Procedures Committee, 04 Feb 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 4, 2003

Official Report 250KB pdf

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Dissolution Issues

That takes us to our third paper, for which we are joined by Andrew Mylne. The clerk has asked me to point out that the covering paper contains an error, in that the Parliamentary Bureau has not considered the issues in question. The directorate of clerking and reporting felt that the paper did not need to go to the bureau, so it has come straight to the committee.

I ask Andrew Mylne to introduce the paper.

I have very little to say about the paper; indeed, I hope that it speaks largely for itself. It covers one or two issues that relate specifically to the forthcoming dissolution of Parliament. As I say at the beginning of the paper, we are simply trying to ensure that everything works in that context in the way that we have envisaged. We have also taken the opportunity to include a few other unrelated changes to bill procedure.

My only substantive point is to ask the committee to disregard paragraph 6 of the annexe, which deals with consolidation bills. Since the paper was prepared, we have had cause to revisit the issue and the Executive officials who read the paper pointed out that our suggestions might cause complications. In any case, we are aware that the Parliament's first consolidation committee—which has been set up to deal with the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries (Consolidation) (Scotland) Bill—has recently published a stage 1 report that invites the Procedures Committee to examine a few issues about consolidation procedure. I imagine that that matter is likely to come before the successor committee in the new session. If that committee is to undertake a more general examination of consolidation procedure, it seems more sensible not to jump the gun by raising a very small point at this stage, especially as we might not have got things entirely right. If that explanation sounds reasonable, the committee might agree to disregard the paragraph.

For the reasons given, is the committee happy to exclude the issue of the consolidation bill from our consideration of the paper? We will hold it over for our successors.

Members indicated agreement.

I wonder whether Andrew Mylne could clarify a particular point for my benefit. In relation to paragraph 3, which concerns marshalled lists, I did not really understand what you wished not to include in those lists.

The paragraph refers to the fact that a manuscript amendment can be lodged at any stage. As members know, a manuscript amendment is lodged after the deadline and can be considered with the amendments that have been lodged before that deadline only with the agreement of the Presiding Officer or committee convener. The committee has already examined the criteria for making such decisions. If the convener or Presiding Officer decides that such an amendment cannot be moved, it means that it cannot be disposed of, even though it will be published in the business bulletin like all other amendments. Because the purpose of a marshalled list is to provide an agenda of the options that are available to the committee or the Parliament at a particular meeting, it seems to be more appropriate not to include in marshalled lists manuscript amendments that it has been decided cannot be moved.

Are such amendments included in the marshalled list at the moment?

I think that we have not been including them if we know that it has been decided that they cannot be moved. However, the rule is not entirely clear as to whether that is expected. As a result, it is simply a matter of ensuring that the rule is clear on the point.

So it is simply clarification of existing practice.

Indeed. I should point out that, if a decision has not been taken by the convener or Presiding Officer by the time the marshalled list is printed, we would include the amendment in the list to ensure that it was there if it were decided that it could be moved.

I am happy enough with that. Do members have any questions?

Do manuscript amendments appear in the business bulletin?

Yes. Every amendment that is lodged is printed somewhere.

So the public would know about it.

Yes.

The next item for approval deals with members' bills and proposals, which would, in effect, require in the new Parliament the support of a sufficient number of members to proceed. That seems perfectly reasonable.

It might have been helpful if the section on members' bills and proposals had gone to the Parliamentary Bureau, because not only the bureau but the Procedures Committee is considering non-Executive bills generally. Issues that would have an impact might arise from that. It makes sense to have to make decisions prior to dissolution about what will happen pre-dissolution and post-dissolution.

It might be possible to inform the bureau of what the committee decides before anything goes to the Parliament for approval.

The bureau should be informed.

The proposal is fairly consistent with other proposals that have been to the bureau. That might have been the reason why the proposal was brought straight to the committee. Will you explain exactly what is proposed in paragraph 8?

I have set out the circumstances in which it might be appropriate not to print a proposal in the bulletin for the full month that is currently required. As I explain in the earlier paper, there are good reasons for publishing proposals for a full month, even if they get 11 supporters quite early on, because there is a lot of symbolic significance attached to getting supporters for a proposal. Members quite often continue to add their names after the procedural threshold has been reached, which seems to be perfectly proper.

It would seem slightly odd to continue to print a proposal if the bill had already been introduced, because the bill supersedes the proposal, so to speak. When the Parliament has been dissolved, there are no business bulletins, so we could not continue to publish the proposal. If dissolution is particularly short, it is theoretically possible that the month might still be ticking along when the Parliament returns; that would seem very odd.

So, is the paragraph a request to take a bill proposal out of the business bulletin when there is no longer any requirement for it to be there, although it is still technically within the publication time?

The situation is unlikely to arise and in the vast majority of cases the proposal will continue to be published for the full month.

Are members happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

I like your proposal to introduce the subjunctive. Donald Gorrie and I, as the committee's pedants, particularly approve of that sort of thing. I think that you are proposing to call amendments "amendments" and to call motions "motions", but to treat both the same way.

That is pretty much as simple as it gets.

That seems to be sensible. Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

What a day.

Paragraph 17 relates to a minor inconsistency. At the moment it is clear that we move to a vote immediately after debate on the lead amendment in each grouping. You wish it to be made clear that only the lead amendment requires to be moved immediately and voted on immediately and that all the others are voted on as soon as they are moved. In effect, the paragraph underscores existing practice.

Indeed—it precisely reflects existing practice. The existing wording of the appropriate rule was no doubt drafted to produce the system that we operate, but it implies a slightly different system, which we not only do not operate, but could not operate.

Do members agree?

Members indicated agreement.

Paragraph 18 is possibly more substantive. I do not know whether the situation has ever arisen in practice, but it would be infuriating for a member to be in that position. Standing orders do not allow members who are—for the purpose of taking part in debates on a bill—attending a committee of which they are not members to object to the withdrawal of an amendment by the unanimous agreement of the committee.

You suggest allowing members who are attending but who are not committee members to require a moved motion to be voted on. That would give them the equivalent right to the right that they have at the moment to move an amendment that has not been moved. That change would allow all members to participate fully in the work of a committee at stage 2. That is an important change, although I suspect that nobody has ever realised that it is a problem and it has never happened—or has it?

I am not aware of its having happened. It is probably a smaller problem in practice than it is in theory. I presume that if all of a committee's members were happy for an amendment to be withdrawn, and if the non-committee member succeeded in forcing a division on it, it is unlikely that the amendment would be agreed to. Nevertheless, it seems to me to be right in principle that the option should be available.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

This is a real dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin session. It will be a little gem to be treasured in the annals of this committee.

We have agreed that the issue with consolidation bills should be held over until consolidation is addressed in the round.

The issue about members in charge is another delicious little one. I am sure that Andrew will enjoy explaining it to us.

As I have tried to set out in the paper, there is a small anomaly in relation to Executive bills and committee bills. The Parliament has agreed to changes to the member-in-charge rule, in particular to acknowledge that although ministerial responsibilities might change during the passage of an Executive bill, that should not affect the rights of the minister in charge simply to keep the bill moving through its stages.

We want to ensure that the same is true of committee bills in all relevant respects, because they are also the expression of a collective will, unlike member's bills, which are the expression of individual MSPs. I suggest further tweaking of the rule to ensure that the process works in the context of dissolution and where—as is possible—a committee is wound up and replaced by another committee with a similar remit during the course of a session. The proposal seeks to ensure that a bill is not frustrated in its progress by such eventualities.

That change would mean that you could have a member who was no longer convener piloting a bill for a committee that still exists.

It would mean that if a committee bill was introduced by the convener of a committee, the bill could continue its progress and continue to have a member in charge even if that individual ceased to be the convener. Whoever takes over as convener of the committee becomes the member in charge under the existing rule, but the proposal would ensure that if a whole new committee came along during the same session, the convener of that committee would become the member in charge.

Where a convener resigns, moves or whatever and there is a new convener, you are not precluding that new convener of the committee from being the member in charge. However, if you are introducing an option, how would you ensure which person is in charge of the bill?

The current rule provides that if the convenership of a committee changes during the passage of a bill that that committee originated, the new convener automatically picks up member-in-charge status and therefore has the necessary procedural rights. That is already covered in the rules.

Are you adding a complication? Would the proposal apply only when a committee ceased to exist?

Yes.

That is fine.

Do members agree to the proposal, and to the consequent changes to standing orders?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you, Andrew. I am sure that you enjoyed that.

I did.

I did too. If Mike Russell were still a member of the committee we could have discussed that for two, if not three, hours; but they were giants in those days.

Item 4 is another dissolution issues paper, for which we are joined by Hugh Flinn, as well as by Andrew Mylne. They will invite us to consider the highlights and the changes that they want to make.

The paper is a joint effort between Hugh Flinn and me. I am primarily responsible for the material on changes to the standing orders and I am happy to answer questions on it. However, the material on what will happen in the new session with the general procedure for parliamentary questions and motions is mostly Hugh's; he will be happy to answer questions on those aspects.

The first specific recommendation is that motions should fall at the end of the parliamentary session and should not carry over into the next one. There is nothing to stop members who are re-elected from lodging the same motion, either to air an issue or to pursue a members' business debate. However, the idea is that when the Parliament ends, all the unfinished business, including motions, should disappear. Are members happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

We are invited to agree that there is no need to change the rules on oral questions in relation to dissolution because the existing rules are adequate. Do members agree that there is no need for change?

Members indicated agreement.

The suggestion on written questions is, in effect, to close written questions 14 days before the dissolution or expected dissolution. The suggestion is made on the basis that difficult, complicated and research-intensive questions are unlikely to receive a substantive answer in that period. Do members agree to the suggestion?

Members indicated agreement.

On questions that are lodged before the axe falls, but which are not answered before dissolution, it is suggested that the member who asked the question should receive an answer if the answer arises in the course of dissolution. I presume that that includes the period after the election but before the swearing-in of new members.

Strictly speaking, that is not correct. Dissolution ends when Parliament meets first after an election.

So, a written answers report could be produced before the swearing-in of members.

The date on which the written answers report would be brought out is not settled. In practice, it would probably come out around the time of the first business bulletin of the new session.

Would that fall on the day of the swearing-in of members?

I am not absolutely sure, but it might well fall on that day.

Anyway, the intention is that, as soon as is realistically possible, any answer that has not appeared in the public record—including outstanding answers to members who are no longer members—will be produced in the first written answers report.

I have a few concerns about paragraph 18 of the second dissolution issues paper. I understand that the Executive will desist from answering questions during dissolution and that answers will be sent in letters to members during that time. However, given that during dissolution members who are standing again will cease to be members and will become candidates, I am concerned that the Executive will treat former MSPs as candidates and will correspond with them in the same way in which it would correspond with other candidates.

Given the counting-days rule that questions cannot be asked in the 14 days before dissolution, the Executive should not have to answer questions during dissolution. It will still be possible for urgent issues to be addressed by oral questions. If an urgent constituency issue arises in the 14 days prior to dissolution, the member could pursue it by writing to the minister. We must also be aware of emergency questions. The Presiding Officer would have to look kindly on a request for an emergency question that involved an urgent constituency issue that could not be addressed by a letter or an oral question.

That is probably what paragraph 18 means when it states:

"such answers will be sent in letters to the members who asked them before dissolution."

I do not anticipate a great deal of that during the election period because the Executive could be open to the accusation that it is not providing answers or that it is only providing answers to members from the Executive parties. Our recommendation should be that we steer away from such activities during dissolution.

I do not think that we can recommend that. We can either accept the approach that is possible or, if we do not want answers to be given to questions during dissolution, we would have to change standing orders to stop questions being answered. The Executive could be invited to stop answering questions, but that will not be binding.

I understand that the Executive has proposed that and that it will not answer questions. However, it will correspond with candidates if required.

It is hoped that the situation will not arise, but that if it does, it will happen rarely. The Executive has made a commitment that it will, if possible, answer every question substantively before dissolution. Paragraph 18 is merely a contingency to deal with specific situations in which it is not practical to answer a question before dissolution because of, for example, the volume of research involved.

It is also correct that the Executive will deal with such questions in a letter to members. The issue for the committee is that, from the point of view of transparency, it is clearly appropriate that a substantive answer should, when given in a letter, be public, as would any answers given before dissolution. That is why we suggest that such answers appear in a written answers report when a new session starts.

I am quite comfortable with that.

Although the answer to an individual member might be given during dissolution, there will be no publication of that answer—it will not appear on the website, for example—until after dissolution.

Yes.

So, only the person who asked the question would get the answer.

We would be quite happy with that. The answers could appear on the website at the same time as the written answers report was published when the new session starts.

Okay. Are we happy to go with that?

Members indicated agreement.

After the election, we would ask to note when the lodging of new questions will begin. Is everyone happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.

We therefore approve the changes to standing orders 1, 2 and 3 to give effect to those recommendations.

Members indicated agreement.