Parliamentary Time
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the seventh meeting in 2003 of the Procedures Committee. Barring the unforeseen, this will be the last meeting of the committee this session. We have a relatively brief agenda, which is a welcome change.
The first item is on what we are loosely calling a legacy paper, which will convey to our successor committee our thoughts on the shape of the parliamentary week. As the clerk does not wish to say anything by way of introduction, I open up the matter for discussion. The nub of the paper is the set of options at the end for reconfiguring the parliamentary week.
I thought that the discussion paper was a fair summary of the position and of the various options. The only thing that I was keen on but which has been left out would have come in paragraph 36, which concerns the timetabling of stage 3 consideration of bills. The paragraph should recommend that the timetable be advisory only, but that the Presiding Officer should try to finish the overall debate within the allocated time. There should be some flexibility; there have been occasions when one bunch of amendments has been squeezed heavily, while the next bunch has been gone through quite quickly.
There tends to be pressure on the amendments in the early and middle stages of stage 3 proceedings, and the debates appear to run out of momentum later on, presumably because a lot of members' points will have already been made earlier. We tend to find that time is made up towards the end of proceedings.
The debate on whether to pass the Agricultural Holdings (Scotland) Bill took about 55 minutes, despite the fact that only 30 minutes had been timetabled. That was of benefit to the many members who spoke in that debate. It was possible to call all those who wished to speak because of time gained, yet earlier in the stage 3 proceedings, there was severe pressure on one grouping of amendments in the middle, which spanned lunch time. We got away with that only because a couple of people significantly reduced the length of the comments that they had planned to make, in the knowledge of that pressure on time. I think that proceedings would be easier to manage were the timetable indicative, rather than obligatory. That, however, is a matter for our successor committee.
For the benefit of members who have just arrived, Donald Gorrie has suggested that, in paragraph 36 of the discussion paper on time in the chamber, we should add a suggestion that the timetable for stage 3 should be indicative and that it should not have to be strictly adhered to. That would allow the Presiding Officers to allocate more time should particular groupings of amendments take longer to consider than expected.
If members have any other opinions on that, now is the opportunity to make them. If not, their opinions on any other part of the paper are welcome.
I have a couple of small points to make, Presiding Officer.
Presiding Officer?
I mean convener—or sir.
Paragraph 39, which is the first paragraph in the part of the paper that deals with First Minister's question time, says:
"the Presiding Officer suggests that FMQT should be extended to 30 minutes and that he understands the proposal to command widespread support."
In paragraph 41, we point out that, in fact, that proposal does not command widespread support. We might as well take the latter part of paragraph 39 out, in which case that sentence would read:
"Following the experience of Aberdeen in May 2002, the Presiding Officer suggests that FMQT should be extended to 30 minutes".
It would be misleading to retain the wording:
"he understands the proposal to command widespread support"
when we know that it does not.
I am slightly worried that some of our suggested discussion points might be viewed as recommendations.
The paper will go to the successor committee and it will be up to the members of that committee to make recommendations. They will be free to accept what they want to accept and to reject what they do not want to accept. I would not worry about anything in the paper appearing to be over-directional. It is not being discussed in the chamber, and I do not think that it acquires any momentum in the sense that you suggest.
Paragraph 47 relates to the idea of having ministerial question sessions, and says:
"There was some support for this".
Was there some support for that? I thought that, by the end of our discussion, we were all against the idea.
I do not think that we resolved that question. I would not say that a majority of members were for the idea, but there was some support for it.
I agree that the idea was expressed that we should pilot the proposal to see how it went.
Paragraph 47 also mentions "concern", so it tries to be balanced.
The whole paper is about timing. Paragraph 6 of our draft annual report, which we will consider at the end of the meeting, discusses our consultative steering group report. It says:
"The report also maps out areas of future work which it considers should be given priority such as: legislative procedure, subordinate legislation, parliamentary questions, Sewel motions, the further implementation of equal opportunities in the Parliament, and specific recommendations to help develop procedural transparency."
That is a more comprehensive list of what we might wish to pass on as legacies, rather than the discussion paper on time in the chamber. The discussion paper is good, but there are other issues that we might wish to mention as a legacy.
The whole CSG report is a legacy. The legacy paper is a specific paper that the committee asked to be drawn up to consider issues surrounding the shape of the parliamentary week. It is quite focused and is an attempt to concentrate the successor committee on considering those issues and coming up with some early suggestions, which would, of course, be entirely that committee's responsibility.
So, rather than being the sole legacy paper, the paper is one legacy paper, and we are leaving the CSG report and other recommendations as part of our legacy.
Indeed. Papers on on-going work and preparations for anything else are also legacy papers.
I am generally comfortable with the legacy paper, not least for the reasons that we have been talking about. As it will be up to the successor committee to decide what to do with the paper, we do not have to agonise unduly over the detail.
However, one area ought to be strengthened: paragraphs 27 to 30, which form the section on speaking times in debates—I note also that that section does not feature in the summary of issues at the end. Every time that we have covered the issue in the committee, we have been united about the need for greater flexibility in parliamentary debates. That is not about allowing members to give long, rambling speeches, but about addressing the rigidity of the four-minute speech. I have been struck by the fact that, ever since we conducted our survey on the matter, I have picked up a lot of noise around the system about it.
I will share a wee anecdote—perhaps other members feel the same. When Westminster had its most recent major debate on Iraq, we had business in the chamber. A number of us were around the tea room at the time, and I lost count of the number of members of different parties—with different views on the substantive issue that was being debated—who said, "We just couldn't have a debate like that because of the constraints on our debating time." Members recognised that—they said it.
We have not quite captured the committee's view or the uniformity of our opinion that greater flexibility is needed within debates, not only on the questions that are addressed in the preceding section of the paper—about the nature and subject of debates and whether we should vote on motions—but on the timings for speeches in debates. We cannot and should not be prescriptive. There is no consensus view on the matter. However, we have lost that point. It needs to be brought back into the paper in the section on speaking time and in the summary, if members agree.
I agree. In a previous discussion, the point was made that, through party loyalty, several of us had spoken in debates because nobody else seemed to want to speak, and, on other occasions, had wanted to speak and were not able to or had not been allowed to speak for nearly as long as we felt that we could contribute effectively. The straitjacket of the two or three-hour debate should be much more flexible. If the Executive wishes to advertise some nice, new glossy production, it is fair enough that we have a debate on it, but that debate need not necessarily go on for terribly long for members to give the ritual support or abuse to the document. However, major issues need more time. I would support some sort of statement, along the lines that Susan Deacon suggested, that there should be a greater degree of flexibility.
I have a number of other points.
We will stick with speaking times just now.
I refer to paragraph 34 on timing. The matter comes back to the notice given to members of debates. The problem with paragraph 34 is that it contains a sentence that talks about "the deadline for motions". That is a separate issue and inappropriate to paragraph 34, in which we talk about flagging up when a subject is coming up for debate. Just now, through the Executive's goodwill, I have an hour and a half's notice on what is likely to come up in a fortnight's time. Had I two or three days' notice, I could trawl to ensure that we have notes of interest, and we could be flexible.
We should learn from the experience of when the lights went out and the sound went off in the Parliament. It was remarkable that we managed to do our business and save two hours. That shows that where there is a will, there is a way. If we have time, we fill it; if we are under pressure, we can still secure business.
That comes back to the idea of short term, medium term and long-term timetabling. We should tie into that. We may know that an issue is of great interest and, because we need a big chunk of time, we can ensure that we expand the time available, especially if we are talking about earlier starts or later finishes on the Wednesday. Just now, we have a big chunk on Thursday morning only, in which we can get three hours—possibly four at a push—on a subject.
I would like to see something in paragraph 34 that would allow us to bring back in from the CSG report the need for more than an hour and a half's notice for the parties to assess how much interest there will be in a particular subject to ensure that we can say, "This one looks as if it will be really important. We need longer for it from beginning to end." That would also enable us to say that we thought that another debate should be six minutes long or whatever was thought appropriate. I suggest that that might be a way forward on the matter. I have other points on other matters, but that is it on speeches.
When we discussed speaking time previously, we also discussed the survey in which members said that they wanted more time in the chamber but did not want to give anything up for that additional time. We need to deal with that. I have never been opposed to the principle of considering extending the time available, but I have always had difficulty with that issue if members are not willing to give and take.
On deciding priorities, it will always be the case that a priority for an Opposition party will not necessarily be a priority for the Executive. I appreciate that Iraq is a different issue—it is a priority for the country and all the parties. However, a priority for the Executive might be additional time for a transport statement, which might not be a priority for the Opposition parties.
I have some difficulty with how we clarify what is a priority for everyone, because we will not all agree. In the real world, we will not all join hands and say, "This is our priority: we all think that, in two weeks' time, we will want to discuss transport." The Opposition parties might rightly consider other issues to be priorities.
I do not know whether I can move on, but the summary in the paper says that we should consider using Mondays and Fridays for additional members' business debates—that is, for plenary time. I do not recall us discussing that possibility. I may have missed such a discussion, but I do not recall us suggesting that Monday afternoon and Friday morning slots be used to accommodate plenary business, and I do not recall agreeing that to be a priority.
I am not sure. I do not think that the paper implies that we agreed to that. We can make that clear.
I do not even remember discussing it.
We did not discuss the use of Mondays and Fridays for members' business. We discussed the use of those days for committees, to allow for more plenary debates on Wednesdays.
I have a point of clarification on something that Paul Martin said, about which I feel quite strongly—he may have picked up my point wrongly. The reference that I made to the Westminster Iraq debate was not about prioritisation of subject matter. In saying that members said that we could not have such a debate, I was making a point not about the subject but about the flow of the speeches within the debate. My point was about the fact that there was flexibility about the length of time for which members could speak. I want to be absolutely clear on that. It is a different point.
That is the very point that I was going to make. The priority will be decided by those who call the debate, whether they are from the Executive or the Opposition. We all know that there are debates in which a lot of people want to be involved, and the problem is that there is not enough advance notice. Even at present, if enough notice is given, the extension that we are likely to get might be an hour if we are lucky. We need to open that up.
Listening to the television last night, I was struck by comments on the likelihood of a debate at Westminster today going on until 6 o'clock, 8 o'clock, 10 o'clock or even longer. The difference between Westminster's system and the way in which we structure our debates makes us look like kids at play at times, as people are constrained by having to say something meaningful in four minutes. They may want only two minutes to say what they want to say, and then sit back down. In Westminster, some members do that in a couple of minutes, but some need a long time because they are painting a complicated scenario. That is what is wrong with our debates.
We need to focus on the notice that is given. We all know which subjects are likely to command a large number of speakers. I have already referred to that, and it happened yet again in the debate that we had last week. There are two things that we know for a fact give members cause for concern. First, they may know that they will not be able to participate in the debate because they are not in the party speaking lists. Secondly, they are not likely to make a noise about that, because they obviously have an eye on the party. There are constraints within a party, and you cannot become a rebel overnight.
We need to free up that situation. The existence of a list for the convenience of the Parliament and the Presiding Officers means that they are complicit because, as I have already said, they take those lists but do not look behind them. If party speaking lists are to be provided—there is probably a good reason for them—and if the time constraints remain the same, there must also be a limit on the lists to free up time. If we stick to having just an hour for big debates, the Presiding Officer must look at the lists and cut them down a bit to free up time not just for back benchers but for other members. Even front benchers who do not cover the relevant portfolio may want to contribute, so we need to free up the system. The best way in which to do so is to extend time for the big debates, which would allow the party speaking lists to prevail and everyone to get a fair shot at speaking.
Without raking over last week's debate too much, I want to mention the fact that I was conscious of calling three people whose names had not been submitted by their parties. I dare say that, had it been an absolute free for all, I might well have called more. There may have been an element of unrecognised and unaddressed demand.
Notwithstanding the four-minute constraint, it was an excellent debate with many excellent speeches. I will not single out any one in particular, but I remember one three-minute speech that was really very good and got quite a bit of coverage in the press. Although I am a supporter of longer times for speeches, speakers can actually make a point very effectively in quite a short period of time. In a sense, such debates are more demanding than the debates at Westminster, which give members the luxury of talking for much longer. We should not confuse length and quantity with quality. The Scottish Parliament did itself rather proud last Thursday, and the quality and tone of the debate, within our current constraints, were impressive.
I would like to clarify one point, just in case I made any mistakes in my earlier comments. You are right, convener. People can make very meaningful contributions in a short space of time; there is no doubt about that. I concur with your view that extending individuals' speaking time does not mean that we will actually hear something meaningful. I know of some people who would probably make me walk out when they started to speak, because they ramble on. It is horses for courses: sometimes you need a bit longer, but sometimes you need only two minutes.
My main argument is that debates are constrained by the system of party speaking lists, which constrains the number of people who speak. I just wanted to make that clear.
I recognise that.
I echo your point, convener. Susan Deacon used the word "flexibility", which was echoed by Donald Gorrie, but I am not sure that that is exactly the word that we want. We are talking about flexibility of response or flexibility for the Presiding Officer. We agreed that back benchers do not have enough time and that four minutes is not long enough. That is one point on which we agreed unanimously. As Paul Martin pointed out, nothing else wants to give, and there has to be discipline. In the Iraq debate, which was constrained by many factors, the self-discipline imposed by the speakers was also notable and was made to work to their advantage, as they made their points very well.
I would like to give an example from about three weeks before the Iraq debate. I had put my name down in advance to speak in a debate on a report by the Justice 2 Committee, and I was called in the wrong order—by mistake, I assume. I had been toiling to get my speech done. I had written it far too long, as usual, and had cut it back to four minutes, but I was then told, just before I stood up, that I had only three minutes. I then had a choice between losing sections of the speech and trying to make the same speech in less time. I have to say that I was not very pleased with what I said, as I précised my speech and it did not satisfy me at all.
In my view, that experience illustrates the fact that members need to know in advance whether they will be given four minutes or six minutes. You need a rough idea, so that you can make a rough call, and there must be some guidance ahead of time. On a subject such as Iraq, we could have known in advance whether we would have five-minute or six-minute speeches. That would have been a fairer way to handle it. That is the sort of flexibility that I want, rather than simply the flexibility to speak ad infinitum.
Sometimes the difficulty is that the Presiding Officers give a time in advance but, as the debate progresses, they find that they have lost a lot of time. They then have to make a judgment between reducing the time, and therefore being meaner to the later speakers than they were to the earlier ones, and cutting people out altogether. If you had been offered in advance the choice between speaking for three minutes and being cut out altogether, you might have gone for the three minutes. It is a hard one to call and there are limits to the flexibility that can be exercised.
I do not support party speaking lists, but I understand that they are helpful to the Presiding Officers. I do not know whether that is really the case.
They absolutely are helpful. They give an indication of how many people are likely to want to speak, so we can make a calculation about timing and running order.
As I said, I do not support the party speaking lists, but it is obviously an issue for the Presiding Officers. I think that, in a modern Parliament, members should be given direct access to the Presiding Officers to indicate whether they want to speak. I am not sure whether Westminster operates a system of party speaking lists; I think that there is a direct approach to the Speaker and his deputies.
We agreed with you on that in the report on the CSG principles.
One of the issues that I want to revisit concerns the crystal ball that tells us whether or not everyone will want to speak in a debate in two weeks' time—I plead that we be realistic about that. Announcements are made every day that can dictate how popular a debate will be. For example, if there was to be a debate on health and it was announced that a hospital was being closed because of a superbug, a great deal of interest would be generated in that debate. We cannot always rely on a crystal ball that will tell us whether every member will want to speak on a subject in two weeks' time. The length of time that has been allocated to some debates has been increased, but there has been no take-up by members. What we do is dictated by events that go on around us; I say with the best will in the world that that is true of everything that we try to do.
The situation is a wee bit like the winter shutdown in football: every team wanted it, but when they got it people said that they did not want it any more because it was making the leagues lose money.
There is empathy with the business managers.
People meddle with systems and say that suggested changes—when they are made—sound good. However, when we start to enforce such changes, people say that what has been done is not what they had expected. Gil Paterson's point was well made: Why does this Parliament not sit for long hours, as members do at Westminster? It is because we said from the outset that we did not want to be like Westminster; we wanted to be a family-friendly Parliament in which parents would rightly have the opportunity to share time with their children and be able to fit their work around the school holidays. I appreciate what Gil Paterson said—there is an argument for extending a debate into the late hours of the evening, but if we put that suggestion to all the members of the Scottish Parliament, it would receive a clear rebuttal.
I keep repeating the point that in the real world, although it sounds great at the time to meddle with things, it does not work when we attempt enforcement. There is a need to fine tune and improve arrangements, but the proposal in question is not the way forward.
It is worth noting that the Scottish Parliament has been around for considerably less time than the Scottish Premier League, although I hope that it will be around for much longer. The important point is that the Parliament is new and that is all the more reason for testing out different ways in which to do things. I agree with Paul Martin that those different ways of doing things might not work, but we will not know unless we try. The danger of not being willing to experiment with our practices and procedures is that the existing procedures will become set in stone for decades or even centuries to come, as has happened in another place.
We should be relaxed about the prospect of testing different practices, which would also mean that we must be willing to admit that changes have not worked and that the original arrangements were better. I would be very concerned if we were not willing to try new ways of doing things.
We should change the reference to "business managers" deciding party speaking lists to party managers, as we did in the report on the consultative steering group principles. It is not always business managers who decide party speaking lists. In the Scottish National Party, the whips submit the party speaking lists.
Last week's Iraq debate was an SNP debate, which was held in Opposition time. Even if we had wanted a longer debate, we were entitled to only three hours. That raises a practical issue: if members of all parties want a longer debate and the Opposition has used up its share of time, from where can we get extra time? There is a case for flexibility in parliamentary time, so that we can pull in extra time.
More than half of the SNP group wanted to speak in the Iraq debate; I am sure that the situation was similar in other parties. Not every member's name was submitted directly to the Presiding Officer, although that practice should be encouraged and I am glad that the CSG report makes such a recommendation. A party might well want to structure its argument and its case. That makes sense, but it should not preclude other members from making speeches if the Presiding Officers want to bring them into the debate.
On the issue of flexibility and obtaining more time, an extended slot on a Wednesday is a possibility, especially if we started earlier on a Wednesday after lunch. That would allow us to have long substantive debates. We would not want to do that often, but we should ensure that the opportunity exists, should we need it. We should emphasise that such use of time would not be general practice, but would apply only in circumstances in which there was a clear demand for a longer debate.
We have shied away from shaving time off opening and closing speeches. We should mention that in the paper.
We could not shave time off closing speeches.
No. Closing speeches are very tight at the moment but, especially in relation to longer debates, the present formula is too generous, so we should include mention of that in the paper. Members who make opening speeches—I do not get to do that very often these days—would not necessarily be opposed to that.
Paul Martin made a point about Mondays and Fridays. The first point in the summary of issues has slightly telescoped that. It should say, "More use of the Monday afternoon and Friday morning slots for committees to allow more time to accommodate plenary business."
I am sure that that is what was meant, but the present wording could be read differently.
There is also a public relations point in relation to paragraph 11, on the normal parliamentary week, which says:
"Monday 14:30 to 17:30: Members' travel and constituency time … Friday 09:30 to 12:30: Members' travel and constituency time".
Paragraph 2.2.3 of standing orders actually says:
"The Parliament may … meet on any sitting day".
It goes on to describe the normal parliamentary week. The 2.30 to 5.30 slot on Monday and the 9.30 to 12.30 slot on Friday are potential parliamentary meeting times. It is misleading to suggest that those times are for members' travel and constituency time. We get enough flak without unnecessarily giving ourselves more.
I was going to take Monday morning and Friday afternoon off after reading that.
Do you have something more to add on that point, Gil?
No, I wanted to deal with the point that Paul Martin made earlier. He was right to point out that paragraph 39 should be cut short. It should say, "The Presiding Officer suggests that FMQT should be extended to 30 minutes", and end there.
I agree with that. I have bracketed the relevant part of the sentence. That was Ken Macintosh's perfectly fair point.
That is part of a basket of options on that point, which are listed in paragraph 40, that we might give to different people. Paragraph 40 means that, if we consider the issue in the round, a period of 30 minutes might come into play.
The extra time would not be for the leaders of the Opposition parties; rather, we would use the 30 minutes to encourage back benchers to get involved.
Back benchers are being constrained at the moment.
I have a point that does not relate to the substance of the paper, but is a suggestion about methodology. We could suggest that there is a need for more qualitative research on the issue. Although the surveys are useful, they are quite limited in the responses that they provide. Focus groups—dare I use the phrase—of members could give constructive output on some of the issues. No Procedures Committee will have a monopoly on perspectives on the matter and we will not capture effectively the views, insights and suggestions of members through paper-based tick-box surveys. If other members of the committee are comfortable with it, we could suggest that part of the next committee's on-going work should be to seek to get interested members to take part through seminars, for example.
Paul Martin made the point about knock-on effects and about how something that might seem like a good idea does not work once its consequences are worked through. An iterative approach is necessary to make progress on such issues and I suggest that we incorporate such a suggestion in the paper.
We have had a good summary of points, additions, qualifications and clarifications. That should allow us to finalise the paper and to pass it on. I assume that members will be happy for me to sign off the paper. It will not go anywhere, except to our successor committee.
Members indicated agreement.