rules retains the objective of speeding up the process. I do not see why we would move it into a rules-based system that is far more flexible if we were not going to change the definitions.

On that basis, I press amendment 557.

I do not intend to say too much more, other than that I think that this amendment is about ensuring that there is a provision in the bill to ensure natural justice—to ensure that people are informed about the reasons why decisions are taken. Given what we have just reflected on, there seems to again be a consensus that that is the right thing to do and that it is how we would want the system to continue to operate.

I am confused about what the difference is between ensuring that this is in statute and has a legal footing and simply putting it into the rules of the SLCC. The minister spoke about the importance of flexibility for the SLCC, but again I am not clear whether the intention would be that the SLCC would continue to provide the reasoning for decisions and that any changes to that would be subject to consultation. I am not entirely sure how removing it from statute would provide more flexibility.

As with the previous amendment, I am keen that we ensure that there is a statement of intent in the bill and that we ensure that those rules are followed because they are in statute rather than in a flexible process that would then be subject to the consultation that the minister has outlined.

On that basis, convener, I press amendment 572.