Chamber and committees

I am a new member of the committee, so I will look at the legacy paper carefully. We have agreed to take in private our work programme agenda item, which is the convention not just in this committee but across all committees. I was really pleased with the tone that you set in your initial remarks, convener, and I hope that Mr Mundell might reflect on his tone. That said, our committee will look at not only this OECD report but the further report on assessments and certification later in the year. That should go without saying, but Mr Mundell felt the need to raise the issue. I respect that but, moving forward, I hope that we can work collegiately and non-tribally, as the convener suggested. I hope that we can all live up to that.

There is nothing that I am required to declare, but it makes sense to note that I was a teacher for 10 years. I was registered with the General Teaching Council for Scotland and was a member of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

I am happy to nominate Kaukab Stewart.

Likewise, I have no relevant interests to declare.

Thank you.

I would not normally say something at this point but, given the resonance of your initial comments as convener, it would be remiss of me not to reflect on them. We should of course strive for gender balance on all committees, but that is particularly the case with this committee, given the types of issues that we will consider proactively, I hope, and, frankly, as a matter of course. I support your initial comments. The lack of gender balance is deeply unfortunate but, irrespective of that, I look forward to working collegiately with all committee members to ensure that we seek the views of MSPs more widely—they are far more reflective of Scotland than the members of the committee might be in practice at the moment—and the views of wider society.

I concur with what Alexander Stewart has said. I draw members’ attention to two aspects of the legacy paper. The first is sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. It is clear and explicit in the legacy paper that the Parliament should never be complacent in dealing with such matters. We are urged to keep them under constant review, as we, of course, should.

We should be mindful of the comments that we made at the start of the meeting about the committee’s membership not being particularly reflective of Parliament as a whole. That does not mean that we cannot do our job, but it should not have to be this way. I want to put that on the record.

The legacy paper also mentions involving people in our work. Just because we are a small committee and it might seem that we are dealing with the nuts and bolts and the mundane aspects of the Parliament—they might be a bit dry, but they are vital—does not mean that we should not reach out and involve various stakeholders and individuals in our work. Of course, we should, and I see that the previous committee did that, so I thank it for putting that on the record.

Finally—I know that I said that I would talk about two aspects—there is the section on the Parliament’s practices and procedures. It is a real strength that we have new members on the committee, because I have been a member of the Scottish Parliament since 2007. The Parliament has been engaged in parliamentary reform in recent years, and some of that is bedding in, but it is very good to have a fresh set of eyes on the workings of Parliament. I call on fellow committee members who are new to the Parliament to work constructively and to look at the workings of the parliamentary process with a degree of scrutiny, because it is important to have a fresh look at such issues when we have new members coming in. We can get set in our ways if we are not careful.

I look forward to working collegiately in taking forward many of the issues that are raised in the legacy paper.