Chamber and committees

It is about avoiding the tick-box exercise or just going through the motions.

The pandemic has meant that staff are not able to meet as they would normally in an office environment. Has that given you any difficulties in fulfilling your role and responsibilities and in ensuring that you can still have engagement and transparency? It would be good to get a feel of how you see that developing.

Do you think that that is to do with pressure of work, or is it just the environment that you are in?

Specifically on this group, it is only right and proper that there is the change. I concur with and accept that. However, you make a very valid point, convener, about the resource and timescale that we have. There are a large number of CPGs, and they are quite diverse in their roles and responsibilities and the curriculum of activity that they may get involved in, depending on the topic.

It would be best practice if we had some structure that meant there would not be a tsunami effect on the committee clerks in having to manage it. Perhaps we can tailor a structure in which some formulation is put in place that helps the CPGs but that also helps the committee and its officials to manage the process. I am aware that they put a lot of effort into all of this, and we cannot have them being engulfed. We have hundreds of CPGs. If they all did this, we would spend our complete working lives dealing with it, and that cannot be the case.

There may be an interview in which a candidate goes in front of a number of individuals, but there is usually an application form to complete as well. How do you encourage and support individuals to fill in that form? I know from seeing such forms in the past that they have a one-line question that applicants are expected to write maybe 300 or 400 words in response to. That is the topic and the style, but that style can sometimes be quite restrictive as to what individuals can say. How are you planning to broaden the whole idea of that to ensure that the application form and the interview are much more aligned? Sometimes, they can be quite rigid or stuffy, and people do not feel comfortable in that environment. How do you change that?

The standard or template that you are putting together will give them the opportunity to develop that. Is there also the opportunity for things to be expanded in different boards when they are looking for different people? If the criteria are too rigid and people do not fulfil the criteria, they are bound to fail, but if the criteria are widened and people feel that there is a bigger opportunity to develop that, that may encourage more people to progress.

Commissioner, you have given a very broad view this morning of your intentions with the code and how you want to encourage individuals to come forward and boards to be much more diverse. I think that that is starting to become a reality now.

It is also very important that we try to get the best individuals and that there is a good calibre of candidate coming forward, but not all candidates will succeed. Looking at those who do not make it, what are you doing in the code to look at what happens to candidates who go through the process and fail? Are they encouraged to come back? What role do you have in that? You have talked today about how you are very involved in the application process, in which those individuals progress only so far. It would be good to get a flavour of what you are trying to do there and how you are revising the code to encourage people to come back.

As you have said, the range of views and opinions in the consultation was very mixed—the issue is about being able to see the wood for the trees so that you get the benefits indicated in the report and the views of the consumer and the legal profession can be married together to ensure that everyone feels that they have achieved something. If that does not happen, the danger is that people will feel that they have missed out or have lost something in the process.

I, too, thank you for the frankness of your evidence and the personal testimonies that you have given today. It is useful for the committee to hear at first hand about your experiences.

I will focus on where we are on evidence. Can you give examples of how a legislative ban has been, and continues to be, effective? Can you advise us of any areas of best practice that we should look into when we are looking at how the evidence is being managed and processed?

I will follow up that point. You have touched on the issue of faith, but the committee has seen evidence that, in about 20 per cent of cases, the conversion therapy was carried out by people in the medical profession or by healthcare providers. What lessons can we learn from that sector? That is quite a large percentage, and there are much stronger rules and regulations in that sector, on which, as parliamentarians, we can have more impact to ensure that the proper procedures are followed. What areas should we strengthen, and what lessons can be learned from experience in that profession?

You have given us the example of what is happening in Australia. Any there any other international practices or benchmarks that the committee should investigate or analyse, so that we can collate as much information as possible to find out what is happening in other parts of the world?