Parliamentary Time
Welcome to the sixth meeting in 2006 of the Procedures Committee. The first item is Bruce McFee's report on his visit to Estonia and Finland. A paper has been circulated.
Thank you convener. First, I thank the clerk for the paper, which gives a pretty comprehensive view of the systems and of the information that we found out while we were in Estonia and Finland.
Most striking for us were the differences between those Parliaments and this. The most obvious difference, and the one that members would expect me to mention, is that both those other Parliaments are the Parliaments of independent countries, so they have the full range of powers, which is reflected in their use of parliamentary time.
There is a great difference in the amount of time those Parliaments spend on considering legislation; it way exceeds the amount of plenary time that is given to considering legislation in the Scottish Parliament. That is particularly the case in Finland where, for a number of historical reasons that date back to before the first world war, even very small changes are required to go through what we would consider to be the primary legislative process rather than their being made by statutory instruments.
The overall time that is spent in plenary session and in committee in both Parliaments is significantly higher than is the case in Scotland, particularly the length of the plenary meetings. In Estonia, the plenary and committee meetings are operated from Monday morning until Thursday afternoon, and in Finland they run from Tuesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. It is also worth noting that the Finnish Parliament sits in the afternoons and evenings as a matter of policy, and that 75 per cent of Finland's members of Parliament are also councillors, which is why there are no parliamentary meetings on a Monday; that seems to have happened by universal acclamation so that the members can carry out their council duties. It should also be noted that, in Estonia, the fourth week in every cycle is a constituency week.
There are two other areas of difference on which I want to touch that might not be directly relevant to the inquiry but are worthy of note. The first is the time that is allowed for answering written parliamentary questions: in Estonia it is 10 days and in Finland it is 21 days. It is worth sticking that to the wall.
In Estonia, oral parliamentary questions require one day's notification and in Finland no advance notification of the question is required. On our visit we witnessed an instance in which advance notice had been given, but it was pointed out to us that that was very unusual. The question was about bird flu, which was a big issue there at the time.
The questions are not segregated; they do not have the system of themed questions that we have here. However, I have to say that attendance at question time, particularly in the Estonian Parliament, is worse than it is here. That Parliament probably has the same number of members present at question time that we have at themed questions.
To go to the heart of what we are talking about, there are no formal limits on the time for speaking in debates in either Parliament, although convention in the Estonian Parliament dictates that eight minutes is roughly the maximum time that is allowed for a speech. There is also an anticipated maximum in Finland—I cannot quite remember what it is—but essentially the Speaker of the Parliament does not have the right to intervene or to end a speech. If the person who is making the speech wishes to continue, he or she is permitted to do so for as long as they like, but that does not happen terribly often in practice.
Finland also has what it calls rapid-tempo debates, which gives an indication of the allowed timescales for speakers. The time that is allowed for speeches is limited, the limit being decided by the speaker's council. Members who open or present debates are limited to 10 minutes and other speeches are limited to five minutes. That gives an idea of the amount of time that can be allowed in non-rapid-tempo debates, should it be desired.
This all points to a question about decision time that Karen Gillon has raised on several occasions. There is a big rush here to get to decision time at 5 o'clock. They have cured that in Finland, where members can talk all night if they want to because decision time is at the start of the next day's business. It is therefore possible for members to continue to talk and to extend their speeches for ever and a day, but decision time will be the first item of business on the following day. The exception to that is on Fridays, when there is a rush for home, which tends to ensure that debates are wound up timeously.
The most interesting part for me was the subject of interpellations. An interpellation is a question that is asked of a Government minister or the prime minister that requires a formal response and debate in the chamber, if required. There are two very different approaches in the two Parliaments. It appears that in the Estonian Parliament—the Riigikogu—any member or faction has the right to ask for an interpellation, although it has to be a question on an issue of broad national interest, so a member cannot ask about the bus stops in Auchtermuchty, or whatever. Ministers are required to come before the Parliament to answer within 20 days. Monday is the set day for interpellations. A question-and-answer session ensues after each interpellation is answered by a minister, and a debate follows that. That continues until all requests for statements have been met, whether there are 20 or two. Although there are many more such requests in Estonia than there are in Finland, we do not believe that the position is abused. The questions seem to be handled in their entirety on Mondays. Interpellations, importantly, can result in a vote of no confidence in the Government. In Estonia, there are a good number of interpellations every year.
In Finland, the system operates differently. It operates on a more concentrated, if not higher, level. There, interpellations require a minimum of 20 signatures, which is 10 per cent of the members of the Parliament. The Government must respond within 15 days and it is usually the Prime Minister who makes the response. Normally, the debates on interpellations are long and full and can result in a vote of no confidence. There are usually four to six interpellations every year.
While bearing in mind the point that has been made about the deficit here of time for back-bench members of Executive parties, it is important to note that in neither legislature is there any formal Opposition business. The balance for the interpellation system should be quite clear.
In Finland, there is a practice of allowing a member to initiate a topical discussion. That goes back to something that Margo MacDonald suggested in relation to how members can use members' business. The Speaker's council decides whether such a discussion should take place. In the Scottish Parliament, the nature of members' business means that, often, the debate is not topical, simply because of the length of time that is required for the motion to gather signatures and for a party's turn for members' business to come around.
In some quarters, there might be a fear of embracing the idea of unlimited speaking rights and interpellations. I have no doubt that, if such a system were introduced here, it would be oversubscribed in the initial stages. However, the experience of those Parliaments—we should remember that the Estonian Parliament is not much older than ours—is that there is not much to fear from the system, which is generally accepted to be a good way of holding Government to account.
Thank you. Your presentation supplements the written report; both have been helpful. The issue of interpellations is interesting. All the Parliaments that we visited use a form of interpellation, so I think that it would be worth our while to pursue that. How do members wish to pursue the issue? Should we ask the clerk to summarise some of the constructive ideas? Should we include all the constructive remarks that have been made during the debate in the chamber and our discussions in the committee?
I would like the international perspectives to be presented separately, so that we have something to compare ourselves with. It would be easier to do that if the two aspects were separate. We need to get the ideas that we have heard about from other legislatures into the public domain so that other members can talk about them and consider how we can move the issue forward.
We also need to take into account the fact that one or two things, such as interpellation, appear to feature consistently in what we find in other countries. I was particularly interested in what Bruce McFee said about how that system enables Opposition parties to hold the Government to account. It would be extremely radical of us to propose the adoption of a procedure of that kind, so we would have to consider the issue in considerable detail.
It is interesting that various Parliaments use interpellation in different forms. It would be helpful if there were a mechanism for back benchers of Government parties to propose constructive ideas without that being regarded as somehow threatening to their Government.
Perhaps I will be shot for saying this, but I think that there is a serious democratic deficit in the Scottish Parliament in terms of the position of back benchers of governing parties. It is the one matter on which I probably agree with Karen Gillon. It is a serious deficit because although the Opposition parties are expected to oppose, I venture to suggest that Opposition debate days do not necessarily always hold the Executive to account. We have stale, set-piece debates on some occasions. The interpellation system is more dynamic, more topical and more in-depth because there is the ability within it to question ministers. Even at question time here, when a minister gives a response to a supplementary question, an MSP has had it—they can do nothing further at that time. However, under the interpellation system, we could ask more questions, and then debate the issue.
I agree with the suggestions that have been made so far, but I would also like to ascertain whether provisional work could be done on interpellation and on comparing the different systems that are used. I do not think that we can necessarily take something from one system and simply slot it into another, but the interpellation concept is useful, so it would be good to ascertain how far we could go with that system. I had read about interpellation before I witnessed it and I think, as do others who advocate it, that it might be a useful alternative to Opposition business days because it would allow members of other parties to play a full part.
My interpretation of interpellation is that it would not necessarily replace Opposition business. I saw interpellation in Norway; I think that it is comparable to question time here, when the Presiding Officer realises that there is significant interest in a question and takes a large number of supplementaries on it. In that respect, I believe that the interpellation format is beginning to develop in this Parliament. Perhaps what is needed is a more formal approach that would allow a subject to be introduced, followed by short speeches. Perhaps that would allow a rapport to develop among members of all parties and ministers, so that ministers could answer in detail questions on particular issues.
Is it agreed that the clerks should take up Karen Gillon's suggestion and produce a separate report on interpellation? To take up Bruce McFee's point, we could summarise the four different systems of interpellation that exist and draw on that summary. I do not know whether it would be possible to produce a mixture of some of them, while acknowledging that we cannot always just slide such things together. We might decide that one of the countries has the best model, which we could pursue. There is also the question of speaking time and so on. Is that all on item one?
Members indicated agreement.