The
never-ending omnishambles of Ferguson Marine and the contract to build two
ferries serves as a metaphor for the failings of government, as well as marking
the complete disappearance of accountability between the general public and
those who control the many levers of power in the too many layers of government
in Scotland.
Two
of the biggest players in the public sector in Scotland are the NHS and Councils,
with combined expenditure in 2023 of over £42 billion and employing across both
sectors just short of 500,000 people. When
the Cabinet Secretary for Health was asked about the accountability of Health
Boards to the public they serve, we were told that public attendance at
meetings of Boards helps:
‘ensure transparency and accountability around
the decisions that are made by the Board’
The
Cabinet Secretary for Local Government answered a similar question around
Councils and the public with:
‘Public attendance at council meetings is
permitted to ensure councils are transparent and accountable to their local
communities. Although members of the public cannot actively contribute or ask
questions at council meetings, attendance at meetings means the public can gain
an understanding of local issues and how decisions are made.’
That
did not appear to be the case at Edinburgh Council when in 2014 the first Edinburgh
tram line opened 5 years behind schedule and £400 million over-budget.
It
was decided to examine the extent to which members of the public can in fact
hold the public sector to account. It
was also decided to examine just how accessible was the ‘right’ of the public
to attend meetings of any of the NHS Boards or any full Council meetings. An FoI request was issued to all Health
Boards and Councils at the start of the year.
The full research report is available here.
Information
on ’Right’ to attend
As
is the case with all ‘rights’ available to the public, they are only ‘rights’
if people are aware of them, are regularly reminded of them, and are fully
aware of how to claim their ‘rights’ at any time. NHS Boards and Councils were
asked to provide information on how they communicated with the public about
their ‘right’ to attend meetings and hold Boards and Councils to account, and
when this form of communication had last been reviewed. Many of the responses from Boards and
Councils referred to notices posted on their websites. Many of these were
short, focusing on the practicalities of how to arrange attendance with very
few offering a wider context of why members of the public were being encouraged
to attend and what all involved – the public and the organisation – gained from
their attendance.
Those
public bodies offering only a web-based invitation to attend meetings are
discriminating against those parts of the population who do not routinely have access
to the internet. Alongside this,
there appears to be a distinct lack of active and positive encouragement on
offer across all Scotland’s Councils and Health Boards in their efforts to
persuade members of the public to attend meetings. An invitation to attend meetings which is
buried in a corporate website cannot be described as being reflective of a
pro-active approach to building a strong and recurring public presence at the
peak decision-making process of any public body.
If
the right to attend Council and NHS Board meetings is indeed to be seen as part
of the overall dynamic which enables the public to hold NHS Boards and Councils
to account, then it would not be unreasonable for Scottish government to set a
range of key performance indicators covering this area, such as requiring
remedial action by the public body when two consecutive meetings of any Board
or Council record that no members of the public were in attendance.
Attendance
data
NHS Boards and Councils were asked to provide data on how many meetings [of the
Board and the full Council] had been held in the last three calendar years and
how many people had asked to attend the meetings. There appears to be no
discernible pattern as to how often there are meetings of full Councils or
Health Boards each year. From the FoI responses, a total of 1,057 full Council
and Health Board meetings were held over the last 3 years.
Some
Councils took the view that as Council chambers had public galleries and that
members of the public were not required to notify them of attending, there was
no established practice of counting any member of the public attending. This
was also the case where meetings were streamed on-line, with Councils choosing
not to require signing-in to the streaming and so not enabling a count of who
was ‘attending’ other than elected members.
The
reality is that most Councils and Health Boards between them held 1,057
meetings over the last three calendar years [2022, 2023 and 2024] at which
members of the public had the right to attend. During that time, 393 people
were recorded as having attended in-person and 58 as having attended virtually,
with 232 [59% of all] of these accounted for at meetings held by one of the
Health Boards.
Unsurprisingly,
the majority of decision-making meetings in Councils and Health Boards take
place without members of the public being recorded as present. This also means
that the decisions being made at these meetings are not being held to account
by the public. One of the obvious changes required in this aspect of meetings
is to require public bodies to formally record the number of people in attendance,
both in-person and virtually. In addition, they should be required to gather
data on the protected characteristics of those people who choose to attend.
Barrier-free
access to meetings
Boards
and Councils were also asked how many requests had been made to attend meetings
where particular needs to enable access had been identified.
Of
the 1,057 full Council and Board meetings held during the last 3 calendar
years, just two people are recorded as having advised of having particular
needs to be able to access and attend the meetings. In addition to the general
lack of people attending meetings of Councils and Boards, it is also evident
that the failures in this form of ‘accountability’ go deeper, and that there is
embedded discrimination present in how the systems are failing to attract the
attendance of disabled people with particular needs. It is also probable that
people sharing other protected characteristics are also being failed by the
system. Given the lack of data being gathered on the protected characteristics
of those people who are attending meetings, it is simply not possible to
quantify the extent of discrimination in how the system operates.
It
is also important to note that where meetings are made open to the public
through live-streaming that captions generated through such as Microsoft Teams
have an accuracy of 85-90% and are not typically considered accurate enough for
professional or critical situations where complete comprehension is necessary
for deaf or hard of hearing users, In light of this, public bodies using
live-streaming of meetings should be required to use electronic notetakers to
provide more accurate captions for the meetings.
Equality
& Diversity Impact Assessment [EQIA]
Boards
and Councils were invited to indicate when the question of accessibility of
their meetings to the public had last been checked with a formal assessment
[EQIA], including a check on how public bodies ensured the public knew of their
right to attend meetings.
5
[out of 64] Councils and Health Boards indicated an EQIA had been undertaken of
the practices and cultures of holding meetings and their arrangements for the
public to attend and hold Councils and Boards to account. Given meetings of the
full Councils and of the Health Boards are the place where the primary
decision-making takes place, these do seem to be prime candidates for an EQIA
being carried out to test practices and cultures and ensure that no
discrimination is allowed to exist and that full accessibility is available to
all. The Equality & Human Rights Commission in Scotland needs to remind
public bodies of their obligation to carry out EQIAs.
Unfit
for 21st century
For
over 50 years, the general public has had the right to attend meetings of
Health Boards and full Councils and so, according to Scottish government, hold
them to account. This research, with a particular angle on examining the
accessibility of the concept, finds that the right to attend is a rather stale,
and somewhat tired concept, is unfit for the 21st century, lacks any visible or
tangible evidence of public bodies being ‘held to account’, and is more an act
of faith than a practical or meaningful reality.
The
reality of members of the public holding public bodies to account is, from
Scottish government’s perspective, achieved by simply attending meetings of any
NHS Board or full Council and observing proceedings, saying nothing. Relying on
such a simple belief that people mutely attending meetings will serve as a
robust check on the public sector going rogue or act as a bulwark against
further £multi-million performance errors in the public sector, is an act of
faith which is a not-so-distant cousin to that at the heart of the apocryphal
tale of Canute imploring the waves to desist from their tidal meanderings.
The
role of the public in holding public bodies to account requires urgent and
fundamental reform. One possible change could help retain credibility in the concept and
give rise to visible accountability. Requiring Health Boards and Councils to
hold one additional public meeting a year at which a general progress report is
offered for the previous 12 months – written in plain language – and that the
public in attendance can both speak to the report presented as well as vote to
accept or reject the report. Doing the same for another 70 years and getting the same [non] results is not an option.
