Procedures Committee, 07 Sep 1999

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 7, 1999

Official Report 135KB pdf

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Summing-up Speeches (Interventions)

That takes us to paper PR/99/3/3, which is on interventions. There was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing about interventions just before the recess. It appears to me, even from the limited amount of business last week, that this issue is beginning to settle down a wee bit. It seems to be understood that interventions are possible during closing speeches, but that the Presiding Officer is attempting to protect all members—not only concluding speakers—from interventions when they are clearly winding up their speeches.

I think that that is sensible practice, but not something that we would necessarily want written into the standing orders. I thought that things seemed to be working better last week.

I disagree entirely. There is no normal precedent for protecting members during the last minutes of speeches. Members can refuse to take interventions. Members can effectively cut off interventions if they are in their peroration.

It pains me to say it, but Phil Gallie made a very reasonable point last week. He and Rhona Brankin both intervened but the Presiding Officer refused to allow the interventions, saying that the minister was in the last minute of a speech, which then went on for another two and a half minutes. The clock is not being observed as had been assumed it would be and the protection has been applied to ministers—it could be applied to others, although it happened to be to ministers that time—for much longer than the Presiding Officer intended.

There should be no such convention and members should be entitled to take or to refuse interventions at any stage during a speech. That is a normal part of the cut and thrust of debate.

I do not agree with Mike. Some of the gesture politics that have gone on the chamber show that people are intervening deliberately to upset summing up. Summing up is a crucial part of any debate and must therefore be protected by the system. It was handled better last week, but there is difficulty with whether a speaker is in the last minute of a speech or not. Members never know because they do not have the speech in front of them and so do not know at what stage of the speech the speaker is. I would not like, as Michael suggests, to throw the baby out with the bath water. We need recognition that summing up is different.

Surely that protection is within the speaker. The entirety of what the speaker is trying to put over can be judged—its beginning, its middle and its end. Why should people be protected? I do not understand.

They should because speakers say that they are in their summing up and that they do not want interventions, but members continually try to intervene.

That can make those members look stupid. On a number of occasions last week people getting up on their feet did not work.

Speak for yourself.

I am speaking for some of your colleagues as well as for some of mine.

Let us not wrangle about that.

Come on, let's. [Laughter]

One should be able to take an intervention at any time. A member should be allowed to offer that at any time. However, a member saying that he or she will take no further interventions because they are summing up matters less than the issue about whether they will speak for a further one or two minutes. If the member has signalled that he or she is summing up, it is no longer appropriate that interventions be made—at any stage or from any member.

If it is felt that interjections are being bawled out at the close of a speech it is for the Presiding Officer to then come in with tackety boots. It is a matter about which members should learn and in which the Presiding Officer should exercise his authority. Concluding speakers should not deliberately make a ten-minute summation without taking interventions. We must feel our way through this. What matters—and I feel strongly about this—is that we do not accept the previous ruling that members should not intervene in a concluding speech. That is wrong. People are entitled to intervene in a concluding speech and ministers, or whoever is making the speech, should be allowed to take interventions. We have got away from that.

Beyond that, I do not know whether we want to have a rule on interventions in standing orders. It would be very artificial to have people pinging bells or sounding buzzers to tell members that they have passed the point at which they can intervene.

Everything that you have said is a matter for common courtesy. The member who continually stands up when a speaker has made it perfectly clear that they do not intend to take interventions is the person who suffers. The atmosphere in the chamber will turn against such a person, particularly if they do it repeatedly. The situation should be left exactly as it is.

I disagree.

I think that you are right, convener; things have been going better. If we leave it, as Gil says, to members to have the courtesy not to intervene when a speaker has said that they are summing up and are in the last minute of their speech, we must then prevent people abusing the system by raising points of order. There are a lot of people in the chamber who do not know the difference between a point of order and an intervention.

That is a matter of chairmanship.

People are undoubtedly abusing the system in that way. You know that, Mike.

You and I know that politics is about trying to get one's point across.

But Gil talked about using common courtesy.

One can do both with charm and eloquence, as both you and I do.

Please speak through the convener.

Andy, you said that you disagreed. Do you wish us to make some formal statement in standing orders to regulate this?

No, I disagreed with Gil's point about common courtesy. On some occasions courtesy is not proffered as it should be.

There has been a lack of courtesy on occasion. That is part of the interplay of political life.

Indeed.

It is also part of the learning process in which we are all involved. I am disinclined to move any further on this, unless we find that we have to revisit it. We should encourage an open and accessible form of debate—a debate involving interchange. We should relay some of our thoughts to the Presiding Officer for his guidance and interpretation. That is all that we need to do at this stage.