Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Good morning. Can I welcome Members and the public to this morning's meeting of the Member Accountability Bill Committee? Before we go into our substantive element today, can I just remind Members of some housekeeping? The meeting is being broadcast live on Senedd.tv, and a transcript is published in the usual way. The Senedd operates bilingually, and if you require simultaneous translation from Welsh to English, that's available on the headsets via channel 1. If you require amplification, that's available via channel 2. There's no fire alarm scheduled today, so if one does take place, please follow the directions of the ushers to a safe location. Do any Members wish to make a declaration of interest at this point? I see none. The final thing is, if you've got mobile phones, please make sure they are either silent or off, so that they don't interfere with our proceedings today.

We're going to move on to item 2 on the agenda, which is the substantive evidence session today. Can I welcome the Counsel General and Minister for Delivery, who is the Member in charge of the Bill, to the meeting? Would you like to introduce your officials for the record, please, Counsel General?

Certainly, Chair. I'll ask them to introduce themselves.

Will Whiteley, deputy director for Senedd reform in Welsh Government.

Anna Hind, Senedd reform legal services team.

Ryan Price, head of Senedd reform policy in Welsh Government.

And, of course, it's Julie James, who's the Counsel General, in case I didn't mention you before.

You might have been aware of the sessions we've had to date. We'll just remind you and highlight the fact that it's a very tight schedule we've been given, but we will do our best to get as many questions in to you as possible, because there are some things that have come up during our evidence sessions to date that we really want to explore. So, I'll start off with Sioned.

Diolch. So, I'll just start by saying that this is a very unusual Bill, which the committee will already be very aware of. The Government is enabling a series of things that the Commission needs to put in place—the parliamentary authorities—and the Government is very keen not to appear to be telling the parliamentary authorities how to manage their business or run their proceedings. So, there are a large number of things in the Bill that are effectively Aunt Sallys, if you like, so a place to start the conversation, or they're permissive, and we anticipate that the committee might want to make them mandatory or anything else. But the Government is largely neutral on this. This is not a policy Bill; it's not something where the Government is pushing a particular point of view.

So, the answer to the very specific question is that we're delivering on recommendation 5 of the Standards of Conduct Committee report into recall, and they wanted a stand-alone recall sanction. That's what they recommended without any express reference to any period of suspension or anything else. The inclusion of that sort of trigger event, if you like, is an important part of recall systems elsewhere as well, and a custodial sentence seems like something that the vast majority of people would agree is something that means that an elected politician has fallen short of their standards, if they've been convicted and given a sentence. So, it's a place to start.

I actually anticipate that the committee might be recommending that, if the Bill stays in the shape it's in—so a lot of 'ifs' for my response here—but if the Bill stays in the shape it's in, then we'll be asking the next Senedd's standards committee to do a piece of work, and I would anticipate that they might have a series of things that resulted in automatic recall, like deliberate deception. My own particular thing, which I've been on record on a number of times, is sexual misconduct, for example. But it would be up to the standards committee in the next Senedd to put a list of trigger events. This is, if you like, a starter for 10—sorry for that trivial language; it's not meant to be trivial. But it's a place to start the conversation.

This is a way of trying to strike a balance, because, as everyone will know, the Senedd is about to go to a four-year term. Currently, appeals are taking longer than that. I mean, we all very much hope that the court system will speed up, but it very rarely is so swift as to be proximate to the event in question. If you wait for the whole appeal process to happen, you might well be one Senedd election away from the event, in which case you'd have to change some of the other provisions in the Bill, because the event has to have happened in that Senedd at the moment, so you'd have to do some consequential changes to that. But, again, it's a matter for the committee, really, in the end. It's about trying to find a balance between having a sanction for conduct that's proximate to the event and fairness in the whole system. And the other thing to say is that, obviously, recall is asking the electorate what they think. It's not an automatic losing of your seat. So, if you're vehemently pleading that you're innocent, that you're going through an appeal process and so on, well, putting that in front of the electorate is one of the things that you can do. So, it's not an automatic disqualification. Recall doesn't work like that. So, there are things to balance out in it.

I mean, ultimately, I'm afraid it's a matter for the committee. As I say, the Government isn't pushing a particular point of view here—it's just a place to start. And we thought we'd start with trying to balance the need for public perception of punishment for particular behaviour, alongside fairness for somebody who's in the criminal justice system. And because recall isn't a disqualification, we thought that that was a fair place to start.

Before we move on, you've said several times that it's a matter for the committee or it's a matter for the Senedd. You're the Member in charge of the Bill, therefore wouldn't it have been better to actually have taken the Bill to public consultation before bringing it to the Senedd?

Well, we're up against a time frame here, of course. The Bill might well have benefited from pre-consultation, but this, as you know, is part of an agreement with a number of other parties in the Senedd, and so the Government has done what it was asked to do. It's a very unusual Bill, because like all Bills that act on parliamentary authorities, it's trying to put options in front of the parliamentary authority without the Government overstepping the role of the Executive, if you like. So, it's not, in my view, as the Member in charge of the Bill, the role of the Executive to tell the parliamentary authorities how to conduct their business. It's a matter for the Bill to go through the scrutiny process and the amendment process, and for the parliamentary authority, in the shape of its committees, to express a view back to the Government, and we will then take account of that and pass the Bill as recommended—or not, as the case may be. It's a very unusual Bill in that case. It's not a policy Bill for the Government.

Okay. And on the appeals process, which you just answered on, you've highlighted that four-year terms is a pressure, but the reality is that we shouldn't be dependent upon four-year terms. We should be dependent upon the legal system in place, and everyone so far has given us information that every other Parliament seems to be operating on the basis that once you're into the legal system, the legal processes must be completed before the recall process commences. You seem to be going against that view. 

Well, we're going with what happens for disqualification in the Senedd. If you're disqualified in the Senedd, that happens on conviction. So, if you're convicted of an offence that would lead to disqualification, that happens automatically and before the end of the appeals process, so we're simply following the same process for this.

One of the difficulties of this Bill is to make sure that the disqualification system and the recall system match in some fashion. Again, I don't, I'm afraid, have a very specific view as a Government Minister. Members of the committee will be aware that I'm also a Member of the Senedd and I have a view as a Member of the Senedd, but not as a Member of the Government on that. So, the disqualification regime has that as the mark for disqualification, so we followed it for recall, because that makes it the same. But I absolutely understand that there are other ways of dealing with it. The UK Parliament isn't the only system in place in the world, and there are reasons why we might want to do something similar to that and there are good reasons to follow things that already happen in the Senedd.

And are you comfortable—? I know you've expressed to the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee concerns that it's within the competency of the Senedd, and is the fact that you are possibly denying someone a right to a fair trial and the consequences a challenge to that?

Well, we don't believe so, because the disqualification regime is like that, and that's not been challenged or subject to any kind of commentary to that effect, so I don't believe that that is one of the competency issues.

Okay. And you've also highlighted that, except for the future Senedd standards of conduct committee, I assume it's through the guidance we're talking about, to actually decide whether there should be trigger events, such as less than—at the moment, it's less than 12 months that's considered, but automatic disqualification is more than 12 months. Would you be able to change that 12 months to six months—a conviction of over six months?

Well, yes, but what you can't do in this Bill is change the disqualification regime. So, you can change any other bit—if the committee wants to make recommendations to change the other bits. What we've tried to do is make the two regimes match together in some fashion, but, again, if the committee feels differently to that, then that's a matter for the committee.

One of the things I've asked my officials to do—and I'm very happy to share, perhaps in a private session, Chair, with the committee—is a flow chart of how the various regimes work together, because it's quite complicated. So, what happens for disqualification, what would happen for recall in a number of scenarios, and how those two things mesh together is quite important. And we'll come on, I'm sure, to talk about it, but if we are going to go down the road of an offence of deliberate deception for candidates, for example—

We'll talk about that later.

Yes, but matching it to the disqualification regime is very important. So, every time we're talking about one of these things, in my head, as the Member in charge, it's trying to make the regimes flow together as a single set of things that a Member has to have in their head, because these are things that affect individuals. People have to understand what the standard they're being held to is, and so having it make some sort of coherent sense is important.

Okay. Sam.

Thanks, Chair. Good morning, Cabinet Secretary. Thanks for being with us here today. Just looking at the section 5 in the Bill, which is regarding recall guidance, the Bill first of all says that

'The Standards of Conduct Committee may issue guidance about the matters to be taken in to account by the Committee when considering whether to recommend submitting a Member of the Senedd to a recall poll'.

Is there a reason why that isn't a 'must issue guidance'? Why is it 'may'? 

Well, the whole Bill is written like that, so, again, this is this is part of the issue about the Government not—. What we're trying to do is enable the Commission, the parliamentary authority and its committees, to have powers to do things that we think should be have a statutory basis, but we're trying not to dictate how they should happen. I anticipate the committee might want to investigate changing quite a few of the permissive things into mandatory things, and that might well be one of them, but we strongly feel that it's not for the Government to tell the parliamentary Commission what it must do.

Okay, that makes sense, and being consistent with that. One of the criticisms that's been tabled at the way that it's been laid out so far is the lack of certainty within there, so, like you said, because it's been drafted in such a way where the Commission itself would put detail into this, and there's been criticism about, for example, the lack of a number of days by which somebody should be suspended to be considered for a recall. Is that something that you'd consider putting in here, having some of that certainty about some of the triggers that the guidance should be considering?

No, I very strongly feel that that's a matter for the Commission and its committees. So, what we're anticipating is that the next Senedd will have a standards committee. We are making that statutory, putting that on a statutory footing, because I do think that the Government does think that a standards committee should be a compulsory part of any parliamentary arrangements, and then we're asking that standards committee to do the work necessary to produce the code of conduct by which Members should be governed. That, I feel very strongly, is not a matter for the Executive. That very much is a matter for the parliamentary authorities to do that.

I guess what I'm probably trying to get at a little bit, then, is that—. I appreciate the position that you're in, and you're fulfilling what's been asked of you. But it just kind of feels like this is pre-legislation, as it were, because, like you say, you'd expect the appropriate consultation to take place, and you expect somebody else somewhere else to do the work to put on the face of the Bill the detail required. Do you think that's a fair comment from me, that perhaps this feels a bit too early?

I think it's a really difficult thing to do. So, if you have any Executive anywhere in a democratic system that's trying to facilitate its parliamentary authority to have the powers necessary to run its affairs, and, in doing so, therefore, it needs to pass legislation to do that, then that legislation, it seems to me, would have to be written in this sort of permissive way. Otherwise, what you've got is an Executive telling its parliamentary authority how to run its affairs, and I think that is not a good look for any democracy. So, in a sense, Sam, I think you'd always end up in a situation where the whole Bill is expressed as permissive, and you'd expect the Commission and its committees to be able to undertake the work necessary to come to the conclusion for what they would like.

If you come up with things that you'd like the parliamentary authority to be able to do that we haven't put a permission in for, then I wouldn't be surprised, either, because, actually, the timetable for this Bill is necessarily constrained, because it's a year 5 Bill. The committee will be well aware that, at the moment, the timetable has Stage 4 of the Bill on the last Government sitting day of the Senedd term, which is, in itself, extremely pressured, obviously. But the Bill has been brought forward as a result of an agreement with a number of political parties, and so we're honouring that agreement.

Okay, thank you. Just going back to the guidance that's in section 5 of the Bill here, the Bill does say that there should be a two-thirds vote to pass any such guidance. Is there a reason why that's been put on the face of the Bill, rather than a simple majority?

No, that's just reflecting what currently happens for the changes to Standing Orders. Changes to Standing Orders currently require a two-thirds majority, and so the Bill is simply reflecting the current parliamentary Commission's view of how that should happen. Again, if the committee takes a different view, then—. The Government doesn't particularly have a view. We're trying to reflect what the existing system looks like.

Okay, thank you. And then, we've had witnesses in front of this committee, as I'm sure you're aware, and also comments on the questions that have been outlined on the Bill, section 10, on the wording for any ballot. I just want to understand if there's any particular work that's been undertaken to develop those questions that have been outlined for a ballot, and whether you think that there could or should be any adjustments to the questions that have been outlined on the face of the Bill.

We have undertaken some discussion with the Electoral Commission on this as well, and we're mindful of their point of view, but I haven't actually undertaken that work myself. Ryan, you did that, I think, didn't you?

Yes, certainly. So, we've had discussions with the Electoral Commission to date on the policy and the Bill as a whole, and that included testing some of those elements of the question at a very high level with them. I think, in terms of the question around user testing specifically, we haven't done any detailed user testing externally on the question. That is something I know that the Electoral Commission generally are keen on doing, and I suppose, dependent on the evidence that they've given, that's something we could consider as part of the ongoing development of the Bill. So, we've discussed with the Electoral Commission, but no specific user testing.

Okay—

And I suppose, just to add to that, Sam, we do feel that that should be on the face of the Bill, because we think it should be politically neutral. So, we don't think that there should be any question of the next Senedd posing a different question, or whatever. So, I think we'd be very interested to hear the committee's views about whether it should be on the face of the Bill or not, and therefore established as part of the primary law for this.

I think some of the feedback we have had is that it's more positive than other recall ballots, because it does give the option for remove or retain. So, it's not clear, when you walk into that polling station, what you may or may not be doing. So, I think that is some positive feedback on this here. And, sorry, just—. We're also very aware that explaining this to the electorate isn't always straightforward, and I wondered whether you'd considered, whilst trying to keep the ballot paper as simple and clear as possible, whether there should be any sort of explanation as to why that ballot is taking place on the ballot paper itself. Is that something you've thought about?

Yes, so I've discussed this with the Chair of the standards committee as well. The Government, as you know, accepted their recommendation 9 and I'm more than happy to consider issues such as that. We've discussed, as Ryan has already said, with the Electoral Commission and various electoral administrator bodies what might be appropriate by way of communications in the run-up to a recall poll, just to be clear that everyone is understanding whether they can participate—that's the first thing—and, if they're participating, what they're exactly doing in that recall poll.

I suspect that these will be very rare indeed, and so you won't be able to build on a body of knowledge; you'll have to do each one as if it's the first one ever, I suspect. So, we'll have to develop a set of comms for a recall poll, which starts from the assumption that nobody knows anything about it, I think. And so, you'd have to take it from there. So, we'll have to explain, from first principles, it seems to me, every time this happens, I imagine. I think if you were getting more than one a Senedd term, you'd have something seriously going wrong. So, I think you'd have to develop a set of comms that were very explicit about who is being asked to participate and what they are doing, and I think, particularly in light of the fact that we have the list system for voting, it's very important to explain what's happening. And then, of course, the complication for this is that the next Senedd also has to review the whole voting system and so on, so this will have to be kept in mind as part of the review of the voting system. Because, if the voting system changes, that might have quite an effect on the way that the recall system works, depending on how the voting system changes. So, again, we've tried to take into account what might happen for all of that.

Yes, and, as you say, there's a lot to consider within all of this, and, of course, part of that is the role of the Electoral Management Board. So, I wonder what consideration you've given to extending the statutory functions of the EMB to cover recall polls in addition to the other work that they already do.

Well, again, Sam, I don't really have a view on that. If the committee thinks that that would add value, then we're very happy to go along with that. I think that it doesn't require the kind of national co-ordination that a general election requires, and I also think they're going to be one-offs, so it's not—. Electoral management boards generally are the co-ordinating authority for a whole series of elections going forward. So, I think these are likely to be one-off, single events, quite unique, but if the committee feels strongly that that would be of benefit then that's fine with me.

I think part of my thinking, Chair, around this is that, with usual elections, there's quite clearly a political party involved somewhere, a candidate, hopefully, involved somewhere, an agent, so you can hold people responsible for activities along that. With a recall, there may not be registered political parties campaigning for the removal or retention of a particular person, so I guess there's a risk of that getting messy. I wonder whether you've thought about how the conduct of these polls should be regulated through section 11 regulations with that in mind—that there may not always be clear lines of responsibility and accountability of people getting involved in these sorts of campaigns.

Yes, it's really difficult, isn't it, because it's very hard to imagine, given the list system, how parties that are not affected by the recall might engage. We know from a lot of the research that we've done on how recall systems have worked elsewhere—. For the UK Parliament, for example, Members of the UK Parliament subject to recall have generally done something personal. It hasn't been that the whole party has done this; it's been that the person has done something that is a very individual piece of behaviour.

So, I guess the election then runs on whether that person can justify that behaviour or not to their electorate, in which case the other parties might or might not take a view about whether they have a view about that or not, I guess. But it wouldn't—. Because of the list system, it's not going to be political in the same way as—. We had a recall poll here in Wales—everybody will remember it—in Brecon and Radnorshire. But, of course, there was jeopardy for the political party involved as well in that, whereas, in this system, there would be no such jeopardy.

So it may be that political parties take the view that they're best out of it, or they may take a view that the person has committed such an egregious offence that they feel strongly that that person shouldn't continue to be the representative. It's really hard to know.

And I—. Sorry, Chair. I guess that what's interesting from a UK level, in terms of any recalls—. My understanding is that there's never been the return of a member of the same political party for each of those recalls. So, while you are right, absolutely, that, more often than not, it is a personal issue with an individual's actions, people certainly associate that person with the party that they represented, perhaps, when those actions took place. They may be suspended at the point of the election or booted out of the party. And I guess that trying to communicate that is, perhaps, going to be a challenge with this type of recall. Have you considered how that may land with the electorate, and what alternatives there could be to deal with that?

Yes. So, we explored a number of different ways that it might work. In fact, actually, as part of the passage of the reform Act, which all of you will remember, I'm sure, a large number of those things were discussed there—what would happen about filling by-elections and so on. In the end, for the reform Act, we came to the same conclusion as here: that there isn't anything you can substitute for falling to the next person on the list, because anything else creates a democratic deficit and simply doesn't work.

So, I've had discussions with a number of you outside of this committee as well on this, because this is a really difficult concept. So, you could, for example, leave the seat vacant. But then, obviously, the people in that area have one less representative through no fault of their own, and that might be a real problem for them in terms of representation. So, I don't think that's a particularly good outcome. Obviously, depending on when the recall poll took place, they might have a democratic deficit for three or more years, and that doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

You could run a D'Hondt election in that whole region, but then that calls into question the democratic mandate of the other elected representatives, through no fault of their own, because politics changes radically in the space of a year. And then you'd have people who, in the eyes of the public, ought not to be there, because that's not how the election has come out, but who haven't done anything wrong to stop them serving their term out. So, I think that that doesn't really work in terms of faith in democracy and so on.

Inevitably, you end up back where we are, which is that it drops to the next person on the list. And the only time that that would have jeopardy for a political party is if somebody's crossed the floor. So, if somebody's crossed the floor, and they're subject to recall, it would drop to the next person on the list that they were originally elected on, and not the party that they've crossed the floor to. But that's only happened a couple of times in the whole history of the Senedd.

We went round and round a little bit on this, as you can hear, and I'm sure that you've had witnesses do it as well. In the end, you end up back where we are now, because that seems the most obvious of the systems.

I guess, if I may, Chair, one final quick question on that point. I think that we've seen in this place, probably, in the last Senedd term, parties started and disbanded within the Senedd term, and I guess there may be consequences if that ever happens as well.

Well, indeed, and we'd have to try and cross that bridge when we come to it, but there would still be people on that list, even if the party didn't exist in the Senedd. So, I agree that there might be circumstances in which there's a real problem, but, hopefully, these will be very rare indeed.

Yes, sure. Thanks, Chair.

Okay. Before I move on, Sam was talking about the conduct of a recall poll, and you've highlighted very much that you didn't want to be, as a Government, putting too tight a regulation on the Commission to govern itself. But section 11 actually is about the Welsh Ministers making regulations. So, it's not the Commission, it is the Government. And you say 'may'. Why don't you say 'must', so the Welsh Ministers must do this—take the permissiveness out of that, and make the Welsh Ministers do it?

I'd be more than happy to entertain an amendment of that sort. What I'm hoping will happen as a result of the committee's deliberations is that you'll make a series of recommendations, and the Government will then work with the committee to bring forward a set of amendments that I would very much hope we could all agree. We don't have a particularly set view on that, so I'm very happy to entertain that being mandatory. Parliamentary draughtspeople, generally speaking, draft Bills to give as much leeway as possible to the Minister in question, and I think this is probably one of those instances. If the committee wants that to be mandatory, we're not going to object to that.

I will just say that it gives me a view that there's an awful lot in this Bill that is up for discussion, and the time for discussion is limited. Buffy.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for joining us this morning. I have some questions around the Standards of Conduct Committee. Could you outline why it's necessary to make it a legal requirement for there to be a Standards of Conduct Committee? Were any alternative approaches considered?

It makes specific provision for the composition of the Standards of Conduct Committee, and we thought it was very difficult to do that if there might not be a Standards of Conduct Committee. As I said in answer to an earlier question anyway, it seems inconceivable to me that you could have a decent parliamentary authority that didn't have a Standards of Conduct Committee, so we thought we would put that beyond doubt. It also means that the provisions around lay members and so on make some sense. If the committee is itself not necessarily in existence, then having a whole series of provisions around how you compose that committee doesn't make any sense at all. It's a follow-on from that, really.

We've heard a lot about lay members. We have some extra questions around that subject. Could you outline if it's necessary to make provision in this Bill to enable the Senedd to establish a process of appeals against decisions of the Standards of Conduct Committee?

Recommendation 11 of the Standards of Conduct Committee report said that we should have a legislative mechanism to enable any future appeals procedure to be brought into force by the Senedd, so we're implementing the recommendation of the standards committee. It doesn't force the Commission to do that, Buffy, but it puts the legislative framework in place that allows the establishment of the appeals committee, and then include lay members, or only comprise lay members, whichever the committee thinks is most appropriate. I know I sound like groundhog day now, but this is one of the ways where we really feel strongly it's a matter for the parliamentary authorities to decide how their standards committee and appeal mechanisms work. I think a democratic situation in which the Executive is telling the legislature how to manage its standards is not a good one, so this is deliberately done as permissive in order to allow this committee to deliberate on what it wants to recommend to the Senedd. After all, it's the Senedd that will eventually pass the Bill or not.

Thank you for that answer. Do you consider it a necessity for the Bill to mandate the establishment of the Standards of Conduct Committee, and are there any further steps that could be taken to enhance the independence of the committee in the Bill?

I do think very strongly that any parliamentary authority should have a Standards of Conduct Committee, as I said. I would just express a personal view now—not the view of the Government formally, but I'm also a Member of the Senedd, of course. I have long thought that having a committee that could have lay members on it that had particular expertise to bring to bear in the light of particular types of allegations is very important. For example, sexual misconduct allegations are very sensitive indeed and need to be looked into by people who understand how to do that and are properly qualified and trained to do it. I've long thought that it's a problem that that doesn't exist. What the Bill is doing is enabling that to happen. It doesn't mandate it, because it's not right for the Executive to do that, but it enables it. As an individual Senedd Member, I very much hope the committee does that.

You can imagine other offences that are alleged that might require specialist knowledge. Fraud, for example, can be very complex indeed. You might need somebody who has an understanding of the mechanisms of that kind of offence. You can see that an ordinary lay member, if I can call them that, might not have the expertise necessary to follow banking fraud, or something, all the way through. There's a chance now for the parliamentary authority to have a group of lay people with specific expertise who could be called in for particular types of allegation, because it's important that both the people making the allegation and the person who is being accused of it have people who understand that offence and are capable of bringing expertise to bear. I've long thought that, and that's a personal view. I want to be very clear that that's a personal view. That's not the Government's view. Those of you who know me know I vehemently think that, and have done for some time.

Can I clarify? You just said they'd be called in. We're talking about lay members who are members, not called in, because that's an expert witness, effectively. 

You could do it either way. You could have a pool of lay members who are called on to sit on particular types of appeal, or you could have people who are standing members of the committee.

We're talking about an appeal now.

Or the committee—either way.

It's important we clarify your thinking here.  

You could have both. You could have members of the standards committee who are lay people who are appointed for the duration of their term. You could have members of the standards committee who are called in for specific things but who are retained, if you like. You could do both of those, if you wanted to. And you could do that for the appeal committee as well. You don't have to have the same one for both of them either. So, you could have standing members on the standards committee—

So you're now talking about having an appeal committee with a different set of lay members to the original standards committee.

Yes. You could have an appeal committee that is an appeal committee in its own right. It doesn't have to be—

The Bill doesn't say that, does it?

It doesn't have to be a sub-committee. The Bill sets it up like a sub-committee, but it doesn't have to be a sub-committee.

Okay. Can I bring Sioned in on this one?

Diolch, Sioned. I really feel strongly that if the committee feels that that's what they want to recommend, then the Government will implement what the committee wants to recommend. I can see that the Welsh language is one of the things that you might want to have some expertise in. So, to my mind, that is one on the list of things. But I can't emphasise enough that the Government wishes to implement the views of the Senedd Commission and its committees and not to take a view themselves. So, if the committee takes that view, then we're very happy to implement it in that way. I see the point you're making, of course. 

Because we're talking about lay members, can I bring Lesley in at this point?

Thanks very much. We've heard some very differing evidence and views around lay members, and I think you have previously stated that it was a starting point. As the Bill currently is, there is provision for lay members of the Standards of Conduct Committee to be appointed for up to six years, and I think you've said that should be the maximum. I just wonder where you got that figure from. Is it arbitrary?

Longer than a Senedd term. At the moment it's five years, of course, so that would make it six years. So, longer than the Senedd term, long enough for somebody to get some expertise together. Long enough, I think, to be able to not appoint everyone for the maximum term, so that you can avoid having an all-in, all-out situation all the time. If you were to set up the original standards committee and everyone had the same term, you would forever have an all-in, all-out. So, a long enough term to have some people appointed for the full term, but also to have shorter terms than that for some people to start the rolling process, if you see what I mean. The shorter you make that longer bit, the more difficult it is to appoint people for the lesser amount of time and have that make coherent sense. So, it's a place to start. I do think having members longer than one Senedd term is an important thing. I don't think that it would be a good look to make it look like it was being politically changed every Senedd term. I think you'd need to have something that made it very evident to the public that they were not political appointments in that sense.

Continuity is very important. Currently, as the Bill is laid out, disqualification of former Members of the Senedd from being lay members of the committee is up to two years after they leave office. We have heard evidence, particularly last week, I think, that strongly suggests that people shouldn't even have any political activity to be a lay member, let alone somebody who has been a Member of the Senedd. Again, why was it two years after leaving office? Why wasn't it a full term?

The standards Measure currently provides that the person appointed as the commissioner for standards can't be appointed for a period of two years after being a Member of the Senedd, so we've just replicated that. Again, I have a very personal view on that, which is I don't think a lay member—. My own personal view is that trying to persuade a member of the public that a person who's ever been a Member of the Senedd is now a lay member is quite a hard task. That's my own personal view. But the Measure says two years for the commissioner, and so we've just replicated that for the rest of them. 

Okay. I agree with you. I think if we had gone out to consultation, if there had been more time, I'm sure—. What we're trying to do here is get trust in politics from the public.

Just finally, do you think that the Bill's long title, which states that one of its purposes is to require the existence of a Standards of Conduct Committee of the Senedd that includes members who are not Members of the Senedd, is exaggerating the effect of the Bill, given that the appointment of lay members is at the Senedd's discretion?

Yes, it does go beyond what's strictly provided for by the Bill. So if the committee doesn't make any amendments that mandate the appointment of lay members, then we'll adjust the long title accordingly.

Thank you.

On the question on the lay members, it does say it's renewable. The evidence we had is people seem to think that, as a lay member, one session is enough. We had evidence from a lay member of the Committee on Standards in London who said one term was appropriate. So, do we need to renew them? Can we just simply say they do one term, full stop? 

Again, it's a matter for the parliamentary authorities—

You're giving it back to us.

I apologise, Chair, for the anecdote, but everyone who knows me will know that, once upon a time in what now looks like prehistory, I was the head of legal services in the City and County of Swansea Council, and responsible for appointing lay members to the standards committee, and to say that it is not easy to recruit them is putting it mildly. So I think you should be careful that you don't make it so that you have somebody who's perfectly capable of serving and you've put a rule in place that means you can't ask them.

But it's also ensuring that there is change.

Yes, absolutely. Obviously, there should be term limits, but they should be long enough to attract people who can get some expertise, and long enough to make sure that there is some turnover, but not an all-out policy all the time, and all that kind of thing. It's a difficult balance, isn't it? But my own experience, which is a long time ago now, so to be fair, this might have changed, was that people were not flooding us with applications to be lay members of the standards committee.

On the standards committee—we didn't get to this point—we're making it mandatory, but we're not making it mandatory that it should be chaired by a Member who's not a member of the Executive party. We do that with public accounts. It's in the Government of Wales Act. Why don't we do it here, so that clearly there is a separation from the standards committee to the governing party or the Executive party—it might be more than one—to ensure that it's in. The reason I say this, before you say back to me that it's up to the Standing Orders to do that, is that, of course, Standing Orders won't be changed until the seventh Senedd, so you could actually have somebody appointed as Chair before then.

Well, I have no objection to it, if the committee feels strongly that that's something they recommend. I don't have any—. I'm not going to put up any objection to that Chair.

Okay, thank you. I see we're moving on in time and we do need to talk about Part 3. So, I think I'll start off with Lesley. 

Thank you. I think the main question around Part 3, and I think I know the answer, is why you are seeking to introduce this provision without having conducted any public consultation at all. 

Sorry, is that the deliberate deception provision? 

Yes, sorry. 

That's Part 3 of the Bill.

Yes, Part 3. 

Well, because we were asked to is the answer to the question. It's one of the things the Government said it would bring forward. This whole Bill is about trust in politics, isn't it? And it's about trying to do some small things that give the public more trust in its politicians. So, being explicit that those politicians shouldn't have deliberately deceived the public in order to get elected is one of the things that I think most of us can see would increase faith in politics, and so that's why it's there.

But it's very difficult to pin down, as I'm sure the committee is finding out, and that's why we have recommended that it's done by the next Senedd, so that a proper period of time in the next Senedd can be taken both by the standards committee and by the Senedd itself to come to a view about exactly how that should work.

We also think very strongly that the conduct Order, which—. We've only just redone the conduct Order for the next election and it ran to several hundred pages, and I'm very pleased it was the first bilingual one as well, which is very important. But they're complex pieces of legislation, and although in theory they're secondary legislation, they're as complex as any piece of primary legislation that we do. So, it would be appropriate for it to be included in the conduct Order, it seems to me.

Do you not think that should be made in primary legislation?

You could make that argument, but I don't see any problem with it being in the conduct Order. The current offences that occur for the conduct of elections are in the conduct Order, so that's obviously 'secondary legislation' in inverted commas. Lots of secondary legislation goes through the approval process for the Senedd, so it's largely—. You know, the Senedd gets to approve it. It's not mandated by some Minister in a back office someplace. And the conduct—. Well, all of you will have remembered the conduct Order going through. These are big pieces of legislation. It's not a small piece of work. But the current offences for elections are in the conduct Order, so this would just be replicating them.

So, just on that, we have heard concerns that there is so little detail on the scope and on the content, definition, exemptions of that new criminal offence, which, obviously, you thought it appropriate to put in the Bill for a future Government to introduce a new criminal offence on the making of false and misleading statements in subordinate legislation. We have heard concerns that there is just so little detail in the way the Bill is currently set out. So, perhaps you could say what is your answer to those concerns around why that is, and why it is included on the face of the Bill. 

So, I think really straightforwardly, if we don't put the next Senedd under a duty to do this or give them the power to do it, then what will happen is the primary legislation will happen next time, and the actual thing won't happen until the time after. So, it's a sort of, 'We should have started this 20 years ago, but the next best time is now.' If we don't do it now, then you're just knocking it forward all the time. But I do think and I do agree that there isn't time to properly develop the offence now, and that's why I think it's most appropriate to put the next Senedd to do it properly and to develop it properly, and also this is in the context of the whole reform agenda as well. So, the next Senedd is under a duty to review the way that the election happened and the way that it worked, and so this is an appropriate part of that, it seems to me, when you're looking at what happens the next time. 

To clarify, the next Senedd is not under a duty to do it; it's under a duty to put a motion forward to do it. We argued this at the point—

I accept the point, Chair; that's right. 

And the same with this. You started off this morning by saying you didn't want to put duties upon the Senedd, and yet you're now saying you're going to put a duty upon the Senedd to do something. 

Yes. So, this is to conduct the election in an appropriate way. So, that's not the way the parliamentary authority conducts itself—

The election you're talking about is 2030 at the earliest, because this won't be in place for 2026.

Yes, 2030.

So, you could put primary legislation in the next Senedd to get it done by 2030. Is that possible?

No, I don't think that that's currently possible.

You don't think it's currently possible.

Well, not with this Bill it isn't.

But that section of the Bill could be put into primary legislation in the next Senedd.

For this—. Sorry, I've lost the thread of that.

Well, you talk about—. You also mentioned, in your answer to Lesley, that you want things done now, so that it can be done for—

For 2030.

—2030. But isn't it possible to put a Bill forward in the first year, two years, of the next Senedd, the seventh Senedd, to actually still get it done and implemented by 2030?

Well, you could possibly do that. 

It is possible.

It's possible. I don't think it's probable.

But it's possible.

Yes, and it's not impossible, certainly.

Thank you. Lesley.

But I don't think it's probable that that would happen.

Just listening to your answers now, do you think this legislation would have been more appropriate done alongside the Senedd reform Bill?

Yes, I think, probably, looking at it in the round would have been an important thing to do. But that was very complicated legislation by itself. One of the things—and you'll be familiar with this from your previous experience, Lesley—one of the problems with legislation is attaching everything to that legislation that could conceivably go with it, and I think there's a case to be made for having smaller, discrete Bills that look at particular aspects. So, this is a complex aspect all by itself. Imagine bolting this to the side of the already very complicated reform Bill conversation. So, I think it's appropriate to do it in a stand-alone piece of primary legislation. And then, as well, developing the actual offence in the Senedd by the Members who would then be subject to it at the end of their term is an appropriate mechanism as well.

Okay. Just finally, we've heard concerns about the potential unintended consequences for free speech of such a broad power to prohibit or make false and misleading statements. What's your response to that?

Right. So, this is a really complicated thing, and this is where the competency discussion comes in. So, the competence for the Senedd is to affect the conduct of Senedd elections, not free speech in general. I think anything you do around free speech in the run-up to an election should be approached with severe caution, obviously. But it's in the context that we've just said, isn't it, about trying to increase public confidence in the democratic process in general. So, it's about the balancing act for that, it seems to me. But the Senedd would only have competence to do it in the light of its own election. So, we'd have to be very sure that the offence was proximate to the election, that it had an effect on the election, and that was demonstrable. So, that's quite difficult, and it's why we haven't been able to come up with that already, and I'm sure the committee is having evidence to that effect from a number of people as well.

I'm very concerned that we don't end up with a Bill that my own lawyers think isn't within competence. Because, I'm sure that the committee knows this already, but I'm the law officer for the Government, so if my legal advice was that it was outside competence, I would myself be being asked to refer it to the Supreme Court. I wish to avoid that, obviously, if at all possible. So, we're very keen to make sure that anything we do is in competence. I'm very happy to push the envelope, if you see what I mean, but we have to be sure that it is within competence. The Government is very clear that the Bill as presented is in competence and the Llywydd agreed, so that's why we're discussing it now. But when amendments come forward, we will have to be very clear that those amendments keep us inside the competence envelope and don't stray out into more general matters of freedom of speech and so on.

Thank you.

I'm happy that my lawyer's nodding happily. [Laughter.]

I noticed.

Sam, do you want to come in here?

Yes, a quick question, Chair. So, with that in mind, I wonder if you've been able to think of any examples of what may be able to be prosecuted with the way the Bill's been outlined, or whether anybody who advocates for Part 3 has been able to provide any examples as to what may be able to proceed through a court of law.

It's very difficult to come up with examples of it. I think what we're doing is establishing a principle, really. So, a large number of the utterances that various people have made, which I thoroughly object to, for example, are statements of opinion and wouldn't be caught. So, I won't repeat one here, but there are several of them where you'd think, 'Well that's not true', but it's a statement of opinion. So, it wouldn't be caught by this.

I think it's also very important that the 'deliberate' bit is put in there as well. So, if you are, whatever we call it these days, re-tweeting things—it's not called that any more, is it—'re-X-ing' things on social media or whatever, that you take some care that what you're repeating is true and isn't based on a falsehood. But if it was pointed out to you that it wasn't true, and you removed it immediately, is that deliberate? There are complications, aren't there? So, I'm not able to come up with a single thing where I say, 'This is caught', other than an obvious misstatement of fact. I don't know, but, 'There are 14 million people living in Wales.' I mean, that clearly isn't true.

Just a follow up to that, then: can you understand why it might be puzzling to people to create legislation that then can't seemingly be used?

I think it is about the principle of it. So, the principle is that a politician seeking election shouldn't deliberately deceive the public. That's the principle, isn't it? And, okay, I can't come up with one right now, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. I think the principle is an important principle that we would all agree with, wouldn't we? Nobody's going to disagree that a politician shouldn't be allowed to deliberately deceive the electorate. I would be very surprised to find somebody who disagrees with that statement. So, I think, Sam, it is a point of principle rather than a specific that we're establishing, and it's why I think the piece of work that actually defines the offence itself should be undertaken by the next Senedd.

Yes. Sorry, Chair. That's fine.

Okay. Sioned.

To that end, really, as regards what a 'statement of fact' is, for instance, something that immediately springs to my mind and we've seen in other places around the world is the use of deepfakes, for instance. So, would you be open to expanding what 'statement' means in that sense? Because that is trying to show that somebody said something by the use of AI or a manipulated image or video that would be absolutely untrue and could have an influence, couldn't it? It could be judged to have an influence in some cases. Would you be open to trying to expand what that 'statement' means on the face of the Bill in that sense?

Absolutely, you would want it to be something that had been published, and you want to find some phraseology that is as expansive as you can make it. We also don't know what technology is coming, do we? We have no idea. So, you'd want to try and futureproof it a little bit, whatever the offence is. The deepfakes are quite scary, aren't they? You see them quite often these days. And then, for those of you who follow American politics, there was an interesting one recently where it was being alleged that it was a deepfake and then it was proven that it was actually true. So, these things are getting complicated beyond belief, aren't they, really? That's why, in framing this, we would have to do it in a narrow way. We would have to be sure that it affected the outcome of the Welsh election, that it was published—the statement or whatever it is we want to call it was published—in the context of the Welsh election and with a view to affecting its outcome. So, this isn't a wide piece of work at all; it's very important that it's narrow.

But you're right: it's very important that it captures all of the kinds of tech issues that we have. Those kinds of deepfakes—. We've all heard those. People make pop songs out of words that politicians have said, don't they, and cut them in and stuff. We've all seen them, and they're quite amusing. The ones I've seen anyway are obviously fake and made for comedy. So, comedy, again, wouldn't be caught, in my view, or satire wouldn't be caught. But if you were to try and do that to make it look real, then that would be a very different matter, it seems to me. So, again, you want to be sure that you're not getting rid of comedy and satire, which is a very important part of democratic discourse, but you're also catching something that makes it look like I said something that I very obviously didn't say, in a realistic way. As the tech advances, that gets more and more difficult to spot, doesn't it?

It is very difficult, and the evidence we have received so far demonstrates what a challenge it would be, and whether any court could actually decide upon whether something was intentional, reckless, deliberate—I think you used the word—or not. And whilst you say it's a principle, there has to be an achievement of that principle as well in the legislation. I suppose I'm going back to this all the time, this situation, where we're talking about a conduct Order, which would use secondary legislation to deliver all this. There's a lot of information that has to be clear. The detail has to be made available. Therefore, public consultation is going to be wide-ranging on any conduct Order. It should be wide-ranging on this, to be honest, because to have an understanding of what this all means and the implications of it is important. Do you anticipate—? Are you putting it somewhere in place that such public consultation must take place for a conduct Order? Because, to have the confidence and trust you talked about, then people must buy into it and, to buy into it, they need to understand it and be part of the discussions, but, at this point in time, I don't see that happening.

Well, there are a couple of things to say there. So, first off, the consultation on the deliberate deception point was part of the Standards of Conduct Committee piece of work that they did. They did quite a piece of work on deliberate deception, and took a number of—

We've seen the report—I appreciate that—and this is a consequence of the two reports from the Standards of Conduct Committee, but this is a Bill that should have its own consultation.

Well, we've implemented the recommendations of the standards committee, as we accepted we would do, and, as I say, as part of the agreement. My own view would be that the conduct Order is a very technical piece of work that affects the general public. So, it's an interesting combination of a technical piece of work that does have quite an effect on the way the public exercises its democratic right. So, you could take the view that public consultation is appropriate. I don't think it's a particularly accessible piece of work, so you'd have to do some work around it if you were going to do some consultation. The consultation, generally, is with people who run elections—the local authorities, the Electoral Commission, the electoral management board, the administrators, the people who—. I can never remember their acronym.

The AEA.

Yes. Whatever they're called—the Association of Electoral Administrators. Oh, they've simplified it since I last spoke to them.

So, we do technical consultations with a whole series of people who have an interest in these things, particularly the electoral administrators in the local authorities, who are actually asked to implement it. So, it's important to get all of their views about the practical implications of it. But I have absolutely no objection at all to doing a public consultation on it as well. I think you would probably have to explain in a little more detail what you were consulting on and why. But that's not hard to do.

But it's important, because you are talking about something that candidates would be subject to, and they're not necessarily going to be the technical experts you're talking about. They're going to be people from all backgrounds. So, there's an understanding necessary, from the point of what they have to say on these things as well.

Yes, absolutely, and, of course, if you are standing as a candidate, then your agent will have a large number of things to look through, and, generally speaking, the electoral administrators get the agents together and talk them through the technicalities of all of this, because some people will be agents for the first time and won't be experienced at it, of course. So, there's quite a bit of hand-holding that goes on to make sure that people do understand it. But I don't disagree at all that before you put it in place there should be consultation with people who will have an interest and who will be wider—. So, people who've acted as agents in the past will have a view, for example, it would seem to me. So, I'm not objecting in any way, Chair, to that being included.

And you've said that the Order has to be made for the 2030 elections. Is that a requirement or obligation on Welsh Ministers to produce a new conduct Order in the Bill?

Well, I'm happy to have it made a requirement, if that's what the committee wants. I mean, it seems to me that that's appropriate.

Okay. On timescales, what type of timescales are we talking about in which a complaint can be made in this? I know it's an election, but are we talking about only during the election period itself? Are we talking about, maybe, several weeks afterwards, because you know how the expenses go in for a month afterwards, so, theoretically, the election work goes on beyond the election? Have you identified timescales in which this actual offence may be considered?

I don't think we've reached a full conclusion on that at this stage, other than to say, I think, that the vast majority of the offences that sit within the conduct Order are within certain regimes, either the illegal practice or the corrupt practice, and depending on which routes you may go down, either through a criminal approach or through an elections court, there are limits in terms of timescales around election court processes. I'm not sure, Anna, whether there's a similar limit on the criminal approach.

Not on the criminal approach, but if it was to be a part of the illegal practice regime or the corrupt practice regime within the conduct Order, then, yes, there are strict, very short deadlines after the poll. But, for the criminal prosecutions, anybody could make a complaint at any time, but what effect that would have on the election is less certain than if it was an election petition route. It would still have some of the consequences flowing if you were found guilty of it. If it was an illegal practice or a corrupt practice, then the consequences that flow, such as the inability to sit as a Senedd Member, would have an impact if you were found guilty of it in a criminal court, but there is no time limit on when that criminal complaint can be made in the same way as it is for an election petition.

And on the human rights element, because, obviously, there's a human rights element here of an individual who is being accused, and the justice impact as well, do your human rights assessments and your justice impact assessments actually reflect upon these points within the Bill?

So, this is the point I'm making about making sure that it's narrow enough for competence and then that helps with the impact assessments as well, because if it's affecting the election—. The point about human rights is that they have to be proportionate. So, you're restricting a human right, freedom of speech, but it's proportionate and it's proportionate because it's a set period of time and it affects a particular event. I think that's the current view we're taking, and it's why we're nervous, as you can hear, about widening that. If that's widened out, then I think we would start to have human rights concerns about it because interfering with freedom of speech in the run-up to an election is clearly a very serious thing to do and you'd have to have very specific reasons to do it.

Fine. Since we have some time—[Interruption.] Have you got a question? Go on, then.

Yes, I think that's incredibly sensible. Absolutely. And, as I said, you'd have to review the whole thing anyway if you're reviewing the way that the whole system works, so it would be part of that review, wouldn't it? So, that seems a very sensible proposition.

We haven't talked about the standards commissioner's own-initiative approach, I think because we understand it and everyone seems to think it's a good idea. But, I suppose it's how we actually allow that to happen, and some of the points that you talked about, about ensuring that the Welsh language—. It means that anybody can be comfortable in that process. So, I'll leave that to one side. But, I've one other point. Did you consider—? We've noticed, going back to the recall side of things—because I've got two minutes—that, for the criminal act, there's a notification in the English and Welsh courts but not those of Northern Ireland and Scotland. We understand that there are different legal issues here, but has there been any consideration by the Welsh Government as to how that could be achieved or the implications of that not being achieved as a consequence?

So, first off, I think that if a Senedd Member is committing an offence in Northern Ireland or Scotland, the likelihood of it not being in the newspapers is pretty low. So, you'd know anyway, it seems to me. Obviously, the Member themselves is under a duty to say so, so that's another way of knowing. But also you'd have some protocols in place, it seems to me—voluntary protocols. There's no reason why that can't happen. We just don't have any legal way of doing it because it's outside our jurisdiction. 

Has any other Member got a question for the Counsel General? We've got five minutes if you want to ask a question. Okay. Thank you, Counsel General.

Can I make one last—

It all depends, yes.

—plea, then, in that case? This is a very unusual Bill, as I said at the beginning, and I think it's very important that we try and reach a consensus about where we are, so I'd be very happy to speak to the committee once its report is prepared, and so on, about any consequential amendments that might want to come forward, so that we could work together to do them, so that we don't end up with the kind of conversation we sometimes have at Stage 2, which we'll all be familiar with, where the Member in charge says, 'Well, I absolutely understand what you're talking about, but the language isn't right for the Bill', and we avoid that if at all possible by working together—so, our parliamentary draftspeople and your Commission lawyers work together to try and get a consensus view about what that looks like. It's just an offer I'm making, Chair.

I'm sure the Commission welcome the offer. The question we have, as a committee, obviously, is whether we consider the Bill to be of a standard we can recommend or not, in a sense, and our biggest concerns, as stated at the beginning, is the timescale and the rush of this Bill, because it is an important Bill. It does have serious implications for future Senedd Members and their livelihoods, and the opportunities for the public as well. So, we are concerned about the ability to actually undertake a wider consultation in the appeal time. I understand your points of why you're trying to get it done, but our job is to make sure, when Bills come through the Senedd, they are good Bills and laws, and to make sure they are effective. So, these are deep concerns.

I think there's a very obvious danger that, although the Chair says it's possible to do it in the first year or so of a four-year term, the likelihood of that happening is very low indeed, it seems to me. So, if you haven't got established the principle of a recall system in order to work on the conduct Order, whoever the incoming Government is, in order to do the work on the conduct Order immediately, then the chances of that timing out again are very high, it seems to me, and the reason we have brought the Bill forward is because we think establishing the principles now, so that you can immediately work on the conduct Order and get that in place for next time, for the recall provisions in particular to happen, is a very important principle. If we don't do it now—the Chair's quite right—it's possible but, I think, very improbable that that would happen in the next Senedd. I think there's a real issue about whether you'd knock it on into yet another one by that time, because you've got a conduct Order to do, you've got the reform to do, and you've got a whole series of other things to do. The chances of this sliding past are pretty high. It's a personal opinion, but that's my view. I've been in charge of the legislative programme in the Government for a long time, and it would be very, very difficult, in my view, to see this as a priority for any incoming new Government.

I think you'll end up with no recall system, won't you, and so we'll be one of the only Parliaments without one. I haven't encountered anyone who doesn't think putting a recall system in place is a good idea. So, I think we all think it's a good idea; it's just a question of how and when we do it, and, as I said, I absolutely don't disagree that we maybe should have started this earlier. We are where we are. If we don't do it now, we'll be in the same position next time, it seems to me.

From my history as Chair of the Reform Bill Committee, where we talked about the reform—I think Anna was there at the time—we did highlight the concerns that there was no recall at that point in time. I know we're there at the moment, but the question we'd have to ask ourselves is: is this Bill delivering what we want it to deliver? That's the question, and that's our job.

Well, indeed, Chair, it is, and, as I say, we understand the difficulty, but I think the principle is an important one.

Lots of principles are important, but the question is: does the law deliver the principle? That's the question we ask.

Thank you for your time. As you will be aware, Counsel General and your colleagues, you will receive a copy of the transcript. If there are any factual inaccuracies, please let us know as soon as possible. With that in mind, thank you very much.

For members of the committee, item 3 is papers to note. There are a couple of papers to note. One is, actually, a letter to the Counsel General from the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee on this particular Bill. The second one is a letter to the Business Committee on the impact of the timetable for scrutiny, which we've sent to the Business Committee, and it was considered this morning. So, are Members happy to note that? Thank you.

Under item 4, we now, under Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix), resolve to exclude the public for the remainder of this meeting, and from our meetings on 3, 9 and 16 December. Are Members content to do so? I see they are, so we will now move into private session. Thank you very much.