Procedures Committee, 06 Mar 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Official Report 247KB pdf

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Conveners' Speeches

Item 5 is a referral from Alex Neil MSP on the time that is allocated to committee conveners during stage 1 and stage 3 debates. I have referred Alex Neil's comments to the Presiding Officer to see whether the suggestions can be accommodated within the existing scheme of things. If not, we might discuss the subject in an issues paper in the fullness of time. Clearly, if we give the relevant committee conveners more time, we have to take time away from other speakers in the debate. That is the issue that we would have to resolve.

The next relevant debate will take place on March 14, on the Housing (Scotland) Bill. The Social Justice Committee is the lead committee, the Local Government Committee dealt with a substantial part of the bill independently, the Equal Opportunities Committee has dealt with the bill and the Finance Committee is discussing the financial memorandum today. If the convener of each of those committees took the time that Alex Neil suggests, there would be no speeches at all from back-bench members. I cannot see any justification for that.

The timing of such debates needs to be reviewed. The time that has been allocated for the Housing (Scotland) Bill is inappropriate. Given the complexity of the bill, we should have a much longer debate to allow participation by members who have an interest but are not committee conveners and therefore not already in a privileged position, who are not committee members and therefore have not had a chance to take part in the debate and who are not front-bench speakers or ministers. Bills are for the whole Parliament—we have all been elected to represent everyone's interests. We should consider carefully—perhaps at another meeting—how we deal with the bigger bills and how they are timetabled.

I am also concerned that it would be difficult to monitor whether the convener was speaking strictly as convener of the committee—they might include their own political viewpoint in any speeches. Alex Neil's letter was rather ambiguous. He says that the length of time that he was given to speak on the Education (Graduate Endowment and Student Support) (Scotland) (No 2) Bill

"did not allow me to put across the Committee, as opposed to the Party point of view".

So he wants the extra time to speak on behalf of the committee.

Exactly. That makes it more complicated. It also makes it difficult for the Presiding Officer to make a judgment call on whether a member is straying into party policy, particularly if they do not know the minutiae of a party's approach to a subject. That, added to Brian Adam's points, makes me slightly reluctant to take the matter much further.

I take a different view. I agree with Brian Adam that the stage 1 debates on important bills are not nearly long enough, which is annoying. I have found that the members who tend to speak in debates are the committee members who have dealt with the issue, and other members who have an interest do not get called. The same must happen in other party groups.

On the other hand, the convener of the lead committee should have a reasonable amount of time to speak in a debate, provided that he or she is clearly setting out the committee's stall. The committee will have done a lot of work and the convener's speech is helpful to the members who have not read the committee report industriously, even though they should have done. I agree that the situation becomes more complex if more than one committee is involved. We need more time for the debate and more time for the committee convener.

I agree with Donald Gorrie, with the proviso that giving one member more time does not have an adverse effect on other members. However, it is legitimate to give conveners extra time or more status—I do not know whether there is a difference between the two—to explain the committee's position. Four minutes, frankly, is not enough. I recognise that the situation puts the Presiding Officer in a difficult position, and there have been a few cases in which conveners from all parties have strayed on to their own political agenda instead of sticking to the committee's remit. However, we could live with that if committee members took retribution and ticked off the convener at the next committee meeting instead of that happening in the chamber. The committee system's self-regulating mechanisms should be used; I would not put the onus on the Presiding Officer to control any convener, unless what the convener was saying was out the window.

Okay. We have had a good thrash at the issues and, obviously, Sir David Steel will respond in due course. We will also gather the views of conveners. Members have made the point forcefully that giving the conveners more status in such debates would impact on back benchers. When we return to the issue, we should probably approach it from the standpoint of protecting back benchers' interests and claims on parliamentary time. Are we agreed to draw up a paper and consider the responses in due course?

Members indicated agreement.

I hijacked the issue by focusing on the Housing (Scotland) Bill. However, other bills that come before the Parliament could be 111 sections long. Could we consider, and make some recommendations on, timetabling and the allocation of time to speakers?

We could do that. However, the difficulty is that we would be second-guessing the Parliamentary Bureau by saying that it has not allocated sufficient time to discuss that stage of the Housing (Scotland) Bill and, theoretically, other bills. Perhaps we should not pick up on specific points.

I was highlighting a general point.

If we felt that, generally, there was insufficient time for stage 1 debates, it would be legitimate for us to consider the matter, discuss it with the bureau and make recommendations on it. We will note your comments and bear them in mind when considering our forward work programme.