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We have half a dozen pieces of paper from individuals on the review of parliamentary time and a piece from the clerk. We are considering what other Parliaments do, what we want to do and of whom we wish to ask questions.
I am obviously very opinionated today. Having experienced a round-table discussion of climate change at an Environment and Rural Development Committee meeting, I am drawn to that option, if we have the right panel. Having just politicians around the table will not necessarily be helpful, but we could have organisations and the broadcast media to talk about impacts on them. I say that not because I think that they should be able to preclude us from doing anything, but because it is always useful for us to have a steer on what should happen. It would also be useful to have a cross-section of people from civic Scotland, although, rather than having lots of people, we should have two or three. At the Environment and Rural Development Committee's round-table discussion, there were about a dozen people plus the committee and it was not too cumbersome. That allowed people to question one another. In evidence sessions, we sometimes lose the ability for people to cross-examine one another. On issues such as the one that we are considering, however, that approach would be useful.
I am not against what Karen Gillon says, but I want to be clear about what we are considering. The agenda says "Review of Parliamentary Time" but a lot of the evidence seems to be skewed towards parliamentary timetabling. Most of it relates to stage 3 of bills. Are we opening that seam again? I am not necessarily against re-examining that but, if we go down that route, I want us to be clear that it is a huge subject. Two or three of the submissions refer to parliamentary timetabling as opposed to parliamentary time, but those are two entirely different things.
The former convener wrote back in response to those submissions to explain what we are considering.
It was me.
As I understand it, the inquiry is about the parliamentary week. I remember saying that we should consider the period between 9 o'clock on Tuesday and 5 o'clock on Thursday, but I do not know whether we set that in stone. The inquiry is not about timetabling but about the parliamentary week and the best way of using the time that we have available.
That is my understanding of what the inquiry is about, hence the letters that I sent out during my brief tenure as acting convener. We have already set in train procedures by which timetabling can be dealt with. Whether people adopt those procedures and whether they allow adequate time for debate at stage 3 is a political matter. Those decisions are for the business managers and ultimately for the Parliament. The procedures are in place to allow them to hold as long or as short a debate as they like. It is for the business managers to sort out how they use that time and it is for the Parliament to vote them down if it does not agree. My understanding is that the inquiry is about how we use the week rather than about the stages of bills, but I stand to be corrected if that is not the case.
I find it a little difficult to distinguish between timetabling and time. As I understand it, the aim is for the Parliament to make the best use of the week. Among other things, that might involve some debates being longer and some being shorter. The inquiry is not exclusively about the timetable. It is not about extending the week and saying, "Right, we're going to have eight days in the week"; it is about making the best use of the time that we have.
Convener, it is potentially about extending the parliamentary week—for example, until 7 o'clock in the evening, if that is what people want, or into Friday morning or Monday afternoon. It is potentially about our changing the Parliament's sitting pattern into one week for plenary and one week for committees. I did not think that it would be about bill stages, amendments or whatever. We have had that inquiry. The procedures are in place. If people do not want to implement them, that is a matter for the Parliament. Ultimately, we have provided the mechanisms and it is up to others to decide whether to use them. I have to say that, if the parliamentary week is the subject of the inquiry, we could come up with absolutely anything.
I ask the clerk to read out the inquiry's remit.
I will not read out the whole remit that the committee agreed, but I should say that it is slightly wider than a simple focus on the parliamentary week. The paper says:
But it is not about reopening our inquiry into the timetabling of legislation.
I do not think that that was envisaged when the remit was agreed, but it is for the committee to decide.
We must be clear about this, because members have expressed different views about the issues the inquiry should cover. I do not think that the remit invites us to review the lodging of amendments and other such bits and pieces, but it could have an impact on the stage 3 question the convener raised if someone argues that there is not enough time in the parliamentary timetable.
As we govern our activities, we can decide to look more in one direction and less in another. After all, the remit is not the 10 commandments.
But it would be useful to know what we are looking for at this stage. If we want to open up issues such as the timetabling of amendments, we have to take a decision on that. I certainly did not think that that was the aim of the inquiry. The debate centred on what, for want of a better word, could be described as the woolly motions that we sometimes debate and to which members lodge amendments just for the sake of it, when more time could be allocated to legislative debate such as stage 3 consideration of a bill. Instead of debating a nice motion in the morning, we could set aside a whole day for a stage 3 debate. I could be wrong, but I thought that that was the debate that we had decided to explore. To be honest, I genuinely think that the committee should focus on that debate when it takes evidence.
The two issues seem to overlap.
Is there room for both?
Yes.
I float the possibility that the public's perception and our perception of what we should be doing might be two entirely different things.
If we have both groups together at the same time, we might get a good discussion.
I do not have a view either way. There would be some merit in having two round table discussions. As regards how we split them up and decide who comes to which one, we could have representatives of civic Scotland first and then explore the issues that they raise with MSPs. At that point, we could take stock and make decisions about our lines of inquiry in the subsequent evidence sessions.
A positive proposition has been made that we should go for two round table sessions in the first instance. Do we have time to take evidence after that, if we need to?
The overall timetable for the inquiry is not limited, except to the extent that the end of the parliamentary session would be its end point. It is up to the committee to take what time it thinks it needs. We are just looking for a steer on how quickly the committee wishes to start hearing evidence—whether that is done in round table format or in another way—so that we can make the necessary arrangements.
It would be useful to have the two round table discussions before we undertake the visits. That is just an idea, but it would allow us to explore in formal evidence what we learned abroad, what civic Scotland told us and what we found out from the paper research exercise. As a result, our exploration of the topic would be better. My guess is that that would have to happen after the Christmas recess to allow people to do the necessary preparatory work now, to have the round table discussions, to do the visits and to pull everything together.
That is not unreasonable.
We seem to have agreement on that. I assume that the clerks do the invitations to the great and the good—or perhaps the bad—but they might like some suggestions about whom to invite. In my view, the Parliament and the Executive have managed to kill off the Scottish Civic Forum, although it perhaps still exists in a ghostly form.
My understanding is that it still exists.
It has funding until the end of March, so I assume that it still consults its members, or is capable of doing so.
It would be helpful to have a further steer from members on whom they would like to invite. Alternatively, the matter could be delegated to the convener, if that was considered appropriate.
We must have representatives of the broadcast media. For the sake of balance, we should have one from the public sector and one from the independent sector, which have different perspectives on some of the issues.
We will invite some broadcasters and some Civic Forum people, or their equivalents. Do members want business and the trade unions to be represented?
Yes, we should invite business and trade union representatives as well.
It is not a big organisation, but it brings together many different organisations.
Given that the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has gone to the trouble of submitting evidence to us, it would be useful for us to explore some of the ideas with it and others in a round-table discussion. It has provided some interesting evidence.
The suggestion that we hear from one or more members of the consultative steering group about how they feel things have worked out since the planning they did back in 1996 and 1997 was interesting.
Members of the CSG gave a lot of evidence to the previous Procedures Committee, but they may have changed their views in the past two years.
Is written evidence available on that point? Were some of the questions that we are considering explored with members of the CSG? Forgive me for not recalling whether that happened.
They were. There is a mass of evidence that we foolishly produced just before the previous election, which was not good timing. There is a great deal of material in the archives.
Is there material that it would be relevant for us to reconsider? If so, could it be recirculated?
We have given the clerks a fairly large number of names. There will be another round-table discussion with committee members and other MSPs. Should we drag a minister along, screaming or otherwise, or is it not etiquette for a minister to be here?
A minister should be here, as they will have particular views. If we are to have a serious round-table discussion, it is important that they should be present and take part.
In my view, the Parliamentary Bureau is the source of most of our problems. Perhaps someone should be at the table to defend its position.
To defend the indefensible.
On previous occasions, we invited each political party to send a representative. It was left to the party to decide who it would send. In a case such as this, it might want to send its business manager or whip. That may be one way forward.
So each group represented on the bureau would send someone.
Yes.
The problem is that one then gets an establishment view.
We will be the non-establishment for the purposes of the inquiry.
Good—that is an excellent remark. Do we accept Karen Gillon's suggestion that we should try to timetable visits after the round-table discussions? How long does it take to arrange such events?
It takes a certain amount of time. Committee members have already indicated to us which visits they are interested in. If we have at least an idea of the timescale, we can go ahead and make the appropriate administrative arrangements. We are expecting to bring to the committee's next meeting a summary of the written material that we have received from other Parliaments. That may be an opportunity for the committee to take a final view on whether it still wants to visit the three destinations that were originally selected. The deputy convener mentioned that we may want to look again at one possibility. However, until the written material has been circulated, it will be difficult for the committee to make an informed decision.
We must try to establish a date on which the visits would potentially take place. We had set a date in early November, but I do not think that that is now realistic.
The matter might be better dealt with administratively. My only hesitation would be that if the committee does not decide on the final destinations until 25 October, there is not very long to make the practical arrangements.
Could we do things more quickly by e-mail? If we cannot decide until 25 October, we might get into December, when lots of things will come up and people are pulled in all sorts of different directions with constituency events. Then, we get into January, when there are issues around travelling, particularly in the early part of the month. We therefore go into late January, and it is February or March before we can take evidence. Is it possible for us to get a paper together? It does not need to be a huge paper, though. I am keen to take a steer from you guys, the clerks, on where you think the best or most useful places to visit are. We can therefore sign our decision off earlier, if that meets with your satisfaction, convener.
We can try to circulate something and give the committee a steer, if that would be helpful, so that a decision can be taken well in advance of 25 October.
There is no point waiting an additional two weeks before attempting to make the arrangements. That would just add to the timetabling problem.
And to the cost of the visit, the budget for which is limited.
That is all on the review of parliamentary time for the moment.
Meeting continued in private until 12:57.
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