The next agenda item is the review of parliamentary time, on which we have a paper. The issue is wide ranging and interlocks with other points, so it is difficult to focus precisely. However, we are getting another paper at our next meeting.
Yes. It will be on the various types of business that fill the time available, including Executive and non-Executive debates, committee debates and so on.
Yes. That paper will be about the way in which we use the time, whereas today we are considering the time itself. We could go through the paper bit by bit, or concentrate on the questions that are asked at the end, or perhaps we should have a general discussion around the aspects that are presented in the paper.
My recollection is that the First Minister makes a statement on the first Tuesday of the new term in September, which sets out his legislative programme for the coming year.
That has been followed by a two-day debate in the past couple of years.
So we think that that point is reasonably covered at the moment.
Yes. That is my recollection.
Right. So we accept that the parliamentary year starts on 1 September or thereabouts.
As a defined term, the parliamentary year runs from May to May because of the timing of the elections. There is a rule that provides for the First Minister to make a legislative statement at around that time of the year. However, existing practice is rather different; the statements have mostly been made in September and they are done as a general programming issue rather than under the existing rule.
The practice in a normal year has been to have such a debate in September, first thing after the summer recess, but I was trying to remember whether that happened in the election year or whether the debate took place in May, just after the election.
It took place in May in the election year.
It must have been in June, after we had elected a First Minister.
It might have been in June, yes.
It took place before the summer recess in the election year.
My slight concern about trying to put anything further in the standing orders or in any prescription about the parliamentary year is that I would like to encourage the Executive to get away from the view that legislation must be completed within a parliamentary year. We have a parliamentary session and our procedure is not like Westminster's, whereby legislation has to be completed within a Queen's speech year. Legislation can be carried over the summer—as will happen with the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Bill—and can be taken into the next year's planning as well. I would be keen for us not to put anything too tight in our rules that would encourage the Executive to move away from the good practice that it is beginning to adopt.
I take that point. I agree that, when a bill has been in preparation for a long time, carrying it over from one parliamentary year into the next should not be a problem. However, I would be concerned if the summer recess were to intervene between two major stages of a bill—for instance, if we were to have stage 2 in the spring and leave stage 3 until the autumn. That would be too big a stretch and minds could have ceased to be focused on the issues by the time that we reached stage 3.
At present, the rules allow that. As I understand it, stage 2 of the Planning etc (Scotland) Bill will begin in June. We will go through about a quarter of the bill and then resume the debate in September. Is that worse than holding back the whole of stage 2 until after the recess?
I do not think that that is a problem in relation to specific issues. My main concern is about a situation in which stage 2 has been completed and stage 3 has been deferred to a much later date.
So, there is no great enthusiasm for doing anything too specific about the division into parliamentary years.
Let us move on. Do we accept the present pattern of recesses? Does anyone wish to propose longer or shorter recesses, or recesses at different times?
The pattern of recesses falls into the group of issues that we have to consider that can be loosely headed as family-friendly issues. In our report, we will have to compromise on one or two aspects of what have been described in the past as the family-friendly aspects of the Parliament. For that reason, we should not change what there is no good reason for changing. I think that we should retain the current pattern of recesses.
There is no point in changing things for the sake of changing them.
I am not convinced that we have run out of parliamentary time. If I was convinced of that, I would probably support an extension of the parliamentary week. However, when I am still faced with anodyne debates I am not convinced that we have run out of parliamentary time.
I think that we will pursue that issue next time. Andrew Mylne is doing some research on how parliamentary time is allocated. We could explore whether we spend too many hours debating Executive motions and such things. We could follow up Karen Gillon's point. Is there any zeal for having a more flexible end to the day?
I thought about how flexibility might best be achieved and I came up with one or two ideas, which I have written on the back of this paper. Nevertheless, I am inclined to agree with Karen Gillon that, to all intents and purposes, we probably need to consider how constructively we use the time that we have. There is something to be said for allowing flexibility, especially in relation to stage 3 debates. However, to maximise use of the flexibility that we have or the flexibility that we may create, we should keep the notion of a 5 o'clock decision time as part of our normal routine. That is an important part of defending the right to be flexible when flexibility is necessary.
For some time, I have been thinking about how we handle legislation. What concerns me most about that—especially at stage 1—is the fact that the committee report becomes a subject of debate among the members of the committee. I have now taken the position that I will not put myself forward for a stage 1 debate on a committee report on a bill if I have been a member of that committee. If we are serious about involving members in legislation, we should ensure that they get involved before stage 3, when it is far too late. We will never sort out stage 3 if that is when every member comes in with all their worries, woes and concerns.
The clerk can take account of that point. I could not agree more with what you say. There are two aspects to the issue. The first is the time that is allocated for the Parliament to debate a stage 1 report. The second—going back to a point that Karen Gillon raised on an earlier occasion—is the idea that members should have an informal seminar or whatever to teach them about the bill. I am interested in the subject of the Bankruptcy and Diligence etc (Scotland) Bill, but I have not read all the documents. That reflects badly on me, but we are all like that. If there had been a seminar on the bill last week, I could have focused on the parts that interested me and could speak more intelligently about it.
Karen Gillon's points are well made, but they reflect, to some extent, the problems of the Executive parties. Because of the allocation of ministers and the committee responsibilities of the Labour Party, there is a tendency for the Labour members who speak in a stage 1 debate to be members of the lead committee. By contrast, the Conservative party may be given two, three or four slots in the debate and have only one member who is on the lead committee; therefore, we have slightly more flexibility. If there is a subject in which I am interested but on which I am not up to speed, I will sit through the stage 1 debate to learn something—perhaps because I am boring in that way.
That is a helpful point but, according to Karen Gillon, the stage 1 debate is slightly too late. There should be some mechanism for getting us up to speed, so that you could participate in the stage 1 debate; that would be better. We will examine the whole legislative process as part of the use of parliamentary time.
What would be the benefit of voting first thing on a Thursday morning, given that we have already decided not to have a flexible decision time?
If there were no decision time on Wednesday, it would mean that, if debates went on longer on Wednesday evening, people would not feel constrained by the fact that there was going to be a vote at some point later on and they would not have to stay in the chamber.
I thought that, in relation to question 3, we had decided that we were relatively content with having decision time at 5 o'clock.
There is an issue about our being too constrained by time. Having decision time first thing on a Thursday morning would mean that everything would not have to grind to a halt by 5 o'clock on a Wednesday.
I do not think that there is any real advantage to be gained from moving decision time. We must bear in mind not only the needs of members, but the way in which members of the public interact with the Parliament. It seems that that can happen on a Monday, if someone's MSP is here on that day, a Wednesday afternoon and all day Thursday. Members generally want to be about when constituents come through. If members are required to be in a committee, that can be difficult. Most parties have a rota for dealing with the fact that members require to be out of the chamber and the situation would be completely different if we were talking about committees rather than the chamber. I do not see that there would be any advantage in our juggling the arrangements.
Is there anything to preclude our having all the votes at 5 o'clock on a Thursday?
It would take a long time. In addition, votes are often taken on a Wednesday on business motions that relate to Thursday's business.
But a vote on a business motion can be taken at any time. It could be taken at the start of business on a Wednesday.
Are you suggesting that there be only one decision time a week?
We could vote on a Thursday night.
I still think that the paper makes a good case for the idea that votes should be held as soon as possible after debates have taken place. There is an urgency to the situation and an honesty to that approach. Although we cannot have divisions after every debate, deferring decisions from one day to the next takes us into a grey area.
I am not minded to extend the Wednesday evening session, so I am quite relaxed about decision time being held at 5 o'clock. If votes on Wednesday debates are to be taken the next day, it would make far more sense for them all to be taken at once than it would to have a vote on a Thursday morning and a vote on a Thursday night.
If the main chamber activity stopped at lunch time on a Thursday, people who were not involved in committees on a Thursday afternoon would be able to work at some of their other parliamentary activities, which might be a bonus from their point of view.
I understand your point and that, if they were not members of a committee that met on a Thursday afternoon, members from North East Scotland or the Highlands and Islands, for example, would be able to get home. There is some merit in giving that further consideration, especially as, if we had a proviso that committees should finish at 5 o'clock on a Thursday, members would not have to be here any later than they have to be at present.
I do not think that committees would take too kindly to being told exactly how long their meeting could last. It would be difficult to say that all committee meetings had to finish at 5 o'clock. I am not quite sure whether there is anything in the standing orders that relates to the timing of committee meetings. The committee in which I participate on a Wednesday usually meets at around 9.15 and can be finished by 12.30. If Parliament met in the chamber on Thursday mornings, that would mean that, allowing time for lunch, it might be half past 2 before a committee meeting could start. That would not give us an awful lot of time, if there were a proviso that we had to be finished by 5 o'clock.
Surely it would not be beyond the wit of the Parliament to timetable for Thursday afternoons those committees that do not tend to have long meetings or to overrun, such as this one and the Standards and Public Appointments Committee. Committees that tend to have longer meetings could fill up the slots that would be vacated on Tuesday mornings.
Perhaps we were stupid when we started the inquiry. There has been no appetite for a change to our meeting times. People have shown no appetite for sitting longer on a Wednesday evening.
That is a new idea, which I have not explored with people. Thinking about it, there are benefits to considering the idea further. If we are serious about being as family friendly as possible, that approach has to apply as widely as possible. I am thinking of, for example, members from the Highlands and Islands.
I agree that the idea is worthy of consideration. I am keen on the idea of moving decision time away from Thursday evenings in order to allow members to return to their constituencies. To be honest, what worries me is that people might try to avoid certain committees not because of their subject areas but because they do not want to attend committee meetings on a Thursday. We need to think about those motivations. Also, there might then be pressure on members in that, if it was possible for them to get away on Thursday, they might feel that they need to do that. Frankly, that is how I would feel.
To be fair to the clerks, they started in the way that Richard Baker has suggested, but the committee felt at its previous meeting that it wanted to consider the bigger picture.
I realise that. Perhaps the clerks were right the first time round.
Richard Barker has made a valid point: all those matters are interrelated. We should park the idea for the moment as one that will be worth considering in the light of further discussions.
I should add that I made a suggestion about changing the structure of the parliamentary week that the clerk included in the paper. My radical suggestion is that the full Parliament should perhaps meet in the chamber three afternoons a week with committees meeting in the morning. If further consideration is to be given to the structure of the parliamentary week, we should seek members' views on that suggestion.
That suggestion would give some flexibility for debates on Tuesday and Wednesday—it is an excellent idea.
For the moment, we will park the issue about meetings of the Parliament on Wednesdays and Thursdays and come back to it later.
From an organisational point of view, it is always good to know when I need to be here and when I am available to be somewhere else. I tell my staff who fill my diary that they should schedule my constituency business starting from 9 o'clock on Monday morning and finishing at 4.30 on Friday and that they should work inwards from those times but leave as big a gap as possible for me to be here. We must be prepared to consider flexibility wherever necessary although, from a personal point of view, I find it very useful to be able to predict years in advance where I need to be on a particular day.
Yes—we all find predictability important. Do members know of colleagues who have any great desire to vary the overall pattern of meetings?
For the moment, in that case, we will not pursue that issue.
That is correct, apart from private bill committees, for which special dispensation was made recently.
Option 1 is the status quo. Option 2 is to open the floodgates so that any committee can meet at any time. Option 3 is that, in special circumstances in which a committee was under particular pressure to interview more witnesses or whatever, we could allow a committee to have a second meeting during the week at the same time as a meeting of Parliament. Does anyone have any views on the three options?
I am interested in the arrangements for private bill committees. The paper mentions the amendment to the rules that gave private bill committees the right to meet during chamber time. Will the clerk fill that out slightly and tell us exactly what the restrictions are?
The change was made as a result of a Procedures Committee report earlier in this session. I need to find the relevant rule.
A private bill committee cannot meet when there is a meeting of the Committee of the Whole Parliament at stage 2, or during stage 3 consideration of a bill in Parliament.
Yes. From memory, one of the restrictions is that a private bill committee cannot meet when Parliament is considering an amending stage of a bill. The committee also needs to seek the approval of the Parliamentary Bureau, if possible. The restrictions are designed to prevent such meetings from causing particular problems.
What crossed my mind as I read the paper was that I am not averse to allowing other committees to meet during chamber time on the same basis.
Do you mean not as a general rule, but in particular circumstances?
Yes.
I would be happy with that.
I agree, as long as safeguards are in place.
The next question in the paper is about decision time, but we debated that earlier. Have members picked out any points from the paper that were not covered in the questions? Does the clerk wish to draw to our attention any issues that we have not discussed adequately?
I do not think so.
The discussion has been helpful and has allowed us to make progress in our overall look at the subject. At our next meeting, we will discuss the use of time in debates, which is a key issue. We will also discuss the timetable for legislation, to which Karen Gillon referred.
When will we consider the timings and arrangements for stage 3 debates?
We will try to cover that in the papers for the next meeting.
So we will cover legislative time as well as debating time.
On the basis of the view that the committee took at the previous meeting, I tried to approach the various issues in order, from the widest down to the narrowest. At this meeting, we have considered when Parliament should meet. The idea is to consider at the next meeting for which categories of business Parliament should use that time and then to return to the issue of speaking times in debates. We will cover stage 3 debates next time.
So, regardless of how the week looks, there will be three Parliamentary meetings a week, although we need to consider whether we will meet on three afternoons or for a full day and a half day.
Yes.
I am still trying to pursue with the Minister for Parliamentary Business the point that the committee raised about separating final stage 3 debates from the debates on amendments at stage 3. We are trying to have that put into effect.
I seek clarification on that. We discussed stage 3 debates at our previous meeting, but that is not the issue that I believed we were going to pursue with the minister; I thought that we were to pursue the suggestion of having stage 3 debates over two days, in order to provide more time for discussing amendments, rather than pursue the suggestion that we separate the stage 3 debate from the debate to pass the bill. That has already happened with the Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament Bill. I understood that we were trying to pursue with the minister the possibility of having stage 3 debates over two days to extend debating of amendments. I would welcome clarification, if that is not the case. There may well be two issues, but the issue that I was keen to pursue with the minister was the question of whether we could have a longer time for debate on contentious amendments, so that everybody who wanted to talk about them could talk about them for a sensible period of time.
I accept that that is the objective. What I mentioned was one way of achieving that objective by allowing a longer time for debate.
I am certainly keen on keeping open the idea of separating the stage 3 debate from the motion that the bill be passed. That might be the key to solving the timetabling problems for amendments.
I shall try to ensure that both those points of view are stressed in any conversations with the minister.
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