Official Report 153KB pdf
Karen Gillon is on her way, but we will make a start.
It is indeed logical to state that, if we increased the time between lodging stage 3 amendments and stage 3 consideration, we would shorten the time available for lodging amendments following stage 2. Would it be valuable to recommend in our report that the time between stages 2 and 3 should not be shortened, so that the time for lodging stage 3 amendments is protected?
I go along with that. I do not know whether colleagues feel the same. Two weeks before an election, a week is an important length of time, but, generally, a week is neither here nor there in a four-year session. Losing a week should not be a big deal from the point of view of the Government or anyone else.
I have learned to understand this from an Opposition point of view. Given our limited resources and the particularly limited resources of individual members who do not have the support of a party group—we want to protect them, too—we can struggle to keep to deadlines for amendments anyway, so I would not like that time to be eroded.
The rules contain a minimum time, which is usually exceeded. The important thing is that it should not be reduced.
The time that is available for lodging stage 3 amendments should not be reduced.
Yes—the time between the end of stage 2 and the deadline for lodging stage 3 amendments.
The proposal could more aptly be described as increasing the minimum interval between stage 2 and stage 3 by one week, the implications of which are perhaps not as wide ranging as we thought. The evidence suggests that the minimum period is often exceeded anyway. [Interruption.] Sorry. I did not realise that I still had my phone switched on.
Do you want me to answer it for you?
Actually, that would be good, because I have just seen who it is.
We need to decide how specific we want to be about advising, guiding or instructing the Presiding Officer—whatever it is that we are allowed to do—to take a tough line on late amendments. Do we simply leave it to his discretion?
We should leave it to his discretion.
Yes. There is a danger with instructions starting, "We will leave this to your discretion, but". That can lead to difficult positions, particularly as what we are doing should not affect any requirement on late submissions. If we expand the interval between stages 2 and 3 by a week, we should compensate for that. However, people will probably still leave it until the last minute.
We should avoid tying the hands of the Presiding Officer when it comes to any part of his responsibility. However we try to change the system, it is important to make it easier and more practical to operate. The most important thing is that, if we find ourselves about to do something a bit silly, the Presiding Officer has the power to accept amendments right up to the last minute to correct any mistakes that we might be about to make. We have all been there; we have sat in the chamber and seen some strange things happen.
We could say that, as at present, the Presiding Officer must judge the validity of late amendments.
When did she request that? Was it during consideration of amendments?
Yes. There was a point at which Pauline McNeill was almost having a dialogue with the minister and wanted another go to get an assurance from him, but Murray Tosh clearly felt that we were overstaying our time and said that she could not.
Yes, I do. There was a suggestion that if we increased the flexibility—from 30 minutes to one hour—we would simply try to use up the extra time. I know that the committee has taken a view on that, but I invite it to reconsider, now that we have the evidence, which is that the half-hour was used on four occasions and was not used on 19. The suggestion that we simply fill up the time when an extra half-hour is available does not hold water. That is why there is an argument to increase the flexibility, because it would be used in only a minority of cases. It would be needed on probably only one or two occasions, but it would allow a fuller debate. The last big occasion when debate was clearly curtailed was stage 3 of the Licensing (Scotland) Bill, but there have been others.
The stage 3 debate on the Scottish Commissioner for Human Rights Bill was not an extreme case, but there was definitely a period in which contributions were extremely curtailed. The final debate was token too, as there was no time for serious debate.
I do not understand your suggestion. Are you suggesting that a debate is scheduled that, if necessary, can be cancelled so that stage 3 discussion can continue into a further meeting?
The parliamentary agenda for the second day would be either/or—either, if required, to continue the stage 3 debate or, if the debate had finished the previous day as hoped, to have the ordinary debate.
I do not think that that is a good idea. We would be saying that the scheduled debate that could be bumped was not important, which would bring into question what we do in Parliament. If that debate interested members of the public, they might make arrangements to attend it or they might lobby MSPs about it. I do not see how the proposal would work or how such flexible business would lend itself to the transparency and accountability of the Parliament. People might want to travel from any place in Scotland to listen to the debate, which they could not do at short notice.
I agree with Kate Maclean. We are in danger of overstating the problem and the frequency with which it arises. We should distinguish between the stage 3 debate and consideration of amendments at stage 3. I do not say that the time that is available for debate is not an issue. However, the paper that is before us states that over 16 months, four out of 23 bills required a half-hour extension. In all cases, that extension was accommodated on the same day and the debate did not need to be carried over to the next day.
We are all coming from the same agreed perspective. We want to ensure that enough time is allocated to debates to which most members want to contribute. I am worried about figures that deal only with the occasions on which debates have been extended. It would be interesting to know whether the figures take into account the number of extra members who wanted to speak. Because some issues are very controversial, I imagine that an extension of half an hour or an hour would not be enough.
I agree with Richard Baker. We have discussed the issue already and have factual evidence that an extension has been used on four occasions. Richard is probably right to suggest that an extension of half an hour or an hour might not be enough—on some occasions, all members who wanted to speak would not have been able to do so even if the debate had been extended by two hours. We should retain the power to extend debates by half an hour and make the point strongly to the bureau that, when we need more time for debate at stage 3, it should factor that in, rather than depending on extensions that do not achieve what we want.
I understand the argument: the same one was made when the power to extend debates by half an hour was introduced. How convincing will our case to the bureau be when we present it with the fact that the provision was used on four out of 23 occasions—17 per cent of the time? The bureau might conclude that it has got things right 83 per cent of the time and that it is not doing badly. Given that the time available is made up of slots, it is difficult for us to judge whether the bureau has done the right thing. Because of the way in which time is divided up, it does not have much ability to award an extra half-hour or hour to a stage 3 debate, so we might be being slightly unfair on the bureau—that might be a rarely expressed opinion at the Procedures Committee. The bureau has a difficult job in trying to judge in advance how long a debate is going to take, so lodging amendments earlier should help.
By reducing the time available for the final debate. In such cases, the parliamentary day has not finished later; the stage 3 debate has just been compressed.
Which goes back to the problem that we are discussing.
To be fair, the bureau scheduled an extra-long day for stage 3 of the Scottish Commissioner for Human Rights Bill, but it still did not allow enough time and the debate ended up being, in my view, a total farce, in which members did not properly discuss some of the controversial issues.
Next, we return to the question of how to deliver briefings on bills to members after stage 2. We have received a useful memo from SPICe. The story moved on to the suggestion that SPICe could produce such a briefing.
The memo is interesting, and comes from a wholly different perspective. We are not comparing apples with apples. The table on page 2 shows that the time taken to produce post-stage 2 briefings has been estimated at 13 days, 22 days and 12 days for different bills. Our understanding was that the convener of a lead committee would be able to produce the briefing and report it to Parliament in a 10-minute slot, or whatever it happened to be. That perhaps indicates how far this issue has drifted, probably because of the exercise that was already going on in SPICe. We must make it clear that we are asking for something entirely different—something much briefer than the SPICe briefings—that will take a lot less time to report to Parliament. We are asking for something that the convener of a lead committee can wrap into a 10-minute speech or put on an A4 page, but the SPICe briefings take around 12 days to prepare. They are clearly not the same thing.
Yes. You are saying that we do not envisage something as elaborate as SPICe envisages in its briefings.
The two things come from different starting points. When we discussed the matter, we did not expect the convener of a lead committee to produce something like the SPICe briefings.
No. Obviously, the convener would be assisted by the clerks to the committee. Can we agree that it would be helpful to get briefings from SPICe at the end of stage 2 and that there can be discussions between the committee clerks and SPICe as to what would be a reasonable degree of detail for the briefings to contain?
Yes. That is fair. I draw your attention to the last sentence in paragraph 2 of the SPICe memo:
I am concerned that SPICe is being asked to produce something that, realistically, would create a huge additional workload but would not be read by most members. It is fine for us to say that SPICe could produce all these briefings but, from experience, I know that members are so busy that they tend to read briefings only about bills that they are involved with or about matters in which they are particularly interested. Every member does not read every briefing that is produced by SPICe. Before we created that huge workload, we would have to know the resource implications and whether SPICe would need additional staff. We would be asking for a huge amount of extra work from SPICe, and the briefings might not be read.
We had in mind a sort of guide for members that would outline the main issues that had come up at stage 2. It would say what amendments had been rejected or accepted and whether the minister had promised any responses at stage 3. It would focus on the main controversial issues. That would require some work, but one could exaggerate the amount of work that would be involved. SPICe keeps up to speed with the activities of the Parliament and its committees anyway.
I agree with Kate Maclean. The SPICe briefings are very useful, but the briefings that have been produced have included information on the general principles of the bills and the stage 1 reports. What we are talking about is a more succinct statement. I do not think that all the work need land on SPICe's shoulders; it should involve the clerks to the lead committee as well, as they will have been instrumental in guiding the bill through stage 2. We are looking for a brief statement that would be produced not just by SPICe but by the clerks, too. Producing such a statement might not be as time consuming as is envisaged. Even if it required a time commitment, the main work of the Parliament is legislation, so priority should be given to it by all of us.
Can we agree that Andrew Mylne will negotiate with SPICe on our behalf? He has a feel for what we are aiming for and SPICe has its own agenda, which is slightly different. I hope that we can end up with a briefing that is helpful to members but not too onerous on SPICe.
Would not most members who were lodging amendments get some assistance with drafting them? The intent of the amendments would be known at that stage.
I think that the report on stage 2 should be separate from the stage 3 amendments.
I was thinking of stage 2 amendments. Some amendments come from outside bodies and are fully explained in written submissions from them. However, most amendments are submitted by members, who generally seek help in drafting them, so the intent behind the amendments would be known in advance. Some of the work behind the briefing might already have been done.
I presume that members would explain their amendments during stage 2.
Yes, although sometimes the effect would be different.
The seed might fall on stony ground, but at least it would be cast and visible. We will explore the idea with the clerk.
Yes, indeed. We just need to get on with the job earlier.
Do members agree that we should continue to pursue the proposition?
We should pursue it, but extending the lodging deadline to 6 pm would be unacceptable, because it would cause many problems, particularly for staff, who might have to stay until quite late at night to finalise the Business Bulletin for publication the following day. However, an earlier deadline is acceptable and political parties will have to conduct their business to fit in with the parliamentary timetable, as they used to do. Parties have to take on board changes to the parliamentary timetable.
I sound two notes of caution. As it says in paragraph 11 of the paper, giving the Presiding Officer discretion to allow motions to be altered or replaced after the lodging deadline could put the Presiding Officer in a difficult position. If the deadline for lodging motions were brought forward, there would be more scope for members to claim—rightly or wrongly—that a more topical issue had come up. I suspect that a more topical issue could be found every week, which members would want to take precedence. Whether the issue was significant would depend on the member's political persuasion. For that reason, I have some difficulty with the proposal.
I agree, in that we do not have to set a deadline. Kate Maclean is right—if we set a deadline of 6 o'clock, that might impose too much on some members of staff. It would be right not to impose a deadline but to see what the chamber desk can do in liaison with the appropriate business managers to make the system work. There is already some flexibility with the half past 4 deadline, so we should leave it to the chamber desk to be as flexible as possible within that. We do not have to be too prescriptive.
One thing that I had hoped to do but failed to do was to find time for an analysis of how often motions are topical; I think that that happens much more rarely than people think, although it can happen. Do we agree to progress with the policy suggestion?
I would like more work to be done on the issues that paragraph 11 raises, because I think that it strays into measures that have unintended consequences. I do not have a perfect solution. On previous items, we have said that we should not issue the Presiding Officer with guidelines, yet the presumption in paragraph 11 is that we issue the Presiding Officer with guidelines.
No; we would allow him to use his common sense, which is what he has always done.
Paragraph 11 refers to providing
If the guideline is that discretion is to be used only in exceptional cases, that is the parameter being referred to, and that is a loose enough guideline for me.
I suspect that giving the Presiding Officer complete flexibility exposes him to greater risk.
The second part of the last sentence in paragraph 11 refers to
I think that we should agree to proceed without Bruce McFee's caveat.
The argument that there is an intense desire to have nothing but topical debate is absolute rubbish and has no substance. The Presiding Officer can judge whether a genuine reason exists for debating something topical. The party concerned can speak to the Presiding Officer and persuade him—or not—that a change is needed.
I refer the convener to the practice of asking for emergency questions and how robustly such requests have been dealt with by Presiding Officers over the years.
Okay. Can we progress with the proposal?