Item 8 today is a statement by the Chair of the Standards of Conduct Committee on the procedure for dealing with complaints against Members of the Senedd. I call on the Chair of the committee, Vikki Howells.

Good afternoon, and thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd, for the opportunity to make this statement today. The committee has today laid a revised procedure for dealing with complains against Members of the Senedd, and an accompanying report. The procedure will come into force on 18 July 2022. 

As elected politicians, we have a responsibility to ensure that we set the highest standards of behaviour and, as Chair of the Standards of Conduct Committee, that is never far from my mind. The procedure for dealing with complaints against Members of the Senedd regulates the process for making, investigating and determining complaints against Members, and is a key tool in setting expectations for the way Members should behave. I am therefore pleased to be able to make this statement today, outlining how the committee has updated and improved the procedure to make it work more effectively for everyone.

During the fifth Senedd, a comprehensive review of the code of conduct for Members of the Senedd was completed, and a new code was approved to come into force from the start of the sixth Senedd. To complement this, the committee agreed to consider the existing procedure, and consider whether it remained fit for purpose, as our first substantive piece of work in the sixth Senedd.

The committee issued a draft procedure for consultation between 19 January and 21 February 2022, and received 11 responses. The Senedd Commissioner for Standards, Douglas Bain, attended an oral evidence session and was able to give significant technical advice, drawing on his experience from Northern Ireland as well as Wales. I would like to take this opportunity today to thank him on behalf of the committee for his assistance.

In reviewing the procedure substantially for the first time since it was introduced, the committee has endeavoured to make it clearer and more accessible to the public. We have produced an explanatory guide in easily understood and accessible language to sit alongside the procedure. This takes the form of a key steps document and a flowchart, allowing members of the public to see how the procedure works at a glance. The committee has also produced more technical guidance on the operation and application of the procedure to help comprehension. This will be a living document that can be updated whenever new questions or issues arise. The process itself will also be more transparent for those involved, as the commissioner and the committee will contact the complainant and the Member who has been complained about at newly agreed milestones, to keep them informed.

In order to ensure that recollection of events is still fresh and evidence readily available, the committee has set the timescale for admissibility of complaints at six months. However, I would like to provide reassurance that the commissioner will consider complaints relating to incidents outside of this timescale where there is good cause for delay. This ensures that the procedure is able to capture repeat offences, where behaviour has been taking place over a longer period of time. Further guidance on what is meant by good cause is included in the guidance.

The committee has removed the appeals provision in the procedure by a majority decision. This was a decision that we considered very carefully, looking at the processes in other Parliaments and the experiences of the last Senedd, where the appeal mechanism was used for the first time. There are a number of stages within the process that allow for input and challenge and raising those concerns that were set out as the grounds for appeal, given that each complaint is dealt with by the commissioner and considered by the committee, with the final report being debated in Plenary. The Member who has been complained about has the right to attend the relevant committee meeting in person to make representations. We strengthened the oral hearing stage of the procedure, so that it is clearer that this is the opportunity for the Member to raise issues of factual dispute or procedural concern in relation to the commissioner's investigation and report. The committee is also able to refer matters raised at this point back to the commissioner for further consideration.

The final major change is that the commissioner will now only share the facts established with the complainant and the Member complained of, and the committee will be responsible for sending the commissioner's report to the Member complained of and the complainant. The committee will also be required at this stage to set out the next steps in the process to all those involved, which we hope will increase understanding of the process and address some of the concerns that have been shared with us about the anxiety around not knowing what is happening during the complaints process.

The other changes made by the committee to the procedure are outlined in our report. These changes add up to a document that is much clearer and easier to understand than the previous version, and also take into account experiences that the standards commissioner has had in his past roles, as well as useful evidence from other commissioners and relevant stakeholders.

I would like to thank all of those who contributed to this inquiry for taking the time to provide us with valuable evidence, and ensure that we have been able to make the procedure fit for purpose. Members of the committee will be available to discuss any aspect of the revised procedure with Members at drop-in sessions next week. I look forward to answering any questions that Members have here now.

I only have one speaker and I call Joyce Watson.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. And thank you, Chair, for taking on what is an extremely complex and difficult thing to do.

But I do have one question and it's about the removal of the appeals provision by majority decision. I had, as you well know, extreme difficulty in appealing a decision that went in favour of Gareth Bennett in the last Senedd and against me. It resulted in having to bring in somebody else from outside to overturn that decision, because I was in a position where I was told I couldn't appeal and that other people would have to speak on my behalf, which was completely unsatisfactory, as was the result from the previous standards commissioner, who agreed that misogyny, sexism and all those things were acceptable. I know now that that has been put to bed, but if individuals don't have the right of appeal, and if, as was the case in my situation, the first I knew of that decision was when that final report was made—. I didn't have an opportunity between putting forward a complaint and finding out what the resolution was to know exactly what was happening. So, I do note that that point has been raised in what you're doing. But I wouldn't like to see such a situation and I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I had to go through again, and that is taking on a commissioner for standards, when it's that person who you're relying on to actually uphold the standards that we rightly should be working under.

I'd like to thank Joyce Watson for her comments here today, and I sympathise very much with the comments that the Member has made. And what I would say in reply to that is that the issues that Joyce Watson has raised today fall mainly under the code, the code of conduct, which was subject to significant consultation and discussion in the latter half of the last Senedd, and the review that was made of the code then. This committee intends to allow that code time to bed in and to review it at a later point in this Senedd, to ensure that it remains fit for purpose, which is, of course, good practice, and to address any issues that may have arisen. And I note the Member's comments, and they can be fed into that review.

And, as Joyce Watson has correctly identified, the appeals process was never really intended for the way in which Joyce would have liked to have had the opportunity to have used it. In fact, any appeals could previously only have been made on very narrow procedural grounds, and were conducted entirely on the written representation of the Member who was complained about and existing papers related to the complaint. In fact, we found, in the fifth Senedd, that when the appeal process was utilised for the first time, concerns were expressed about how costly that appeal process was and, actually, that it had the potential to be abused by Members seeking to delay the outcome of the process. The most recent appeal, for example, took 11 weeks from the Member having received the committee's report to receipt of the decision on the independent, legally qualified person to be received. And, as the right of appeal was unqualified at the point of commencement, there was no sanction for making an appeal that is without merit. The process could potentially have been used by a Member, not in the way that Joyce would have liked to have used it, but actually to delay a final decision, for example, in the case of a complaint arising towards the end of a Senedd term. And I would end by saying also that just under half of the respondents to our consultation agreed that that appeals process should be removed, and there's also no appeals process in Scotland.

I thank the Chair.