Procedures Committee, 29 Feb 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 29, 2000

Official Report 123KB pdf

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Scots

I welcome Irene McGugan, who has come here this morning to speak on the first item on the agenda—the use of the Scots language.

I thank the committee for addressing the issue and for taking the trouble to produce a helpful paper. It seems anomalous that members are able, with the permission of the Presiding Officer, to speak in the chamber in Scots—and are reported in Scots in the Official Report—yet are not able to lodge a motion in Scots or Gaelic. If oral Scots is acceptable, perhaps written Scots should be considered to be eligible for use in motions.

The ambiguity of the status of Scots as a language has been mentioned. I contend that it is a language. It is recognised by the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages as one of the lesser-known minority languages of Europe. That definition is good enough for me.

The consultative steering group report had several interesting things to say on the use of Scots and Gaelic. It concluded that the normal working language of the Parliament should be English, but that that did not prohibit the use of Scots or Gaelic. It took the view that most members would be expected to understand both spoken and written Scots, and that there would be no need to provide interpretation facilities for any MSPs who wanted to use Scots.

The Welsh Assembly model, as outlined in the paper, seems to have a great deal to commend it. Any difficulties of interpretation between Scots and English could easily be addressed by any number of academic experts and Scots language organisations who could advise Parliament.

The paper suggests that if Scots and Gaelic were considered acceptable languages in which to lodge motions, motions in any non-English language would have to be allowed. However, that logic is flawed, as has been highlighted by other decisions that have been made by Parliament. We have signage in English and Gaelic only and there is no suggestion that we should have signs in every language. The Parliament is about to appoint a Gaelic officer, but will appoint no officer for any other language. The Welsh have not adopted that principle; they use English and Welsh and have not sought to use other languages.

As a member of the Equal Opportunities Committee, I shall support any and every move towards an inclusive Scotland. However, there is a case for acknowledging the status of Scotland's indigenous languages—Scots and Gaelic—and a strong historical and cultural argument can be made for that.

Finally—before members ask me all sorts of questions—I suggest that the option of being able to lodge motions in Scots or Gaelic with an English translation would be acceptable. That would not require an amendment to standing orders—which would make the change easier—although when I tried to submit a motion in both Scots and English it was rejected on the basis that standing orders prescribe that a motion should be lodged in English only. Allowing motions in Scots to be lodged would be a significant step forward.

I ask John Patterson to comment, for the committee's benefit, on the interpretation of standing orders in relation to the lodging of a motion in English and Scots.

That is set out on page 7 of the paper on Scots. Motions are to be lodged in English, but the advice that the paper sets out is that they can also be lodged in any other language.

Would the business bulletin print both versions if motions were lodged in English and another language?

That would be possible.

What is current practice?

It would print both versions.

That was not my experience—my motion was rejected.

As we understand standing orders, the chamber desk ought to have accepted your motion in both versions, and printed it in both versions. I do not see any logical reason not to accept that.

Irene is right to draw this matter to our attention, particularly the refusal to accept a motion that was lodged in Scots. That was erroneous and should not be repeated. A member should have the right to lodge a motion in any language they choose, as long as they provide an English translation. The burden on providing the translation should be on the member, although the clerks would want to check it. Given that one is required to give notice before speaking in another language, as we know from the Gaelic debate on Thursday, the clerks might ask for the translation to be checked before the motion is published in the bulletin. That would be reasonable if the clerks felt that the translation might be inaccurate.

There would be no question but that, for legal reasons, the English motion would take precedence. That is the nature of the legislation. Nothing can be done about that, except to change it by primary legislation. We are not proposing that. However, we are being unduly restrictive. Irene is opening up an area that we should be relaxed about.

All of Mike's points are perfectly valid. Do members see any difficulties with them?

No.

Should we advise the chamber desk of our decision, or will the chamber desk pick it up from the clerks' internal briefings?

You should write a letter.

We will write a letter incorporating Mike's points of clarification.

Could we copy the letter to the Presiding Officer and ask for a brief notice in the business bulletin so that the matter is clarified? A precedent has been set and we want to overturn it as quickly as possible.

That is fair. Are you happy with that, Irene?

I am.

I am not against the pragmatic way in which this is being suggested, but we ought to be clear about procedures in terms of the precedence of the English version, which Mike referred to, and the lodging of amendments. If a member wishes to lodge an amendment to a motion that has been lodged in English and in another language, who will the onus be on to provide the translation of the amendment into the other language?

It should be on the member who lodges the amendment.

With the deepest respect, that is not necessarily the case. If English has precedence and the person who is lodging the amendment is not a speaker of the other language—whether it is Gaelic, Scots or some other language—I am not sure that the onus should be on them to provide the translation of the amendment. We need to be clear about that.

I am improvising here, but I would have thought that if a member wished to amend a motion lodged in English and Scots, it would be competent to lodge the amendment in English only.

The English version would be formally moved, so the other version would have no legal standing.

We must be clear about that, because members might have their rights to lodge amendments restricted.

We should point out in the notice in the bulletin that if members wish to amend a motion in Scots or in any other language, they need amend only the English version.

Sometimes, the number of questions or motions a member lodges becomes a political virility symbol. I hope that people would not feel obliged to show their 100 per cent Scottishness by using Scots incessantly. It is useful to have talked about this, and it is relevant to certain motions, but I hope that some common sense will be applied.

It will probably not be, now that you have drawn attention to it, Donald. I appreciate your point, and it is up to each of us to interpret as we see fit the various ways in which parliamentary questions are recorded and presented.

Irene McGugan does not need to stay for the rest of the meeting if she has better things to do, although she is welcome to stay.