Procedures Committee, 08 Nov 2005

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 8, 2005

Official Report 269KB pdf

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First Minister's Question Time

The next item concerns a letter from the Presiding Officer about what happens if a member who has the right to ask a question of the First Minister is ill. Three party leaders are involved now—originally, there were two. The Presiding Officer suggests that the rules be changed to specify that somebody else can be substituted for the missing member. At the moment, he does that de facto by giving additional supplementaries to the deputy leader on other questions, but he thinks that it would be more satisfactory if the rules were changed to make the situation clear.

Forgive me for not having my copy of the standing orders with me, but what does rule 13.7.4 say?

It says:

"When a question is taken, it may be asked only by the member who lodged it."

I do not see why the rules should be changed to suit the leaders of political parties if they are not to be changed to suit other members of the Parliament. If the party leader who lodged the question is not available, they cannot ask the question, in the same way that, if I was not available for a question that I had lodged, I could not ask it. Flexibility existed to allow the Presiding Officer to call Annabel Goldie, as he did, and she got the supplementary questions to which she was entitled. That is how the rules should stay; we should not change the standing orders.

A mountain is being made out of a molehill, to be perfectly honest. Karen Gillon might or might not be pleased to know that I agree with her entirely: if we change the rule, we must change it for everybody. There have been occasions on which the member who lodged a question that has been selected for themed question time or the latter part of First Minister's question time was, for whatever reason, not in the Parliament to ask it and members who wanted to ask supplementaries on the back of the question could not have them heard because the original question could not be asked.

The first three questions at First Minister's question time are a lot of nonsense: "What did you have for breakfast this morning? When are you meeting the Prime Minister? When next will you polish your shoes?" They are almost irrelevant as questions, other than that they perhaps give the First Minister a chance to announce where he has been that week. We do not need to change rule 13.7.4, as the Presiding Officer can substitute two supplementary questions, which, in effect, is what we would have had in the first instance—two supplementary questions to a non-question.

If we are going to change the rule, we should change it for everybody. I could make a far better case for excluding the first three questions at First Minister's question time from the suggested provision and including all other questions.

It is worth examining whether rule 13.7.4 could be changed for everyone. We should examine that.

I have a point for Bruce. We saw the system work extremely well in recent weeks, when Annabel Goldie came in with supplementaries on the first question and got a share of the debate. There was no objection to the way in which that happened but, had the questioner from the Scottish National Party been absent, the order of the first two questions would, in effect, have been reversed. Would Bruce be content with that situation?

I am not sure that that would be the effect.

We cannot start with a supplementary.

I suppose that we would have to take the supplementary second. I think that in such circumstances, which are unlikely to occur, that would be acceptable. I cannot speak for my deputy leader, but I think that to amend the rule for one set of circumstances, but to exclude everybody else, would not be a good idea. The issue is equity; either the rule change is done for the whole questioning process, or it ain't done at all.

Can we agree to ask the clerk to write a paper for us on the question of amending the rule for all members?

No. We considered the matter at a previous meeting after the Presiding Officer wrote to ask us to consider it and we decided that we would not amend the rule. We have a fairly new procedure and members are given plenty of notice for lodging their questions. There will be times when we must deal with an emergency situation, but it is not the end of the world if a member misses a question and has to resubmit it at a later date, even if they have prepared supplementaries. That is the way things are.

In his previous letter to us, the Presiding Officer was not specific about the proposed change being for First Minister's question time and we said no to his request. This time he has been specific but, as members have said, there is already adequate cover. First Minister's question time ran smoothly last Thursday even though a member who had lodged a question was not there. I do not think that we need to take the matter further.

I think that there is a bigger issue for us, which is that members are not lodging the questions to which the draw entitles them. The number of questions that are not lodged is beginning to alarm me. However, if members are not taking the process seriously, that is a matter for them. We have enough work to get on with without getting into another inquiry and taking evidence on question time. There is no clamour at my door from Labour back benchers saying that question time is a problem. An issue arose about First Minister's question time, but I think that we have dealt with it. We should just put the issue to bed and say, "Thank you very much, George, but on this occasion we have to agree to disagree."

I felt that the system worked fine last week and I have no particular problem with it.

Right. Is anyone in favour of acceding to the Presiding Officer's request?

No.

Okay, the committee does not accede to his request.

We will consider item 6 in private.

Meeting continued in private.

Meeting continued in public.