Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. It would be nicer if we could tax people for not visiting Scotland.

Thanks for coming in this morning, and thanks very much for the report. It is very interesting. I particularly like the focus on data. It is good to see the analysis that has been done and the recommendations for future work on data to continue to give us visibility of what happens in reality, because it is often difficult to get a sense of that when you are in the thick of it.

The data on interventions was also particularly interesting. If we drill down into that, not only does it show that men are more likely to have their interventions accepted, but it actually shows—I am not quite sure what to make of this—that women are more likely to accept interventions from men than men are. That is really interesting. I do not know whether witnesses want to comment on that, but there is probably quite a bit that needs to be dug through.

The area that I want to focus on is implementation and some of the aspects around that. There are some complexities in there. I want to hear reflections on the way that the Parliament actually operates rather than reflections on the way that we think that it operates in theory or on the way that other parliaments, more generically, tend to operate.

The issue about the relationship between the Parliament and the parties was raised. There is a fundamental point there that we need to be careful about, because, if we strengthened the position of the Parliament in telling parties how to operate, we would butt up against some fundamental democratic principles. That is not necessarily a road that I want to go down. We need to be conscious of that issue.

You have looked at the numbers on a wide range of aspects, including committee membership, and we have talked about the Presiding Officer, the Deputy Presiding Officers and some other functions such as those of the parliamentary bodies and so on, but in all those areas the membership is decided through different processes—some processes involve elections and other involve the party deciding.

On Susan Duffy’s comment about the bureau deciding the best member, in reality, the party whips decide who is on the committees, not the bureau, and we need to be aware of that. There a number of things in there that we need to unpick.

I will give an example of possible unintended consequences. You talked about committee membership and what the numbers should be, and you mentioned the overwork aspect, which is absolutely correct, because, if we do not have the right percentage of women in the Parliament as a whole and if we have more women than men in Cabinet and in junior ministerial roles—as, I think, we do at the moment—that percentage gets even more skewed in terms of the remaining workload. We are at a position where, I think, 43 per cent of committee places are occupied by women, which is more than we would have if it was representative of Parliament membership, excluding members who are in a role that prevents them from being on a committee.

Let us envisage a scenario with the Presiding Officer and Deputy Presiding Officers—just follow this through—whereby we had mandated that there could not be 100 per cent of one gender across those three roles. If the Presiding Officer was female and we had two female candidates and one male candidate for Deputy Presiding Officer, the male candidate would get the role automatically, without an election process. That is an unintended consequence. We may be comfortable with that, but we need to understand that that takes away from Parliament the ability to elect who it wants, which is obviously not helpful.

Just to wrap up on this, we are talking about committee membership as though it is—I need to be careful how I phrase this—something someone aspires to. The reality is that there are 140-odd committee places and fewer than 100 eligible members. Everybody is on a committee. Many members are on two committees, and, frankly, it depends on which party you are in, because the governing party has a lot fewer people to spread around the committees. The point is not that people are not getting on to committees but that there are lot of committee spaces that need to be filled.

I am sorry, convener. I will cover all of my points now and then let witnesses speak to them.

My final point is on the proposal to hold a committee place or other place for a member for when they come back from parental leave. That butts up against reality, because committee memberships change very quickly. For example, I was told yesterday that I am getting moved on to a different committee next week—I am not moving away from this one; I am staying on this one, as far as I know at this point in time. The situation changes extremely quickly, so the idea that you could know what the scenario would be in six months’ time is not realistic, given the reality of how the Parliament, the committees and the parties work.

I will leave it there, but there are a lot of issues around implementation. I suppose the question is, have you thought about all those issues or are you just throwing out what you think would be nice in an ideal world and expecting us and others to unpick the reality of how it would work in practice?

I have a couple of reflections on that. I am absolutely not saying or hinting that there is an issue with parties and their understanding of the issue—quite the opposite, in fact. It comes back to some of the points that were made earlier about whether it is better to have a cultural change or a rule-based change and what the interplay between those is. In some areas, a culture change is needed; the changes cannot be driven through with a rule change, as we have talked about. That is the point that I was making.

One more thing to throw out there is that this stuff is not static in other aspects, which means that we need to be careful where we go. In the specific example about gender balance for committee conveners, if we decide to move to elected conveners—this is something that the committee is thinking about, and the final decision will not be ours, obviously—we are in a different space, which adds another layer of complexity to the issue. We need to think about what might happen in the future.

Moving on to the BRIA, I note that the implementation costs have been identified as being between £150 and £1,000 for a microbusiness and as high as £10,000 for some small and medium-sized businesses. Does anybody have any further comment on the accuracy of that?

On the specifics of that, does that mean that, by its nature, there will be a lot of subjectivity in how you split up a cost and potentially some debate, shall we say, about what is payable and what is not?

Absolutely.

Good morning, panel. It is good to see you. I want to talk about the BRIA, which has come up quite a bit this morning, and explore the numbers in it. There has already been some comment on the numbers, but I want to get on the record your sense of whether they are accurate. Before I come to that, however, I want to pick up on another area that adds complexity, which is the implications of the levy applying only to the accommodation element of a guest’s stay and not to other things that they pay for as part of the overall price. What are your reflections on that? How would the process work when people book through online platforms? What complexities might that give rise to?

One reflection on that is that we can calculate a number but, particularly for a microbusiness or a small business, the impact on the owner’s time will mean that it is not as simple as saying, “This will cost £X.” It might chew up a lot of their time, and that might be reflected in their attitude. Do you have any comments on the admin burden, apart from the notional cost impact?

Does anybody have any comments on the BRIA and the indicative costs in it for businesses?

Good morning, panel. I want to touch on a couple of areas. First, I want to get your perspective on the complications around the levy applying only to the accommodation element of a guest’s stay. Following on from that, I want to get some sense from you of the complexity and the time requirement for small operators in particular to calculate and charge the levy and whether that cost is accurately reflected in the BRIA.