Item 3 is consideration of the work programme. We should follow the procedure that we followed with the previous report, and go through the paper quickly, page by page, to see whether there are any questions for clarification. Then we will discuss the issues. Are there any questions on pages 1 to 8 of the paper?
No.
We need to consider today which inquiry to undertake as our first. We could perhaps also consider undertaking one of the smaller, more technical inquiries, which could be started in parallel. I do not want to tie the committee's hands too much at this stage by determining too much business in advance, because some future work will come out of our away day on 25 August. Therefore, it would be sensible for the committee to determine one major inquiry at this stage and perhaps to look at one or two of the more technical issues. Are there any comments?
Given what was said in our previous discussion, it would be useful to have a full inquiry into question time and First Minister's question time now. If we could agree that today, we would allow the clerks some time over the summer to work on that and to request information from members on their views so that we have something to work on when we come back from the recess. It seems entirely sensible that we do that now by tying the inquiry in with the coming changes and trying to conclude everything not too long after the summer recess.
I agree. We should tag on to that the wider business issue that I raised about the length of our working day on Wednesdays and whether we will extend business occasionally on Wednesday nights. We should do that so that we can deal with such issues, which matter to all members. There is probably not the same spread of desire to resolve other important issues as exists over question time and what the business week will look like. It would be a useful exercise if we were to wrap those two matters together. In that way, we could start to deal with some of the issues that I raised.
The parliamentary week is mentioned in paragraph 13D of the paper on options for future work. We can certainly cover some of those issues when we consider question time.
The two issues are linked. If we move or extend First Minister's question time, that will eat into the rest of the week. We must try to resolve that problem and ensure that we sort out all the issues once and for all. We should just do the work and sort them out.
Do members agree to hold an inquiry into question time, which is option 3 in paragraph 12 of the paper, and to link it to the proposal in paragraph 13D?
Although that will be a fairly major inquiry, I suggest that we also consider a couple of the more technical issues on suspension of rules and on emergency bills, which are mentioned in options 7 and 8. Those are essentially technical amendments and adjustments that may need to be made to standing orders. They would not require the level of work that a full inquiry would require, so perhaps we could consider them as a parallel piece of work.
Why have you chosen those issues ahead of everything else?
Only because they are relatively technical matters of tidying up the standing orders on those areas, rather than substantive matters.
I do not have a problem with that, but I would rather that we did something on the procedures for Scottish statutory instruments, because that is an issue for members. I know that there are problems with Westminster on that.
I think that we would need to ask the Subordinate Legislation Committee to provide some ideas before we pick the issue up. There is no harm in starting the process by asking the Subordinate Legislation Committee to examine the issues and give us proposals. However, we probably ought to ask that committee in the first instance rather than initiate an inquiry. I am happy for that to be undertaken, as we will obviously need something to take on once we have the question time inquiry out the way.
From what I hear in my party—I am not sure whether this is true for every party—an issue that certainly seems to concern back benchers is how we deal with non-Executive bills, how we prioritise them and what resources are available for them. That issue is hanging around—it has been for some time. It is a running sore, but we could sort it quickly. I believe in getting the easy stuff out of the way quickly so that we make some early gains, which starts to give the process some credibility. It would be useful to consider that matter early on as well.
I would certainly like that work to be done within the first year of the session. The pressure of non-Executive bills on the non-Executive bills unit and on parliamentary time could be quite a problem by the second year of the session.
Option 2 is an inquiry into Sewel motions. Could not the Parliamentary Bureau have a look at how it deals with Sewel motions? I have been business manager only for a short time, but it seems to me that the current process is rather piecemeal. If the bureau could consider the matter over the summer—obviously, it will take a bit longer before we can deal with the issue—it could perhaps come up with a rationale for how we deal with Sewel motions. We need a more considered decision-making framework than the current piecemeal process. At the moment, some Sewel motions go to committees, but some do not; some are discussed on the floor of the chamber, but some are not. Having dealt with a few Sewel motions, I think that it would be useful if the bureau could begin that work before we do.
We could certainly refer the issue to the bureau and see what it says. It will be up to the bureau to decide whether it wishes to do anything about it.
Meeting closed at 11:07.
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