Official Report 203KB pdf
We move now to the second agenda item.
On a point of order. Agenda item 6 relates to the Parliamentary Bureau's predictably dire response to a paper that I submitted, a large section of which covers exactly the same ground as item 2. For some reason, my paper was not included for consideration under item 2, but the two items must be considered together.
I have no difficulty with that. Which section of your paper covers the same ground?
I refer to the part that deals specifically with minimum periods between stages of bills and the timetabling of amendments. Not unnaturally, I think that my proposition is very much better than the proposition in the paper that relates to item 2. We should discuss both propositions together.
That seems reasonably fair and sensible. If members are relaxed and are not upset about that, I will take the paper that was produced for item 2 as the skeleton for proceeding through the issue, but I ask Donald Gorrie to feel free to raise additional relevant points from item 6 as we progress.
I have nothing to add to the paper, which I think speaks for itself. I should say that I have had no notice whatever of the matters to be discussed under item 6 and might not be able to comment very effectively on them, but I will do what I can.
As Donald Gorrie raises any additional points, I am sure that he will spell them out pretty clearly so that you can react to them. If you feel at any point that you have not grasped anything, we will go over it again.
I do not want to criticise anybody, but my paper, to which item 6 refers, dates from June and has therefore been around a long time.
The paper for item 2 was sparked by a letter from the Presiding Officer, but we have only just received the Presiding Officer's response to the paper that is listed under item 6.
The recommendation addresses a specific point and is quite fair, but it does not deal with two points: that a different time scale is necessary between the stages of a bill to allow more consultation with outside groups; and that more time is needed to consider amendments when they have been lodged. My proposition is that there should be a two-stage process, in which amendments would be lodged by a certain day, but members who lodged them would have two or three days in which to adjust or withdraw them. In addition, Executive amendments would have to be lodged a day before non-Executive amendments. The latter point is dealt with later in the paper. I am quite happy that the proposal before us deals with the problem that is discussed in the paper, but it in no way deals with the wider problems.
Is everybody else happy with the recommendation?
The next issue is stage 2 and the reconsideration stage. The question is posed
I think that option A is better. It would give more time for members to react to amendments that have been lodged at stage 2. There is an Executive habit of lodging huge rafts of amendments, apart from any amendments that are lodged as a result of private enterprise. It is quite difficult to obtain neutral professional advice on amendments. Having a longer notice period would be a step in the right direction.
Would you prefer option A for both stage 2 and the reconsideration stage?
Yes. As you say, we have no experience of the reconsideration stage, but I suppose that it would be sensible to have the same rules for both stages.
Paragraph 15 explains that increasing the notice period would mean that there would be less time before the deadline in which to lodge amendments. That is an especially strong consideration when there are two committee meetings in the same week, because the deadline for amendments for the second meeting might expire before the first meeting has taken place. That does not make sense. Any member who has been involved in bills knows that that can happen—one can be left with a very tight, if not impossible, time scale.
I wonder whether the circumstances that are identified in paragraph 15—a committee meeting twice in a week—are not somewhat unusual. If such meetings occurred and created deadline difficulties, the facility would exist to suspend standing orders to take them into account. Andrew Mylne does not look convinced by what I am saying.
When we were preparing this part of the paper, we were aware that this issue was less clear-cut. That is why we have set out the options. Janis Hughes's point is an important one to bear in mind. If the notice period is increased before the second of two committee meetings, the period after the first meeting when amendments can be lodged for the second meeting is reduced—there is a trade-off. It is right to say that two committee meetings in one week would be unusual.
It has happened.
Most committees would hope to avoid that whenever possible, but there are circumstances in which that would be difficult to avoid—for example, if the deadline that was set by the Parliamentary Bureau was very tight and more amendments were lodged than was anticipated. I am not sure whether suspension of standing orders in those circumstances would be possible, given the steps that have to be taken to secure such a suspension, or whether it would be particularly helpful. It would be better to produce standing orders that will work in most circumstances that one can anticipate. Suspension of the standing orders should be kept up one's sleeve for the very rare occasions on which exceptional circumstances arise. It should not be relied on to deal with foreseeable problems. Because of those factors, we recommended option B.
I was.
This is a slightly different thing.
Therefore, if a bill was referred back in the circumstances that I was thinking about, it would simply be for a re-run of stage 2 for the relevant sections.
If a bill was referred back to the committee, it would be for further stage 2 proceedings and stage 2 rules would apply as they did for the original stage 2.
Thank you for that clarification.
Janis Hughes has a point: there are two separate issues. We need a longer deadline before the first stage 2 meeting. That is the stage at which there is often a raft of amendments that we need to consider carefully. Fewer amendments are lodged in between one meeting and the next. The other issue concerns having enough time to lodge an amendment. Would it be possible to have a three-day deadline before the first meeting, and a two-day deadline for subsequent meetings? In my paper, I suggest six-day and five-day deadlines before the first meeting of stage 2 and stage 3, which is more sensible. However, if we are considering the paper for item 2, we should have different rules for the first meeting at stage 2 and subsequent meetings.
I wonder whether that might be confusing.
The whole thing is confusing.
My first reaction is that I am not sure that the amendments that come before the first stage 2 committee meeting are necessarily more complex or numerous than the ones that come before subsequent meetings. The Transport and the Environment Committee's experience of going through the Transport (Scotland) Bill has been the opposite: the more we have gone on, the more substantial and the more thoroughly worded have been the amendments. I appreciate that Donald Gorrie lodged a big amendment in the early days, but the minister introduced all kinds of weighty matters towards the end. I am not sure, therefore, that a general pattern can be seen.
Option B is a trade-off.
Option B is a kind of trade-off. Janis Hughes favoured option B; Donald Gorrie favoured option A. I see that only Donald favours option A, which is to change the period of notice from two days to three, whereas three members are in favour of option B. For what it is worth, the committee recommends option B.
Good—that was painless.
One of the reasons why that rule does not work particularly smoothly is that it was drafted before the current meeting pattern of the Parliament was established. What we are trying to do is adjust the rule to fit the meeting pattern. I have made it clear that the recommendation assumes that the same sitting pattern will continue. It is right to flag up the assumptions on which the recommendation is based. If the sitting pattern were changed—which would also require a change to standing orders—it might be appropriate to revisit the issue, or at least to bear it in mind that it might be necessary to revisit it at a later date. My main concern was to ensure that the committee was aware of the various factors that had been taken into account in the recommendations.
Fair enough.
I do not have a problem with any of the proposals. However, would not it be sensible to say that the minimum interval should normally apply? The Census (Amendment) Scotland Bill, for example, could have gone through in a day. In cases such as that, why should we have to wait for nine whole meeting days between stage 2 and stage 3? That works both ways. There might also be occasions when there is a need for ten whole sitting days, if there is something really serious to consider, although more often, we will deal with bills that do not need so long. We could leave the matter so that we do not have to go through any major suspension of standing orders to deal with those bills.
From the outset, the view that we have taken of the rule is that it is designed to set a minimum, not to deal with normal cases. As members are well aware, bills are pretty variable things—some are much longer than others and some raise many more difficult issues or are much more politically controversial than others. Any standing order must be able to cope with the range of bills that one can anticipate. The rule is designed to set a minimum that is suitable even for simple and relatively uncontroversial bills. We would then anticipate that when a bill was more complex or difficult, the intervals that were established would be longer than the minimum that would be required under standing orders. The time scales would then be for the Parliamentary Bureau to decide in its timetabling motions.
I believe that Gil Paterson has a question.
My question has been answered.
I want to be clear. Is not there a facility for Parliament to speed things through, as happened with the bill to ensure that all those chaps did not walk out of Carstairs?
That was an emergency bill. There is separate rule in chapter 9 of the standing orders, which allows an Executive bill to be classified by Parliament as an emergency bill. Any bill that has been classified in that way—which requires a resolution of Parliament—is not subject to the rule on minimum intervals. In fact, the standing orders create a presumption that such a bill will go through all its stages in one day. That facility therefore exists in extreme emergency situations—in which, for example, public safety is involved—to get a bill on to the statue book quickly.
My proposals were that the minimum period between the stages of a bill should be extended from two weeks to four. Andrew Mylne's paper correctly makes the point that we should count sitting days rather than weeks. I am happy to go with that, but there should be more time for reflection between the stages of a bill. At the moment it is difficult for the interested groups to get their act together to inform MSPs of the various issues. The nine whole sitting days should be increased to 18, or significantly more than nine. The seven-day period should also be increased significantly.
The seven or nine days is meant to be a minimum. I appreciate that there are political arguments about the need for more time, but I suggest that those arguments are better addressed through the Parliamentary Bureau, where the political parties can be encouraged to allow more time if that is felt to be necessary. Obviously, political factors will need to be balanced. The Executive will wish to get its bills through more quickly and opposition parties will usually wish to have more time. That is a political matter that needs to be discussed in that forum. The recommendation aims only to provide the minimum floor, which would perhaps be suitable for cases in which fewer issues need to be discussed.
The Executive will always take the minimum as the normal. As Andrew Mylne says, the Executive wants to get its bills through, so it is in the Executive's interest to press on with a fast time scale. It is in members' interests, regardless of our party, that the Parliament scrutinises properly. A more restrained and sedate time scale would allow us to do our job properly, which at the moment we do not.
I do not disagree in principle with what Donald Gorrie is saying, but we both sit on the Transport and the Environment Committee and are aware that we have had quite a bit more than nine whole sitting days—I cannot remember whether it is three or four weeks but it has been a reasonably adequate period—to deal with the necessary work between stages 2 and 3 of the Transport (Scotland) Bill.
Andrew Mylne will know better than I—he can remember the procedures. There have been situations in which we have done more than one session a week on amendments.
The Justice and Home Affairs Committee is perhaps not a typical example because it had to deal with a lot of legislation in a short period. That committee's problem of being overburdened with legislation was one of the motivations for the recent changes to the structure of committees, so I hope that the problem is unlikely to arise again for that committee, or any other, with quite the same intensity.
That is right. The problem was the amount of work rather than the time scale, which was never a huge issue.
There are only two bills that I can talk about in this context. I felt that the time scales were very tight for the National Parks (Scotland) Bill, where each meeting came hard on the heels of the one before. However, I have felt more comfortable with the more generous periods for the recent Transport (Scotland) Bill.
Thank you.
I will fight harder on the next one, I warn you.
Right.
I contest that statement of the Parliament's ethos. The Executive is, in a sense, a being outwith Parliament. Parliament's job is to keep control of the Executive. Henry McLeish and I are not equal members. Each of us has one vote in Parliament, but he—the leader of the Executive—and the members of his Executive team are different forms of animal from back-bench members. I dissent from the concept that the Executive should be treated absolutely the same as back benchers.
I take the same view as Donald Gorrie. If there is a problem with the Executive lodging motions late, we must address it. We must look at that closely.
I would be content to stick with option A, that is, to keep the situation under review. That is not because of a lack of sympathy for what Donald Gorrie says. I have some sympathy with the point that it is fair that members get a chance to respond. I have some sympathy with the view that, in general, it is not right for the Executive to lodge a major amendment that changes the structure of a bill with, as it were, five seconds to go, so that members cannot respond to that amendment. It is wrong in principle for the Executive to behave like that. If it has been behaving in that way, I do not know about it.
Gordon Jackson is right. I do not know the background to the Health and Community Care Committee's letter, but I presume that it has had experience of the matter. The convener suggested earlier that our vision might be clouded by our different experiences. The committees that I am on have not yet encountered the problem of late lodging of Executive amendments, but it might happen in future. Option A is best at the moment. I have some sympathy with Donald Gorrie's comments, but opinions are down to personal experience in some respects. We should monitor the situation for a further period before we make any decisions.
As two members are in favour of option A and two in favour of option B, I will throw in my tuppence worth. I do not want to be censorious of any minister, but when I opened my e-mail this morning to look at the amendments that had been lodged for tomorrow's debate on the Transport (Scotland) Bill, there were several additional Executive amendments. I know that the Minister for Transport has tried very hard to lodge amendments in good time and that a huge number were lodged last week. Given her earlier statements that she would try to avoid late lodging, I am sure that the fact that a further 10 amendments were lodged late in the day was a disappointment to her.
No.
Our debate was interesting and constructive. I thank everyone for taking part.