Keeping empowerment in the Community Empowerment Bill

One of the key ambitions for the new Scottish Parliament, as set out by the Consultative Steering Group in 1998 was that it should be “accessible, open, responsive and develop procedures which make possible a participative approach to the development, consideration and scrutiny of policy and legislation".

Barnardo’s Scotland is proud of its record of participation with the work of the Scottish Parliament. Together with our campaign partners Aberlour and Who Cares? Scotland we won several awards for our successful campaign to increase support for young people leaving care in Scotland.

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But actually it was through working closely with the MSPs on the Education and Culture Committee, the Minister and her civil servants that the amendments to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 were secured. The Poverty Alliance has had great success with the Scottish Living Wage Campaign which we were also involved with.

That campaign worked with an ever wider group of MSPs for years, building support through evidence sessions, debates and a committee inquiry. The result of this was the cross party consensus we have now on the need for a living wage.

So, we have seen the fruits of the participative approach to policy making that the founders of the parliament wanted to see. However, the central plank of this approach - the Committee system - has come in for criticism in recent years. Governments (whether single party or coalition) need to be able to deliver on the commitments they have made, so they need to be able to get their business through committees.

But there is a danger that this can undermine opportunities to have a participative approach to the legislative process. Parliament’s consideration of new laws must take account of the views of those affected by them – not just in in terms of general principles, as discussed at stage 1, but also in the detailed scrutiny at stages 2 and 3.

The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill has the potential to be a good example of the participative approach to policy making by including amendments informed by a large number of organisations working in and with communities across Scotland.

Organisations like Oxfam, the Poverty Alliance, Barnardo’s Scotland as well as a number of others argued that the Bill needed to be strengthened to ensure that planning and setting priorities at the local and national level was more transparent and informed by the views of the people of Scotland.

While the Minister was not fully persuaded by these arguments, during stage 2 of its parliamentary journey, the Local Government and Regeneration Committee amended the Bill in three important respects. The committee voted for amendments to enhance the parliamentary scrutiny of Scotland’s National Outcomes and to set minimum standards for the way that the Scottish Government has to consult on the Outcomes.

It also voted to give communities and community bodies the right to appeal if public bodies turn down their request to be involved in setting local priorities, an important democratic right.

These amendments and how they were achieved go to the heart of the participative approach set out by the Consultative Steering Group in 1998. They are amendments informed by work in communities and taken up by opposition members of the committee who have been persuaded by the arguments not only from the organisations mentioned previously but from their experience in their constituencies.

The amendments were developed with the priorities of communities in mind, subject to full scrutiny from committee members, debated and passed.

The Bill is due to be debated by the full Parliament on 17 June. During stage 3 the Government could use their majority in the chamber to overturn the amendments made in Committee and remove the amendments that increased the empowering mechanisms in the Bill.

This is an important moment for communities in Scotland. The Bill will have a huge impact on the way government at all level responds to the needs, wishes and aspirations of communities across Scotland.

We will see if the Parliament is prepared to listen to the views of organisations working in communities, who have sought to participate in the details of this vital Bill. Almost as crucially we will see if the views of a key committee (and the organisations that made representations to them), that important aspects of empowerment were missing from the Bill until it was amended, are overturned or addressed.

Enhancing scrutiny of National Outcomes, widening involvement of the people of Scotland in setting them and strengthening the democratic rights of communities to participate in local decision making are all vital elements of empowerment.

Those founding aspirations for an open and participative Parliament need to still hold force, whatever the composition of the Parliament.