Agenda item 2 is on the issues arising from our inquiry into the timescales and stages of bills. We have a number of interrelating documents, but the key one is paper PR/S2/04/11/17, which was circulated at the previous meeting and which is a list of issues that were raised during the inquiry. The present paper is a slightly extended version of the one that was circulated previously. A number of the other papers tie into parts of that paper. I suggest that we go through the questions in paper PR/S2/04/11/17 to get preliminary ideas and views on the issues. Where appropriate, we will consider the wider options that are contained in the back-up papers. Are members content that that is the best way of dealing with the matter?
Members indicated agreement.
I suggest that we try to complete this agenda item by 11.30 am at the latest to give us time to consider our report on members' bills. If we do not get through everything, we can come back to the issue at our first meeting after the summer recess.
On the first bullet point, I do not think that we can prescribe how committees should set up their work programmes. We will have to reflect on the issue, but some people have suggested to us that pre-legislative work is useful, whether it is done through briefings or taking evidence. However, certain work depends on whether a draft bill has been published. We cannot prescribe that committees should do pre-legislative work. Perhaps referring to good practice is the most that we can do. I feel that such work has been useful in considering the bills with which I have been involved. The work is for the benefit of members—it is like a training exercise to allow members to get to know the issues that they will consider later in the process.
Some pre-legislative work takes place already. In this session, the Enterprise and Culture Committee has taken briefings from officials on a range of issues, although that has been for inquiries, not legislation. That work has been helpful. What I take from the evidence is that we should encourage committees to engage more in issues before they deal with bills at stage 1. However, as Cathie Craigie said, we cannot be prescriptive. Perhaps we can suggest a number of ways in which committees might work—for example, a committee might designate a small group of members to consider the issues before a bill gets to stage 1. We should suggest that committees should not only consider briefings from officials, but sift through the major evidence that the Executive has taken. We should not be prescriptive, but we should certainly encourage.
I have worries about the issue because committees have to do what they think is right. We have to get the balance right between the committees' role in considering legislation and their role in dealing with their own agenda, such as inquiries and other work. If, in effect, we introduced another stage in the legislative programme, that would further curtail what committees can do independently of the legislative programme.
I concur with that, convener.
Quite a lot of our witnesses felt that there should be more pre-legislative scrutiny by committees, but that did not crystallise into any specific suggestions. Before agreeing to anything, I would want to see some suggestions of how that could be done so that we could assess it. We have identified a problem but no specific solutions.
It must be for each committee to make that decision. I remember the experience of the Social Justice Committee—Linda Fabiani was also on that committee—during the passage of the Housing (Scotland) Bill. The bill was published in draft form and the committee took the opportunity to go out and speak to people about it. That was helpful for committee members and, when the bill was introduced, we were ready to run because we were well aware of the issues that were important not only to tenants but to the professional organisations that had responded. Such involvement is useful, but the decision has to be made taking into account the legislation that is coming before the committee and the views of the individual members.
Reflecting on the evidence that we have received, we could say that greater pre-legislative scrutiny by committees could be useful and could be seen as best practice, although it would be up to each committee to decide whether and how it wanted to do that.
From experience, I do not think that a committee would be compromised by undertaking such scrutiny.
I am wary of using the phrase "best practice". If it is up to each committee to decide what to do but we say that a particular course of action is best practice, we are accusing a committee that does not follow that course of action of not following best practice. That can bring its own problems.
I was going to make that point. There is also a difference between scrutinising a draft bill and taking part in a consultation process. With a draft bill, a committee knows what is being proposed, whereas a consultation process is about forming the bones of the bill and, in that case, it should be for everyone to decide the correct approach.
I think that we have a fairly clear steer on the first three bullet points on the list of issues at the pre-legislative stage. Do we want to make any comment on the publishing of draft bills?
It should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Okay. Let us move on to the section on stage 1. I draw members' attention to committee paper PR/S2/04/11/3, which gives some averages for the time that has been taken by committees in getting written evidence. Do members have any comments on the section on stage 1?
The first bullet point asks:
First, is anyone minded to suggest that there should be changes to the rules governing stage 1 timescales?
No.
Secondly, do we want to consider making recommendations on how committees should conduct inquiries? I do not want to use the phrase "best practice".
The second and third bullet points are more important than the first. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations indicated specifically that it did not believe that there was enough time for the submission of written evidence. The time between the call for evidence and the deadline for submission varies widely—between 22 and 84 days. That may be a more important factor than the overall limit in ensuring that stage 1 is opened as widely as possible.
The bill for which the period between the call for evidence and the deadline for submission was shortest was the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill. However, there was no member who did not know in great detail the views that people held on the bill, despite the fact that the lead committee had only 22 days to take written evidence on it. The bill was one of the most controversial pieces of legislation considered by the Parliament and people made their views on it known to members. The paper does not take into account the fact that the Executive consultation on the draft bill ran right through from March 2003. The submissions that were made to that consultation were very similar to those that were made to the committee's consultation and to everything that I received during stages 1, 2 and 3 of the bill; the views expressed in those submissions were similar to the views of the people who were not happy when the bill was passed. To some extent, it does not matter how long we have to consider a bill, as members must make decisions.
People had 84 days to submit written evidence on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill. That is the same as the 12 weeks that we have asked members to set for their initial consultation with members' bills. If we want to get the views not just of members and of organisations that can respond within tight timescales—the usual suspects—we must recognise that longer periods for the submission of written evidence and consultation are needed. Most members knew the position that they would take on the Prohibition of Smoking in Regulated Areas (Scotland) Bill, but 71 days were allowed for the submission of written evidence on that bill.
The Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill is slightly different from the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, as there were two, if not three, secondary committees on the former bill, all of which had to take evidence and complete their reports before 30 January. Although the lead committee took evidence up to that date, the Local Government and Transport Committee had taken written and oral evidence and submitted its report by 30 January. We must bear in mind the fact that we are not necessarily comparing like with like.
I note some of the points that Jamie McGrigor has made about flexibility and not wanting to stipulate to committees what the arrangements for dealing with their business should be. We can recommend that committees should allow adequate time for consultation. However, it must be for committees to set their work programmes and to allow adequate time for consultation. We should say that there needs to be adequate time for consultation, but that the evidence that we have taken suggests that the committees will have to consider different amounts of evidence for every bill. There may be more or fewer secondary committees, so each occasion is different.
Decisions will depend on issues such as whether a draft bill, if there was one, was very different from the bill as introduced. Such factors have an impact on the amount of additional evidence that is needed. There has to be a case-by-case approach.
Do committee conveners and clerks discuss such matters with the Parliamentary Bureau?
The convener discusses the matter, but I wondered whether the committee should have an input.
Is it not one of the convener's roles to work with members of the committee and to make assumptions about their thinking on the basis of previous discussions? We heard evidence from committee conveners and the Minister for Parliamentary Business that there is flexibility for conveners to go back to the Parliamentary Bureau and say, "Look, there's a problem. We won't be able to manage." I do not think that anyone has given us an example of a committee's request for an extension to stage 1 being refused.
Politicians fill whatever space they have. If we have six months, we will fill six months and if we have three months, we will fill three months. Someone somewhere must set a deadline; if a committee considers that it has not been given enough time, it can make that case. That has been the system in the past and it seems to have worked relatively well. We should not try to fix something that is not broken.
I do not share that view, but my view is obviously not shared by other members of the committee, so I will not press my case. I do not suggest that the Parliamentary Bureau should not set the timetable, but I think that it should at least wait a while before it does so to allow more time for discussion with committees than is currently the case.
How does the current system work? I do not know. Did you say that the Parliamentary Bureau waits for a week before it sets the timetable?
By and large, the Parliamentary Bureau sets the timetable the week after it allocates a bill to a lead committee.
What happens during that week?
Discussions take place with the clerks and the convener, but there is rarely an opportunity for a committee to have a full discussion about how much time it needs.
Do conveners discuss that with their committees?
That depends on whether the committee meets during that week. Quite often there is no meeting; that is the problem.
Are you suggesting that committees should have more time to consider the timetable?
I am suggesting that a committee should have the chance to meet at least once between its being designated as lead committee and the setting of the timetable by the Parliamentary Bureau, to discuss whether it wants—
That might cause difficulties with timing. It would not be possible to stipulate a time, because that would depend on other—
Given that no one mentioned the issue in evidence, which is the line that we have drawn in the sand in the past, we cannot take a view on the matter.
We can take a view.
I will remember that, convener.
We can take a view on anything that falls within the remit of our inquiry, as this matter does. However, no other members share my view.
It seems to be that your suggestion—
I still do not know what the convener's view is.
I thought that I had made that clear. My view is that a committee should have an opportunity to meet to discuss the timetable and offer its views to the Parliamentary Bureau before the bureau sets the timetable. At the moment, that does not necessarily happen.
That suggestion seems to be fair.
The suggestion seems to be reasonable, but the practicalities would be difficult.
Some committees meet fortnightly, so there could be further delays. The Procedures Committee is charged with trying to improve parliamentary processes so that members take decisions. One of the convener's roles, as well as being an impartial chair—as the convener pointed out—is to help to manage the committee's business. Committees have the opportunity to talk about their forward work programmes and timetables, as we did earlier. If we were dealing with legislation, that would have been flagged up to us and we would have discussed the matter. We might suggest that an extra week should be allowed, but the extra time needed might run to two or even three weeks. I do not think that there is a problem. Jamie McGrigor said that any decisions would be set in cement. However, evidence that we have received suggests that they are not set in cement and that we already have the flexibility that he seeks to be able to extend or shorten stage 1 consideration.
I thank you for those comments. However, I think that we are having an extended debate about an issue that I said I was not necessarily going to pursue, because there was no consensus in favour of the idea when I floated it.
There are genuine difficulties in that area. For a start, I do not think that there is enough consultation between lead committee conveners and committee clerks to determine how secondary committees will fit into the agenda. Indeed, if such consultation happens, no one knows about it. It becomes incredibly frustrating for both sides. For example, a committee might want to get through a bill and get on with the rest of its work but finds that it is tied because it is waiting for a report from a secondary committee. I know that lead committees do not have adequate time to consider secondary committees' reports because the dates do not add up. That situation is also incredibly frustrating for a secondary committee, which might have its own huge legislative work load and be getting pushed by a lead committee to deliver a report within an unrealistic timescale. We need to make some recommendations about timescales, because the whole problem comes down to individuals and the relationships between committees. If the system does not work, it simply does not work.
That is true, and it leads us directly to what Stewart Stevenson said when he gave evidence. I cannot give specific examples, but I am familiar with situations in which a secondary committee's report has been paid no real attention at all, but has been simply tacked on as an appendix to the lead committee's report.
Members have raised a valid concern. Indeed, a related issue is how we handle situations in which people give evidence on the same topic to more than one committee. Perhaps we need simply to recommend that everyone should work together better to sort out the role of secondary committees, to sort out evidence taking from witnesses when more than one committee is working on a bill and to sort out the timescales for receiving reports. Are members happy to say something about those matters in the report? I do not think that they require that standing orders be changed; we just need better practice.
Members indicated agreement.
I now seek members' comments about the minimum period between the publication of the stage 1 report and the stage 1 debate.
I think that the period should be seven days. It is not fair to give members only a night to think about their contributions to a stage 1 debate and to make balanced decisions on the evidence that the lead committee has taken. Such an approach is unrealistic and does not lead to good legislation.
Of course, that seven-day period could be altered in emergencies.
Yes.
We might find it difficult to formulate a rule change that would define that.
We could specify a period of five sitting days.
That is not quite the problem. At the moment, the rules provide for the bureau to set a date for the completion of stage 1. However, a date for the stage 1 debate might not necessarily have been set at that point.
Is there a rule that covers that situation?
I will ask the clerk. Would the bureau be able to set a timetable stipulating that a committee must publish a report by a certain date?
Yes, I think so.
So instead of setting a completion date for stage 1 consideration, the bureau could set a completion date for the report. It could then timetable the stage 1 debate no less than five sitting days, seven sitting days or whatever after the report's publication. Would that work?
One practical difficulty is that the bureau might want to establish the date of the stage 1 debate in the business programme some time ahead and before the committee would be in a position to know for sure whether it would hit its publication target. Every committee has discovered that sometimes it is not known how many meetings it will take to agree a draft report. However, if the committee wants to pursue the idea, I will be very happy to work up a few thoughts on the matter.
Clearly, there is a view that the present system is not satisfactory.
To be honest, there is no point in the inquiry if we cannot make the changes that people have asked us to make. That issue has come back time and again. We need to find a way of doing it.
I will look into the issue.
Are members agreed that we need to do that?
Members indicated agreement.
The next issue is the minimum interval between stage 1 and stage 2. Given that, for the most part, stage 2 consideration has started after a period that is considerably longer than the minimum period that is required, do we want to make any changes to that?
If we are considering extending stage 2 amendment deadlines, we may need to provide a greater gap between the stage 1 debate and the first stage 2 meeting to allow proper time for amendments to be lodged.
I think that you are right, but we will consider that in paper PR/S2/04/11/4, which deals with stage 2 amendments. At the moment, we are considering what the gap between stages 1 and 2 should be in principle. We are considering not just whether to change the gap by a day or two to reflect the changes to amendment deadlines, but whether there needs to be a much longer gap than the present seven sitting days. For example, should the gap be twice as long as that? Are members content that, other than make a change to reflect the change to amendment deadlines, we do not need to change the gap between stages 1 and 2?
Changing the minimum gap to 10 sitting days would allow us to accommodate the amendment deadlines.
We will consider the consequences of that when we come to consider changes to stage 2.
The issue is all about how "unreasonable" is defined. We all react differently to stage 2 debates. I love stage 2 because it really gets me going—which is quite sad, really. Stage 2 debates allow members to become involved in a much more detailed way, which gets the adrenaline pumping. There is a huge amount of pressure, but is that pressure unreasonable when it is partly what the job is about? However, whether unreasonable pressure is put on clerks and Executive officials is an issue that we need to consider in the wider context.
I agree with Karen Gillon. I like stage 2 debates and the pressure that they put on us and I get the feeling that the clerks and the civil servants quite like them, too. Perhaps they put up a good front and pretend otherwise, but there is something exciting about having to work to such a tight timescale. After members have worked on a bill for a long time, stage 2 provides an opportunity to make the changes that members feel can improve it. I think that all members feel that way.
In our consideration of such matters, we have a tendency to look inwards by considering only the effect on members and staff. We must also think about people outside Parliament who have an interest in legislation. Sometimes such people have been involved in the process for two years and have participated in various consultations, but suddenly—whack!—they find that stage 2 goes bang, bang, bang. I am not saying that we necessarily need to make changes to the timescale, but we need to bear in mind the fact that that may be an area of public concern.
Once a bill is published, organisations often know what amendments they need to make. By stage 2, they have already had time to think up amendments. The difficulty lies in whether organisations are able to get into gear to lodge their amendments at the right time.
I accept that outside bodies know the key amendments that they want to lodge, but they also want to be able to respond to amendments that others have lodged. That is where the timescale issues impact on outside bodies. At certain stages in the process, outside bodies simply do not have sufficient time to consider the overall picture and to keep themselves informed of the situation and members informed of their concerns.
The point about keeping members informed is vital. One of the things that I have heard said a lot in this committee is that we need to move beyond the usual suspects. The kind of timetable that we have been discussing might be fine for organisations that have full-time staff, but there is a big issue about how people who are not full time or who work for voluntary organisations can interact with Parliament if there is a short timetable.
Maybe I have just been lucky, but I have never gone into a committee not knowing the arguments on both sides of a debate around big amendments. The process might put pressure on organisations, but they certainly get to MSPs and they know what buttons to push. I do not buy the suggestion that organisations are not able to influence legislation, although I accept that they might not like what we do.
I have not heard any of the evidence, so all that I can do is consider what is set out in our papers. It is interesting to note that everyone who has responded, apart from Patricia Ferguson, has said that there is not enough time, although Ross Finnie said the opposite, which simply shows that there is a split in the Executive.
The process is not perfect, but unless committees decide to extend the legislative process by meeting fortnightly to consider amendments, we will not be able to deal with those concerns. If people think that that is what we should do, we will have to make that call. However, it is not realistic or honest of us to say that we will meet fortnightly during stage 2. That would not be good for the legislative process.
Members who are dealing with amendments will be aware of the various sides of arguments because they will have heard the evidence and been lobbied through letters, e-mails and so on. MSPs are elected to make decisions and must do so based on evidence that they have received and their experiences. The buck stops with the members.
The papers that are before us show, however, that many members are saying that the lack of time makes the process difficult.
The changes that we propose in relation to extending slightly the lodging deadlines for amendments will make a big difference to the process. It would not be reasonable to suggest that committees meet only once a fortnight during stage 2; that would simply confuse the process even more. I hope that the committee will agree to the suggestion that those slight changes be made.
Rather than have committees meet fortnightly, we should do what is suggested in the fourth bullet point, to which the convener was probably going to come: we should give committees more control over the timescale so that they can take more time to cope with the problems that Stewart Stevenson raised; for example, their being unable to process amendments in the time they have been given.
If significantly more amendments to a bill are lodged than was originally expected, the Parliamentary Bureau has to consider sympathetically any request to extend the deadline for completing stage 2, but I am not convinced that that necessitates any change to standing orders. If a committee is deeply concerned about its not having enough time to consider amendments, it should simply approach the Parliamentary Bureau to say that that is a problem.
We do not want the lodging of amendments to become a way in which to wreck a bill, which can happen at Westminster. If we allow that to happen and we say that a committee must be flexible enough to respond to however many amendments are lodged by whomever whenever, bills will be wrecked. The Protection of Wild Mammals (Scotland) Bill, for example, would never have been passed in such circumstances.
That is a valid point. Let us move on.
Yes. When the Communities Committee was considering stage 2 amendments on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill, it agreed to meet all day one day, but Parliament met for the First Minister's statement on the explosion in the Stockline Plastics factory, and we could not suspend the committee. We had to close the meeting and start a new committee meeting in the afternoon, and the staff had to go away and reprint the marshalled list and do some more work. That situation is just stupid. If committees require to meet once, twice or three times a week when they are considering bills, that is for them to decide, but there should be a mechanism whereby one meeting can be called, all the paperwork be made available and that meeting be suspended and reconvened. That is how all the members of the Communities Committee feel: not being fully versed in Parliament's standing orders, we all could not believe that we could not suspend the meeting for half an hour and return.
That point is noted and I am sure that it will be reflected in the report.
Do we need to go through the paper page by page? The next three bullet points in paper PR/S2/04/11/17 address all of paper PR/S2/04/11/4. Could we not come back to paper PR/S2/04/11/4 later?
There are a number of options for the minimum notice period; it would be helpful if we could make a decision on those options.
We will probably get tied down in discussing the options before we make a decision.
One of the options is that there be "no change".
Well, there you go.
I do not want to spend a lot of time on the matter, but we need to go through the paper to see whether there are any queries. It is important that we make a decision on the options. I am fairly clear about the one that I want to go for.
I am unclear about what is meant by the first bullet point in paragraph 14 on page 3, on non-Executive members.
At the moment, two and a half days are available to consider Executive amendments, which are lodged five days before a stage 2 meeting. If we move the deadline back by one day, there will be only one and a half days available, unless the Executive moves its deadline back by one day. It will not do that, because it would then have to lodge its amendments before the debate on the previous sections—nobody would do that; it would be stupid. There would therefore be less time to consider the implications of Executive amendments before a member lodged his or her amendments. However, I guess that most people know what amendments they will lodge anyway.
On the third bullet point in paragraph 14 on page 3—
Do you mean the one that says
Yes.
That is true. It is a fact.
Yes. It is one of the issues about which I am concerned. We do not have sufficient time to see the marshalled list and the groupings before the debate. I hope that we can solve that problem.
That would cause confusion.
I agree.
The letter that we received from the Health Committee suggests four days rather than three days.
Would that mean that amendments would have to be considered on the same day as the Executive lodged its amendments?
There are disadvantages in having a four-day notice period as a matter of course if the committee is meeting weekly. As I said in the paper, that would cause significant difficulties. The suggestion in the paper is to increase the notice period to four days only for the first day of stage 2—for which the bulk of amendments tend to be lodged—and where there is no previous committee meeting a week before stage 2. Obviously, the decision is up to the committee.
Do we agree to stick to three days for all stages?
Members indicated agreement.
That raises an issue that we referred to earlier. Should the interval between stage 1 and stage 2 be increased, either from seven days to eight days or by another week, from seven days to 12 days?
I do not think that it should be 12 days.
Should we choose option 4A?
My suggestion was 10 days. Is that not an option?
There is something about the sitting patterns—
The reason for the proposed number of sitting days relates to the number of weekends in between. Given the normal sitting pattern of when meetings of the Parliament and committee meetings take place, if you want to increase the interval you will—to be realistic—have to increase the period by a whole week. If it was to be increased only by one, two or three days, you would create anomalies in respect of when committees sit and the weeks in which they could do things. In some ways it is easier to think of the interval in terms of weeks, rather than days, although the wording of the rule in standing orders refers to sitting days.
Is a sitting day a working day, or is it a day when Parliament sits?
Sitting days are Monday to Friday.
So 10 days means two weeks.
Yes, but if Parliament meets on a Thursday and a committee meets on a Tuesday, an interval of 10 sitting days takes you through to the Thursday two weeks later, not the Tuesday two weeks later, which means that it is three weeks before the committee can meet.
But eight days takes you to two weeks anyway.
That is fine. We do not want to go to 12 days.
Paragraph 26 of paper PR/S2/04/11/4 explains it. We will go for eight days.
Yes, because that will make it easier to produce marshalled lists and groupings, which are what people want.
I do not know whether it is appropriate for the Procedures Committee to be involved in this, but no parliamentary rules prescribe how the marshalled list should be published. One amendment in a group might be on page 1 of the marshalled list, but another amendment in the group might be on page 98. Instead of having separate marshalled lists and groupings, we should publish the groupings with the amendments in the group printed underneath. There is overwhelming support for that among members.
There are a number of issues about how amendments are made available and published. We can include a number of suggestions in the report. We do not need to make changes to standing orders; some changes just require changes in practice. Making marshalled lists and groupings available as early as possible would be helpful.
Are people who are in the gallery for stage 3 given copies of the marshalled list and groupings list if they wish them?
There are difficulties with that because of copyright issues, but that is really a matter for participation services; it is not something with which we deal.
I imagine that it must be a nightmare for people from professional organisations who have been involved in the process if they have to sit in the gallery with their papers on their knees and follow what is happening. The public should be able to track our progress, as that would improve communication with them.
Marshalled lists are available on the Parliament's website, as are bills. Groupings need to be published somewhere so that people are aware of them. I would have thought that the best place to do so would be the Business Bulletin.
If this is not an issue that we can deal with, can we raise it as a committee, or can Andrew Mylne raise it in discussions with the clerking teams?
Discussions are going on with relevant clerking staff about ways of improving the presentation of material. The aim is to bring ideas back to the committee. The issue has to be dealt with at administrative level for practical reasons.
Is there a reason why we do not get this in the Business Bulletin on the day of stage 3? People have asked me why other amendments and material go in the Business Bulletin—sometimes at great length—but this does not.
Do you mean the groupings list?
Yes.
I have never understood why the groupings list is not included in the Business Bulletin, particularly for stage 3. It should also be included for stage 2.
That information is not published in the Business Bulletin probably only because of the timing, as sometimes it is not available until the morning of the committee meeting. Linda Fabiani will remember that when we were doing the Housing (Scotland) Bill, it was 8 o'clock in the morning before members were able to pick up the marshalled list. If we are bringing forward the process a wee bit and having a 12 o'clock deadline, staff will be able to work on the amendments for three or four hours and there might be an opportunity for that information to be published in the Business Bulletin.
Those points are noted. Can I have confirmation that the committee supports option 6, which is that a second or third stage 2 meeting in any particular week should be treated as a continuation of the first?
Members indicated agreement.
Have we agreed to options 5 and 6?
Yes.
Good.
The final bullet point on stage 2 is about whether there should be a formal opportunity for committees to review the bill as amended before it goes to stage 3.
I do not think that we need to have that. When the committee is going through the bill, it has the opportunity to review each section when it is being agreed to. In my experience, few members have taken the opportunity to debate sections again but, as I understand it, they have the opportunity.
Giving committees a formal opportunity to review might affect issues such as the time between the stages. That is the only issue.
It seems to be logical that if the Finance Committee can feed into the bill at the start of the process, it should have an opportunity—rather than a requirement—to have another look at the implications of amendments that have been made at stage 2. I can see the argument against making it a requirement that committees review the entire bill after it is amended at stage 2, but I do not see what is wrong with giving them an opportunity to do that if they choose to, especially given how complex stage 2 processes are, as Stewart Stevenson described.
We are not considering making changes to standing orders. We are simply saying that committees—
Can if they want to.
Yes. We are saying that committees can review the bill after stage 2 if they want to.
It is sufficient.
The general view seems to be that nine days is sufficient. It is usually exceeded in any case, so it is unusual for there to be only nine sitting days between the two stages. Are members happy to leave that interval as it stands?
Members indicated agreement.
Are we dealing with the point on the Finance Committee?
The decision is that we will indicate that committees should have an opportunity to review the bill, but we are not going to make it a formal requirement.
Okay.
We move on to discuss stage 3. The first issue is whether we should change the notice period for amendments at stage 3. I refer members back to paper PR/S2/04/11/4, which contains our options. Do we want to leave the notice period for amendments at stage 3 at three days or do we want to extend it to four? Four days would give more time for publication of the marshalled list.
We need to go to four days in order to allow the marshalled list to be published.
That is particularly important at stage 3 because the amendments at that stage are selected and members do not know what amendments have been selected until the marshalled list has been published. Are we agreed that we should extend the notice period to four days?
Given that there would be only four sitting days between stage 2 and stage 3 if a bill is unamended, having a notice period of four sitting days for stage 3 amendments might cause a problem. If we are extending one period, should we not extend the other?
That is an important point. We shall come on to that when we discuss option 8. The suggestion is that we should just remove the present four-day limit for unamended bills and have a single deadline.
There has never been a bill that went through unamended.
I think that my bill, the University of St Andrews (Postgraduate Medical Degrees) Bill, was unamended at stage 2.
A number of smaller bills have gone through unamended—at both stages, in some cases.
I suggest that we go for the option of having a single deadline for all bills, whether they are amended or not. If there is a need to get a bill through more quickly than that, standing orders can always be suspended. Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
Do we also wish to move the lodging deadline for stage 3 amendments from 4.30 pm to 2 pm?
Yes.
Is that agreed?
Members indicated agreement.
We have sorted all the issues to do with amendments. We now move on to the other stage 3 issues, and the first question that we must consider is whether enough time is allowed overall for consideration of stage 3 amendments. I think that that depends on the bill in question—how long is a piece of string? Do members have any comments?
Six-party politics will create more and more of a problem.
Oh dear.
There might be seven parties after the end of this week. Who knows?
There will be an increasing problem with the final stage 3 debate being only half an hour long if all six parties in the chamber want to get a cut at it. There must be a fair proportion of time available for all the parties so that the smaller parties do not get a disproportionate time, so we will need a longer time for the debate. Stage 3 of the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill, which we all sat through, provided a good example of there simply not being enough time. I felt that that was particularly true in the case of the amendments in the name of Paul Martin; there was not really enough time to find out what those amendments were really about, so they did not get enough consideration.
Thank you for raising that point. I thought that it was totally unfair that, during the open debate on the Antisocial Behaviour etc (Scotland) Bill, back benchers were allowed to come in despite not having moved an amendment or said a word all day. I am also talking about the Green and Scottish Socialist Party members. They had not lodged any amendments, yet they were allowed to participate in the open debate—they are just back benchers, the same as me. Regardless of their party, they are competing for time against the Executive and the front-bench spokespersons from the major parties. However, Parliament always has the opportunity to extend the debate. If we had wanted to sit until 7 o'clock or half past 7 on Thursday, we could have moved to extend the debate until that time. If there is flexibility to do that, people will do it.
I find it slightly frustrating when we get amendments at stage 3 that are not debated. I do not know how we can legislate for that, but I do not think that we should be voting on amendments on which there has been no argument. We need to find a way of having that debate, and if it means that we have to move the timetable by 15 minutes to allow those amendments at least to be moved and spoken to, that will let us know the policy intention behind an amendment before we vote on it. At the moment, we are in the ridiculous position of voting on amendments that nobody has spoken to, and I just do not think that that is right.
That is one of the issues that I intended to raise. I, too, find reaching the cut-off point frustrating. I keep harking back to the Housing (Scotland) Bill, but I remember that I felt hard done by because members were voting on an amendment to that bill that I felt was terribly important—perhaps nobody would have agreed—and that I believed they had misunderstood because we had not had time to talk about it. I do not know whether the committee's discussions and evidence have covered that matter.
I take on board the points about the open debate, but I think that a priority has to be the fact that we vote on amendments to which no one has spoken, which came as a surprise to me when I was elected.
The one person who can do something about the issue is the Presiding Officer. If five minutes at least were allocated to each amendment, that would allow every amendment to be spoken to. The timetable could allow for that. We should not end up with no speaker in one debate because a long debate earlier had an extra speaker. Somebody, somewhere must make the hard decision. If that means that we must change timetabling motions, that is what we will have to do.
As a minimum.
Yes.
That time would not always be needed for every bill, because with some fairly minor bills, nobody has anything to say by the end of stage 3. However, Karen Gillon is right that an hour is more reasonable than half an hour for discussing most major pieces of legislation.
Perhaps we would not need to stipulate that in standing orders; we could just make a recommendation to the bureau.
The time for the open debate is not specified in standing orders, but we will recommend to the bureau that the time for the debate should normally be at least an hour.
The bill should have been given three weeks, so that we could all speak about it.
In relation to amendments, I draw members' attention to paper PR/S2/04/11/5, which is on timetabling motions.
I thought that the meeting was to stop at 11.30.
We are pretty close to getting through the whole lot; we may do that in the next 10 minutes.
Where are we?
We are now looking at the bullet points at the top of page 3 of the note on the list of issues. On timetabling motions, there is a question mark over whether the procedure that was adopted last week when an extension of 15 minutes was granted was in order, but we will brush over that now.
We should change the rules so that such a procedure is in order.
That is the key issue. Do we want to give flexibility to the Presiding Officer to allow some adjustment, do we want to change the rule or do we want to do both? Should there be the opportunity during the course of a day for a motion to be moved?
We have to do both.
We will do both. That is agreed.
Yes.
I draw members' attention to the fact that the Subordinate Legislation Committee has made a strong recommendation that if a major change to subordinate legislation is made at stage 3, there should be a deferral of at least a week to allow that committee to consider the change. Do we support that proposal?
When has that been a huge problem so far?
PR/S2/04/11/8 gives a couple of examples of when such changes have been made at stage 3. The main example is the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, in which additional powers were taken by ministers at stage 3.
What are Henry VIII powers?
You get your head chopped off.
Ministers give themselves such powers to amend primary legislation by subordinate legislation, although the approval of Parliament is still required.
Why are they called Henry VIII powers?
I presume that it is because he was the first to use such a procedure.
You would think that we would have found a better way by now.
Are members content that there is no need to change the procedure with regard to subordinate legislation?
There is an issue. My experience is that subordinate legislation is the one part of the Executive's legislation that is very badly drafted—that continues to be a problem. If the Executive says that the use of those powers will be subject to affirmative resolution, I am relaxed about it, but some issues arise if their use will be subject to negative resolution. If we do not change standing orders, we must send a message to the Executive that we expect that it will use those powers only in extreme circumstances.
Are members happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
There are three miscellaneous issues. The first is whether the Executive memorandum on delegated powers that is provided to the Subordinate Legislation Committee should be an accompanying document. The Executive is not very keen on that, but that does not mean that we should not require it. I am not convinced by the Executive's argument, because it must know whether there are subordinate legislation procedures in a bill—
Can you clarify what that means?
Currently, when a bill is referred to the Subordinate Legislation Committee, the Executive provides a memorandum on subordinate legislation provisions within the bill for that committee to consider. That committee has asked that that memorandum should become an accompanying document, like the policy memorandum and the financial memorandum, so that it has to be published with a bill.
I do not see a problem, either.
I suggest that we make that memorandum an accompanying document.
Members indicated agreement.
Should the Executive also provide a revised memorandum at the end of stage 2? I think that it should.
Members indicated agreement.
Should further information be made available to assist members preparing for amending stages? We have already discussed that and the clerks are going to come back to us with some thoughts on the related administrative issues.
If it is possible, we should have that information.
The final question is whether the Executive should be required to provide updated explanatory notes on the bill as amended at stage 2.
I am surprised that it does not.
From memory, the minister said that she would consider that matter and come back to us. I do not think that it is a big problem. However, there might be problems for the Executive if an amendment were passed at stage 2 that the Executive felt would have a negative effect on the bill. The explanatory notes would probably not support the amendment and the member who lodged the amendment might feel that the Executive was taking an opportunity to argue against their amendment. That would be fair enough, however, because if it were Executive legislation—
Does the Scottish Parliament information centre provide anything at that point? I cannot remember.
SPICe provides a briefing—
Does SPICe update the briefing after stage 2?
It does.
Surely that is of more impartial benefit to a member than updated Executive explanatory notes.
That briefing deals with Executive amendments as well. I always find it useful to look at the explanatory notes to a bill, as they can clarify matters.
The minister has said that she will get back to us on that point and we have time to wait for that. The issue is whether the Executive will provide explanatory notes when amendments that it did not propose are passed. Do members agree to come back to that issue?
Members indicated agreement.
That concludes our consideration of timetables and stages of bills, which was very helpful.
Members indicated agreement.
Meeting continued in private until 12:23.
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