The next item on the agenda is consideration of the paper on increasing the effectiveness of committees, which has been circulated to members. Do members have any comments? If you wish, I can go through the paper paragraph by paragraph. I came to this process on the conveners liaison group fairly late in the day and certainly did not feel like trying to make any large changes, even though there are some aspects about which I am not particularly excited. However, most of the paper is advisory and the recommendations have enough flexibility to allow committees to decide their own priorities.
As I am concerned that some of the paper's recommendations might be adopted, I think that we should comment on several issues. For a start, the paper suggests that standing orders could be amended to allow committees to meet at the same time as the Parliament. As the Parliament meets for nine hours a week, it would be absolutely atrocious to overlap its work with committee meetings. That would deprive members of involvement in the plenary meetings, which are already short. I would like to think that the committee will express reservations about that.
I think that I am correct in saying that the paper does not refer to substitutes because the issue has already been referred to the Procedures Committee, following the committee restructuring. It was felt that proposals for that were already under consideration, so there was not much point in including the issue in the paper.
I echo Phil Gallie's comments on the idea of amending standing orders to allow committees to meet while the Parliament is in plenary session. Although that might appear to be a good thing for the management of committee business and an attractive option from the conveners' point of view, I think that, if we were to make that change, we would soon realise what a mistake it was. For example, if Phil Gallie was involved in a debate in the chamber, that would put him in considerable difficulty as the only Conservative member of this committee. I strongly oppose the idea of amending standing orders in that way.
The middle point under paragraph 5 states:
I was a bit unhappy about the idea of timetabling committee meetings at the same time as meetings of the whole Parliament, especially because committees do not generally meet on Mondays, Fridays and Wednesday evenings. It is not as though there is no time during the week when committees could meet, although they choose not to meet at those times. I did not think that the idea of committees meeting on Wednesday afternoons or on Thursdays stood up to much argument, given that we have Mondays and Fridays available. Clearly, other people felt differently. Although diaries may treat Mondays and Fridays as free at the moment—and I hear what Maureen Macmillan says about the difference between them—things could change in the fullness of time, if we know that Mondays and Fridays are no longer as free as they used to be.
The process has to be two-way.
Yes, consultation has to be a two-way process.
I have a general observation on the committee system. I have already referred to the fact that we act as an investigatory power and as a second chamber. I am sometimes concerned by the narrowing of expertise that is evident in the legislative process in the Scottish Parliament. When bills come before the chamber, the people who participate in the debate always tend to be the ones who have been involved all the way through the committee stages. Those are the people, perhaps understandably, who have picked up the expertise.
It is up to the parties to decide who they want to represent them in any debate. It is not up to us to comment on that. It could also be argued that it is of benefit to have somebody speaking in a debate who knows what they are talking about rather than, as happens in another place that I can think of, people who do not know what they are talking about.
This committee may suffer because many members of Parliament tend to shy away from justice issues, which can involve complex legal points. Bills such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Bill are not exactly going to attract many folk to consider our reports. From my point of view, it is down to individual members to choose whether they want to consider the matter in detail. I do not think that the committee can really do anything to improve that.
I am not sure that that is necessarily to do with our response to the paper on the effectiveness of committees. We shall write to the conveners group encapsulating the remarks that have been made.
Meeting closed at 11:53.