Accountability between the public and the system of government in Scotland

 

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 21^st 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.