Standards Committee, 14 Feb 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001

Official Report 116KB pdf

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Committee Effectiveness

Agenda item 4 is consideration of a paper from the conveners liaison group on increasing the effectiveness of committees. I imagine that many members will have seen the paper at other committee meetings, but if there are any comments on the paper, I would be happy to feed them in at the next CLG meeting.

Can you clarify what standing and official statutory power the CLG has?

None, as far as I am aware.

That is what I thought too. Are there any plans for it to have such standing? The CLG is a useful body, which exists because it serves a purpose, but I find it odd that a body whose meetings are not minuted and not reported is drawing up guidelines for the rest of us.

My understanding is that the CLG is to be formally constituted under the Parliament's standing orders. The detailed work has not yet been finished and presented to Parliament. That will happen.

That is reassuring.

The purpose of the paper is to ensure that all committee members are aware of the suggestions for how the committees should operate to—as the title suggests—increase their effectiveness.

The paper is helpful—possibly more so for some of the subject committees than for us. I do not think that we have encountered many of the same problems, although obviously during lobbygate—when I was temporarily not a member—my colleagues on the committee had much more work than usual.

There is one suggestion to which I definitely register my objection—the idea that committees should meet during plenary meetings. I object to that for all sorts of reasons. I may have a slightly jaundiced view of the matter, because I am quite often in the chair when the chamber is relatively quiet, but I am not keen to encourage any further distraction—albeit a serious one—for members.

The reasons for not having committee meetings at the same time as plenary were well documented by the consultative steering group. Those reasons are compelling. I would not like that part of our processes to be changed.

I am keen to represent the committee's view, rather than just to represent Patricia Ferguson's view through the committee. Are other members generally supportive of the point that Patricia made?

Patricia Ferguson's points are good. I agree with her in principle that committees should not meet at the same time as plenary meetings. However, we have only one and a half days of plenary meetings and if, for example, the committees introduce bills of their own, we might find that that is not sufficient. In those circumstances, perhaps we should consider making greater use of Monday afternoons—which are available for committee meetings but are not being used—instead of scheduling exceptional committee meetings for Mondays, Fridays and Wednesday evenings.

Whichever way things go, there will be increasing demand on plenary time. There may be a need to change to two full days of plenary meetings in the first instance, which would impact on Wednesday mornings. We need to consider when Wednesday morning committee meetings can be held if they cannot be held at the same time as plenary.

Those matters need to be discussed. However, I agree in principle that plenary and committee meetings should not be held at the same time.

I agree whole-heartedly with Patricia Ferguson and I think that I agree with Tricia Marwick.

I did not think that there was any pressure or movement to expand plenary meetings. Most of the time, there are ample opportunities in such meetings.

It is unsatisfactory that committees sometimes meet at the same time. It would be even more unacceptable—indeed, completely unacceptable—if committee and plenary meetings were held at the same time.

I have some reservations about one little area. One committee of which I was a member tried to meet between 12.30 pm and 2.30 pm when there was no plenary meeting. Apparently, however, that is considered plenary time. I did not realise that. I do not want any watering down of the rule that committees cannot meet at the same time as plenary meetings, but I was slightly unsure why the period between 12.30 pm and 2.30 pm was classified as plenary. Perhaps the clerks can help me with that.

The Education, Culture and Sport Committee wanted to meet because its members had seen its report and wanted to make a couple of amendments. The committee wanted a formal 15-minute or half-hour meeting, with official reporters present, to endorse the amendments. There were no other dates on which the committee could meet. A meeting would have been convenient, but we ran into that obstacle.

Before I bring in Kay Ullrich, perhaps the Deputy Presiding Officer can give us some guidance on Ken Macintosh's point.

I am sure that Bill Thomson can give the committee a better line than I can, but I think that such a meeting could not take place because a plenary meeting is only suspended at 12.30 pm. The meeting does not actually end until after members' business.

We talk about a family-friendly Parliament and I am aware that many of my colleagues have young children. If there is an either/or choice of extending to evening sittings, I would come down on the side of some flexibility during plenary meetings, as Tricia Marwick has said. I do not want committee meetings to be held in the evenings, because colleagues have young children or perhaps elderly relatives to look after. They would find evening meetings totally impossible. The idea of a family-friendly Parliament must be preserved at all costs.

I want to make three points.

First, I agree entirely with what Patricia Ferguson said. There is a general mood that committees should not meet in plenary time.

Secondly, there should be maximum flexibility to respond effectively to the demands of legislation and to the general demands made of MSPs.

Thirdly, the number of private members' bills coming before Parliament is growing. I think that that is to be considered by the Procedures Committee, but committees should be able to deal effectively with all such bills. What prioritising should there be in dealing with such bills?

I start from the premise that there should be maximum flexibility to satisfy the demands that are placed on Parliament.

When I report back to the CLG, I propose to say that the committee's main concern relates to bullet point 3, in paragraph 5:

"Further consideration should be given to whether there would be benefit in amending Standing Orders to allow committees to meet at the same time as the Plenary."

Are members agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Yes. We do not want that to happen. It should not be considered, and I would be concerned if it was.

Is the majority view that the rule should not be changed?

Yes.

Kenny Macintosh made a good point about lunch time sessions. Fine-tuning of committee reports could sometimes be done in ten or fifteen minutes, but—because of standing orders—it is difficult to fit in such meetings at the moment. We need to sort that out so that we would not be meeting in plenary time. Perhaps we should suggest that the Thursday morning plenary meeting stop at 12.30 pm and the afternoon session start at 2 pm.

That is a good point; I will put it to the CLG. If I am not there, I am sure that Tricia Marwick will make the point.

Are members content with the rest of the paper?

Yes. Everything else is fine.

Agenda item 5 is our forward work programme. As agreed at the beginning of the meeting, we will take the item in private.

Meeting continued in private until 11:53.