Bills (Amendments)
The third item on the agenda is a paper on the timing and deadlines for amendments to bills, which Andrew Mylne is here to talk about. The committee has discussed those issues previously at various stages. I ask Andrew Mylne to give us a run-through of the principal points and highlight the recommendations.
Andrew Mylne (Scottish Parliament Directorate of Clerking and Reporting):
Thank you, convener. I am sorry to have brought quite a lot of material to the committee, as I usually do. I hope that most of it is self-explanatory. The main paper deals with two issues that the committee has considered before. There was a commitment to come back to the committee with further thoughts on both those points.
The first of those issues is manuscript amendments at stage 3. In the paper I have tried to emphasise the balance that needs to be struck in relation to the procedure for manuscript amendments between the two slightly competing priorities of the flexibility of the process and the importance of giving notice. After that discussion, the paper recommends that, on balance, a procedure for manuscript amendments at stage 3 would be helpful.
The paper also considers whether there should be an earlier deadline for the lodging of Executive amendments. The committee has considered the issue before, but the paper uses more information that we have gathered. Members will recall that when the committee last considered this issue, it agreed to review it after six months. In October, once the six-month period had expired, we collected statistics, which we have presented in the shorter of the two papers. Drawing on that new information, the longer paper pulls together the issues and suggests that there might be a useful trade-off between manuscript amendments and deadlines. If adopted, the manuscript amendment procedure might help to take the sting out of the deadlines issue and provide an alternative method for dealing with one of the reasons why that issue was raised in the first place.
I hope that that brief description gives an overall picture. Obviously, the detail is in the paper, on which I will be happy to answer questions.
I am quite happy with the recommendations in paragraph 28 of the report, which accepts the principle of manuscript amendments at stage 3 and deals with related issues. I agree with the recommendation that we accept manuscript amendments up to the latest possible stage. The only experience that we have had of the Presiding Officer having to improvise on such an issue was during a stage 3 debate, when the Parliament was allowed to do something that it would not otherwise have been able to do. Members seem happy with paragraph 28.
The second set of recommendations relates to the setting of an earlier deadline for Executive amendments. The evidence that is presented in the table in the shorter paper is instructive. It indicates that the system can operate perfectly well. An interesting question is raised over the timetabling of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. It is clear that the timetabling of that bill, rather than any deadlines, was the real issue. People with influence on the Parliamentary Bureau may care to raise that point the next time that the Parliament deals with a substantial piece of legislation.
I accept that the manuscript amendment procedure would allow difficulties to be overcome. I can give a pertinent recent example. On the final day of stage 2 of the Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill, Lord Watson lodged an amendment by voicemail at 5 to 2. The amendment replaced one lodged earlier, and would have knocked out some counter-amendments that had already been lodged. The convener of the Rural Development Committee accepted manuscript counter-amendments and I think that the lead member was perfectly happy with that. With a bit of good will, co-operation and overtime by the clerks, everything was smoothed out.
With the manuscript amendment facility in place, the concerns over securing an earlier deadline for Executive amendments evaporate a little—as long as conveners are aware of the power and use it when a genuine late amendment arises. We should keep this issue under review. If we find that the Executive is not able to reach the high standards that it has reached in recent bills, we can revisit it.
I sat through the marathon of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. At the end of the shorter paper, it says:
"95% of amendments were lodged at least 4 days in advance of Committee consideration."
However, the table that follows tells a story that better reflects my experience. In the table, the deadline has been changed to a five-day deadline and the percentage is considerably lower.
I am reasonably relaxed that the Executive made every effort to lodge amendments as early as it could and that the option of being able to lodge a manuscript amendment at stage 3 would allow a final cut if there were significant problems.
However, I cannot underestimate the problems that we had during the Housing (Scotland) Bill, which were raised when the bill was timetabled. Problems arise when a committee meets twice a week, which means that members must lodge amendments that anticipate decisions that have not been taken. That creates an absolute mess. The problems that we experienced with the Housing (Scotland) Bill will have to be revisited. I doubt that even Executive-inspired amendments at stage 3 could have dealt with those problems, some of which had still to be uncovered.
Although I am relaxed about the situation, I am concerned about the anomaly in the report between the 95 per cent success rate for the lodging of amendments four days before consideration and the rates of 40 and 60 per cent for non-Executive amendments that were lodged before the five-day deadline at stages 2 and 3 respectively. Late lodging of amendments can make a difference, particularly for Opposition members who have to deal with the volume of amendments that were lodged during the processing of the Housing (Scotland) Bill.
What the new First Minister said on his appointment about doing less, but doing it better was very promising. We have written to ask whether he would be interested in a meeting to discuss some of those points. It is clear that the whole juggernaut of the Executive machine at stage 2 is a problem for us all. If the First Minister means what he said to apply to the stage 2 process, we could obtain a significant improvement in the way in which we handle that.
I want to ask Andrew Mylne about the surprise at the sheer volume of bills that has come through in some of the evidence. It is also apparent that the Executive has not taken on board the fact that the programme is four years long and that it does not have to do everything in one year, which results in the jamming together of many stage 2s in the spring. That means that committees have to meet twice a week. It might help the process if, instead of everything having to get through by the end of June, bills could be started before the summer and continued after the summer.
Those are political matters. The rules allow members to introduce bills on any sitting day. It is up to the Executive when it introduces the bills in its programme. It is up to the Parliamentary Bureau to timetable each bill. The decisions that go into that are obviously political as well as practical, so it is difficult for me to comment on them to any great extent.
There is a tendency for the Executive to set an end date for the enacting of a bill and to work backwards from there. The difficulty is that sometimes not enough time is left to accommodate all the parliamentary stages and things inevitably become a little squeezed. As I said, such matters are political and in that context it is for the bureau to take decisions that allow enough time for the various parts of the process to unfold. My concern is with the procedural framework, but that framework is not a substitute for political decisions that need to be taken.
I am generally comfortable with the views and recommendations in the paper, but I voice a concern about the sheer pace and volume of what the Parliament is attempting to do. I appreciate the Executive's end. Running through our discussion is a presumption that the Executive has all the time, resources and capacity to cope with everything, but there are huge pressures at that end as well. None of us wants a situation in which the Parliament passes flawed legislation. I do not believe that it has done that. Everybody in the process has been working hard and well. I simply note a concern that there is a range of stages in the process when something could slip. All of us should be vigilant in that respect. It is worth trying to focus on fewer things and do them better, wherever that drive comes from.
As one might expect, I was one of those who was unhappy about the Executive's performance on lodging amendments at a late stage, but the tables at the back of the paper suggest a distinct improvement, for which due credit must be given.
I will pursue Susan Deacon's point. I go along with the proposals, but we should consider other ways of slowing the juggernaut, especially at stage 2. Might we not do as much business over the same period if committees had alternate meetings—one to deal with a bill and the next to deal with whatever consultation or examination is being conducted? At present, committees whizz through bills—boom, boom, boom. Members are totally exhausted, and then they whizz through their investigation—boom, boom, boom. If booms were alternated, committees would do better, especially if a member is an 11th hour person, as I am—in fact, I am a 12th hour person.
I have found being involved in a bill difficult, because on leaving one meeting I must write my amendment for the next meeting. The process could be slowed a bit and yet allow committees to do the same amount of work over six months or a year. That should be considered, but that is, in a sense, irrelevant to today's discussion.
However, that issue arises from the paper. I realise that Andrew Mylne cannot comment, but I wonder whether we could approach the Executive on what Susan Deacon described—a concern among ministers and officials about the rate at which they must work. That contrasts with the face of the Executive that parliamentarians see—the Minister for Parliamentary Business's office, which wants to meet the deadline. I suspect that the Minister for Parliamentary Business's office might have been the common enemy. Would the Executive or civil servants be prepared to discuss their concerns about the pace of stage 2 and the volume of amendments? I do not know whether there is a way round that, but perhaps Andrew Mylne could reflect on that and the clerks could explore the issue. Perhaps Susan Deacon might also give it some thought.
The issue is serious. In the Parliament's first year, we all felt bad that so much was being hammered through before the summer. It was understandable that, for political reasons, people wanted to show that the Parliament had achievements. However, the process was not good. It is far more important that we discuss matters thoroughly and are clear about what we are doing than that we worry about deadlines that we have set ourselves.
Do members accept the recommendations in paragraph 55 of the paper, which repeats recommendations from the first section of that paper and makes recommendations about Executive amendments?
Members indicated agreement.
I thank Andrew Mylne and members for attending.
Meeting closed at 12:22.