The next item is about members in charge of members' bills. We got laboriously through the matter, apart from the final issue of who can substitute for an independent member who is promoting a bill when a committee is considering that bill. Option A in the paper is that, if there is an independents group, as there is at the moment, that group would be allowed to nominate a substitute, as party political groups do. Option B is that, if there is a single member who is not part of an independents group, that person could nominate a substitute. The question is whether the Parliamentary Bureau should nominate the substitute in such circumstances. It would not happen often, but that seems to be a reasonable proposition. Option C is that there should be no substitute.
I am drawn to option B, but I am not convinced by its wording. My option B would be that the bureau would nominate an individual who would not upset the balance between Opposition and Government parties. I am not convinced that the bureau would have to nominate a substitute from one of the smaller parties, but the nomination should not upset the balance between Government and Opposition.
Perhaps what we are looking for is someone who gives a freer hand, but on the assumption that a responsible course would be taken. That would simply defer responsibility to the bureau.
Where there is a recognised group of independents, would anyone object to its members nominating a substitute? Is that okay or are there difficulties with that?
I have some difficulties with that, because independent members are initially placed on committees not as members of a group but as individuals. They may subsequently form a group, but they do not sit on committees as members of a group, so why should that group retain the right to nominate an individual? Given the number of circumstances in which such a substitution is likely to take place, which would be very few indeed, I would be keen to see a rule that applied to all independents, irrespective of whether they were members of a group of independents. Their membership of such a group could change from one week to the next, or they might leave the group of independents half way through consideration of the bill.
The difficulty with that suggestion, in drafting terms, might be that if we specify in a rule a reference to Government and Opposition, I think we would need to be clear about what that means and how it would be applied to each bill that came along. Members' bills, almost by definition, are not necessarily party political, but they must be cross party to some extent before they get to committee. That is my concern about the practicalities of that suggestion.
Of course, the member could change their mind during the process.
If the member was an independent, they might well do.
If the power was given, as Karen Gillon suggests, to the bureau and if there was a recognised group of independents, they would have a representative on the bureau who would presumably argue the case for whoever they felt should be the substitute. Likewise, on upsetting balances, the Opposition groups are represented on the bureau, although if push comes to shove and the Executive parties vote together, they have a majority vote. Presumably, if the Opposition representatives on the bureau felt that a choice was not fair, they could make a stushie about it.
Surely a rule could be drafted that would refer to the Executive parties in another way. For example, if the member was not a member of an Executive party, a substitute should not be. Would that not be possible?
The member would not be independent if he or she were a member of an Executive party. That would be the case unless an independent member was the difference between a majority and a minority and became a member, as an individual, of an Executive Administration and held the balance of power in that Administration. God forbid—it is bad enough for you lot.
Is the solution simply not to give guidance at all? If we are to have substitutes, should we not defer the right to appoint a substitute to the bureau? If there was anything to be put in the rule over and above that, it should be a simple remark relating to the bureau having to have regard to the previous balance of the committee.
Yes—having regard to the party balance of the committee is good.
It should perhaps have regard to the previous balance of the committee.
I think that the rules already refer to the bureau's requirement to have regard to the balance of the political parties in Parliament in constituting committees, which comes from the Scotland Act 1998. We need to bear it in mind that the circumstance under consideration is one in which the member is debarred from a committee for the agenda item and therefore the member being substituted is someone who would not normally feature in the balance between the Executive and Opposition parties that represent the bureau in the first place, so that balance—
But they do reflect the balance on the committee because the person who is there, in every single case, still enables the Executive parties to have a majority on the committee because the place was given up by one of the Opposition parties. The Executive parties do not give up a place for an independent member. There is no committee in this Parliament that does not have an Executive majority.
So I have noticed, Karen.
That's democracy for you.
So the independent member would not be a member of the Executive parties. I think that we are making this unnecessarily complicated for the very simple circumstances—in fact, the very extreme circumstances—in which the issue would arise. I think that we should decide what we are going to do and report that whenever the rule is used in the future, it should be reviewed by the Procedures Committee to ensure that it is not being abused by the bureau. The bureau should be allowed to substitute, taking into account the previous balance of a committee. If the rule was abused, Parliament would take that into account. I would hope that the Procedures Committee of the time would make the necessary changes to standing orders to ensure that future abuses could not take place.
We agreed previously that if the member in charge of the bill is a member of a political party, that party has the right to nominate a substitute.
The party would already have a substitute, who would sit on the committee for the time the bill was being discussed. We are not changing the rules, because that already happens. We are saying that, in every circumstance, a member in charge of a bill who is a member of the committee dealing with that bill is not allowed to sit on the committee during its consideration of the bill. Either that member's substitute would participate or the committee would be one member down.
In the case of a member who is not a member of a party, the bureau should nominate a substitute, bearing in mind the balance in Parliament and on committee.
Yes.
When the guidance is reviewed, it should reflect that and we should say in our report that in future the Procedures Committee should continue to monitor the process to ensure that it is not subject to abuse by any bureau in the future.
I remain confident that the bureau would not dare to abuse the process.
Is that agreed?
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