S4M-15201 Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament (Amendment) Bill - Opening Speech

The Deputy Presiding Officer (John Scott): The next item of business is a debate on S4M-15201, in the name of Stewart Stevenson, on the Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament (Amendment) Bill.

15:54

Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

There is always a benefit in reviewing, with a critical eye, the regimes that govern our work and that of individual members here in Parliament.

The bill’s proposals seek to improve the public accessibility of information reported by MSPs, allowing for effective public scrutiny. The bill will also ensure that a wide range of parliamentary sanctions are available and will broaden the definition of the serious criminal offence of paid advocacy.

Due to partial overlaps in the reporting requirements on MSPs under the Parliament’s register of interests and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—otherwise known as PPERA—certain financial interests must be reported to both the Electoral Commission and to the Parliament. That is known as dual reporting. The PPERA requirements are defined in terms of donations to political activities, which include parliamentary activities, whereas the Parliament is interested solely in financial interests that could be perceived to influence MSPs in carrying out their parliamentary duties.

The two regimes have different criteria for registration, which can make the system complex. There are also two separate complaints processes depending on whether an MSP is reported to the Electoral Commission or to the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland for failure to register a financial interest.

Removing dual reporting will provide for simpler reporting requirements for financial interests overall for MSPs and greater transparency and accountability to the public than is the case at present. That will make details of MSPs’ financial interests more transparent, as they will be more easily accessible in a single place, on our Parliament’s website; the means of pursuing a complaint in relation to a financial interest will also be streamlined for the public.

The bill makes the necessary adjustments to the categories of registrable interest to enable the Electoral Commission to draw all the information that it needs from the Parliament’s register.

When dual reporting ends, the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland will take on sole responsibility for investigating breaches of those PPERA requirements that are currently investigated by the Electoral Commission. The bill will incorporate that into our revised register of categories. It will broaden the commissioner’s remit and simplify the process for the public, providing one place to direct complaints.

The group of states against corruption—GRECO—published a report in 2013 that recommended that consideration be given to lowering the thresholds for registering gifts. At present, members must register gifts over the value of 1 per cent of a member’s salary at the start of the parliamentary session. That makes the current figure £570. The qualification is that it excludes gifts that do not meet the prejudice test, for example, gifts between members of the MSP’s family.

Other jurisdictions have lower levels of registration. The House of Commons proposes to lower the threshold to £300, the House of Lords will go to £140, and the threshold in the Northern Ireland Assembly is £240. With those developments in mind, and the desire to increase transparency of members’ interests in this place, the committee decided to include a measure in the bill to lower the threshold for registering gifts to 0.5% of a member’s salary, rounded down to the nearest £10, at the beginning of the current parliamentary session. That would presently be £280.

I turn to the paid advocacy provisions. Paid advocacy is where an individual uses their position as an MSP to advocate a particular matter in return for payment, including a benefit in kind, or to urge any other MSP to do so. It is a criminal offence and a breach of the Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament Act 2006 for an MSP to undertake paid advocacy.

As I have stated in previous debates—we first debated the subject in April—no MSP has ever been found to be in breach of the paid advocacy provisions. Given the gravity with which paid advocacy should be treated, the committee is very clear that there is a case for increasing the scope of the criminal offence. To that end, the bill amends the existing paid advocacy offence to ensure greater consistency with the Bribery Act 2010. The paid advocacy offence currently requires actual receipt of an inducement by an MSP or an MSP’s partner where that results in some benefit to the MSP. The Bribery Act 2010 goes further than that: it does not require an individual actually to receive inducements in order to commit an offence; they must only agree to receive such inducements.

The committee considers that if an MSP is found to have agreed to undertake advocacy for financial gain or to have encouraged a fellow MSP to do so, they should be considered to be guilty of an offence regardless of whether inducements have actually been received. During the stage 1 debate, Tavish Scott asked me whether that would cover a scenario in which a member requested an inducement for advocating a cause. I took the opportunity to amend the bill at stage 2 to put beyond doubt that that scenario, too, should be covered by the paid advocacy offence.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that the Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament (Amendment) Bill be passed.