Agenda item 3 is consideration of a brief report on the process for the review of oral questions that we agreed we would conduct before the summer recess. The report is before us primarily for information and so that committee members can let us know whether they require any specific information for the review. We also need to consider whether we wish to conduct any further questionnaires before the end of the review—not only a questionnaire for members but a questionnaire for visitors to the public gallery.
Questionnaires are probably the most important part of the review at this stage. My impression from speaking to colleagues is—
I am sorry to interrupt, Bruce. Have all members received the paper? It was a late paper.
The agenda says that paper PR/S2/04/8/9 is attached for item 3. I have that paper.
The paper was a late one, so not all members have it. Karen Gillon can look at my copy just now. Carry on, Bruce.
Carry on.
Thank you very much—that is very kind of you, Karen.
I will read the paper while you are speaking.
In that case, I will take longer to speak; I know that you are a slow reader.
The key question concerns the purpose of the previous format of question time. Was it to scrutinise the Executive or to provide a build-up to the theatre of First Minister's question time at 3.10 pm? However, I do not know how we can find that out or get to the bottom of the matter in a questionnaire.
You are making valid comments, Karen, but I am reluctant to get into a debate about the review. I want to consider how we conduct the review and the clear view is that we should have a questionnaire. The questionnaire is fairly simple—a draft will be circulated. I am not sure that it necessarily goes into all the points that have been raised, but I invite members to have a look at it.
The draft questionnaire is simplistic and does not get behind what the real questions are. We are the Procedures Committee. What is it about the procedure of question time that is not working? How do we get behind questions and answers such as, "Do you like it being at 12 o'clock?" "No, I don't," and, "Why not?" "Because it is not as exciting." How do we find out what members think question time should be about and how it should fit into our procedures?
Karen Gillon is right. We were having fun with one of our MSPs last week. She had been complaining for weeks that she had never had a question sufficiently high up the list to be called. She complained and moaned about that a fortnight ago. Last week—by coincidence—she was almost top of the bill for each of the three categories.
I know who Cathie Craigie is talking about.
Members have sometimes been submitting three questions every week but are not getting called. There is no way that the selection of questions can be rigged to ensure that everybody gets a fair shout. There has to be a way of resolving the matter. When we debated the format of question time before, we decided that everybody could submit one question for each of the categories and that we would consider the matter on a trial basis. I think that we should review that procedure.
Yes, that is part of the problem.
There must come a time when, having spoken to members and having been influenced by what they say, we come back to the committee and make our own judgment.
I wonder why the questionnaire is to be answered confidentially. I am sure that we are not going to get electoral fraud. If people have strong opinions on the matter, I do not see why they should not put their names to their questionnaire. That is a minor point, however.
That would be feasible. We would not be considering the matter until the meeting in June, so there is time for the questionnaire to be revised, issued and returned. In fact, the less time members are given to respond, the quicker they will do so.
We must recognise that the current format is not working. The dilemma is whether we keep it going to allow proper review or whether we change it. I think that we have to change it, because it is starting to get embarrassing. I agree with Cathie Craigie, however, about the questionnaire as drafted. We will get it back and the answer to question 1, on whether question time should continue in its current format, will be, "No, it shouldn't." How does that take us any further? I am worried about the questionnaire approach, because I think that we will find out what we already know, which is that the current format is not working.
I understand what you are saying, but I am not entirely clear what you mean by "not working", because saying that members do not like the current format is not necessarily the same as saying that the format is not working. If members say that the format is not working, we need to be clear why it is not working. The themed questions seem to work reasonably well. The Presiding Officer occasionally takes quite a number of supplementaries to allow more in-depth examination—that is the sort of thing that we are aiming for. Procedurally, the format is working perfectly well. We will be unable to find a procedural solution if all we know is that members do not like the current format. We need to find out why they do not like it. We need to develop the questionnaire so that we get members to tell us what is wrong with the format. Otherwise, we will never find a solution that will work.
I would rather hear something about how they think they can improve the format—that is what we really need to know.
Bruce Crawford and I had a brief conversation about this last week. Between 2 pm and 2.30 pm last Thursday, the chamber was sparsely attended. I do not know whether cross-party groups or lobbying meetings had run on. We need to ask members why they are not turning up for question time. Have they forgotten to change their diary? Are the themes under discussion not of interest to them? We have to get to the bottom of that. It is important to find out whether members think that question time and First Minister's question time should be able to stand on their own, which was the point that we made previously.
The reality is that attendance was always going to drop off. We all came to question time at the beginning because we thought that we had to. We were all whipped and we all appeared. Towards the end of the period when the old system—question time followed by FMQT—was operating, the numbers attending question time were dropping off. Members had already started to opt out—it is not a new thing. The new format has given them the excuse that they needed for opting out. They now say, "It's because you've changed the time, and you've done this and you've done that." The problem is all down to FMQT, which is not the theatre that people think it should be. However, are questions there to be theatre or are they there for the effective scrutiny of the Executive? That is the key question for me.
We are drifting into a discussion about the detail, rather than the process of how we conduct the review. However, you raise the question whether it is necessary that the chamber is full for question time.
We must investigate the format of the departmental question times, which seems to be one of the issues causing the problem. As Green party business manager, I find it difficult to get some of my members along. They ask why they should come along when the issues under discussion are not their area of responsibility. On the other hand, the questions are not specific enough that a minister is necessarily being put on the spot. Moreover, there can be several ministers. Therefore, we get neither the ministerial scrutiny that is one of the benefits of specification nor the generality that ensures that most members want to come along. There is a problem with the current set-up of ministerial and departmental questions.
What do people think question time is—a mini-FMQT at which Opposition spokespeople have spats with ministers and everybody else is left out? That might be what they want, but it will not happen. From my perspective as a back bencher, I certainly do not want that to happen. Such spats can be had if they are wanted, but that is not what question time is about—it is about holding the Executive to account and scrutinising what it is doing. Members might say that an issue is not in their remit, but they represent huge areas. I challenge any member to tell me that there are no relevant issues in their regional list area for question time. An issue might not be relevant to a party's spokesperson, but it will certainly be relevant to the constituency that the member represents. If that is the game that members are playing, I will certainly start to expose it.
We are getting too much into the debate about what answers the review should come up with; we should be focusing on how we conduct the review. The first key issue is that we originally set a target of completing the review before the summer recess so that the changes could be in place after the summer recess. Is that still the committee's intention? Do we still want to conduct the review in such a timescale, which is fairly limited? We must have a debate in the chamber, so we probably have until only 15 June or thereabouts to complete a review. Do we want to continue with that timescale, or do we want to extend it?
The starting point is whether we want to have a new system in place when we move into the new Parliament building. I think that we must have a new system in place, because the current system is not working. Therefore, we must have a timescale that means that we will not continue with the current system when we start to meet in Holyrood in September.
I am still not clear why the system is not working, but we will not get into that debate.
But that is the key point. What does Mark Ballard mean by saying that the current system is not working?
I mean that it does not appear to give the in-depth ministerial scrutiny that we wanted it to have and that not many members seem to attend. The system does not seem to be achieving any of the objectives that we had for it. The advantages that we discussed—that it would, for example, open up a minister to specific scrutiny of their brief—do not seem to be happening, because there will often be six very different questions relating to a broad portfolio. That does not provide for tight scrutiny. Moreover, not enough members attend, so there does not seem to be any atmosphere.
It would be interesting to have a discussion once we have the data. The point that Mark Ballard is making relates to whether a huge number of members who want to be called to scrutinise ministers on issues are not being called. Data are being compiled and it will be interesting for us to find out from them whether there is evidence to back up Mark Ballard's claim.
I am loth to consider the matter again before we move to Holyrood, but I recognise the imperatives of having to do so. We have set ourselves a timescale and have said what we will do. People expect what we have said will happen to happen. A wee bit more time might have been useful, but we are constrained to a degree by our earlier decisions.
If we recommend that significant changes should be made, there is an issue about chamber time. There is a limited amount of chamber time this side of the summer recess.
I saw that someone has advance notice, which I do not have, that a committee debate will be held in the chamber on Thursday 24 June.
The Conveners Group receives advance notice of the likely dates for committee debates.
It is good that it does, because the business managers do not. It would be good if we could have that slot.
This committee would not have the full slot, because the Finance Committee will need part of it for the budget debate—
I understand that, but—
At most, we would have an hour on that date. Given that we have to make other changes to standing orders, is it realistic to carry out the review before then? We could do so, but do members think that we might need longer to debate the issue, which will be controversial and involve more than just ticking a box and moving on? It might be more realistic to have the debate after the recess. I throw in that question because our decision will affect our timetable.
I was not here when the original decision was made, so I come from a slightly different standpoint. Changes to the system take time to bed in and I do not think that we have allowed enough time for that. We have not given ourselves enough time to do what we thought we could do. The pressure was about First Minister's question time, but we are also talking about making changes to the whole system and I do not think that we can make a judgment on question time until folk have had a chance to run with the new system for a bit longer. I do not know whether we have the flexibility to start an inquiry later and run it after the summer recess. I will take guidance from the convener on that.
This might not be a response to the points that have been raised, but it helps me to understand Karen Gillon's position on the matter. A lot of the matter is about theatre and the atmosphere that is created and that is why people are starting to disengage. To put it bluntly, I think that members do not turn up for question time because they do not get their mugs on the television any more—that is the real driver behind whether they turn up. At some stage, we might have to reflect on whether that is an issue.
I think that there would be merit in running the trial system for a bit longer. It has been operating for only a few weeks and, if we discount the current three-week period in which meetings of the Parliament are disrupted, there would be only one more week before we would have to gather in the data if we wanted to have the debate in June. I would rather run the system until the summer recess and then review it after that.
How will we do that?
We would have a few weeks before the October recess.
In relation to Bruce Crawford's point, I am moving towards the view that we should have question time and First Minister's question time on different days. That would clearly separate the two and we would not have a situation in which people go for lunch after FMQT and do not bother to come back for question time.
There is no doubt that the one-and-a-half-hour slot at lunch time on Thursdays causes problems.
Question time should not include two slots for departmental questions; there should be only one such slot, even though that would mean that questions on a department would not come round as often as they currently do.
The fundamental question for the committee is whether we conduct the review before the summer recess or whether it would be beneficial for the purposes of the review to take a bit longer, to enable us to consider the questionnaire, for example, in more detail.
May I move a formal proposal?
Mark Ballard wants to comment first.
I have a lot of sympathy with the suggestion that part of the problem is that question time and First Minister's question time take place on the same day. Could we ask the Parliamentary Bureau whether, when we move to the new building, we could run an experiment in which question time took place on a Wednesday afternoon, rather than on a Thursday afternoon? That would give us something with which to compare the current system. I do not think that my suggestion would require a change to the standing orders.
None of the suggestions would require such a change, because we have made the standing orders flexible.
Having question time on Wednesday afternoons would allow us to try something different and see whether it worked better.
I move that we extend the current trial until the summer recess and that we ask the Parliamentary Bureau to trial question time on Wednesdays and First Minister's question time on Thursdays from the summer recess until the October recess. We can then review the two arrangements in light of the evidence with a view to producing a report by the December recess.
Are members broadly in agreement with that proposal?
The data that we were collecting will still be available for our meeting on 8 June, so we can consider them then and confirm that we want to stick with that decision when we have all the evidence. Are members happy with that proposal?
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